The following is adapted from my new book What's So Great About Christianity. For more information about the book, see my website dineshdsouza.com.
Bestselling atheist tracts like Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great portray religion as an unreasonable form of "blind faith," often leading to fanaticism and even violence. Some of these atheists call themselves "brights," implying that they are the smart people who base their opinions on reason and science and don't fall for silly superstitions. But for all their credentials and learning, the atheists have been duped by a fallacy. This may be called the Fallacy of the Enlightenment, and it was first pointed out by that great Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant.
The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that human beings can continually find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. The Enlightenment Fallacy holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant showed that this premise is false. In fact, he argued, that human knowledge is constrained not merely by how much reality is out there but also by the limited sensory apparatus of perception we bring to that reality.
Consider a tape recorder. Being the kind of instrument it is, a tape recorder can capture only one mode of reality: sound. Tape recorders can "hear" but they cannot see or touch or smell. Thus all aspects of reality that cannot be captured in sound are beyond the reach of a tape recorder. The same, Kant says, is true of human beings. The only way we apprehend reality is through our five senses. But why should we believe, Kant asked, that our five-mode instrument for apprehending reality is sufficient for capturing all of reality? What makes us think that there is no reality lies beyond our perception, reality that simply cannot be apprehended by our five senses?
Moreover, the reality we apprehend is merely our experience or "take" on reality. How can you know that your experience of things is in any way like the things-in-themselves? Normally you answer this question by considering the two things separately and then comparing them. I can tell if my daughter's drawing of her teacher looks like the teacher by placing the portrait and alongside the person. I compare the copy or portrait with the original.
Kant points out, however, that we can never compare our experience of reality to reality itself. All we have is the experience, and that's all we can ever have. We have only the copies, but we never have the originals. So we have no basis for presuming that the two are even comparable. When we equate experience and reality, we are making an unjustified leap.
It is essential to recognize that Kant isn't diminishing the importance of experience or what he called the phenomenal world. That world is very important, because it is the only one our senses and reason have access to. It is entirely rational for us to believe in this phenomenal world and to use science and reason to discover its operating principles. But Kant contended that science and reason apply to the world of phenomena, of things as they are experienced by us. Science and reason cannot penetrate what Kant termed the noumena: things as they are in themselves.
Some critics have understood Kant to be denying the existence of external reality or of arguing that all of reality is "in the mind." Kant emphatically rejects this. He insists that the noumenon obviously exists because it is what gives rise to phenomena. In other words, our experience is an experience of something. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to see Kant as positing two kinds of reality: the reality that we experience and reality itself. The important thing is not to establish which is more real, but to recognize that human reason operates only in the phenomenal domain of experience. We can know of the existence of the noumenal realm, but at this point reason has reached its limit.
In Kant's view, the limits of human reason cannot be erased by the passage of time or by further investigation and experimentation. Rather, they are intrinsic to the kind of beings that humans are, and to the kind of apparatus that we possess for perceiving reality. The implication of Kant's argument is that reality as a whole is, in principle, inaccessible to human beings. Put another way, there is a great deal that human beings simply will never know.
So powerful is Kant's argument here that his critics have been able to answer him only with derision. When I challenged Daniel Dennett to debunk Kant's argument, he posted an angry response on his website in which he said several people had already refuted Kant. But he didn't provide any refutations, and he didn't name any names. Basically Dennett was relying on the argumentum ad ignorantium-the argument that relies on the ignorance of the audience. In fact, there are no such refutations.
Although Kant's argument seems counterintuitive-in the way that some of the greatest ideas from Copernicus to Einstein are counterintuitive-no one who understands the central doctrines of the world's leading religions should have any difficulty grasping his main point. Kant's philosophical vision is entirely congruent with the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
It is a shared doctrine of those religions that the empirical world we humans inhabit is not the only world there is. Ours is a world of appearances only in which we see things in a limited and distorted way, "through a glass darkly," as the apostle Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians 13:12. Ours is a transient world that is dependent on a higher, timeless reality. That reality is of a completely different order from anything we know, it constitutes the only permanent reality there is, and it sustains our world and presents it to our senses. Christianity teaches that while reason can point to the existence of this higher domain, this is where reason stops: it cannot on its own investigate or comprehend that domain.
