Abstract
This concise new book by Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame, makes the case that the contemporary atheist movement is guilty of “overreach.” He deftly displays how the confident certainty displayed by New Atheists and other secularists is not warranted. The book is not, however, a polemic in the opposite direction; Smith does not argue in favor of theism, nor does he claim that atheism can be proven wrong. The book defends the modest conclusion that the case for atheism is far weaker than its defenders realize or admit—ironically, since the atheists themselves present themselves as the champions of reason and evidence as against the purported irrationality of religious believers (4). Though Smith is not a philosopher or theologian, he is well informed and accurate in his criticisms of the atheist movement. The book does not break new ground, but nor does it aim to. It provides a clear, accessible summary of the debate for the general audience, and a convincing argument for his position.
Smith helpfully divides the topic into three main questions. The first two chapters address whether there can be good reasons to be moral in a world without religion. Smith demonstrates that a naturalist cannot provide grounds for making ethics an overriding obligation, contrary to the claims of atheists. The argument, of course, is not that atheists cannot be moral, but rather that they cannot provide a rationally justified basis for the strict demands of morality, and notably that they have no answer for the moral skeptic, the person who sees no reason to be moral.
In chapter 3, Smith shifts to the question of whether science has or even could demonstrate the nonexistence of God. Again, Smith explains the issues clearly and accurately, demonstrating how scientists and naturalists repeatedly misunderstand the issues at stake. The existence or nonexistence of God is a philosophical not a scientific question, and the ordinary empirical methods of science are of little if any use in determining whether for example a transcendent divinity exists. God, if he exists, is not the sort of thing one can point a telescope at to see.
Chapter 4 addresses the question of whether religion is “natural” to human beings. This question seems rather poorly defined, and much of the chapter is spent exploring the different meanings of the term “natural.” Smith here also tends to lapse into academic jargon such as the following: “I mean the propensities caused by an interconnected set of orientations toward life and the world that humans recurrently experience” (116). In this chapter one might have liked to see Smith use more of his sociological expertise, demonstrating the range and impact of religion on human society. Nonetheless, he does arrive at a plausible prediction that the “New Atheist dream of a fundamentally secular world will prove illusory” (122).
In a few cases, the argument stumbles. Smith claims that theism provides two good reasons to be moral: that God knows better than we do what is good for us, and that God will eventually punish wrongdoing. But neither provides an independent reason to be moral. The former point merely asserts that there is a reason without telling us what it is. Nor can punishment count as a reason, any more than the gunman’s “your money or your life” is a reason to give him your wallet. Each claim, in fact, assumes rather than provides a reason to be moral.
One other element of the book that is less successful is Smith’s brief encomium to Aristotle’s ethics in the last chapter. After having been told throughout the book that there is no rational, secular basis for ethics, it is jarring to read in the conclusion that, in fact, Aristotle’s ethics could provide just such a basis. In fact, this assertion is highly dubious. Critics of “virtue ethics” have long pointed out that the theory is so vague as to be unhelpful; Aristotle’s observation that humans seek “thriving and happiness” hardly seems a basis for a systematic, rational theory of ethics. This is one place where Smith fails to address the critical literature on virtue ethics; this infatuation with Aristotle would better have been left out of the book.
Apart from these relatively minor criticisms, Smith’s book must be said to be a success: a clear, succinct, and accurate assessment of the limits of the case for atheism.