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Divine irony
5 March 2009
Musing on the often acrimonious debate between atheists and believers, Simon Blackburn takes as his inspiration David Hume, who approached the issue not with hatred but with humour
I suspect that many professional philosophers, including ones such as myself who have no religious beliefs at all, are slightly embarrassed, or even annoyed, by the voluble disputes between militant atheists and religious apologists. As Michael Frayn points out in his delightful book The Human Touch, the polite English are embarrassed when the subject of religion crops up at all. But we have more cause to be uncomfortable.
The annoyance comes partly because of the strong sense of deja vu. But it is not just that old tunes are being replayed, but that they are being replayed badly. The classic performance was given by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, written in the middle of the 18th century. Hume himself said that nothing could be more artful than the Dialogues, and it is the failure to appreciate that art that is annoying.
In the Dialogues, there are three principal characters. The first is Philo, a religious sceptic, whose voice is clearly that of Hume himself. Cleanthes is an apologist whose stock in trade is the argument that design is evidence of the existence of a deity: the familiar argument that the delicate and wonderful adjustments of nature irresistibly point to the existence of a divine architect - all nature declares the Creator's glory.
Finally, there is Demea, who wants the God of the philosophers: infinite, perfect, immutable, eternal or transcending space and time, incomprehensible and mysterious. Hume's art consists first in setting Cleanthes and Demea at each other's throats. Each represents an element in monotheistic religious belief, yet they cannot fit together.
In some of the most humorous passages - and it is a very amusing work - Philo sides with Demea in trashing the conception of the deity available to Cleanthes, and indeed calls him little better than an atheist. But then he sides with Cleanthes, who trashes the conception of the deity available to Demea, and in turn calls him little better than an atheist, too. On each front, Philo wins, by two votes to one.
The two wings of theology, one making God immanent, something to be understood as analogous to ourselves, and one making Him transcendent, beyond spatio-temporal physical understanding, cannot be reconciled. The believer has to oscillate incoherently from one to the other.
The problems with the divine architect, creating a cosmos in a manner analogous to the way humans design artefacts, are manifold and familiar. Our own creative activities are highly dependent on the delicate adjustments of the physical world. Our ideas are ideas of the things we come across in that world. Human designers are dependent on parents, not self-caused or self-explaining. Finally our aims and passions are adapted to the animal and social lives we lead. None of this is supposed true of the divine architect. But suppose we waive those difficulties, we still have it that human designers work in groups, refine the designs of others, sometimes lose interest in their designs, go on to make improved versions, and so on.
Cleanthes' theology leaves it open that the world, "for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him."
Philo rightly concludes: "I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all." Demea agrees: Cleanthes is little better than an atheist.
Later in the Dialogues, Cleanthes gets another bout in the ring, when the moral attributes of the deity come into play. But this only bruises him further, for it is obviously absurd to advance a perfectly benevolent, all- powerful and all-knowing architect as the best explanation of the spotty and often appalling course of human and animal lives. We cannot infer from the way of the world a deity that has any preference for good over evil, any more than for heat over cold or day over night.
So then we turn to Demea's transcendental conception of the deity. But this outruns any analogy to those things of which we have experience, and which therefore provide the origins of our ideas.
We cannot understand how anything could be necessarily existent, beyond time, immutable yet active. Since we have no idea of what the property of being necessarily existent in this way might be, then for all we can understand it might as well belong to the whole given cosmos as anything else.
Some might suggest that the world of abstract mathematical objects provides an example of the kind of existence needed, but most philosophers hold on to Gottlob Frege's insight that numerals are adjectives rather than nouns. They deny there is a "world" of mathematical objects in any relevant sense. And even if we were to talk that way, it would give us no usable concept of a deity.
The number 4 is not on the face of it a source of moral and political authority, or an actor in the world's affairs, or the target of prayers or the source of consolation, although it has as much claim to be the sustaining ground for the ongoing order of nature as anything else we can try to imagine. Cleanthes agrees: Demea can say nothing intelligible about his deity, and this makes him little better than an atheist.
So is Hume himself an atheist? The word does not fit, and he never described himself as such. He is much too subtle. Philo the sceptic says that we cannot understand or know anything about a transcendent reality that explains or sustains the ongoing order of nature, while theists such as Demea say that we cannot understand or know anything about the transcendent reality, which is God, that explains or sustains the ongoing order of nature. Since the inserted clause does not help us in the least, the difference between them is merely verbal. And this is Hume's conclusion.
