Does Charles Darwin Really Serve as a Positive Example That Repudiates the New Atheists?
by Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
2009 February 19Rick Weiss is a well-known science journalist, formerly writing for the Washington Post and now for Science Progress of the Center for American Progress. Weiss recently wrote an op-ed for the Post that was then commented upon by Matt Nisbet, an equally well-known science communications professor and blogger. The purpose of both the op-ed and blog post were to attack the New Atheists, the "soldiers in today's culture wars," with whose actions both Weiss and Nisbet disagree. The theme of both articles was that Charles Darwin had the correct insight and approach to personal atheism, which according to the two authors was to throw up one's hands at the problem of the existence of God and then ignore it. Unfortunately, Rick Weiss's op-ed on Darwin's agnosticism does not tell the full story, and the title of Matt Nisbet's brief blog post--"Words of Advice for Atheist Literalists (and Many Bloggers)"--explains the intent of both op-ed and column: to repudiate the New Atheists using Darwin as a contrary and exemplary example.
If Rick and Matt were just criticizing the New Atheist's aggressive style and condemnation of religion, I would say go ahead. But Weiss's op-ed criticizes the substance of New Atheist arguments in an unacceptable way, because the op-ed is philosophically mistaken. Darwin was an agnostic, but also an atheist. True, Darwin "did not know," as Weiss relates, and was therefore an agnostic, but Darwin also did not believe in a god, and most importantly, Darwin rejected the Christian God precisely because of the problem of innocent suffering the in the world. Specifically, and contrary to Weiss, Darwin did not believe "there is plenty of room for God at the top, upstream of the business of biology." Both Rick Weiss and Matt Nisbet are trying to make Darwin into something he was not, and then using that misrepresentation to make a case against New Atheist activists (or "Atheist Literalists" as Matt characterizes them) in an attempt to repudiate them.
As with many confusing issues about which individuals argue, terms are really important, and I think Rick Weiss doesn't understand a specific term, and surprisingly Matt Nisbet--an expert on framing of issues and words--doesn't appear to understand either. Many controversial terms have two very different meanings that make them confusing, such as faith (confidence in evidence and reason or blind belief derived from experience and authority ), spirit (supernatural entity or strong emotion), and religion (supernaturalistic and theistic belief system or a belief system about something that one thinks is of ultimate or crucial concern for one's life). Atheism--the term of interest in the present example--is another such term. Atheism means two different things: both absence of belief in a god or the claim that a god does not exist. The first is weak or negative atheism and the second is strong or positive atheism, and both have been well discussed in the atheist literature. I call the first meaning nontheism and the second antitheism. There is also agnosticism, which in the theistic arena means that one believes the evidence for or against the existence of a god is not available or sufficient. The important thing to remember is that these are not mutually exclusive terms. One can be an agnostic and an atheist; one can also be an agnostic, a nontheist, and an antitheist. Darwin himself was all three.
When discussing God or a god, one has to specify the attributes of the god. To make a long story short, any god with specified attributes--such as the Christian God, Who is all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, etc.--can be demonstrated to not exist by logic. Thus, it is permissible to be an antitheist about the Christian God. Darwin rejected the Christian God because of the problem of evil: a God who is both all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing (omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) could not have created a world with so much innocent suffering. A generic god without specified attributes--or one that is conveniently said to be ineffable--cannot logically be proved to not exist (I know that some antitheists claim it can, but I don't accept their arguments). One has to be nontheistic about this god. Now this is important: through two hundred years of Freethought, atheists have always argued and written from the point of view of nontheism (weak or negative atheism), so that the burden of proof would be on the theist rather than on the atheist. Antitheism crops up now and then, but it is not common. Antitheists can satisfactorily prove the nonexistence of a God with specified attributes, but theists typically back off of illogical attributes or come up with other apologetic sophisms, such as "God is ineffable" or "God is Love" or the pantheistic "God is the Universe." I consider it impossible to disprove gods with no attribute except ineffability or love-ness or existence. Of course, such gods are totally irrelevant for humans, such as the God of Enlightenment Deism (whose sole attribute is existence prior to the existence of the universe but not necessarily now).
