Naturalism and Nihilism
But is Haught being fair to tar atheism, and therefore naturalism, with the brush of religiosity and faith? Are naturalists creedal about scientism, which Haught defines as the idea that “science alone is a reliable road to true understanding of anything”? No. Naturalists don’t (or shouldn’t) suppose that all truths are scientific truths, only that science is our best guide to understanding the ultimate constituents of reality and the things they compose – the “furniture of the universe.” (More on distinguishing science from scientism is here, here and here.) Naturalists’ commitment to science in this regard isn’t a matter of faith, it’s based on experience – the widely shared experience that beliefs about the world based in science are generally more reliable than those that aren’t. If we want reliable beliefs, then it’s rational to stick with science, not a matter of faith. So it isn’t, as Haught says, self-contradictory to assert we shouldn’t base beliefs about the world on faith, but rather on science, since this assertion isn’t based on faith.
Haught takes the new “soft-core” atheists to task for accepting mainstream values and modern lifestyles, saying that they aren’t being true to the real implications of atheism. The old hard-core atheists such as Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre saw that “a full acceptance of the death of God would require an asceticism completely missing in the new atheistic formulas.” They would advise, as Haught puts it, that
If you're going to be an atheist, the most rugged version of godlessness demands complete consistency. Go all the way and think the business of atheism through to the bitter end. This means that before you get too comfortable with the godless world you long for, you will be required by the logic of any consistent skepticism to pass through the disorienting wilderness of nihilism. Do you have the courage to do that?
For Haught, true atheism and naturalism necessarily end up in nihilism. Since the new atheists obviously aren’t nihilists, being good bourgeois and all, they aren’t real, rugged atheists. He asks
Has [Sam] Harris really thought about what would happen if people adopted the hard-core atheist's belief that there is no transcendent basis for our moral valuations? What if people have the sense to ask whether Darwinian naturalism can provide a solid and enduring foundation for our truth claims and value judgments? Will a good science education make everyone simply decide to be good if the universe is inherently valueless and purposeless? At least the hard-core atheists tried to prepare their readers for the pointless world they would encounter if the death of God were taken seriously.
The equation of naturalism with nihilism is a standard scare tactic, but it doesn’t bear on the truth or plausibility of naturalism or theism. Even if Darwinian naturalism can’t provide “a solid and enduring foundation for our truth claims and value judgments” this isn’t proof that it’s false, or that god exists. It’s only a reason to hope god exists, on the questionable assumption that his authority provides a secure basis for moral values (see here).
It turns out, however, that the hard-core atheists (at least as Haught describes them) were wrong: an atheistic naturalism doesn’t end up in nihilism, so we needn’t run scared into the arms of god. Without a transcendent, theistic basis for our moral valuations, there are still compelling reasons for naturalists to be moral: we are animals whose flourishing within a society critically depends on behaving morally toward others. Moreover, we are built by evolution to take moral rules as universally binding (see here). This explains why the new atheists are just normal folk, not nihilists, when it comes to values and lifestyles: they, like pretty much everyone else, are moral by nature.
Haught closes with a question:
Belief in God or the practice of religion is not necessary in order for people to be highly moral beings. We can agree with soft-core atheists on this point. But the real question, which comes not from me but from the hard-core atheists, is: Can you rationally justify your unconditional adherence to timeless values without implicitly invoking the existence of God?The answer, as we’ve seen, is an unequivocal yes. Of course it isn’t that naturalism avoids value conflict and moral ambiguity, but patently neither does theism, whether it’s what Haught considers the insipid, faith-based varieties, or the more "empirical" theological varieties. Since he admits that belief in god isn’t necessary for being moral, this puts naturalists and theists on at least an equal moral footing. That naturalists are not nihilists doesn’t implicitly invoke the existence of god, it’s simply evidence that morality is a natural phenomenon. As Dan Dennett would say, thank goodness!
posted by Tom Clark at 11:10 AM
15 Comments:
I think the advocates for theism forget that while the universe taken as a whole might be amoral and purposeless, humanity definitely has purpose and a sense of what is good and bad behavior. Centering our morality on our own goals is more honest (how could we know the mind of God, if God existed?) and doesn't allow us the arrogance of absolutism.
Samuel Skinner
Humanity doesn't have a purpose- people do. The good of humanity is an aggregate of the goals of every person on this planet. Minor distinction, but it is important to keep track of it.