At the end of the Dialogues, the little boy, Pamphilius, who is present as an auditor, says that Cleanthes' arguments appealed to him most, and even Philo, surprisingly, makes some apparently complimentary remarks about the design argument, provided it has a completely undefined conclusion. Some commentators have rather flat-footedly thought that this was some kind of recantation on Hume's part. But of course it wasn't. It was a supreme piece of his habitual irony.
Since by the end neither Cleanthes nor Demea can defend any usable conception of a deity, it matters not in the least whether you are drawn to say that "it" exists or to deny it. There is no inference to be drawn about anything - moral, political, empirical or theoretical - from either the assertion that "it" does or "it" does not. Joining in on either side equally implies that we know what we are talking about, and the right philosophical attitude is just to laugh at persons who suppose that.
Hume elegantly sidesteps the common charge that dogmatic atheism is just as much a "matter of faith" as faith itself. You cannot make that claim against someone whose mocking irony is careful to issue no "ism" at all.
He also escapes the debating point that atheism is "parasitic" on religious belief. A contented absence of belief is no more parasitic on what is absent than the absence of crocodiles in England is parasitic on them being there, although it is also true that you could not laugh at faiths without them being there to laugh at.
But it is also wrong to call Hume an agnostic. That would imply a definite question about which we do not know the answer. But since there is no definite question at stake, that too lapses.
Hume knew that he was unlikely to be understood. He also knew that the interesting questions now shift to the study that he pioneered in The Natural History of Religion: the comparative study of religious practices and the psychological and social mechanisms that give rise to them, and that they articulate.
The interesting questions surround the anthropology of activities such as drama, dance, music, rituals and ceremonies. Here the question of belief subsides, and the focus turns to what Ludwig Wittgenstein called the "stream of life" that issues in these doings. There is no doubt that these doings and sayings have a function, for good or ill.
They may express hope or fear, safety in the universe or unease at its harshness; tribal solidarity and hostility to others; or universal benevolence and brotherly love. Since religious practices are those of ordinary people, they inherit both the best and the worst sides of human nature.
According to Hume, all human beings have "some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and the serpent", and even Christians are human. Some of their music, architecture and poetry is rather good, some parts less so.
Bad things happen when people decorate their bare, inchoate, unstable and inconsistent imaginings with the baser trappings of their culture. They come out of the fog bearing ludicrous beliefs about cosmology or biology, or carrying their envies and fears, their embarrassments about sex in general or certain varieties in particular, their desire to steal some land or make war on their neighbours. Deities then become dangerous, megaphones through which emotions are whipped up and particular moral demands are given a spurious authority. People need prophets and priests to carry the megaphones, and they are often supposed to signal their rapport with the deity by making remarkable things happen.
Hume also completely destroyed the reasons for believing in any such revelation and signal of revelation in the other prong of his scepticism: the devastating argument against belief in the testimony of miracles. This strips away any pretension to special authority, and then we can go on to test the moral injunctions in their own terms, standing on our own feet. The scandal is when the forum for debate, such as the House of Lords, is stacked with one set of devotees, with the kind of result witnessed in its defeat of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill.
The upshot ought to be not dogmatic atheism, but sceptical irony. Of course, the latter is just as infuriating to those making special claims to authority, perhaps more so. Men and women of God may find it invigorating and bracing to meet disagreement, but even benevolent mockery is mockery. They would find that it is much harder to bear the Olympian gaze of the greatest of British philosophers.
Simon Blackburn is professor of philosophy, University of Cambridge, and the author of How to Read Hume (2008).
Readers' comments
People of faith will doubtless have much to say about Simon Blackburn's article and I'll leave it to them to do the apologetics. However, as a follower of the Christian faith, what made me smile was his choice of ending: "The upshot ought to be not dogmatic atheism, but sceptical irony. Of course, the latter is just as infuriating to those making special claims to authority, perhaps more so. Men and women of God may find it invigorating and bracing to meet disagreement, but even benevolent mockery is mockery. They would find that it is much harder to bear the Olympian gaze of the greatest of British philosophers." Those who know the Gospels and understand what they let themselves in for when they seek to follow Christ, would know that he endured such intense mockery that it formed part of his torture prior to the crucifixion. Roman emperors made entertainment out of mocking Christians. What irony, then, that Simon should think Christians might be fazed by mockery. And what irony, too, that he's under the illusion that faith precludes a sense of humour.
The context relation of university is more complex than business world,that because fox faces fox,wisdom faces wisdom, envy faces envy.