Thus when Christopher Hitchens and other atheists routinely dismiss religious claims on the grounds that "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence," they are making what philosophers like to call a category mistake. We learn from Kant that within the domain of experience, human reason is sovereign, but it is in no way unreasonable to believe things on faith that simply cannot be adjudicated by reason.
When atheists summarily dismiss the immortality of the soul or the afterlife on the grounds that they have never found any empirical proofs for either, they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience. In this domain, Kant argues, the absence of evidence cannot be used as the evidence for absence.
Notice that Kant's argument is entirely secular: It does not employ any religious vocabulary, nor does it rely on any kind of faith. But in showing the limits of reason, Kant's philosophy "opens the door to faith," as the philosopher himself noted.
So the new atheists and self-styled "brights" can do their strutting, but Kant has exposed their ignorant boast that atheism operates on a higher intellectual plane than theism. Rather, as Kant showed, reason must know its limits in order to be truly reasonable. The atheist foolishly presumes that reason is in principle capable of figuring out all that there is, while the theist at least knows that there is a reality greater than, and beyond, that which our senses and our minds can ever apprehend.
Reader Comments ( Page 48 of 48)
706. @ S Durkin ...705.
Silly theists and their pesky blind faith. How dare they actually expect the burden of proof to be placed on me to prove reality instead of them to disprove reality. I mean seriously, when has that ever been used successfully to prove anything?
pboyfloyd at 10:05PM on Oct 28th 2007
707. #7 Chandler.
Statement: 99.99% of scientists believe in evolution.
Just what planet do you live on?
I suggest you go to a library and check out some books of the wide variety of credentialed scientists
who have written books changing their position on evolution.
Please don't remain in a state of ignorance about
this reality.
I also must comment on the statement of another that
DNA formed a SIMPLE CELL and.......
There s NO SUCH THING as a SIMPLE CELL.
Get a microscope and check it out or read Behe's book on microbiology.
Anita Brown at 10:16PM on Oct 28th 2007
708. @ Chandler..7
Certainly do read Behe's book(don't buy it, in any sense)).. then take a first year course in biology... look up some sites that refute Behe's book...
... and don't be fooled for a second that a 'wide variety of scientists' are changing their position.
pboyfloyd at 10:46PM on Oct 28th 2007
709. It's really quite impressive how much mental masturbation Dinesh is capable of... and how much he's capable of getting wrong.
I've been reading his column for the last couple weeks and it's all been complaints about atheists. It's apparently all he's got to offer: "Look at me: I am *SO* much more appealing than atheism because I offer something more hopeful than an empty universe!!" Okay, Dinesh, this is masturbation, plain and simple. You have shown nothing to offer on your own; you're just trying to tart your POV up and make yourself look better than what you're posting as the alternative. Pity you've got that one wrong from both sides. Not only are you wrong about your own attractiveness, but you keep imputing motives to atheists that simply aren't true.
Atheists don't care about you. They don't lie awake at nights thinking about their agenda and how it's going to affect you. They don't even consider you important. You're just a two-bit columnist who doesn't reason very well and would like to be taken seriously. Nice try, but you'd do better driving a truck.
JohnHedtke at 11:33PM on Oct 28th 2007
710. Diacanu of #287,page 20,
I guess I will answer you because it was still not Sunday for me.
You quoted my:
Hey, maybe I am wrong. But why keep working at life when dying is a whole lot easier?
and then you said:
Becauseof the love of your family, of your friends, the pleasures of intellectual pursuits, humor, good food, romance, sex, travel etc, etc.
Yes, but what if your family annoys the butt off of every good thing in you and makes your life a daily torture?
And what if you arent right? Are you willing to suffer the consequences?