As Walter Sobchak says in
"The Big Lebowski":
"Nihilists! @#$% me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
It seems to me that morals is about people getting along with people. Better to get along, than not get along!
Wih John Haught's permission, I'm reproducing a note to me, then a response to letters on his article.
Dear Tom,
Thanks so much for your comments. Unfortunately, because of demands on my time at the moment, the best I can do is refer you to my book and my response to letters in the Christian Century, including yours. I will just say that I agree with you that the naturalist's privileging of science, which even Dawkins is willing to call "scientism," is based on experience. I don't deny this. The question is whether it is *adequate* to experience. On top of this the fiduciary aspect of scientism also consists of the naturalist's believing in science's all-encompassing cognitional scope without being able to demonstrate this empirically. I have no problem with faith. I just want the new atheists to come clean about the faith aspect underlying their own world-view, so that they won't think of religious believers as so totally different from themselves. We are a believing species, and I *believe* that different kinds of belief require different kinds of justification. But much more needs to be said. . .
Thanks for your interest and concern. Best,
John
Haught's response to letters:
One of the perils of publishing a book excerpt is that it inevitably excludes much more than it can include. So my best response to the letters here is to invite their writers to read my book God and the New Atheism. They will find there, as well as elsewhere, that I am anything but an anti-evolutionist; that I do mention and comment on Bertrand Russell; that, contrary to Mr. Dawson, Richard Dawkins does use the term “scientism” to characterize his perspective on truth; and so on. Moreover, in neither the excerpt nor the book do I deny that atheists have values or that they can be deeply moral. Nor do I believe that most atheists, including hard-core atheists, or self-styled naturalists such as Mr. Clark, are de facto nihilists. I have never maintained anything of the sort.
However, it is theologically interesting, and worthy of ongoing discussion, that people who call themselves atheists or naturalists usually do surrender their lives to values that will outlive them, values that undoubtedly grace their lives with meaning and joy. If they object to my essay or book it is precisely because they are measuring my claims against what they take to be inviolable truth. But then what needs exploring is the ground of this inviolability. Contrary to what several respondents here have implied, there is nothing at all defensive about asking whether an explicitly atheistic world-view implicitly contradicts the uncompromising seriousness of the new atheists’ moral commitments and their instinctive devotion to truth. Believers and atheists alike do well to ask whether their formal world-views are in congruity with what actually goes on in their moral and cognitional lives.
My reason for bringing the hard-core atheists such as Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus into the discussion is that, unlike the new atheists, they too demand formal consistency: We should not carry on in our actual lives in a way that denies the logical implications of what we say with our philosophical lips. If you’re going to be an honest atheist go all the way. This means that if there is indeed no inviolable ground for what you take with absolute seriousness, then why do you take it so seriously? Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus actually tried to be consistent, but it didn’t work. The paradoxical fact that even the hard-core atheists cannot exorcise an unconditional seriousness from their own demand for consistency represents what theologian Schubert Ogden has rightly called “the strange witness of unbelief.”
Finally, at least to someone who has spent the larger part of his life teaching very bright undergraduates, the comments by Rev. Burciaga and Mr. Newsome about these young students seem both uninformed and condescending.
John F. Haught, Georgetown University
I must respond to Kenonline. He said that "morals is about people getting along with people. Better to get along, than not get along!"
I will leave it up to the imagination to try to visualize what he would have done in order to "get along with people" if he had lived in Nazi Germany. From the point of view of naturalism, what other people are doing is all that he has as a guide.
In contrast to Kenonline, morality is making the right choices in spite of what everybody else is doing.
Now how are we to know what is 'right'. Will science tell us? Not a chance.
Otis
Tom, thanks for the link. I'm not going to attempt to address all of your assertions in the article, but I'll say that your summary idea that human morality can be easily explained as an evolved survival instinct suffers in the light of others' claims that humanity's war-like nature can be easily explained as an evolved survival instinct. So which is it, are humans moral because it promotes survival of the fittest, or is that why they're war-like? You can't have it both ways. And incidentally, the "hard-core atheists" were much more consistent in the application of their faith in acknowledging that it leads one logically to nihilism.