Blackburn writes: "most philosophers hold on to Gottlob Frege's insight that numerals are adjectives rather than nouns. They deny there is a "world" of mathematical objects in any relevant sense" What? Frege thought numbers were genuinely existent "self-subsistent objects" whose "self-subsistence comes out at every turn" in arithmetic. "We should not be deterred" he added " by the fact that in the language of everyday life number appears also in attributive constructions. That can always be got round" (section 57, Austin translation). Blackburn also writes: "The upshot ought to be not dogmatic atheism, but sceptical irony. Of course, the latter is just as infuriating to those making special claims to authority, perhaps more so" Right, but who are the infuriated? As much as fundamentalist religionists, the group contains the sort of scientismist found at, for example PZ Myers's blog fawning over Dawkins.
Jennie, I don't think the author of the article anywhere claims that religious believers cannot appreciate irony in general. It seems as if you have taken some of the article's rhetoric out of context. I would also point out that the fact that Christians have historically been objects of derision and mockery does not in any way validate their beliefs in the face of such skeptical irony. It is essentially to say that my beliefs include the belief that I will be mocked for my beliefs (wow, that was inelegant), and so whenever you mock my beliefs you are only proving the validity of my beliefs. It's an absurd rhetorical trick. Furthermore, the article's intent is primarily to disarm dogmatic atheism rather than to dissuade religious believers (because the skeptical ironist recognizes the folly in such a debate).
Any belief system should be questioned and shed that lessens one's difficulty in believing the believer exists at all. The only miracle worth pausing over (as such) is one's own existence -- arising from singular egg and singular ovum of those singular predecessors of yours. My grandfather's first wife died, but for which sad occurrence . . . . Systems of belief, from religions to Nazisms, devalue the incredible gift of evolved life, and therewith equip the believer to destroy other such miracles with a clear conscience. Strenuous efforts by some such systems to restore value to life have never availed, and will never avail, to recover from the original damage. History is an unimpeachable witness.
Bravo, Simon! Shows what a real philosopher can do with a timeless question 'answered' by militants of all stripes down through the ages. I wish you had named names--at least the current crop of militant atheists who claim to 'know' so much about religion without the slightest evidence that they've studied 'the enemy' in any detail--Harris/Dawkins/Dennett/Hitchens, I mean. However, I must agree with Benson Bear that you've not got Frege right. But as you rightly point out, Hume's great work lays the groundwork for the systematic study of religion as an all-to-human product, which ultimately leads to all that nineteenth-century German stuff that realizes that the critique of the earthly is hidden in the critique of heaven! And that is something that deserves consideration because it is about something really important--skeptical consideration to be sure, maintaining a sense of humor, but decidedly a more serious matter, indeed.
The myth of the militant/dogmatic atheist rages on. A strange claim to make against people who generally favour debate over arms, and demonstrate an almost pathological willingness to investigate any and all principals or tenets - including the ones on which their own beliefs reply. Blackburn's peeking bias (oh so benevolent as it may be) may go a long way toward explaining his fuzzy reading of Hume. Blackburn may not like it, but "atheist" is a description of one's belief toward a specific truth claim, not a club. Hume need not sign a membership card. Hume's argument rests outside theistic predicates which makes it, by definition, atheist. Literally, his argument is made without theism. Perhaps Blackburn should worry less about what Hume is, and more about what he says.
Everything that can be said can be said clearly; over everything else, we must pass in silence. --W.
James: I think what Blackburn is saying is that Hume's position was there is no specific truth claim to have a position on. Perhaps you can say that Hume was atheistic towards specific deities, like Zeus or Thor, but no towards the general question "Is there a God?" The question is incoherent.
Stop saying that the militant atheist is a myth and that atheists never kill people. In one hundred years of communism, atheists killed more than all religions combined. Even if communists didn't kill people for being religious, which they did, why make this dichotomy between religion, politics, and economics? As for pursuit of the truth, the only thing that communism taught us is that we're too greedy to let it work.
Nathan: One doesn't require a coherant definition of God to be without a belief in it. The ontological incoherency of "god" is an argument against belief, not some third position wrought with irony.