Agnosticism is similar. It is irrational to be agnostic about the evidence or reasons for and against the Christian God (as is often argued by dedicated atheists, since the evidence and logic are both overwhelming that this specific God does not exist), but it is rational to be agnostic about the existence of any god in general. If a god has no attributes beyond ineffability, agnosticism is permissible and indeed required. It is important to understand that all agnostics are also either theists or nontheists: either they choose to believe despite the lack of reason and evidence (fideism) or they choose not to believe (nontheism). There is no such thing as an agnostic who is not either a theist or nontheist. Famous agnostics in history, such as Thomas Henry Huxley (who invented the term) and Robert Ingersoll, were also nontheists. They choose to call themselves an agnostic rather than a nontheist or (weak, negative) atheist to escape public opprobrium (and I don't fault them for that, since they had to live and work within their contemporary society). Darwin fell into this group, but characteristically he made his beliefs known in private correspondence, never in public discourse.
Darwin was agnostic and a nontheist about gods in general, and his personal history made him an antitheist with regard to the Christian God. Many people don't understand this because they have not read Darwin's writings on the subject closely, and they failed to carefully distinguish the subtleties and details of the different forms of atheism. My contention is that the New Atheists are also agnostics, nontheists about generic gods, and antitheists about all religious gods such as the Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, and Pagan Gods. Richard Dawkins has written essentially this in his book The God Delusion. That is, in philosophical belief they are exactly the same as Darwin. Admittedly, the New Atheists conduct themselves in ways that Darwin did not do and never thought of doing, such as publicly and forcefully criticizing Christians, Jews, and Moslems for believing in irrational, non-empirical, useless, and nonexistent imaginary entities that are also dangerous to humanity and other life on Earth since their beliefs promote superstition, cruelty, hatred, bigotry, child abuse, ignorance, stupidity, etc. I have no problem with such New Atheist criticism since it is exactly what I believe. My only disagreement with the New Atheists is that they tend to lump all religions into the supernaturalistic fold or criticize them for not supporting the New Atheist critique. There are liberal, nontheistic, and non-supernaturalistic religions and personal quasi-religious philosophies that are life-fulfilling and self-actualizing and can be recommended to individuals who do not want to or cannot be secular, rather than condemning all religions as a group.
My conclusion is simple. Weiss and Nisbet are trying to use Darwin as a positive example to contrast with their presumed negative example of the New Atheists. If they did this with regard to the public expression and aggressive style of the New Atheists, especially in their intolerance of all religions, they would have a good argument. Darwin was and most atheists today are much more circumspect than the New Atheists and not so intolerant of all religions and religious philosophies. But instead, they criticized the New Atheists with the actual philosophical atheistic beliefs themselves, and here their argument fails, since Darwin was no different in this regard than Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, et al. By the end of his life, Darwin was a total agnostic, nontheist, and--concerning the Christian God--antitheist. When Darwin wrote, "The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject [the existence of an ineffable god] is beyond the scope of man's intellect," he was correct about generic gods in general, and I don't think the New Atheists would disagree. Both they and Darwin would be nontheistic about generic gods. "Every man," Darwin wrote, "must judge for himself, between conflicting vague probabilities." For the most part this is obvious, and Darwin had judged for himself and chosen agnosticism and atheism--nontheism for god and antitheism for the Christian God (whose existence he thought had been disproved by the problem of evil).
Weiss concludes and Matt repeats this: "And he knew enough to not pick fights over what he did not know." Darwin did not "pick fights" only because of his emotional reticence and retiring personality, but he certainly did know what he was writing about when he discussed atheism. So Darwin most emphatically cannot legitimately be used as an object lesson to criticize the "Atheist Literalists" and "Many Bloggers." And Rick Weiss's sentence, "But he also knew there is plenty of room for God at the top, upstream of the business of biology," is just nonsense. Darwin did not know this or even think this. Really, sentences such as this are just over-reaching and are unnecessarily presumptuous and counter-productive.
Last updated: 2009 February 19