In regards to whether or not athiesm/naturalism qualifies as a faith, let's look at the surprising discovery of red blood cells and still-flexible blood vessels in dinosaur fossils a few years ago. Why was this surprising? Because the hemoglobin in the red blood cells should have broken down within thousands of years, but it was found in bones claimeded to be millions of years old. But what was the scientists reaction to this discovery? Did they question the evolutionary dogma that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago? No, by a leap of blind faith, they assumed there must be some way to preserve hemoglobin for millions of years. These scientists demonstrated an amazing knack for ignoring the evidence against millions of years due to their creedal assertion that evolution requires those millions of years. And gives the lie to your claim that "Naturalists’ commitment to science in this regard isn’t a matter of faith, it’s based on experience – the widely shared experience that beliefs about the world based in science are generally more reliable than those that aren’t."
For more on the dinosaur red blood cells story, read this follow-up article that refutes claims that what was found was not actual hemoglobin and red blood cells.
Tobias, thanks for the comments.
1) Re explaining morality: Scientific naturalists suppose that *both* our cooperative, ethical inclinations and our war-like, competitive inclinations are evolved traits, each of which promoted survival in different sorts of situations.
2) Re naturalism as a faith: To disparage or belittle naturalism by calling it merely a faith is an interesting tactic on the part of those who espouse faith as a virtue. But in any case, we can agree that there’s a difference between faith (belief without evidence) and empirical science (belief backed up by intersubjective, public, reproducible evidence). Religion generally takes faith as its grounds for belief, naturalism takes science. That you appeal to an empirical claim about there really being hemoglobin in the dinosaur bones suggests that you agree evidence is a better ground for belief than faith, at least in this instance.
The vast preponderance of the evidence points to dinosaurs dying out millions of years ago. So it isn't a "blind leap of faith" to hypothesize that hemoglobin, if in fact it was present, was somehow preserved over millions of years. Rather it's normal scientific practice, which takes all the evidence into account when forming hypotheses.
I'll let you have the last word regarding moral living vs. war-like nature, though I do not concede your point. If I understand the concept of macro evolution properly, you can't have it both ways.
On the other account, though, I was not actually belittling faith. I was simply demonstrating how faith in naturalistic creeds leads scientists to presuppose millions of years, in spite of evidence to the contrary. The problem is, there's is only a "vast preponderance of the evidence" for the notion of millions of years when you decide to ignore or reinterpret the evidence against it.
Your assertion that faith is "belief without evidence" is preposterous. Perhaps what you meant is "blind faith", but it is disingenuous to equate faith and blind faith. Faith is belief, and must be based upon evidence. To believe something for which you have no evidence, or in spite of the evidence, is folly. Furthermore, I would submit that the cited dinosaur hemoglobin example does, in fact, amount to a leap of blind faith on the part of the scientists in question.
It turns out, you are setting up a false dichotomy when you pit faith against empirical science. They are not comparable. Essentially, what you’re asserting is that science is the only way we can know truth. This is a patently false notion. We can determine truth through logical reasoning, examination of history, or first-hand testimony, to name but a few examples. What’s more, science can in no way address questions of a metaphysical nature, as they are outside the realm of physical science.
In fact, Christians and Naturalists have the same empirical evidence – the world we see around us, experience through our senses, examine through the scientific method, and come to conclusions about using our reason & intellect. Christians base their faith, essentially, upon examination of the evidence in the Bible for the truth claims it holds. In addition, there is much extra-Biblical evidence that can be examined, including the historical records from New Testament time frame, modern archeological evidence and textual criticism, which all give good reasons to believe the Biblical accounts. However, that does not mean we disregard the empirical evidence from science. Instead, we examine the evidence and make logical conclusions about it that uphold the Bible, and we critically examine the conclusions derived by the secular scientists (which conclusions, generally, are biased in favor of naturalism due to their presuppositions). So, it's really a matter of presuppositions: Christians presuppose the Bible is correct, Naturalists presuppose millions of years and macro evolution, and interpret the evidence, and we each interpret the evidence consistent with our faith.
Tobias,
It’s good to know you put no stock in belief without evidence; we at least have that in common, along with reliance on logic and reason. But we continue to disagree over what finally constitutes grounds for reliable beliefs about what’s real, since you believe in what the Bible says, and I don’t.
