The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Don't Hold Water

By Michael Poole

The new atheists are putting out new books and articles, bus adverts and TV programmes like there's no tomorrow. They've gained a large amount of public attention and media exposure - but do their arguments really hold water? Using the analogy put forward by the esteemed philosopher Anthony Flew, Michael Poole examines the new atheists' use of the 'ten leaky buckets' tactic of argumentation - presenting readers with a sum of arguments that are each individually defective, as though the cumulative effect should be persuasive. This closer look at the facts reveals that the buckets are, indeed, leaky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Books
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9780745959436

Michael Poole

MICHAEL POOLE is Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King's College, London. He is the author of several books and some eighty other publications, including a debate with Professor Richard Dawkins.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Un-natural selection or ‘Down with sex!’

A1 Religion is evil because many bad deeds have been done by religious people.

In a two-part television documentary entitled Root of All Evil?¹ Richard Dawkins selected many examples of odd, quirky or evil deeds associated with various religions in order to support his overarching thesis that ‘Religion is… bad for our children and it’s bad for you.’[R] To be fair, he later wrote that he disliked the title since no single thing, religion or otherwise is the root of everything. The programmes were criticized on the grounds that bad things being done in the name of religion doesn’t mean that all religion is bad. If he had taken different examples, such as the evangelical William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery, the starting and foundation of schools and hospitals, or recent testimonies of religious believers forgiving appalling deeds against them and their families, one would have seen a different – and more balanced – view of religion.

In a radio interview Richard Dawkins fairly admitted, ‘I do think that’s a good point and in a way that’s a shortcoming of television that it’s almost forced to do that.’² That may be, but by September of that year, his 400-page book The God Delusion was published, including many more negative examples.

Drawing the battle lines?

Dawkins made his purpose in publishing the book transparent, intending that ‘religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.’[5]

Christopher Hitchens’ blunt message is along the same lines: ‘Religion poisons everything’ ‘Religion kills.’ Perhaps he should have qualified the word ‘everything’, in the same way that Dawkins qualified the word ‘all’ in the television title. It only needs one good deed to falsify ‘all’ and ‘everything’! Hitchens adds, ‘… the mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made.’[10] This assertion is paralleled by Daniel Dennett, whose book Breaking the Spell starts from the assumption contained in his subtitle: Religion as a natural phenomenon. As with Dawkins, a delusion is envisaged, a spell to be broken, since it is assumed from the start that there is no transcendent Being, only natural factors. Actually, Dennett’s ‘spell’ turns out to be not one but two. Of the first he says, ‘The spell that I say must be broken is the taboo against a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many.’ The second ‘spell’ is ‘religion itself’.[18] It seems surprising that the first should be counted as a spell that needs breaking. Psychologists and sociologists of religion, themselves having religious beliefs or none, have long engaged in the scientific analysis of religious behaviour as individual and group phenomena. Applying the blanket term ‘scientific’ to such investigations merits a word of caution, for although the types of psychological and sociological investigation I refer to are scientific ones, the Science Curriculum of one country points out that ‘there are some questions that… science cannot address’.³

On truth

The truth, or otherwise, of the existence of God is one of these questions, a point considered further in Chapter 7. Investigators may choose to disregard the truth or falsity of religious beliefs while examining the function religious beliefs fulfil in the life of an individual or the structure of a society. But it must not be overlooked that the truth or falsity of the beliefs themselves is itself a valid and important study, even if it is not the immediate concern of the particular investigator. I wonder whether Dennett seems to be doing this by taking it for granted from the outset that religious beliefs about God must be false and can only have ‘natural’ origins, upon which he speculates.

The investigation of the functions served by religion – functionalism – is not, in principle, a threat to the truth-claims of religion. It is a partial, but valuable, study of one aspect of the behaviour of individual and collective humankind. Given Dennett’s beliefs, he suggests

The three favourite purposes or raisons d’être for religion are

to comfort us in our suffering and allay our fear of death

to explain things we can’t otherwise explain

to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies.[102f.]

Religion serves these three functions, and why not? They say nothing about the truth or falsity of the beliefs themselves. Something that comforts us in suffering can also be true, for which we should be thankful; explanations outside the competence of science can also be true. Science cannot answer the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ but if God exists, it would be perfectly true and rational to say that God’s activity ‘explains’ it, something addressed in Chapter 6.

Anyway, whether there are ‘delusions’, ‘poison’ or ‘spells’, the claims of these books is clear: down with religion! But all religion? All aspects of all religions? How do these writers go about their chosen task? The first two authors have collected large quantities of reports of ugly or evil things that have been associated with religion in some way. Indeed, Hitchens says, ‘I have been writing this book all my life,’[285] and the quantity of bizarre stories he has amassed is large. Dennett also contributes a share but fairly comments that ‘The daily actions of religious people have accomplished uncounted good deeds throughout history, alleviating suffering, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick.’[253] But neither Hitchens nor Dawkins appears to have supplied a balancing list of good acts prompted by religious