Professor Blackburn does not quote some relevant and profound passages by Hume on ths subject. He proclaimed that he was not such a sceptic as many supposed and expressed "deliberate doubt" "The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgement appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject" (The Natural History of Religion, OUP 1976 page 95)
It is amazing that Hume ever took u the issue of religion since a phenomonalist, which most agree Hume was could hardlydeal with the God side of the relationship implicit in religion, namely, God. Hume was strictly limited methodologically to the phenomena (that which appears). So how an he possibly treat God who is a spirit not ivolving matter atall? John
Benson (And Paul): I'm glad I wasn't the only one confused about the Frege reference. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps he was referring to those following Frege who agreed with him up until the Julius Caesar problem, that is, people who think Frege should have stopped after section 55 and explaining numbers in terms of quantifiers. James: You may not need a coherent definition, but certainly you need to have some sort of concept, don't you? For instance, would you say the sentence "It is not the case that colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is true, or meaningless?
It seems to me that Mr. Blackburn tries to put out a fire and to come down both camps without making available a long due investigation about that the difference between atheism and religiosity lies in the fact that people are psychologically different. I might be wrong, but I assume that Mr. Blackburn as an analytic philosopher is not inclined to explore the place of analytic psychology, where the psychological factors are illuminated to play a crucial role in whether people succumb to belief in God or withstand existential pressures with head up and off their knees. I would also prefer that someone finally expresses fresh ideas on causation of religiosity besides the rant from evolutionary psychology(it is not to say that Mr. Blackburn’s article is an example of it), and explores the connection between the nature of existential concerns and the need to defend against them. I don’t think that “irony” would help in this case, but compassion and understanding. Having said that, I don’t mean to suggest that atheists and agnostics should be stripped away of the necessity to defend themselves when religious people “come out of the fog bearing ludicrous beliefs about cosmology or biology, or carrying their envies and fears, their embarrassments about sex in general or certain varieties in particular, their desire to steal some land or make war on their neighbors”. I still think it is a good article and Hume is brilliant as always, but there is nothing new. Oh well, it is better than nothing.
It is a funny question, but I believe James said it best: "Hume need not sign a membership card. Hume's argument rests outside theistic predicates which makes it, by definition, atheist. Literally, his argument is made without theism." Hume's ideas and arguments are all outside any sort of theism, so I don't see how he couldn't be put in the a-thiest camp.
Waste; Such an extra-ordinary difficult few notes I wrote even with the few typos for which I apologize. But to tell me to be simple about a complex issue, that is, can Hume speak anout religion given his epistemological position. If you have difficulty with my statements my advice is to get a dictionary and do some thinking and stop asking people who think and have vocabulary to boot to mimic your anti-intellectualism.
“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart”. Mencken
Hume: "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author ... " Leibnitz: "Assuming God is possible, God exists." I presume the idea is, if you assume God (qua creator) does not exist, you have a universe to account for.
James: I knew 'incoherent' was a bad word choice. I agree that if someone's conception of God includes a logical contradiction, then it cannot be true in the sense that I understand it. But if someone's God is "infinite, eternal, and transcendent" I don't know what that means; I'm not even sure they do. I cannot take a stand.
All modern commentary about "religion" presumes, like Protestant Christianity and, to a lesser extent Catholicism, that "religion" begins in "beliefs". Hence, discussion about religion (including agnosticism and atheism) ends up being about sets of beliefs. Religion that originates in "belief" is novel and totally exceptional in human history. Religion is truly about traditional claims and behaviors that characterize, reference or seek the influence of supernaturals. Religious "beliefs" are a modern notion, exploited with incredible success by Christianity over the last 2000 years.
There is a passage at the end of the dialogues, where Hume speaks of his "unfeigned sentiments". Here he says that, giving some credence to the arguments, his feeling is that there is more disanalogy between the moral attributes and those of humanity than the attributes of power. My feeling is that it is only here that Hume is really thinking in a religious way, though the thought is not developed.
Perhaps the irony is not such an irony given that in Hume's days one was thrown into jail for thinking the way he did, and that his hiding behind artful evasiiveness was purely a matter of social survival. He was a courageous, no nonsense, non-sentimentalist a class above modern day 'thinkers'. Then again, the fact that nobody caught on to the historical context is perhaps the silliest irony of all.
I don't think hume knows religion, and If hume has presented to us that must isn't his words.Moreover,his parents call hume who has to stop. Hume must have his key reason why he now is so humane!
It has always puzzled me that believers and especially atheists do not start their arguments with a brief definition of what they mean by the term "God". I suspect that the overwhelming majority of believers in the three monotheistic religions would accept the following which I present using traditional language and implying only mild irony: "He is the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent creator and sustainer of the universe. Not only that: He is also infinitely wise, loving, just and forgiving - He not only knows both the position and the momentum of every electron in the universe, or sparrow, but cares. His purposes are always benign, although (say in the case of suffering, injustice, etc.) not always understood by us." This may be naive theologically, but it does represent the actual minimalist definition of believers. Personally, I find such a being absurd and attempts to place the monotheistic God outside the space-time frame meaningless. I also believe that this makes me an atheist.
