PZ Meyers Gives Atheists a Chance to Explain Why They're Atheists

I am an atheist, in short, because I am a rationalist and a scientist. I am an atheist because of reason – because of a simple love of the power of reasoning and rational thinking to bring real clarity, resolution and a grasp of the closest thing you really will get to get to real ‘truth’ while living out your lives on this pale blue dot.

Which is weird, because I'm not an atheist for the very same reasons.

What I quoted above is part an anti-testimony by Heather Dagleish, explaining why she is an atheist. 

Now I don't want to get too psychoanalytical in this post but I can't help it.  Notice that none of what she wrote in that paragraph necessarily has anything to do with atheism.  She's not describing what atheism is all about, she's describing herself.  She wants you to know that she's a pretty great person, that she's rational and loves the truth.  Maybe she is all of those things.  We'll see.  You are not who you say you are, you are what you do.  Let's see what she "does". 

PZ Meyers has started a new daily series on his blog Pharyngula where he allows his readers to explain why they are Atheists.  That quote has been pulled from the very first entry in the series.  I wanted to at least respond to the first one.  As a sort of anti-testimony, I think it comes off as very magical and deep, until you really critically examine what she's saying, of course.

As far as these sorts of anti-testimonies by atheists go, atheists will probably find this sort of thing inspiring.  Christians on the other hand may be a little intimidated by the appeals to rationality and reason and science as justification of atheism.  They're both wrong.  Me personally, I find them revealing.  These sorts of things are like a cross-section of atheist thought, and so they're ripe for criticism.

Rationality or Positivism?

In that first quote above, Heather really wants us to know how rational and reasonable and scientific-minded she is.  What you may not have noticed is that this involves a lot of deception.  At the very least she's deceiving herself and her fellow atheists, and possibly even believers.  Sort of.

When she says that she's rational and reasonable, she's kind of right.  She's right in the sense that her search for truth ends at science, and therefore it would then be irrational for her to accept any truths outside of scientific inquiry - including that God exists.  However, it was not rational for her to limit her search for knowledge to science in the first place. 

Here's the deception:  The implicit assumption in her testimony is that it is rational for one to be limited to science as she is, but she doesn't establish that it is.  Her hope is that you're a sycophant, and you'll be compelled to placate her personal philosophy because you want to be rational just like her.  So, when she says she's "rational, reasonable, and scientific minded" just remember that what she's actually saying is, "There are no truths outside of science."  This is an important distinction that I'll come back to.

I'm kind of jumping the gun, though.  First of all, I haven't shown that she even thinks this way.  She uses a lot of fluffy, heavy handed language in her testimony.  The problem with it being written this way is that the uncritical reader may just take her at her word.  This is a problem because you can't truly see what she's saying unless you read it with a critical eye.

To wit:

Indeed, the whole concept of ‘god’ or ‘gods’ is so ill-defined that asking me if I believe in ‘god’ is like asking me if I believe in floogamaloops.

If you've taken a Philosophy 101 class, you'll recognize what she's saying here.  The idea that people are literally speaking nonsense when they talk about God or the supernatural is not a new philosophy.  In the early 20th century, there were these folks called Positivists who decided, much like Heather has, that a proposition can only be considered true (or meaningful) if it can be verified in some way, for instance via the scientific method.  In other words, a statement is only true or meaningful if it conforms to scientific truth.  According to positivism, if you were to say, "God loves you", you might as well be saying, "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe."

Let's have some fun with this philosophy of positivism:  "Propositions are only true or meaningful if they can be verified through the scientific method."  Try to verify the truth or meaningfulness of that proposition with the scientific method.  While you're doing that, I'm gonna keep dissecting her testimony.

...everybody has their own personal idea of what ‘god’ is – varying vastly from person to person, region to region and time to time.

This is a different argument altogether.  Since there are unified conceptions of God in religions like Christianity I wonder if she'll take the time to address that.  No?  Ok.

Do you believe immunoglobulin M exists? I do. And I can tell you what it is – and it will be roughly the same definition that any person who knows about the subject will give you.

That she felt the need to contrast this with God goes to show, again, that she doesn't find any truth outside of science.  There's no specific response to this, but I wanted to highlight once more the implicit reasoning behind what she's saying.  

