Vincible Ignorance Revisited

Although I had vowed to give the subject a much needed rest, I feel compelled to show due respect to those who objected to my post claiming that atheists are exhibiting vincible ignorance in failing to acknowledge the existence of God.

The most common complaint registered by my critics was that I failed to make an argument for my position. What they mean, I suspect, is that I failed to make a universally accessible argument—one that is based on premises that both theists and atheists could accept. Had my intention been to persuade atheists then such criticism would be justified. My argument, however, was a theological argument made for a specific audience: my fellow Christians. This should have been clear from my opening assertion:

I wish Christians would recognize just the opposite: We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable.

Even this is too broad, though, since my intended audience is limited to those Christians who believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. In other words, to those who agree with the claim made by St. Paul that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

I knew that there would be some Christians who do not view the Bible as authoritative—I was just surprised by the ones who took this position. For example, my friend Rod Dreher says , “it seems to me that Carter goes too far here.” Similarly, my former First Things colleague Michael Liccione claims:

What Hart recognizes, and Carter does not, is that atheism is sometimes motivated by moral passion. That passion can be immature and anthropomorphic, but by no means is it always base. And even when it is base, it often arises from unreflective outrage about real wrongs people do in the name of God. We cannot simply assume that atheism is motivated by a desire to escape divine judgment or indulge in base sexual passions. Paul may well have been right about many pagans of his time, but I don’t think we need or should read him as condemning all atheism as a moral failing.

Liccione’s first claim is clearly misplaced since I said in my original post, “Even as a fervent believer I can acknowledge that skepticism and atheism can be inspired by the reasons Hart lists. But I fail to understand how that makes them noble, precious, or necessary traditions.” It is not that I do not recognize that atheists may be “motivated by moral passion” but rather that I find that excuse unpersuasive and Biblically unsound. Having noble motives for a position does not make it inherently respectable, much less justified.

I am also completely unpersuaded by the claim that Paul wasn’t really talking about atheists of our day. Liccione seems to veer dangerously close to the claim—most often made by Christians who want to defend homosexuality—that Paul is making a culturally relative claim rather than a universal acknowledgment of reality. For obvious reasons, this interpretation has not gained much traction throughout Christian history. If Paul’s statements in Romans are not applicable to the New Atheists, then they will be justified in standing before God and claiming, along with Bertrand Russell, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.”

Another of my Christians critics is Bill Vallicella , one of my favorite philosophers, who makes an even bolder claim:

Paul appears to be doing [in Romans 1] what ideologues regularly do when pushed to the wall in debate: they resort to ad hominem attacks and psychologizing: you are willful and stubborn and blinded by pride and lust; or you are a shill for corporate interests; or you are ‘homophobic’ or ‘Islamophobic’ or xenophobic; or you are a fear-monger and a hater; or you are a liar or insincere or stupid; or you are a racist, etc.

Joe Carter does the same thing.

I’ll admit that I expected better of Bill than to accuse the Apostle Paul, the greatest theologian in history, of being an “ideologue” who resorts to mere “ ad hominem attacks and psychologizing.” Because orthodox Christians generally don’t make such a claim, I won’t spend much energy explaining why I—and most every other Christian in history—disagree. Suffice to say, I side with the guy who had a warrant from God to speak on His behalf. Paul has the authority to make the claim because he is speaking for the one who put the psyche in psychologizing.

As I will be the first to admit, my brief post was an argument from authority: Paul, speaking on behalf of God, claims that failing to recognize that which is readily accessible by general revelation (i.e., the existence, eternal power, and divine nature of the Creator) are guilty of vincible ignorance.

If you believe that Paul is an authoritative source, then you should find this argument persuasive. If you believe Paul is not an authoritative source, then you have no reason to accept this argument—and no reason to accept orthodox Christian theology.

So my atheist critics and I agree that they have no reason to be persuaded by my conclusion. Still, I’m rather disappointed that their attempts to prove me wrong are based on such weak claims. For instance, Razib Khan, whose writings I enjoy even when I disagree, gets off to a shaky start in his rebuttal :

Let me do a substitution on the part I have emphasized: While there have always been people who deny the existence of Allah, it has not been a prominent view among intellectuals, much less a serious alternative to Muslim theism . [emphasis in original]

I suspect this is supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum , though I fail to see what is so absurd about the claim. If a Muslim had written a post directed to his fellow Muslims claiming that atheism is not prominent in the intellectual history of a culture whose dominant influence has been Islam, then I would be hard-pressed to find such a claim objectionable. Muslims and I will disagree about the substance of special revelation, but I think they would agree with me—and St. Paul—that atheists have no warrant for their rejection of God.

