The Logical Atheist

Sorry to hear about yesterday's death of philosopher Daniel Dennett at 82. He was a leading "new atheist,"  one of the so-called four horsemen along with Christopher Hitchens (also gone), Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. Since Dennett was a consciousness denier , I can't regard him as a true friend of reason and hence atheism. ( What's reason without consciousness and free will? ) So I prefer philosopher Gilbert Ryle , economist Ludwig von Mises , and psychiatrist  Thomas Szasz , but then again, if everything is physical, what does  prefer  even mean?

Why did Yahweh create beings who can reason and then not reason with them?

The opposite of skepticism isn't faith or trust. It's confidence. In what? In reason, in one's cognitive faculty, and one's ability to evaluate evidence and arguments to some extent and to learn which experts can be trusted in specialized fields. Skepticism and faith (or dogmatism) are not opposed. It's the radical skeptic, demoralized by his self-confessed ignorance, who might embrace mysticism in search of a ray of hope. Without reason, he's left himself no alternative.

It is not a criticism of reason to acknowledge that no reasoning person or group can have a synoptic view of the world or of society that would enable him or it to rationally plan everything. The faculty of reason is packaged within individual human beings, and no mountaintop exists from which one could see and know all that it would take to plan a society or an economy in the interest of all its participants. The result of attempting to do so would inevitably be what Ludwig von Mises called "planned chaos." This is what F. A. Hayek, Mises's student, also worked so hard to explain. But when individuals operate and cooperate in a free society and marketplace, their small portion of knowledge, articulated and tacit, becomes accessible to all, mostly through the price system. Mises and Hayek showed this in the great socialist-calculation debate of the '20s and '30s. Reason is powerfully efficacious in that it enables us to perceive and understand the world that exist...

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The new atheists, as opposed to an older generation of atheists, love to portray themselves as skeptics. But they should be careful. It is true that words like  skeptic have a narrow meaning in the sense of referring to doubt about a specific claim only. That's fine: language is a living, changing thing, and words can drift in various ways, such as narrowing and broadening. But skepticism (call it capital-S skepticism) has not lost its earlier radical meaning of universal principled doubt : the literal inability to know anything at all or anything about a particular matter. Atheists who defend reason ought to make clear that this is not what they embrace. After all, if we can't know, then what's the point of asking a believer for evidence of God's reality? What is evidence to a capital-S skeptic? It's an illusion. If in principle we cannot know, then evidence is a bogus category. There can be no such thing! Anyone's claim -- even a theist's -- is as good a...

The highest intellectual joy consists in the discovery of truth; a knowledge of this truth will constantly tend to the practice of an exalted virtue; this virtue will serve as the stable foundation of human happiness, the immortal guarantee of the felicity of the intelligent world. Reason anticipates a progress, which all the powers of superstition can never arrest. Let reason then perform her faithful duty, and ignorance, fanaticism, and misery, will be banished from the earth. A new age, the true millennium will then commence; the standard of truth and of science will then be erected among the nations of the world, and man, the unlimited proprietor of his own person, may applaud himself in the result of his energies, contemplate with indescribable satisfaction the universal improvement and happiness of the human race.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species  

The double despotism of Church and state has borne so hard upon human existence, that man is sunk beneath its dreadful weight; but resuscitated nations are about to teach kings and tyrants a lesson awfully impressive, in regard to the destiny which awaits the aggregate injustice of the world. The period is at hand, in which kings and thrones, and priests and hierarchies, and the long catalogue of mischiefs which they have produced, shall be swept away from the face of the earth, and buried in the grave of everlasting destruction. Then will the era of human felicity, in which the heart of unfortunate man shall be consoled; then will appear the moment of national consolation, and universal freedom; then the empire of reason, of science, and of virtue, will extend over the whole earth, and man, emancipated from the barbarous despotism of antiquity, will assume to himself his true predicament in nature, and become a standing evidence of the divinity of thought and the unlimited power of hu...

Reason, which every kind of supernatural theology abhors; reason, which is the glory of our nature, is destined eventually, in the progress of future ages, to overturn the empire of superstition, and erect upon its ruins a fabric, against which the storms of despotism may beat in vain, against which superstition may reek her vengeance without effect, from which she will be obliged to retire in agonizing tortures.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

Nothing is more difficult, while the mind is under the influence of prejudice, than to persuade it of the necessity of removing or destroying that prejudice; prejudice destroys the discerning power of the understanding, and conviction becomes impossible while the force of evidence necessary to produce it is not discovered. The same idea of right, the same ideas of truth, associate themselves with a prejudiced mind, as are to be found in the clearest operation of the most enlightened; and the fool is as confident in error, as the wise man standing on the broad basis of moral and natural truth. No hopes of reform can be entertained relative to such obstinate minds, until you can render them susceptible of the impressions of doubt or uncertainty; the man who never doubts, or calls in question the truth of any deduction which he has made, is but badly calculated for the development of real principle; there is no extension or perfection of mind which excludes the possibility of error, and i...

