Reply #87: Please provide an example of where Hart dismisses the new atheism because they refuse to go ... [View All]

[Jim__]

into the clouds. And please provide an example where such a challenge to the new atheists is not a challenge that is critical to their claims. For instance, where Hart talks about traditional metaphysical arguments it is a direct challenge to their claims:

The only points at which the New Atheists seem to invite any serious intellectual engagement are those at which they try to demonstrate that all the traditional metaphysical arguments for the reality of God fail. At least, this should be their most powerful line of critique, and no doubt would be if any of them could demonstrate a respectable understanding of those traditional metaphysical arguments, as well as an ability to refute them. Curiously enough, however, not even the trained philosophers among them seem able to do this. And this is, as far as I can tell, as much a result of indolence as of philosophical ineptitude. The insouciance with which, for instance, Daniel Dennett tends to approach such matters is so torpid as to verge on the reptilian. He scarcely bothers even to get the traditional “theistic” arguments right, and the few ripostes he ventures are often the ones most easily discredited.

If the New Atheists are not interested in these arguments, that's fine. But to claim that the arguments fail without a clear demonstration that they actually fail, is disingenuous. Hart gives an example of this when he talks about Hume's recognition that the arguments of the New Atheists only really apply to the God of Deism:

Thus, the New Atheists’ favorite argument turns out to be just a version of the old argument from infinite regress: If you try to explain the existence of the universe by asserting God created it, you have solved nothing because then you are obliged to say where God came from, and so on ad infinitum, one turtle after another, all the way down. This is a line of attack with a long pedigree, admittedly. John Stuart Mill learned it at his father’s knee. Bertrand Russell thought it more than sufficient to put paid to the whole God issue once and for all. Dennett thinks it as unanswerable today as when Hume first advanced it—although, as a professed admirer of Hume, he might have noticed that Hume quite explicitly treats it as a formidable objection only to the God of Deism, not to the God of “traditional metaphysics.” In truth, though, there could hardly be a weaker argument. To use a feeble analogy, it is rather like asserting that it is inadequate to say that light is the cause of illumination because one is then obliged to say what it is that illuminates the light, and so on ad infinitum.

Your assertions about point 2 fail to address the issues raised by point 2:

Point 2: The question is almost certainly not going to be answered by playing logic and word games and taking leaps of faith alone. There are ways to approach the question scientifically, for example, by studying the limits of regress in the composition of the atom, for example--how deep can we go toward discovering the atom's indivisibles, if they exist, and in discerning the events in the first nanosecond after the big bang. I don't know about you, but I'd put my money on the materialists to get closer to the truth on these questions than the divines in the Religion faculty. Do we dismiss the meditations of theologians on the nature of "absolute reality?" No. They can do all the meditating they want on whatever subject they want and even get paid handsomely for it. But how do we weigh between these modes of investigation in our own personal lives? To me that would seem to depend on how tolerant one is for gas and bullshit in one's own quest for truth.

Point 2 is not about the first nanosecond after the Big Bang, nor is it about finding more elementary component parts of the atom. It is about existence itself. And when you try to look into questions of existence, one of the first questions that occur will be about contingent existence and necessary existence. If this is not of interest to you, or the New Atheists, that's fine. Just ignore it. But you can't then have claimed to resolved the issues.

Your assertion on point 3 is just a denial of reality.

Point 3: Bull. Shit. Hart misses the influence of Christianity in modern society because he's a Christian who believes in the ultimate truth of the religion. The things that Christianity bestowed on the culture worth preserving--the works of art in inspired, even some of its ideas and institutions--will be preserved. The rest of its muck--including the absurd belief system at its heart--one should hope will dissolve and fade away. Not soon enough, alas, if the idiotic American scene is any indication.

Everything in Western Civilization, including the attitudes of the New Atheists toward Christianity and religion, is culturally saturated with Christian influences. Before trying to analyze religion, they have to understand the effects of this influence.