Post by thegreypilgrim on May 8, 2009 15:25:07 GMT
My dealings with neo-atheists (not "normal" or moderate atheists) around the internet has led to my conclusion that it is largely an anti-intellectual movement. This has been stated elsewhere on the board in several threads (including one [or two] of my own) so noting it is nothing new or revolutionary. Of course, the empirical sciences are esteemed and venerated to the level of what appears to function as holy writ, but all other realms of academia seem to be categorized as either under the auspices of holy science or as anathema to it.
It appears the academic discipline to be unfortunate enough to accumulate the most scorn from neo-atheists (apart from theology of course) is philosophy. It's all "posturing and obfuscation" apparently. Using big words and high-minded sounding phrases to obscure "real world facts" (whatever those are). This turn, makes the least amount of sense to me as I would have thought philosophy to be the greatest bed fellow of the neo-atheist as opposed to science (which is supposed to be ideologically neutral).
Nevertheless, this conjunction of anti-intellectualism and the scorn of philosophy has yielded what I take to be a modified form of the appeal to common practice (or appeal to tradition) fallacy.
Basically what it is is a consequence of the utter loss of the concept of "normativity" which is a pretty important concept in philosophy. This is what (I believe) leads neo-atheists who don't want to make their ethical philosophy (essentially liberal humanism) consistent with their ontological philosophy (typically what amounts to eliminative materialism despite it not being cast in such terms) and, thus, make the argument that because the evolution of our moral framework has been adaptive it therefore must be good.
The dubiousness of that argument aside, it leads to an even more frustrating one when they turn their critical faculties toward religious systems and propositions. This is where the neo-atheist's anti-intellectualism and general ignorance of systematic theology and analytic philosophy of religion truly shines. The neo-atheist feels he does not need to bother which such frivolities, so when confronted with an argument or explanation of a given doctrine he has never come across he employs what I've been calling the modified appeal to common practice argument. It essentially has the following formal structure:
(1) No interpretations of given theological doctrines are admissible that have not predominated in historical practice.
(2) Doctrine D has not predominated in historical practice.
(3) Therefore, D is not admissible.
Typically (1) (or something like it) is not stated, but is assumed, so it takes some digging to even bring it to the surface. It is this premise that I think commits this fallacy since whatever people have done in practice (in the utterly contingent and "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)#Modern_philosophy[/url]accidental[/url]" nature of history) does not necessarily have any normative implications. Furthermore, the meaning of the phrase "predominated in historical practice" is usually highly specific in what it denotes. This is typically the sort of American fundamentalist evangelicalism invented by theologians like Dwight L. Moody and John Nelson Darby which has come to fruition in contemporary times; and, in a case of appalling anachronism, is what colors the neo-atheist's interpretation of church history and the global Christian tradition as a whole.
This, I think, is the reason for what occurs so often when one offers an interpretation of a particular Christian doctrine (but it could be one's interpretation of general theism as well) that "doesn't fit" with the conventional wisdom or popular perception of what Christianity is. A non-literal interpretation of Genesis is a good example of this. The counter-argument the non-literalist will encounter from the neo-atheist will essentially amount to, "Well no one else has done that." This is plainly false, but even granting it as true isn't it still simply irrelevant? How would that response defeat the non-literalist? The point is to think critically about things, employ all the tools of doing so, and discern all the possible and internally coherent interpretations of things and then decide which is the most reasonable. Not to take an extreme example and through both anachronistic reasoning and hasty generalizations allow that example to represent the whole, and discount other possibilities as ad hoc.
It appears the academic discipline to be unfortunate enough to accumulate the most scorn from neo-atheists (apart from theology of course) is philosophy. It's all "posturing and obfuscation" apparently. Using big words and high-minded sounding phrases to obscure "real world facts" (whatever those are). This turn, makes the least amount of sense to me as I would have thought philosophy to be the greatest bed fellow of the neo-atheist as opposed to science (which is supposed to be ideologically neutral).
Nevertheless, this conjunction of anti-intellectualism and the scorn of philosophy has yielded what I take to be a modified form of the appeal to common practice (or appeal to tradition) fallacy.
Basically what it is is a consequence of the utter loss of the concept of "normativity" which is a pretty important concept in philosophy. This is what (I believe) leads neo-atheists who don't want to make their ethical philosophy (essentially liberal humanism) consistent with their ontological philosophy (typically what amounts to eliminative materialism despite it not being cast in such terms) and, thus, make the argument that because the evolution of our moral framework has been adaptive it therefore must be good.
The dubiousness of that argument aside, it leads to an even more frustrating one when they turn their critical faculties toward religious systems and propositions. This is where the neo-atheist's anti-intellectualism and general ignorance of systematic theology and analytic philosophy of religion truly shines. The neo-atheist feels he does not need to bother which such frivolities, so when confronted with an argument or explanation of a given doctrine he has never come across he employs what I've been calling the modified appeal to common practice argument. It essentially has the following formal structure:
(1) No interpretations of given theological doctrines are admissible that have not predominated in historical practice.
(2) Doctrine D has not predominated in historical practice.
(3) Therefore, D is not admissible.
Typically (1) (or something like it) is not stated, but is assumed, so it takes some digging to even bring it to the surface. It is this premise that I think commits this fallacy since whatever people have done in practice (in the utterly contingent and "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)#Modern_philosophy[/url]accidental[/url]" nature of history) does not necessarily have any normative implications. Furthermore, the meaning of the phrase "predominated in historical practice" is usually highly specific in what it denotes. This is typically the sort of American fundamentalist evangelicalism invented by theologians like Dwight L. Moody and John Nelson Darby which has come to fruition in contemporary times; and, in a case of appalling anachronism, is what colors the neo-atheist's interpretation of church history and the global Christian tradition as a whole.
This, I think, is the reason for what occurs so often when one offers an interpretation of a particular Christian doctrine (but it could be one's interpretation of general theism as well) that "doesn't fit" with the conventional wisdom or popular perception of what Christianity is. A non-literal interpretation of Genesis is a good example of this. The counter-argument the non-literalist will encounter from the neo-atheist will essentially amount to, "Well no one else has done that." This is plainly false, but even granting it as true isn't it still simply irrelevant? How would that response defeat the non-literalist? The point is to think critically about things, employ all the tools of doing so, and discern all the possible and internally coherent interpretations of things and then decide which is the most reasonable. Not to take an extreme example and through both anachronistic reasoning and hasty generalizations allow that example to represent the whole, and discount other possibilities as ad hoc.