Khan’s second point is a bit more defensible:

For much of the history of the West there were strong social sanctions against public expressions of atheism. And quite often the sanctions were not simply matters of ostracism, they were of capital consequence.

As an intransigent defender of individual religious liberty, I am certainly sympathetic to this claim. But I’m not sure it helps his case. Atheism and Christian theism were on equal footing during the era of the Roman Empire (early Christians were even charged with atheism). How then did Christianity become so dominant that it became the intellectual foundation of an entire civilization while atheism remained a minority belief?

Atheists can probably create an extensive lists of rationalizations for this historical fact—some of which may even be persuasive. But they will have a harder time explaining why, if atheism is such an intellectually respectable position, that it failed to gain much of a foothold in the West. Perhaps they can claim that Christians—having a belief in an afterlife—had reason to die for their view of truth while atheists—having everything to lose—chose to hide their beliefs rather than defend them with their lives. This is plausible, though certainly not flattering to claim that atheism would have been more intellectually dominant if more atheists had had the courage to die for what they believed.

Still, as Khan notes, the martyrdom of atheists ended in the West around 1700. Why did atheism not gain more traction after the rise of religious liberty? Why was it dismissed as unserious even during the Enlightenment? And why, after 310 years, is the best that it can add to our intellectual heritage the rantings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris?

Finally, Khan points out that in “India and China many intellectuals have long been skeptical of theism.” True enough. However, as an unrepentant believer in the exceptionalism of Western Civilization I have to say, “So what?” I’ve always contended that atheists are on firmer ground if they embrace the mysticism of the East rather than pretending that the culture goods of the West that are rooted in theism (i.e., science, religious liberty, universal human rights) are compatible with atheism.

Which brings me back to my original point: While Christians should show respect and tolerance for atheists, the concept of atheism is not something that we should—much less are required—to treat as a serious alternative to theism.

On an individual level we should still engage in apologetics that clear away the underbrush of rationalizations that prevent atheists from recognizing that which, as St. Paul said, they cannot not know. But we should not be cowed into accepting the legitimacy of atheism as an intellectual project when it has never done anything to warrant such status. Atheism should be treated like other philosophical beliefs that are untenable and absurd.

Consider, for example, how we treat the strong form of idealism—the idea that the material world is an illusion and that the ultimate nature of reality is the mind or ideas. You’ll be hard pressed to find many Christian who think idealism is a concept that we have to consider as intellectually respectable, much less on par with theism. The reason is that if we recognize that anyone who starts with idealism cannot formulate an internally coherent worldview. It’s easy to claim, for instance, that the bus speeding toward you is a mere illusion; it’s much harder to deal with the real world implications of being run over by such an “illusion.”

Atheism is similarly impotent to create a worldview that meets the minimum standards that are required in order to be deserving of our respect. This is a fact that, until recently, was almost universally acknowledged, not only by Christian thinkers but also by those who disagreed with us (e.g., Enlightenment intellectuals). And it is not like the situaion has changed. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an atheist who can explain the implications of their worldview in way that is internally consistent and coherent. Many cannot even understand that difference between the statements “I, an atheist, believe X” and “X is belief that is compatible and consistent with my belief in atheism.” Indeed, I’ve never even seen one make a legitimate attempt to do so in a systematic manner, much less with the rigor and depth that matches Christian theology. Atheists are like vandals who know how to tear down a cathedral but cannot build one themselves—at least not without borrowing from the intellectual heritage of theism.

So I am firmly convinced by reason and legitimate authority that my claim about atheism being vincibly ignorant is true. Nevertheless, I am open to reconsidering that position based on stronger evidence to the contrary.

Since my argument is addressed to Christians, perhaps one of my fellow Christians will take up the cause and explain both why (a) St. Paul is in error and (b) why atheism is as intellectually respectable as Christian theism.