Hume's philosophical paradigm is not able to ask or answer the question, "Is there a God?" As a Christian I am fine with this. Similarly, by the sole use of mathematics I am not able to ask or answer the question, "Are you hungry?" Where I disagree is with the next step in concluding that therefore it is reasonable to mock those that eat.
Its been exceedingly difficult to say one thing or another about god for as long as the idea, or any like it, have visited the minds of people. One thing is not hard to see, which is that people will do something in the name of god, and then the same people will do something completely different in the name of the same god. It would not be a great stretch to say that the more ardent the devotion, the greater the contrast. So god matters little. It could very well be that more could be seen without than with, and that arguments as to the existence of such contribute little to task of seeing itself.
Personally, I have since childhood agreed with the point Simon Blackburn makes. Why, if we have never been tempted to consider the concept “god” to be meaningful or legitimate, would we have need of the concept “atheism?” I don’t find it necessary to declare myself a non-believer of Superman or Santa Claus, concepts that at least make sense to me. We make things up. That’s what the human mind does. When we call the things we make up fantasies – they can live in our imaginations on a separate plane side by side with what we know of the world and our place in it. We understand that they are representations of ourselves by ourselves – no harm done unless we make bad use of them. Believers in the concept god, as we all know, have used the concept for great good as well as for great evil. It would be nice to say let “good” stand for “god.” But the thing is – good is not a concept in the same way that god is a concept; good has moved from concept to behavior and has flesh and blood and nervous center repercussions. I suppose it was god-believers who made up the word atheist – and I hope we can all shudder at the realization of how not good were their intentions. I am startled when even today there are people who think “atheists” are immoral or amoral. That may be why those of us who are not god-believers are drawn to the idea of defending our positions as “atheists.” And I will admit that in a world where there are more believers than non-believers, atheist and agnostic are words that have their uses. It doesn’t matter. We like to play with words and concepts and try to imagine why we are and how we are – and some of us think we can know– and some of us think we can’t know – and really we all think both things and all things at the same time. That’s just the way we are.
Nathan: I understand that. I think the problem is that there is this idea that there is atheist position other than what you've just described. There isn't. If you take any position other than "yes, there's definitely a god", you have taken the non-theist position (aka. atheist). That the question is unanswerable, only seats one firmly outside the theist position. If you are outside the theist position, you are not theist. For short, we describe not-theists as atheists. Of course, Blackburn wasn't talking about atheists. He was talking about "militant atheists", whoever they may be.
Blackburn suggests that Hume was neither atheist nor agnostic. That leaves only one alternative: that he was relgious. Although Hume never addressed the issue directly, no doubt for political reasons, I think it's fair to assume that Hume was an atheist. The whole mechanistic empiricism of his philosophy renders the concept of a deity otiose. Atheism is a matter of faith as much as religion. Agnosticism is sitting on the fence. Hume was no fence sitter. That leaves only one alternative.
"They would find that it is much harder to bear the Olympian gaze of the greatest of British philosophers." I guess a British philospoher's opinion on this matter should be accepted (at least ny me, an American); but how does Hume compare to the Olympians Socarates, Plato, & Aristotle. And irony, what of Plato'sl
"Roman emperors made entertainment out of mocking Christians. What irony, then, that Simon should think Christians might be fazed by mockery." the roman church, at least, seems quite fazed by mockery, elevating it to blasphemy, and anathemizing it. and roman emperors made entertainment out of mocking many different people, among whom were christians, and scarcely the majority. every crucified person was open to mockery once on the cross. i have come to learn over the years that such ahistorical and uncontextualized assumptions as the one quoted here are key to christian apologetics.
I am still glad, as an American, that Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Whether or not he believed it himself, or practised it as a slaveowner against the opinions of his northeastern countrymen. Or even whether my Congress, President, or Supreme Court believe/practise it today. What is the next best alternative for the sourcing (and therefore protecting/enforcing) of natural rights?
Kind of interesting seeing the essayed thoughts and most responses come out of a little island that is becoming an Islamic state.