Michelle at 5:36PM on Oct 29th 2007
711. That wasnt for this blog. Never mind it. Or copy it and put it in your pocket for inspiration.
Michelle at 5:38PM on Oct 29th 2007
712. pboy...Hmmm, so you don't believe in God because He can't be detected by a man made machine? OK. My mistake. I assumed it was because you can not see Him. However, it is entirely possible that there is a way to detect the presence of God. If only we knew his molecular structure. Oh well.
I simply can't resist sharing my favorite joke with you..
The most renowned scientists on Earth met in a conference and decided that they had reached a point where they no longer needed God. So, one of the scientists was designated to meet with God and tell Him of their decision. When God arrived, the scientist said, "God, we have decided we no longer need you. We have reached a point where we travel in space, we can clone animals and humans. We have numerous technical advantages now, and we simply have out grown the need for You." God answered, "That's very interesting. Why don't we take a test to prove what you say is true." The scientist was elated. Here was his chance to prove to God we were truly independent of His help. The scientist said, "I have an idea. Let's create a human being." God replied, "Great...you go first." So the scientist reached down to the ground and scooped up a handful of dirt. Then God said, "No, No. Make your own dirt."
Have a good day!
Joyce at 3:17PM on Oct 30th 2007
713. Ah, hooray for accidental double posting weeks later. *sigh* Ignore that last one.
an atheist at 11:45PM on Nov 10th 2007
714. I tend to agree with Thomas Paine, who revealed in his work, titled `Age of Reason':
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
Ten thousand years of recorded history have proven that statement to be quite accurate.
I'm a Deist, not an athiest. The difference between a Deist and an athiest is on whether or not there is a god. For me, the root of the disagreement stems from the definition of God. Paine said:
"The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.
It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause man calls God."
It's a shame that D'Souza says athiests aren't very bright, for in doing so he has merely undressed in public, by demonstrating his ignorance. The several replies his article has received pointing out the gross errors in his logic, (or lacunae thereof,) attest to that. In closing I offer the followinng food for thought, which speaks for itself, even to the layman:
TOP TEN SIGNS YOU'RE A CHRISTIAN
10 You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.
9 You feel insulted and ``de-humanized'' when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity god.
7 Your face turns purple when you hear of the ``atrocities'' attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in ``Exodus'', and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in ``Joshua'', including women, children, and trees!
6 You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed and came back to life and ascended into the sky.
5 You are willing to spend your life looking for little loop-holes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations old.
4 You believe that the entire population of this planet, with the exception of those who share your beliefs, even including large sects of Christians, will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion the most ``tolerant'' and ``loving''.
3 While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in ``tongues'' is all the evidence you need to prove Christianity.
2 You define 0.01% as a ``high success rate'' when it comes to answered prayers. And you consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God. (Which begs the question: If it's all the will of God, why the hell pray in the first place?)
And the Top Sign that you are a Christian:
1 Most Deists, Agnostics, and Atheists know a hell of a lot more about the Bible, Christianity, and church history than you do. (Which might be an indication of the very reason that you are still a Christian).
And so if it's true that "Atheists are Not Very Bright", then fundamentalists are absolute morons in comparison!
Russ Behne at 7:13PM on Nov 6th 2007
715. http://www.rationalresponders.com/dsouza_nothing_to_refute_here
The question of the nature of reality is one that likely will never go away. There will always be those who support the belief that this mysterious “something” exists, and there will be those on the opposing side. We must work with the tools available to us, and those just happen to be limited to our five innate senses and the knowledge that we have gained through science and reason.
In Dinesh D’Souza’s recent piece for Christian Science Monitor, “What Atheists Kan’t Refute”, he asks why we should believe that “reality” is all there is, but the question should be, “Why should we believe otherwise?” Empirical evidence is the basis and foundation for all human advancements. All technological, scientific, and medical discoveries have been made using these faculties. Nobody would dare to base a monumental decision on anything other than evidence in their daily lives, yet they are expected to do so with regards to this one matter—one that, according to D’Souza’s religion, would be the most important decision anybody could ever make.