Science gives us grounds for trustworthy beliefs since it doesn’t depend on hearsay, intuition, revelation, tradition or scriptural authority, all of which are notoriously unreliable. Instead it tests claims about reality empirically, using publicly available evidence in repeatable experiments and observations. In this way science insulates our claims about reality from the biases introduced by wishful thinking, psychological and perceptual distortions, myths, fables, etc. The Bible is a collection of purportedly factual claims about historical events, natural and supernatural, but skeptics like myself want to know why we should believe these claims. Why should we suppose they are reliable? Are there good grounds for thinking that the accounts in the Bible are accurate? To me, it seems like there are no such grounds, but you will disagree. For you, the Bible is just as secure a basis for belief about what’s real as science. As you say, Christians presuppose that the Bible is correct.
But is it? After all, you yourself look to sources outside the Bible to confirm what it says, so it seems in the end you *don’t* believe the Bible is an infallible source of truth on its own – it needs empirical back up by archeology, etc. If so, then you should stick with what the established scientific consensus has to say on the matter, and not simply cherry pick empirical findings that “uphold the Bible.” You can’t do honest science and presuppose any result, since to do so would be for your wishes and presuppositions to influence the findings.
You say that “Naturalists presuppose millions of years of macro-evolution” but this isn’t the case. It’s good, hard, honest *science* that has established the facts of biological evolution over the eons, based on methods of inquiry that specifically try to *eliminate* the influence of presuppositions and wishful thinking. Naturalists simply stick with the conclusions of established scientific theory, which of course are subject to change in the light of new evidence. We do so because science, not faith or religious tradition, is by far the most reliable route to an objective view of things, which is what we’re primarily after.
You respond with an “unequivocal yes” to Haught question about whether we can “rationally justify your unconditional adherence to timeless values without implicitly invoking the existence of God?”. But you don't demonstrate any such thing. Instead you mention how behaviour which we deem moral could have evolved because its adaptive (an I idea I hold too). But these behavioural traits are not the sorts of “timeless values” Haughts is concerned with. Your argument falls prey to Hume's fork. Further Nature, being a mindless entity, cannot logically provide us with any sort of moral imprimatur. How can simple, senseless particles and forces inform us of transcendental moral directives? You mention that “we are built by evolution to take moral rules as universally binding”, but just because we take these subjective moral rules to be universally binding it doesn't follow that they actually are (it doesn't get us from subjective to the objective). Haught is quite correct in his conclusion that atheistic naturalism considered seriously and honestly necessarily leads to Nihilism. It doesn't reflect well on atheists that we have to throw up such chaff to disregard and escape from the harsh implications of our worldview. There is most certainly a degree of cognitive dissonance going on in the minds' of many new atheists. This wouldn't be such a vice if most of new atheists (I call them cocktail party atheists) didn't lay such puffed up claims to being courageous freethinking skeptics following the treacherous trail of reason.
Eggbert,
You’re right that the values atheists commit themselves to aren’t “transcendent moral directives” and hence not “timeless” in the sense Haught has in mind. But as evolved creatures we have the naturalistic equivalent: robust, ineradicable proto-moral dispositions that ground our sense of fairness and aversion to inflicting unnecessary harm. The moral imprimatur is carried within each of us as part of our biological endowment. It gets leveraged and shaped by culture to produce moral systems necessary for social life, hence these systems aren’t merely subjective, they are binding.
The idea of divine command isn’t necessary to back up moral systems, as evidenced by the fact that atheists don’t fall into nihilism. This isn’t chaff or brave talk, but simply the facts. An external, extra-human moral authority would only be binding on us if we *already* agreed that its values were more or less correct (“Thou shalt not kill”). But since we already agree, we don’t need its authority. Values are necessarily a function of creaturely motivations, so there’s no chance of us falling into nihilism, only of discovering ourselves in moral quandaries. Such is life.
HI Tom:
I think the best critique of the new atheists comes from Chris Hedges in his new book: Hedges puts his finger on the progressivism and moral ceertainty at the heart of its project. Following Berlin, Neibuhr, and others, Hedges says the new atheists make the same mistake as theiststic fundamentalists: the assumption that history is moving in a unidirectional manner and that all knowledge is accumlative and moral progress quantifiable. While I am an atheist I do not share the political and moral certainty of the new atheists. ( A certainty that is ironic, given their reputation for being nihilist).
The central idea of this Naturalism = Nihilism thing is that since nature is not driven by moral purpose, people who believe that there is nothing outside of nature must not be driven by moral purpose either. That's simply a non-sequitur. Why must we emulate the universe? At most it's a reason to be depressed about the world. I don't think it's possible for a non-comatose person to be a nihilist.
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