Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist.
No reasonably orthodox Christian believes in Aphrodite or the rest of the Olympian deities, or in Ganesh the Elephant God or the rest of the Hindu pantheon, or in the Japanese emperor, and so endlessly on - and officially (as a matter of Christian orthodoxy) he or she must say that anyone who sincerely believes in such deities is deluded and blasphemously in pursuit of "false gods".
The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in; namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.
What Grayling is saying above is often heard from atheists. It is a stock item in their repertoire. But is there an argument here, and if so, what exactly is the argument? The conclusion is clear enough: Religious belief of every sort is irrational, unsupported by evidence, and not intellectually respectable. (One wonders if Grayling has given any thought to the nontheistic religion of Buddhism, but let that pass.) A bold thesis indeed, very significant if true or even if rationally supportable. But what is the argument? It is this:
1. Every believer in a given religion regards the gods of other religions as either nonexistent, or rationally insupportable, or not intellectually respectable, or 'false gods,' and so on.
2. The atheist adds just one more item to the list of deities denied by the believers in a given religion, for example, the deity of Judaism, or that of Christianity, or that of Islam.
Therefore
3. Religious belief of every sort is irrational, etc.
That's the argument, muchachos! It is so bad it takes the breath away. The obvious problem with it is that it is invalid: (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). Indeed, it is difficult to see how (3) is so much as relevant to (1) and (2). Even if the premises are both true, it is easy to see how the conclusion could be false. Suppose there is a religion whose conception of God is rationally supportable. This supposition is consistent with the fact, if it is a fact, that every believer regards the other guy's god as rationally insupportable or nonexistent, and the fact that atheists deny all gods.
To have a valid argument, Grayling needs to argue along these lines:
1*. Every believer in a given religion RIGHTLY regards the gods of other religions as rationally insupportable, etc.
2*. The atheist takes it a step further and RIGHTLY regards all gods as rationally insupportable, etc.
Therefore
3*. Religious belief of every sort is rationally insupportable, etc.
This is a valid argument, but it is obviously a petitio principii: one would have to know that the conclusion is true to know that the second premise is true. Further, the first premise by itself suffices to establish the conclusion, but again it is a petitio principii.
The upshot of this exercise in analysis is that Professor Grayling has given us no argument at all. He has merely underscored his conviction that all religion is buncombe. The verbiage I quoted above is just his pounding of his fist on the lectern. But we already knew that atheists think religion a load of rubbish.
Finally, note the assumption that Grayling and Co. make: they assume that every object of religious belief is on a par. It is all the same whether you believe in a flying spaghetti monster, an angry lunar unicorn, Russell's celestial teapot, or the God of Thomas Aquinas. Well, that is just not the case as I argue here.
In the second to last paragraph Bill says "The upshot of this exercise in analysis is that Professor Grayling has given us no argument at all. He has merely underscored his conviction that all religion is buncombe. The verbiage I quoted above is just his pounding of his fist on the lectern. But we already knew that atheists think religion a load of rubbish".
That it isn't an argument is precisely Bill's point. Futhermore, if this is the 'general orientation of the atheist[s], this is the wrong orientation to take, as Bill shows in the last paragraph.
First, in order for the atheist to claim that he denies my god for the exact same reason I deny all the other gods, the evidence for all the gods would have to be patently the same. There would have to be the same amount of evidence for Zeus as for the God of the Bible. But is the amount and quality of the evidence for Zeus equivalent to the amount of evidence, or plausibility, for the existence of the God of the Bible? Well, obviously not.
Even if I would someday become an atheist, I would still recognize that it is overwhelmingly more plausible that the God of the Bible exists than that Zeus exists. For atheists to not admit this seems like they equated the evidential statuses of all gods in their heads for convenience.
Second, atheism obviously is not just denying the existence of God, because there are certain corollaries that result from this fact. If atheism is a rejection of theism, and theism implies A, then atheism implies ~A. From the I-just-went-one-more-god shibboleth, it would appear they only think they unchecked a mental box next to the existence of that god. But it should stand as obvious that any truth that was entailed by the truth of theism is now rendered either untrue or unjustifed under atheism. The atheist may have only gone one more god, but that last god was pretty important; in fact, it's an entirely different universe.
Good comments. Even if one finds the evidence for the God of Aquinas, say, to be weak, surely it is stronger than that for Russell's celestial teapot.
