Dear Lord, why do philosophers, who are supposed to be in the business of thinking analytically, rationally, and deeply, write such stupid stuff about atheism? The latest set of dumb lucubrations on the topic was published, in of all places, Business Insider, which becomes even weirder when you see the arguments about the impotence of atheism when dealing with the byproducts of capitalism. The piece at issue is “Atheism must be about more than not believing in God“, which was written by Patrick O’Connor, a lecturer in philosophy at Nottingham Trent University.

Here are O’Connor’s two main points:

1. Atheism is grounded in humanism, and humanism is impotent before many of the world’s most important problems. O’Connor:

Yet atheists – rather than flippantly dismissing the insights of theologians – should take them seriously indeed. Humans, by dint of being human, are confronted with baffling questions about meaning, belonging, direction, our connection to other humans and the fate of our species as a whole.

The human impulse is to seek answers, and to date, atheism has been unsatisfactory in its response.

Why is that? Because for some unspecified reason, naturalism and reason itself can’t deal with the world’s problems:

Atheist values are typically defined as humanistic. If we look to the values of the British Humanist Association, we see that it promotes naturalism, rational debate, and the pre-eminence of evidence, cooperation, progress and individual dignity. These are noble aspirations, but they are ultimately brittle when tackling the visceral and existential problems confronting humanity in this period of history.

When one considers the destruction that advanced capitalism visits on communities – from environmental catastrophes to war and genocide – then the atheist is the last person one thinks of calling for solace, or for a meaningful ethical and political alternative.

In the brutal economic reality of a neo-liberal, market-oriented world, these concerns are rarely given due consideration when debating the questions surrounding the existence or non-existence of god. The persistent and unthinking atheist habit is to ground all that is important on individual freedom, individual assertions of non-belief and vacant appeals to scientific evidence. But these appeals remain weak when confronting financial crises, gender inequality, diminished public health and services, food banks, and economic deprivation.

Seriously? Who can deal with issues like starvation, global warming, and population control better than scientists? And in Western countries, scientists are likely to be atheists. To suggest that we turn to theologians for answers about the disasters inflicted by capitalism is one of the dumbest claims I’ve ever seen. What do the goddies have to offer? Have Catholics helped us with population control? No, for they’ve helped create overpopulation. A lot of global-warming denialism, too, springs from religion.

O’Connor’s Big Problem, above and throughout his piece, is his total and abysmal failure to explain how theism, that is, the acceptance of deities who interact with the world, provides better answers and responses. In fact, some of the best responses to questions about how to deal with the inequities of capitalism come from philosopher like Peter Singer—a staunch atheist.

O’Connor again repeats his claim, but adds no evidence:

The writings of atheist poster boys Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett do not offer solace to the existential and political realities of our world. In some cases, they can make them worse. Calls for reason and scientific inquiry do not offer any coherent sense of solidarity to those who suffer. The humanist might argue the world would be a far more progressive place if scientific values guided our governments. But the reality is that humanism, together with its ethical correlate of individual dignity, remains ineffectual when it comes to offering a galvanising purpose, or inspiring a meaningful sense of belonging.

It’s not clear how atheist writings (and much of the work cited above doesn’t even attempt to offer solace, but rather to point out the evils inflicted on humanity by religion) make things worse. Presumably O’Connor is referring to Marx’s dictum that religion is “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” But turning to a nonexistent God, while it may provide some solace or community, has done precious little to solve the world’s problems, particularly those inflicted by industrialization, capitalization, and overpopulation. For many, religion simply eliminates the drive to solve your problems because you’ll be fine in the hereafter. For real solutions to material problems we must turn to science. Purpose itself (and it’s not clear that religion has provided more altruistic “purpose” than nonbelief), won’t solve problems.

And seriously, are the largely atheistic nations of northern Europe and Scandinavia befeft of meaning, purpose, and a “sense of belonging”? I don’t think so. In fact, those countries have solved social problems much more successfully than have religious countries like the U.S. or Iran.

Then O’Connor argues, contra what he said above, that our most pressing concerns aren’t material but philosophical:

The most pressing concerns facing humans are philosophical, and sometimes even metaphysical. Humans have genuine fears that life is excessively cheap, a sense that the collective good is waning, that political action is equivalent to apathy and cynicism, and that any solution to any political problem is the ubiquitous idea of the entrepreneurial human.

