The Logical Atheist

I don't know how I recognize faces I have seen many times before (though specialists may understand this to some extent). But who would insist that since that is the case, I have no grounds confidently thinking that I indeed  do  recognize such faces? Or who would say that until I  do  understand, I should restrain my confidence in my reasonably reliable ability to recognize faces? Gilbert Ryle referred to this distinction as knowing   how versus knowing that . It's a distinction we ignore at our folly.

Should it here be asked me ... whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of any measures of truth and falshood; I should reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long, as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rend...

For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour. We need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. A Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction, which will remain constant and durable, with his audience. A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately c...

I hear skeptical atheists (as opposed to the logical variety) laud David Hume, the great 18-century Scottish philosopher, who is thought to have been a thoroughgoing skeptic. Hume famously wrote that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." So I wonder whether these atheists would endorse this passage from Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , section 12, part 1, in which he criticizes Descartes's proposed path to knowledge: There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original principle, which cannot possib...

The sceptical objections to moral evidence, or to the reasonings concerning matter of fact, are either popular or philosophical. The popular objections are derived from the natural weakness of human understanding; the contradictory opinions, which have been entertained in different ages and nations; the variations of our judgement in sickness and health, youth and old age, prosperity and adversity; the perpetual contradiction of each particular man's opinions and sentiments; with many other topics of that kind. It is needless to insist farther on this head. These objections are but weak. For as, in common life, we reason every moment concerning fact and existence, and cannot possibly subsist, without continually employing this species of argument, any popular objections, derived from thence, must be insufficient to destroy that evidence. The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life. These ...

You may speculate all you want about how  we material beings manage to be conscious and how  we manage act willfully, that is, with purpose, but what you cannot rationally  do is ask if we are conscious and if  act willfully. We each know this directly, so the fact needs no investigation, which would affirm that which was to be investigated. Even to ask a question about those things is to demonstrate  their reality. You cannot even talk about the subject without your words presupposing and depending on them.  I'll give you an example. The other day I heard a YouTube celebrity skeptical atheist say, "I generally prefer to say now that we have will. Whether or not it's free or how free it is, I have no idea. So I don't need to come up with an explanation for something that hasn't been demonstrated to actually be real." Look closely at this free-will-denier's words: prefer , idea ,  come up with , demonstrated . What in the world can those words mean in t...

[Religion] is quite simple at bottom. There is nothing really secret or complex about it, no matter what its professors may alleged to the contrary. Whether it happens to show itself in the artless mumbo-jumbo of a Winnebago Indian or in the elaborately refined and metaphysical rites of a Christian archbishop, its single function is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny, and its single purpose is to induce those power to be be friendly to him. That function and that purpose are common to all religions, ancient or modern, savage or civilized, and they are the only common characters that all of them show. Nothing else is essential. --H. L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods , 1930