Your second point is very good too. I have made this point myself in a somewhat different way in earlier posts. To deny that there is a celestial teapot changes little or nothing, whereas denying the existence of the God of Aquinas, changes a lot. For example, it changes the ontological status of physical objects and abstract objects.
Grayling is an academic philosopher, and philosophers in the Anglosphere are taught to argue their assertions and not to make gratuitous assertions, even (especially?) when writing for the popular press. The trouble with gratuitious assertions is that they call forth gratuitous counter-assertions.
Whatever Grayling's intentions may have been, the move I am exposing is a common one among atheists, and it is usually put forth as if it has some probative force -- when it has none.
Welcome to the discussion, and thanks for your comment, with which I am forced to agree!
On the other hand, I don't want to be interpreted as saying his little story shouldn't be attacked, countered, torn to shreds. Poked with holes that show why the Judeo-Christian god is not "just another" God. So perhaps I was wrong: we evolutionists tear apart creationist rhetorical device non-arguments all the time.
Hey, wait. I think I just flip-flopped.
I don't think that ad hominem is necessarily always fallacious. And, this sort of thing could be okay under the right circumstances. Surely you get to cut off the dispute at some point and say something like this. However, I do agree that this is not one of those cases. For instance, the same could be said for science:
Taken this way, Grayling's argument is also invalid. A believer may reject other gods just because belief in them contradicts belief in his God. He need not admit, then, that the situation of the atheist is epistemically parallel with his own. The atheist rejects not only the God that the believer accepts but all gods. Philip M has rightly pointed out that Grayling's argument assumes without justification that the evidence for all gods is the same; but, even apart from this, the argument still doesn't work.
I agree with your conclusion, though I think there are problems with your analysis. It seems to me that this gets closer to what Grayling means to be arguing:
1**. Christians hold that religious belief of all but one kind shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
2**. Atheists hold that religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
3**. If (1) and (2), then the atheist's estimation of religious belief is close to the Christian's.
4**. Hence, the atheist's estimation of religious belief is close to the Christian's.
5**. If the atheist's estimation of religious belief is close to the Christian's, then the atheist's estimation of religious belief is not very different from the Christian's.
6**. Therefore, the atheist's estimation of religious belief is not very different from the Christian's.
What would you (or others) say to this argument? I doubt it will withstand scrutiny, but it isn't as easy to identify its weaknesses as with the arguments you consider.
The argument you present is admirably clear, and of course valid. But it is not sound since (1) is false. For example, Christians do not believe that Jewish religious beliefs have the same intellectual respectability, etc. as the belief in fairies. Roughly speaking, Christians believe that Judaism got a lot right about God. For a second example, Christians don't believe that Muslim religious beliefs have the same intellectual respectability, etc. as the belief in fairies. The main difference between Christianity and the other two Abrahamic religions concers the triune structure of God and the Incarnation of the 2nd Person of the Trinity in Jesus of Nazareth. That is an important difference, but a 'intramural' one: one that transpires within the walls of broad agreement as to the existence of a transcendent God who created the universe, exemplifies the omni-attributes, etc.
So if your reconstruction were what Grayling and Dawkins and the rest of the gang have in mind, then their argument would be unsound.
Also, I don't think your (6**) captures Grayling's thesis, namely, "Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies."
Either Grayling is arguing or he is making a gratuitous assertion. The latter obviously won't fly among philosophers. If Grayling is arguing, then I would like to know what the argument is. On my analysis, he is either giving a blatantly invalid argument, or a blatantly circular one. One your analysis he is giving an argument that is valid but unsound, and one the conclusion of which does not capture his apparatent thesis.
Let's try again. Maybe he intends this:
7. All gods are on an evidential par, the 'fairy par.'
8. Christians reject all gods except their own.
Therefore,
9. Christians ought to reject their god as well.
The trouble with this argument, of course, is that (7) is preposterous. The God of Aquinas is not on an evidential par with Ganesh the Elephant. (8) is also false. As I already suggested, Christians don't reject the God of Judaism, they refine the conception of this God.
Adrian,
I like your parody argument. It highlights the fact that no one denies that science has a right to refine and improve its conceptions. But if so, why not say the same for religion. Not all scientific posits are on a par (caloric, phlogiston, ether, electrons, the planet Vulcan, the planet Mercury. . . .), so why should all religious posits be on a par?
In addition to Bill's points, in which I concur, there is also an ambiguity in 3** as between:
3a If (1) and (2), then the atheist has the same estimation of nearly all religious beliefs as the Christian does.
