10 Questions for Eric Reitan on Is God a Delusion?: A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers (Wiley-Blackwell, December, 2008)
What inspired you to write Is God a Delusion? What sparked your interest?
Back in January of 2007, a colleague gave me a photocopied page from a book and asked me to evaluate it as if it were a student paper. The page contained a summary and cursory criticism of the first three of Aquinas’ “Five Ways” (arguments for proving the existence of a transcendent being). As I looked it over, I noticed that the author got Aquinas’ arguments wrong… and then criticized them at precisely those points where he got them wrong.
As it turned out, the page was taken from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. And so I bought the book, and as I was reading it I thought that one could write an entire introduction to the philosophy of religion just by correcting all of Dawkins’ philosophical mistakes.
The idea quickly turned into a book proposal, which I sent to Blackwell (now Wiley-Blackwell). But in subsequent conversations with the acquisitions editor, my focus expanded to include the entire slate of “new atheist” bestsellers, and it became increasingly clear that I wanted to do something more than just write a textbook on the philosophy of religion.
What I really wanted was to share with a wider, educated readership the ideas and arguments from my discipline—the philosophy of religion—that could help expose the inadequacies of the “new atheist” attacks on religion. I wanted to write a book of “popular philosophy” in the best sense: philosophy that engages with contemporary issues in a way that can help the wider public think more clearly about them.
What’s the most important take-home message for readers?
A number of years ago, I was in a conversation with a conservative preacher who insisted that the existence of God was obvious and that atheists weren’t just in a state of denial, but were in that state because of profound character defects. His view, in short, was that atheists are both intellectually and morally defective—a judgment fairly typical in the most conservative religious communities.
The new atheists are really making the very same charges, but in reverse: If you’re religious, if you believe in God, it’s because you’re too weak-willed to think carefully for yourself in light of the evidence. And then you treat this vice as if it were a virtue, calling it “faith,” and in the process open the door to all kinds of dangerous views, which now can be legitimately embraced “on faith”—in other words, for no good reason.
To be blunt, I am frustrated with this tendency to identify the line between good and evil (or rational and irrational) with the line between theism and atheism, whether this is done in religion’s favor or against it. If readers come away convinced that this tendency is a mistake, I’ll consider the book a success.
Is there anything you had to leave out?
When my book contract arrived, I saw I’d been given a word limit of 95,000 words. Since I’d already written 130,000 words with two chapters still to write, panic ensued. What would I need to cut? Could I do it?
In fact, I could. And with far less loss of substance than I’d feared. But I had to make some tough choices. My aim in writing the book was to find a balance between intellectual substance and accessibility, and the word limits forced me to pursue that balancing act with more earnestness than I’d done in earlier drafts.
For example, in earlier drafts I offered a detailed examination of different versions of the “principle of sufficient reason.” As I read through it, I decided this would only interest philosophical specialists, and so I cut it.
On the other extreme, there were the rhetorical asides whose sole purpose was to entertain. At one point I spent a good two pages looking at an atheist children’s book from the 1970s, a book that basically made the same key claims Dawkins makes in The God Delusion, except far more briefly and with pictures. On review, I decided this discussion was fun but didn’t advance my argument.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic?
There’s a tendency to think that philosophical arguments for God’s existence have to be all-or-nothing. Either they prove once and for all the existence of the Judeo-Christian God of Love, or they’re failures that should be tossed in the trash heap of bad ideas.
The truth is much more involved. First of all, even if the traditional arguments for God’s existence fail to show that a personal loving creator exists, they might show something more modest—for example, that in order to explain the universe we encounter in ordinary experience, we need to posit the existence of a fundamentally mysterious reality beyond the empirical world. Just because an argument doesn’t take us all the way to God doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant to the case for theism.
Secondly, sometimes an argument relies on premises that some reasonable people will intuitively accept and others won’t. When that’s the case, the argument doesn’t prove its conclusion, but it still reveals something important: it shows that reasonable people can accept the conclusion, even if they needn’t. I think the arguments for God tend to be like that: they show us that reasonable people can believe in a fundamental reality that transcends the empirical world, even if the arguments don’t prove that such a transcendent reality exists.
Tags: atheism, christopher hitchens, daniel dennett, new atheists, philosophy, richard dawkins
As an atheist, I can not applaud anyone who would, out of hand, totally dispense of the issue of religious faith. Even an atheist has to have a sort of "faith" or "deep belief" that what we do in life and that what may come "after" it can really be described in some sort of schema. However, I agree with Reitan that advocating some sort of good/evil dichotomy between those who are religious and who are atheistic is a total fabrication on the part of both sides of the issue! How a person can be demonized/canonized by virtue of being religious (just saying that you "believe" without really "knowing" the "facts" of the faith sometimes is more than enough!) or atheistic (just saying that you don't "believe" without knowing the facts of what this really means at all is also more than enough) is more than overly simplistic; it is, to me, overtly dishonest on both sides of the issue. I view both as "philosophical" issues for I, with or without God, can act the same in the world! I believe (no matter how irrationally - and who said that either side has to be "rational" in the first place anyway?) that people strive to be the "best" that they can be. Believing in Christ as the one God or Savior, in the principles of Islam, or the tenets of Taoism or not believing in any of these does not guarantee any grand "moral-ethical" or "spiritual" superiority at all. We are either "good" or "evil" on our own and we each must ferret out those who lie more in between those extremes and, for most (I would hope), those leaning toward the "good" will find that more palpable than toward those leaning in the other direction. It is rather simple really. To me, a "positive" act according to the "Golden Rule" rates more than any philosophical or spiritual utterance!
It's at least close to make the claim that there is a reality bigger than the empirical world we exist in. The need to attach a theism to it is what I question. I think we need to think outside the box. Perhaps we collectively are the theism. That really it is our collective delusion about that reality that makes this empirical world and attendant belief systems an apparent reality and not genuine reality.
That means that we made it all, and we can fix it all. There is no god to fix it, no judgment, no heavens or hells. I recall a rather famous person once arguing, just "imagine."
The fact that the author thinks the Judeo-Christian god is a god of "love" pretty much sums up the fact that it is impossible to be neutral about god-worship. It's apparent to me from reading the Bible that this god is a fabrication of Jewish priests/princes meant to control the tribe and rally it against external enemies. That is not love. I understand how indoctrination and fear create religionists, and perpetuate religious beliefs; but this does not mean that I have any respect for the process.
The problem is that on the theist side far too much weight is giving to belief/non-belief as the determinant through which too many believers are willing to judge people in their entirety. This is a result of religious dogmas, and I don't see any alternative to it. Religions all demonise and denigrate non-believers, to enforce their control over adherents. They have to, otherwise they can't coerce members to stay over the long term.
Because of this, if I discussed my atheism immediately with every new person I met, I think it's fair to say I would have no religious friends. It's just too important a measuring stick for them. Never mind that it doesn't actually have any bearing on how people live, act, treat others, etc - because perception, in this case, is everything.
As a minority, atheists are not in a position to just dismiss people as friends based upon them being religious. Of course, the reverse can hold; some atheists will reject or denigrate some religionists too.
It all comes down to secularism. If we all shut up about our views, and save them until we know people better, then we will use better criteria for judging people than the beleif/non-belief dichotomy.
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