Somin on Atheism

Ilya Somin, Assistant Professor of Law at Mason University, is a contributer to the Volokh Conspiracy blog. Here, he responds to a claim by Ron Rosenbaum that agnosticism is more credible than Atheism, since Atheism has no explanation for either origins or the nature of the universe. Atheism, claims Somin, doesn’t need an explanation of its own in order to reject one with which it disagrees.

I wonder if he applies the same argument to evolution, where Atheists claim that one must have a better explanation, or else accept the one at hand.

Regardless, it appears that his real beef is that Atheists are not well accepted in the general society. This echoes a recent post by Massimo Pigliucci, who lamented that Atheists can’t get dates, unless they claim to be spiritual but not religious, rather than to admit to Atheism. Somin refers to a poll which indicates that a huge segment of general society doesn’t trust Atheists due to a perception of their lack of morals. Somin, like many Atheists bristles at the thought that he is not moral, and conflates that with hostility.

"A common defense of hostility toward atheists is the claim that atheists lack moral values. A 2004 poll indicates that 51 percent of Americans believe that “[i]t is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values.”

"It is indeed sometimes appropriate to show hostility toward people because of their reprehensible beliefs, as in the case of Nazis or Communists. But we generally reject such categorical hostility toward entire religious groups such as Jews, Catholics, or Muslims. The same principle should apply to atheists."

Beware of Atheists bearing imperatives! Why, exactly should Atheists receive the same consideration of presumption of morality, when they reject all sources of morality outside of themselves? Why should we assume that their ethic-du-jour is congruent with any other morality? Especially when the evidence shows that it very often is not? Why should we accord trust to an individual when we have no idea what his moral beliefs really are?

Somin makes an inappropriate comparison, claiming that distrust of those who deny any morality other than their own concoction is hostility. He then attempts to place the self-created, subjective ethics of Atheists in the same category as the objective, external moralities of the monotheists. Placing ethics and morals in the same category is both a Black & White Fallacy, and a Category Error.

To his credit, Somin does not try to claim that Atheists actually do believe in and adhere to the same morals as the monotheists. But he makes the claim that,

” Theist intolerance and bigotry against atheists is at least as common as the reverse. For example, some 50% of the American public believe that it is impossible to “be moral and have good values” if you don’t believe in God.”

This actually is not intolerance or bigotry as Somin charges. It is the rational suspicion that the personally derived, highly volatile, non-standardized, non-universal, completely subjective ethics of Atheists are not ethics at all, or at least not in the same league or functionality as objective morals. They are, rather, pretend morals, moral claims of personal convenience which are a very natural outcome of Consequentialism, which is rejected by the monotheist morality.

Somin does not make clear of what his ethics or moral tenets comprise. And that, alone, makes his motives suspect. How am I to know what it is that he believes is moral, today? And what will it be tomorrow? Or next week? Consequentialism in no manner engenders trust; quite the opposite, for those who understand what Consequentialism actually is. Consequentialism is more of a set of tactics than it is a bona fide ethic. At best it is a negative ethic, a program to achieve goals despite any consequences created by having fought to achieve them.

From the comments,
By giving “omnipotent, omniscient, and completely benevolent” ones own definition with naivete and with rigidity, it no doubt becomes possible to prove there doesn’t exist a being with these criteria as one has self-defined them. But claiming that such a straw figure has anything to do with actual religion is another matter.

Somin rebuts:
This is the definition that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims have adhered to for many centuries. If it’s a “straw figure,” then so is most of monotheistic religion as we know it.

Somin is apparently vastly ignorant regarding the beliefs of Abrahamic religions as well as the rational view of a monotheistic deity. (Plus, his contention that the falsity of his own statement would make monotheistic religion a straw figure, is nonsensical).

A monotheist deity is not omnipotent; he cannot be non-coherent, as most Atheists demand he must be. The deity is however, potent enough to create space-time and mass-energy as well as the functional laws that command the deterministic behavior of mass-energy within space-time, with the exception, of course, of living things.

A deity is omniscient of the character of man; existing outside of time might well give a viewpoint of all time, all at once, with the deity essentially viewing it all as we would history, simultaneously.

The monotheist deity is “just” and that interferes with the Atheist narrative of not being “completely benevolent”. Omnibenevolence is destructive; Atheists and Leftists do not connect omnibenevolence with the consequences of over-indulgence and the de facto determinism (co-dependent slavery) which that produces. Justice, on the other hand, is constructive and a guide for personal development of beneficial character traits. The concept of “Grace” in Christianity is not the same as omnibenevolence as understood by the Left. Omnibenevolence would disallow all inconvenience to humans, especially suffering, evil, natural disaster, hunger, disease, etc., in other words, heaven on earth (a Humanist goal). Grace is forgiveness for personal failures.

By declaring that he knows what “most Jews, Christians, and Muslims” believe or “have adhered to for many centuries”, Somin illuminates his irrationality. He cannot possibly know that, any more than he can “know” that there is no creating First Cause. This is not only irrational, it is ignorant, first of the subject (monotheism), second of the rules of thinking coherently. With this single statement, Somin steps off the firm ground of rational discourse, and into the murky swamp of irrationality.