3b If (1) and (2), then the atheist's estimation of whether any religious belief is ever reasonable is close to that of the Christian.
3a follows from 1 and 2 and is arguably true, but it takes us nowhere interesting; in any event, 1 is false, as Bill points out. 3b does not follow from 1 and 2; and though there are (regrettably) Christians who hold and/or conceive of their faith as arational, there are certainly others who have a more robustly evidential view of the matter.
The central problem with Grayling's article is, of course, his deliberately inflammatory line:This statement, coming from a professional philosopher who has within easy reach the resources to educate himself on the matter, is either contemptibly uninformed or deliberately deceptive. His attempt to justify it is silly, as Bill has shown, and the article continues with a breathtaking string of bald assertions and selective inferences.
For example, Grayling has the temerity to speak of religious belief as "the unreflective credence given to ancient texts that relate to historically remote conditions, . . ." Will he please tell us whether he believes that Julius Caesar was killed in the Senate, and if so, on what basis? If he cannot be bothered to read any modern scholarly work by the likes of R. T. France, D. A. Carson, Martin Hengel, Colin Hemer, or William Lane Craig, might he at least take the time to examine the first fourteen volumes of Nathaniel Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History and point out the unreflective bits?
Again, he informs us thatBut atheism has not? Guilt by association with misbehavior is a universal acid: it will dissolve everything it touches. Perhaps Grayling would retort that Stalin wasn't a real atheist, tacitly suggesting that no real philosopher believes that the No True Scotsman fallacy is a fallacy -- at least, not when he finds it a convenient way to avoid having his own principles of inference turned against him.
Thanks for your contribution. You are right about the ambiguity, which had escaped me.
Since Grayling is capable of writing good technical papers, it is curious that his critical faculties abandon him when he turns to this 'hot-button' topic. Admittedly, what I quoted was from a newspaper article, but as a teacher and something of a public intellectual one would expect him to exemplify a higher standard of reasoning.
Here is a post of mine on the 'No True Scotsman.'
I agree that the argument I presented doesn't reflect Grayling's claim that "Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies." But I don't see Grayling as giving an argument for this claim (at least not in the passage quoted). The "argument" he gives is rather an argument for why the typical religious believer should not be insulted by this assertion. The passage can be paraphrased like this: "Here is a claim about religion: X. I will not give you an argument for X here, but note that the typical religious believer should not be insulted by this claim, because [argument here.]"
I agree completely that the unsupported claim is the one that is controversial and needs to be argued for.
Tim,
By (3), I meant neither (3a) nor (3b). By 'estimation of religious belief' I meant something like 'estimation of the degree to which religious beliefs on the whole are intellectually respectable and rational'. I think Grayling's idea is that if an atheist and a typical religious believer had a list of all the supernaturally-themed beliefs held by people around the world, and they each checked off which beliefs they thought were not intellectually respectable and reasonable, the two lists would be largely in agreement; for the vast majority of such beliefs, the religious person and the atheist would vote the same way. That's the sense in which the atheist's estimation of religious belief is close to the Christian's.
Note that (3) is not supposed to follow from (1) and (2).
I think the argument is a failure, but for other reasons.
Sorry -- I was writing fast. What I meant is that 3a isn't true, since its consequent doesn't follow from the conjunction of 1 and 2.
I doubt that there is any premise in the vicinity of 3 that would make Grayling's train of thought into an argument. More precisely, I do not think there is any such thing as the degree to which religious beliefs on the whole are intellectually respectable and rational -- the collection of beliefs that answer broadly to the term "religious" is too heterogeneous.
As for his not insulting Christians, that's hopeless: it's insulting for Christians who have done their homework to have to endure this kind of remediable ignorance from an Oxford-trained philosopher.
Sorry -- I was writing fast. What I meant is that 3a isn't true, since its consequent doesn't follow from the conjunction of 1 and 2.
I doubt that there is any premise in the vicinity of 3 that would make Grayling's train of thought into an argument. More precisely, I do not think there is any such thing as the degree to which religious beliefs on the whole are intellectually respectable and rational -- the collection of beliefs that answer broadly to the term "religious" is too heterogeneous.
As for his not insulting Christians, that's hopeless: it's insulting for Christians who have done their homework to have to endure this kind of remediable ignorance from an Oxford-trained philosopher.
I see what you are saying. We are at the point of diminishing returns, since it is just not clear what Grayling is arguing if he is arguing anything. But Dawkins makes simular moves, so I should try to find some passages in Dawkins. They might be clearer.