Here's another interesting quote,

My atheism is but a small bud sprouting from the scientific thinking that lets[sic] me appreciate the real world

The phrase "scientific thinking", again here does not mean that she's thinking scientifically, it means she's thinking positivistically.   The scientific method is not a philosophy (it's a methodology), however her belief that there is no truth apart from the truth discovered by the scientific method is a philosophy.  To put it another way, she wants you to think that science leads inevitably to atheism, but it doesn't.  God's existence is irrelevant to scientific thinking.  Positivism, not science, is what leads inevitably to atheism.  Here again, she's misleading her readers by conflating the meaning of her words. 

Atheism should be one of those things you arrive at in any honest quest for truth

But it's not an "honest quest for truth", it's a quest for truth within the constraints of positivism.

Positivism, as I'll explain later, is not an honest philosophy either, so there's no way to justify what she's saying. 

There are of course “other ways of knowing” – it’s just they’re complete bollocks. Beyond laughable in the shadow of empirical science. ‘Intuition’, ‘gut feeling’ and ‘just knowing’ are alternative ways of knowing things, in much the same way that having sex standing up is an alternative form of contraception.

Here's a change of pace.  This is an explicit declaration that there is no way of knowing - no truth - outside of scientific truths.

What I'm starting to think after reading all of this is that "Atheist" isn't a proper label for atheists.  Rather, atheists should be identified by their philosophy.  It would probably be more accurate to call most atheists "Positivists" instead.

Most of this testimony has been completely disingenuous.  Whenever Heather claimed that she was thinking scientifically and rationally, what she forgot to tell you is that "scientifically minded" meant that she had an a priori commitment to rejecting any truth outside of science. This is what atheists do, they conflate on the meaning of words so that they can tell you on the one hand that they're "scientific" and "rational", when in fact they're just being philosophical. 

Positivism is Dead

So what about positivism?  If she is a positivist, who's to say she's wrong? 

Well for one thing, positivism proves itself false.  In her case, the belief that she should only believe things that are scientifically verifiable is not, itself, scientifically verifiable.  This makes it self-refuting.  If it were false, it would be false.  If it were true, it would still be false.  Of course, she can always just believe in positivism on faith, right?  

Faith is by definition belief without evidence

First off, no.  Secondly, that's exactly what she's doing.  She is a positivist without evidence, because there can be no evidence that proves positivism is true.  So is that faith on her part?  Surely not, because she claimed that only the religious have "faith".  You can sort through that mess if you want. 

Okay, but let's ignore for a moment that positivism is self-refuting.  Let's assume that positivism is a valid philosophy.  It would have serious repercussions on the way we think and act.  Here are a few examples:

Morality cannot be justified with science.  If you were a positivist, you could not say such things as, "It is wrong to steal or murder."  You might as well be speaking gibberish because questions of right and wrong have no scientific meaning.  The most you could say is that, "Stealing and murder seem wrong to me."  Well, good for you.

The same goes for aesthetics, metaphysics, and so on.  If it isn't science, it may as well not even be a thing.  

But so what?  If you're an atheist, you probably think that all of those things are relative value judgments anyway, and so you don't care if they're invalid.  

Here's the catch: Positivism is supposed to be based on "scientific thinking".  The problem is that it invalidates science as well.  Science relies on philosophy in order to work, but positivism renders philosophy useless.  

There are numerous examples of unscientific axioms that science relies on.  The uniformity of nature, our ability to cognitively understand the universe, the ability of language to describe the world, and so on.  Even assuming that the "simplest" physical model of the universe is correct is an unprovable assumption.  These sorts of statements however are rendered meaningless, if not false, by positivism and so science would be rendered completely useless if we were to accept positivism.  Ergo if you are truly a scientifically thinking person, you should reject positivism. 

It is painfully ironic to me that atheists, in claiming to be "scientifically minded", can so unwittingly hold to a philosophy which is so anti-science.

By the way, I won't have to criticize any more of these atheist anti-testimonies.  Atheists like to say that the only thing that unifies them is that they lack belief in God.  However, that's a lie; in these testimonies they're all going to say the same thing, just with different combinations of words.  If you don't believe me, read them yourself.