Introduction
I appreciate Shermer’s interest in critical thinking, his gentlemanly manner (though there are moments of minor snark in this video), his professed intellectual humility, his skeptical mindset, and his support for Enlightenment values. I share Shermer’s respect for the Enlightenment and Western moral and intellectual developments. Alas, I’m unimpressed by the quality of his thinking – at least with respect to the video. Shermer articulates his response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s recent and courageous conversion to Christianity. In the response, he produces a mixture of muddles. I don’t believe that he understands the theism-atheism debate. Given the importance of this debate, I will try to articulate where I believe he errs.
What follows are examples of his confusion, with commentary by me.
Falsehood
At 2:25, Shermer claims that atheism is not a belief. Rather, he says, “atheism is the lack of belief in God, full stop.”
This is false — assuming the standard definition of ‘atheism.’ Atheism is the belief that there is no God. (See the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy here. McCormick correctly notes that “Atheism is the view that there is no God.” And as Draper puts it: “the term “atheism” is standardly used to refer to the proposition that God does not exist.” Shermer’s mistaken definition suggests he is unfamiliar with the current philosophical debate regarding theism and atheism.
Fallacy
Setting aside the issue of falsehood, Shermer’s definition of ‘atheism’ is unorthodox. I wonder if he uses this non-standard definition because it’s easier to defend than the standard one. Thus, I suspect he is (perhaps unwittingly) committing the definist fallacy.
Too Broad
Shermer’s definition of atheism as “lack of belief in God” is too broad. He fails to distinguish atheism from doxastic agnosticism (i.e., the position such that one neither believes that God exists nor believes that God doesn’t exist). Clearly, atheism and agnosticism are distinct views. Shermer’s definition conflates them. Moreover, he doesn’t differentiate atheism from the position of one — say, a toddler — who has never considered the matter and hence lacks belief in God. Worse still, on his definition, cats and dogs, sticks and stones, stars and planets, and cars and computers are atheists since they, too, lack belief in God.
Perhaps these counterexamples indicate that I am interpreting his definition too strictly. Fair enough. But it is up to him to provide an adequate definition if he wants to reason effectively regarding the atheism-theism debate.
Double Contradiction
At 2:45, Shermer claims that he is an atheist in the same sense that he is an “a-supernaturalist.” But in the next sentence, he asserts the positive claim: “There is no such thing as the supernatural.” He has contradicted himself here and in consecutive sentences!
On the one hand, he claims that he is an a-supernaturalist in the sense that he merely lacks belief regarding whether or not the supernatural exists; on the other hand, he makes the positive claim: “There is no such thing as the supernatural.” One can reasonably conclude that he similarly undermines himself with respect to the existence of God, since his assertion “There is no such thing as the supernatural” entails the proposition ‘There is no God.’
In short, he seems not to recognize the difference between (a) the possession of a belief and (b) the non-possession of a belief.
Stymied by Scientism; Too Narrow
At 5:55, Shermer argues that since God (if there is a God) is a supernatural being and thus outside space and time, God is hence unknowable in any rational and empirical manner; therefore, it is not possible for human beings to understand God.
Now, there is much to say here. First, “rationally knowable” is a pleonasm. He is addressing propositional knowledge, which is inherently a matter of rationality. Hence, to say “rationally knowable” is like saying “close proximity.” (‘Proximity’ means “closeness;” thus, ‘close proximity’ means “close closeness.” Similarly, ‘rationally knowable’ means something like “rationally believed on the basis of rational considerations.”) This is a quibble about succinctness; I address more substantive problems below.
Second, if God is empirically unknowable, it doesn’t follow that God is rationally unknowable. Perhaps Shermer mistakenly defines ‘rationality’ as identical to “empirical knowability” or at least as entaling such. This definition (call it ‘R —> EK’) is too narrow. Empirical methodology is but one form of rationality, not the entire business. To define ‘rationality’ as “empirically knowability” is like defining ‘communication’ as “writing” or ‘fruit’ as “apple.”
Third, R —> EK smacks of scientism, a hopelessly problematic view. Moreover, R —> EK undermines itself. Think about it: if something is rational only if empirically knowable (i.e. if empirical knowability is a necessary condition for rationality), then R—> EK is not rational, since it is not itself empirically knowable.
Fourth, I doubt Shermer wants to say that we cannot understand math, logic, or morality. Yet, these areas are not matters of empirical knowledge. Math and logic are a priori disciplines. Certain moral claims might also be knowable a priori. Arguably, there are moral claims we can understand (he admits as much at 7:00 and 9:43*), though they are not a posteriori matters.
Fifth, if it is not possible for us to understand God or have knowledge about matters divine, it doesn’t follow that it is impossible for us to form and maintain reasonable beliefs about God’s existence, characteristics, etc. Shermer himself presents two characteristics of God that are plausible to hold, namely, being atemporal and being non-spatial.
Sixth, Shermer’s argument suggests a kind of agnosticism, which is quite different from atheism (properly defined), though this argument is consistent with his unorthodox definition of ‘atheism’ noted above.
His response to Ali has additional problems, but I’ll leave them for the reader to consider. In sum, although I like Shermer and appreciate his work, his reasoning in this video is unsatisfactory.
*He grants at 7:00 and at 9:43 that we can understand morality. He refers to the Golden Rule and the Categorical Imperative as examples. But these are not empirical claims, nor are they descriptive assertions. They are normative ones.