James/Nathan: Filosofically astute as the not-theist/agnostic position might seem, it's not available in real life. An example: Filosofically you can say: 1 Milk is good for you 2 Milk is not good for you 3 The question is unanswerable. However in real-life you either drink the milk or you don't. There is no fence position in reality. In my experience many self-called not-theists/agnostics are praciticing atheists. They do not reach out for the divine / they don't (want to) engage. Within the agnostic position there are usually 5 sub-positions a. indifference / filosofical laziness (but since you're here discussing this I don't assume this is you) c. I do not have enough evidence d. no-one really has enough evidence e it is impossible to get enough evidence Where are you guys at in this?
James/Nathan: On coherent definitions. Coherent definitions are not a prerequisite for engagement. Even if we do not have a coherent definition of vitamine C (e.g in the middle ages) we still can eat it and enjoy the benefits. Even if we still do not have a coherent definition of electrical charge (we do not know the essence of what it is; there are some ideas (not even theories) within string theory, but if we could get the darned Large Hadron Collider going it could mean the end of stringtheory as we know it.) Still the fact that we do not really know what electrical charge is, does not keep you guys from engaging with it and enjoying the benefits en discussing these things online. So why do you do not use "coherent definition" as a prerequisite for engagement in matters like electrical charge, but do you not want to engage the divine before somebody gives you a coherent definition. Sounds like a cop-out to me. Ultimately the proof of the pudding is not in its coherent definition.
Sorry for the messy post guys. Next time i'll try to keep in mind that (apparently) all "hard returns" are eliminated from the text.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article. While I myself feel perfectly comfortable self-identifying as an atheist, I hope one day that the term will indeed become obsolete. We haven't needed the term "a-teapotist" for Russel's Teapot. I'm hoping God goes the same way, like all the others before him. I would like to express my own frustration about the lack of definition usually present in these types of discussions. I simply want to know what ridiculous Dark Age nonsense the other person believes so I can systematically crush the feeble foundations on which they rest their beliefs. I find it fun.
Why not check out these two references instead which are about someone who really Knows what He is talking about. www.realgod.org www.adidabiennale.org/curation/index.htm
Fair bit to read - could'nt help thinking through it all - what would Jesus think?.
If He'd be still in His grave, He'd probably turn over.
Rems: Vitamin C and electrical charge demonstrably exist. Gods do not. Hence the need for a coherent definition before one can engage in discourse around this vague, entirely imaginary construct.
Could some of the American true believers who cannot resist quoting their founding father's please spare some time to add Thomas Payne 's sayings to their armoury. Who know's- a new world might become open to view. Again why do believers restrict themselves? Let's hear more about Cronos and Brahma and why not Avelokitesvara. Open up!
Adam. You can only demonstrate vitamine C and electrical charge after you engage with it. First engage, then demonstrate. So why have a double standard for God? If you want prove without wanting to engage you are starting to sound like the clergy men who didn't want to look through the telescope because they already knew the answer. btw anyone who has done a science 101 course knows it is utterly unscientific to claim a negative absolutes (X does not exist anywhere, anytime). Unless of course you deem youself to be omniscient, then it would make sense. Thus your statement proves your unawareness or disregard of scientific standards.
Adam. Just because something is outside the realm of science doen't make it imaginary. Or do you want to make the philosophical (and scientifically unsupportable) claim that science is the ONLY way to knowledge.
Hard to believe that such a big name philosopher could write such twaddle. Most of the commentators here are not much better, though those that don't have a PhD to back up their nonsense exonerates them a teeny bit. T.H. Huxley, who coined the term "agnosticism", understood the implications of Hume's phenomenalism far better than Blackburn seems to. Huxley also made an enemy of French materialism, which he considered to be Catholicism without God, a metaphysical position beyond empirical claims. Huxley's agnosticism was an epistemological position not limited to the existence of God, and infected by the same empiricist dogma that has ruined much of British and analytical philosophy for two centuries. As for skeptical irony, this is the refuge of the pampered and spoiled, insulated from the consequences of their beliefs, cushioned by the illusion that they are above it all. Add on top of this the notorious middling English mediocrity that recoils at abstractions, and you have an article preaching a vapid tolerance that has no connection to the real life-and-death struggle for the human mind. As the English say, what ballocks!
I get it now: 'god' is an adjective and not a noun.
"Of course, Blackburn wasn't talking about atheists. He was talking about "militant atheists", whoever they may be." "Non-militant atheists" practice (religious) tolerance, in the Lockean sense. "Militant atheists" seem not to feel themselves thus obliged, and may consequently be thus judged "illiberal" in that framework. It's not hard. A little historically informed politicial philosophy cures a lot of intellectual ills. I guess it's up to you to decide if you think we should continue to support that framework. If you have a better idea, I'm sure we're all eager to hear it.