I don’t think the poor, starving, and oppressive people of the world are that worried about philosophy. They’re worried about filling their bellies and having decent health care.  As for “metaphysical concerns”, O’Connor doesn’t specify any that haven’t been discussed by secular philosophers.

The one point on which O’Connor and I agree, is this: if you’re an anti-theist atheist (and not all of us are), and want to actively promote the demise of religion, that requires us to embrace the kind of liberal social reforms that remove the inequities and suffering that undergirld religiosity:

. . . atheism, if it is to be relevant, must shed its humanism. The future vitality and relevance of atheism depends on its ability to broaden its focus away from on the validity of god’s existence and narrow concerns over individual freedom. Instead, it must turn to address questions about economic causality, belonging and alienation, poverty, collective action, geo-politics, the social causes of environmental problems, class and gender inequality, and human suffering.

Obviously, the best person to consult on the rapidity of climate change is the scientist. But these kind of appeals to science as a way of understanding the world around us must be supplemented by the core philosophical considerations of humans existing in the world, who grapple daily with the enormity of undeniable problems. Atheism needs to renew itself if it is to be considered relevant for the new century.

What O’Conner is talking about here is not atheism but antitheism. Atheism itself is simply the refusal to accept the existence of gods. Anti-theism implies a program of action: getting rid of religion. One can do that in two ways: by attacking religion itself and pointing out both its theological and evidential weaknesses as well as its tendency to do bad stuff, or by undermining the social conditions that promote religion. Regardless of which kind of atheist you are, though, atheism will remain relevant “for the new century” so long as people make unsupported statements based on faith.

Finally, O’Connor gets to his second Big Point. This one is familiar to us all.

2. Modern atheists aren’t as serious as the Good Old Atheists like Nietzsche and Camus, who realized the nihilism and despair that atheism truly entails.  Dear Lord, how many times do we have to hear this? This is really a call for modern atheists, who of course have thought about the implications of their rejection of gods (yes, I am worm food when I die, and that’s all), to become more dolorous and miserable. But beyond that, O’Connor implies, wrongly, that New Atheists are less concerned with human welfare than were Old Atheists. I see no evidence that this is the case. The bolding in the bit below is mine:

But this is not to say that atheism must embrace an insipid, watered-down spiritualism. Instead, we can look to a different breed of atheism, found in the work of continental, anti-humanist philosophers. For example, we can turn to Nietzsche to understand the resentments generated by human suffering. Meanwhile, the Marxist tradition offers us the means to understand the material conditions of unsustainable capitalism. Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus allow us to comprehend our shared mortality, and the humour and tragedy of life in a godless universe.

There is a whole other philosophical vocabulary for atheism to explore. Both Nietzsche and Sartre observe a different atheism, one embedded in the context of genuine questions of cruelty, economic alienation, anxiety and mortality.

Atheism needs to be attentive to what it means to live with the consequences of violence, senselessness and suffering. The trouble with atheism in its more conventional guises is a nerdish fetishism for all things that work: what is accurate, the instrumental and the efficient. The trouble is, many aspects of our world are not working. Because of this, the atheist is in danger of being perceived as deluded and aloof from the violent mess of the real. Atheism, if it is to be vital, needs to reconnect itself with the more disturbing, darker aspects of the human condition.

Thank you, Dr. O’Connor, for telling us how we should believe and behave. But you’ve provided not a scintilla of evidence that atheists aren’t “attentive” to the world’s problems. In fact, scientists, who by and large are nonbelievers, are working hard at solving many of them. What has the church done lately about economic alienation and mortality? Has the church helped cure disease, or extend our lives? Hell no: what it does is tell us that we needn’t worry about mortality because, if we embrace Jebus or Allah, we’ll live forever.

The three paragraphs above are arrant nonsense. In fact, the bold parts seem incoherent and unintelligible. How else do we fix what is not working without “a fetish for things that work”?

O’Connor is a philosopher who has wasted his time on a mess of word pottage that is not only poorly written, but, when one can dimly discern a point, is wrong.  And people tell me that you can’t do good philosophy without a philosophy degree! O’Connor demonstrates the converse: even a philosophy degree—and a philosophy professorship—is no guarantor that you’ll produce good philosophy.