There is no system either of education, politics, or religion, which ought to be excepted from the severest scrutiny of the human mind, or the closest examination which the human faculties can bestow upon it; yet habit and custom of long duration have so strongly attached man to his errors, that he reluctantly relinquishes those tenets which serve only to disturb his peace, and destroy his happiness; while the privileged impostors of the world, or those who feast upon the continuation or error and prejudice, unite their strongest exertions to persuade man that his most important interests in time and eternity depend upon the preservation of ancient and unnatural establishments; which, in fact, are as destructive to human felicity, as they are derogatory to the divine purity of supreme intelligence. The influence of authority, the fear of incurring clerical displeasure, and the dread of eternal torments, have partially annihilated the energy of intellectual powers, and taught man tremb...

The faculties of man ought to be circumscribed only by that extensive circle which embraces the full extent of their native and accumulated activity. When religious prejudices are permitted to mingle their gloomy effects with the exalted conceptions of enlightened reason, the important cause of truth and the dearest interests of humanity become perceptibly retrograde, and darkness instead of light pervades the moral world.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

How is it possible that man should have any clear conceptions of natural truth, when his understanding is constantly insulted with a thousand incongruous and non-existent relations, such as ghosts, witches, and devils, which perpetually disturb the imagination, and draw the rational faculties into the vortex of fancy and fanaticism? and this will ever be the case so long as superstition, or, which is the same thing, a religion claiming a supernatural birth, shall spread its bloody and baneful influence among intelligent beings.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

It's often held that skepticism leads to atheism. But it can easily lead to religious faith. After all, if you reject reason and logic--which is what hardcore skepticism is all about--faith may appear as the only alternative if one wants to get through life. (Nihilism is an alternative, but many people have no stomach for it.) So radical doubt is by no means the path to follow. Doubt is a poor principle to live by. Doubt, properly conceived, is contextual; one should have a good reason to doubt. In fact, to reasonably doubt one proposition, you necessarily express confidence in other propositions. As has been said, you have to stand somewhere. You may try to reject reason, but you can't escape it, no matter how hard you try. Skepticism and religious faith (at least by one of its several definitions) both constitute the rejection of reason, so they have much in common. In fact, there is no atheist cause (in the sense of struggle), but there is a rationalist cause. Atheism, far ...

 

Great God of Nature! Must we then renounce the justifiable exercise of all our faculties, in order to be happy? To attain felicity, is it necessary that we believe in contradictions? Must we deem cruelty one of the attributes of divinity? Must the benevolent mind be called to the view of murder, in order to be fitted for the performance of its essential duties? Must injustice and revenge be interwoven with the morality of man? Shall we never be permitted to love truth, admire nature, and practice a pure and genuine morality? Oh, superstition! how much thou hast to answer for! thine influence has corrupted the faculties of man, debased his heart, and rendered wretched the whole human race. Thou hast spread ruin, misery, and devastation over a beautiful and productive earth, and thou art deserving of the curses of every intelligent being in every part of the universe.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Amon...

Does man become entitled to praise for the acknowledgment of facts guaranteed by his senses, or essentially supported through the channel of his mental faculties?... When, therefore, the Christian religion represents faith as being meritorious, it loses sight of the natural operations of the human mind; it betrays an ignorance of nature, and becomes censurable by its deviation from the primary and essential arrangements. Yet in this holy book we are told, that "he that believeth not shall be damned." But what are we to believe? Are we to believe that the Creator of the universe is the parent and friend of the whole human race? Are we to believe that his wisdom acts in coincidence with general felicity, or operates on the ground of universal happiness?... No! We are not permitted to believe this. What then is Christian belief? What are the dogmas and principles to which we are required to give an unqualified credence? However painful it may be to declare it, they are of the fo...

How is it possible that man should have any clear conceptions of natural truth, when his understanding is constantly insulted with a thousand incongruous and non-existent relations, such as ghosts, witches, and devils, which perpetually disturb the imagination, and draw the rational faculties into the vortex of fancy and fanaticism? and this will ever be the case so long as superstition, or, which is the same thing, a religion claiming a supernatural birth, shall spread its bloody and baneful influence among intelligent beings. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species   

Man is essentially interested in the discovery of truth, and the diversified application of its principles to all the concerns of human life; he is equally interested in the practice of a pure natural virtue; truth, however, will make but little progress, where religious bigotry has seized upon the mental faculties, and suppressed the elevated conception of the understanding; nor will practical virtue share a better fate, where its beneficent effects are opposed by similar causes; the hope, therefore, of constituting a useful character, compounded of the love of truth, and the practice of genuine morality, will become evanescent, unless man can be persuaded that he is interested in a speedy return to nature, from which, in all his inquiries, he has so long deviated. The plan of revealed religion, in which man for so many ages has reposed the confidence of his mind, should be re-examined under the impressions inducing an invincible attachment to the development of solemn truth, and the ...

In religion, therefore, or in any other of the concerns of life, if the mind discerns that quantum of evidence necessary to establish the truth of any proposition, it will yield to the force and effect of the proofs which are produced; if, on the other hand, the intelligence of man does not discern the necessary influence of such evidence, infidelity will be the natural and unavoidable result. Why then is the principle of faith considered a virtue? If a man beholds the sun in its meridian splendour, and declares the truth of this exhibition, is he meritorious in making this acknowledgment? If any truth in nature is well substantiated and supported by the testimony of his mind or senses, does he deserve credit for his mental acquiescence? No. Why then have the Christian world annexed to this principle of belief any degree of merit? Is necessary acquiescence a virtue? Does man become entitled to praise for the acknowledgment of facts guaranteed by his senses, or essentially supported th...