One of the most frequently held misconceptions that continues to be used in defense of Christianity is that atheism is a new concept. They argue that the lax moral ethos of society has created a brand-new generation of god-bashers. While it may seem that atheism is having a resurgence of sorts, it is in no way a new phenomenon. Ironically, he not only uses this argument, but then gives demonstrable proof of its falsity.
Convincing the general public that atheism is a new wave of immorality spawned by a materialistic culture is a powerful piece of propaganda. The use of Enlightenment era Kantian argumentation as the backbone of his piece shows that the battle between believers and rationalists has been raging for centuries at least and makes his previous statement seem strangely out of place. (Obviously, he wouldn’t want to mention that this has been happening since the inception of Christianity.)
His self-contradictory statements here are but the beginning of a disturbingly convoluted argument. He states, “The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that there is only one limit to what human beings can know: reality itself.” What definition of “reality” is he using here? How exactly does one go about attaining knowledge of something that isn’t real? The debate between the “Rationalists” and the “Idealists” was much more complex than D’Souza’s practically dishonest representation of it.
He presents conclusions from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” as if they were definitive. Any amateur student of philosophy surely understands that one person’s ideas, even if that one person is Immanuel Kant, are not necessarily axiomatic. Kant argued in support of his belief that the five senses were insufficient tools with which to ascertain truth in regards to metaphysical claims. While this is a philosophically valid concept, it is not scientifically valid.
Kant’s philosophical ideology separates the world into the phenomenal and the noumenal. The noumenal world is essentially an agnostic one, but D’Souza would lead the reader to believe otherwise. He can’t even contemplate the notion that just as we atheists cannot perceive the noumenal realm, neither can he. We don’t have knowledge of every possibility in the universe; nevertheless, all major religions claim to have the corner on special knowledge of this supposedly unknowable world. It gets even more oxymoronic when D’Souza claims that one cannot equate experience and reality, but belongs to a religion that is based on having a “personal relationship” with Jesus. He even goes as far as admitting that it will be easier for religious people to understand this because they know that “[t]he spiritual reality constitutes the only permanent reality there is.” I wonder how he knows this since he cannot trust his senses to accurately reflect the nature of reality and has no access to this “spiritual reality”.
D’Souza’s entire piece is a collection of conundrums designed to confuse the reader and shift the burden of proof onto the non-believers. Kant says there is no reason to not believe in that which you cannot know; D’Souza wants you to believe that lack of knowledge provides sufficient reason to believe. He accuses atheists of “foolishly [presuming]” that reason is the proper method for ascertaining knowledge, and then claims to have knowledge of a “reality” about which it is impossible to know anything. I have two words for this kind of absurdity: utter drivel. “Reality isn’t all that there is, but the spiritual reality is the real reality.” “Experience and sensory input isn’t valid as a method to acquire knowledge of reality, but Jesus is real because I feel him in my heart and you can’t prove he’s not there.” The title should have been “What I Can’t Prove but You Should Believe.”
by: Kelly O'Connor
Brian Sapient at 3:28AM on Nov 13th 2007
716. Why you Mr D'Souza don't seem to be very bright:
1. You have titled your argument "Why Atheists are Not Very Bright" but have given no reason or data why they are not in your opinion, other than saying that atheist foolishly rely on reason for their arguments.
2. I am not aware that "these atheists call themselves "brights," ". These atheists presumably being Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens as they are principle atheists you have attacked. On a broader basis your article would encompass all atheists.
But since atheists rely on evidence and not transcendental knowledge, that you seem to possess and thus by implication deem yourself to be one of the rightful "brights" along with all the billions theists who throng mosques, churches and temples all over the world, it would be interesting to have a subjective IQ test to compare where your "brightness" stands in relation to these named atheists. Or perhaps you should compare your brightness with the many Nobel Prize winning scientists who also are atheists, but not very "bright" in your opinion.
rich at 11:16PM on Nov 26th 2007