151 of 210 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
All baseless assertion, no demonstration., February 25, 2010
This review is from: The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Paperback)
In this review I am only going to deal with the main thesis of the book. I am not going to deal with all the other issues he brings up concerning the rational merit of the arguments for or against Theism.
The main thesis of the book is that ALL atheists dont really disbelieve in God predicated on lack of evidence for, stronge evidence against, or both; but that atheists dont believe in God because we are immoral and willfully deny it. He charges all atheist by default with not having intellectual integrity in regards to this issue.
I used to be a very strong Christian. I have read hundreds of books dealing with worldview issues(more books on the Christian side), and all the arguments pro and con concerning religion and Christianity. I ended up becoming an atheist about two years ago by examining the arguments the best I could. Intellectual integrity means A LOT to me, and for someone to charge all atheists and myself to necessarily not have intellectual integrity concerning this issue is offensive and just plain wrong and without foundation. The mistreatment, hate, and unwarranted prejudice of ideas that this books supports are incalcuable, and this saddens me. Why just single out atheists? Are the believers in all the other religions exempt from this charge? If his thesis includes all disbelievers in Christianity then 75% of the world would be included in this unfounded charge of immorality being the cause of disbelief in his God.
So what is the evidence for his thesis, and what is the evidence against it?
There is no more positive evidence for his thesis, then there is that disbelief in astrology, Zeus, Poseidon, Scientology, mormons magic underwear, and the millions of other Gods(and different versions of his own) is a result not of reasoned disbelief but rather is caused by immorality and willful denial of an overwhelming mountain of ironclad evidence that is close to being self-evident but is not quite so, in order to save are "free will".
He quotes certain Atheists saying they dont want "God" to exist, and for some reason he thinks that this indicates that most if not all atheist are this way. First of all, if wanting something to be so or not to be so, calls the belief or disbelief into suspicion; then all peoples religious beliefs and disbeliefs are in the same boat, because all Christians do and dont want both certain other gods as well as many versions of the Christian God to exist(such as calvins god). Secondly many atheist would prefer there to be a God, either way this does not preclude Christians or Atheists from basing their belief or disbelief in God on a reasoned consideration of the evidence.
He claims that many atheists disbelief is rooted in the absence of a Good father figure. Here he commits the fallacy of special pleading by cherry picking a group of famous atheists that apparently had no fathers or had a bad relationship with their own, and then he selects different famous theists who apparently had good fathers and good relationships with them. This does not work though, because out of the millions of atheists and christians there are many with both good and bad, absent and not absent, as well as ones with good relationships and bad ones with their father. Unless he can find samples that could represent the whole demographic of believers and unbeleivers, this is just baseless conjecture. Even if he could show this, it would still only show correlation not causation. The same goes for him and others saying they know some atheists that are "bad or immoral" therefore this indicates they all are. Every Christian knows Christians they consider immoral, does this mean this is the cause of their disbelief in the Muslim God, or that Christians tend to be more immoral then everyone else?
Atheist differ on whether there is good negative evidence against God or certain types of Gods, but all agree that there is not enough adequate positive evidence and/or reasons to justify Theism, especially full blown Christian Theism. Spiegel claims that the evidence for God is so overwhelming that someone must be deluded or immoral in order not to concede that God exists. This is odd to me, because the overwhelming majority of Christian theologians, philosophers, and everyday Christians all throughout history and presently were not and are not evidentialist(that you should proportion your beliefs in accordance with the evidence) and agree with the atheists contention, in so far that basing things off reason and evidence alone will not suffice in grounding and demonstrating Christian Theism to be the most probable over any and all alternatives. They would argue that you must leap beyond the evidence(and some would say even against evidence) and have faith. So does that mean that most Christians are immoral or willfully blind since they dont think there is ironclad evidence and or reason that could prove Christianity to be certain or even the most probable?
So what if you could show that Christians as a group were more moral then atheists? This still would not show that all atheists do not base there views on reason but instead disbelieve for non-rational or irrational reasons. Correlation does not prove causation. What if it could be shown that Catholics were more moral then Protestants, would this prove that protestants had their views because of their immorality and willfull disregard for following where the evidence leaded? Obviously not!
So what evidence is there on the moral status of both Atheist individuals and societies that are more atheistic? Here is what Luke(blogger who writes the blog common sense atheism) said about the issue of morality and secular societes.
"Christians often assert that religion is necessary to keep a society healthy, happy and moral. They say that a society without God would be immoral, loveless, and miserable. This is not just the position of Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly, or even just of mainstream evangelicals. It is even proclaimed by professional Christian philosophers like Keith Ward1 and John Caputo.
Until recently, this assertion could not be tested because all societies were deeply religious. Moreover, the first atheistic societies had atheism forced upon them by brutal dictators (Hoxha's Albania, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia), and thus were hardly models of a healthy society.
Only near the dawn of the 21st century did Planet Earth see a few societies of "organic" (unforced) atheism emerge: most notably, Denmark and Sweden.2 So, now that we finally have a natural experiment on the issue, does the data confirm or deny the claim that religion is necessary to maintain a healthy, happy and moral society?
Society without God (2008) is sociologist Phil Zuckerman's analysis of the societal and moral health of these two atheistic societies.
So, what do the data show about the health, happiness and morality of these non-religious societies?
The data could hardly be clearer. Denmark and Sweden rank among the most well-developed, wealthiest, most democratic, most free, most entrepreneurial, least corrupt, least violent, most peaceful, healthiest, happiest, most egalitarian, best educated, most charitable, and most environmentally compassionate societies in the entire world.
Well-developed
As of the 2008 United Nations' Human Development Report, which ranks nations on a measure of "human development" (long and healthy life, education, and standard of living), Denmark is 14th and Sweden is 6th. (In contrast, the 50 least-developed nations are all highly religious.) Another "summary" measure is The Economist's Quality of Life Index, which ranks Denmark and Sweden 9th and 5th in the world.
Wealthiest
Sweden and Denmark are ranked 17th and 18th in GDP per capita, according to the International Monetary Fund. In fact, the list of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world is dominated by non-religious nations. Denmark and Sweden rank 3rd and 10th in financial satisfaction. Also note that among the 50 poorest countries on Earth, all are extremely religious.
Most democratic
According to World Audit, Denmark and Sweden are the most democractic nations on earth. The Global Democracy Ranking lists them at #1 and #3. The Economist's Democracy Index ranks them 1st and 5th.
Most free
The Heritage Foundation ranks Denmark and Sweden 6th and 11th on economic freedom. They rank 8th and 4th in freedom in decision making. Reporters Without Border ranks them 14th and 7th in press freedom, with Freedom House ranking them 3rd and 5th.
Most entrepreneurial
The World Economic Forum ranks nations by economic competitiveness, and nearly all the top spots are dominated by non-religious nations, including Denmark and Sweden. The same story holds for specific measures of entrepreneurship, for example Denmark and Sweden rank among the top 5 nations where it is cheapest to start a new business.
Least corrupt
Transparency International ranks Denmark and Sweden as the 1st and 4th least corrupt nations on earth.
Least violent
Denmark and Sweden both rank low in murders per capita. Both Fox & Levin (2000) and Fajnzylber et. al. (2002) found that all the nations with high homicide rates were extremely religious, and that the nations with the lowest homicide rates tended to be relatively non-religious. Good statistics on other measures like rape and violent crime are difficult to compile because nations measure crime differently, and such statistics are often more a measure of the effectiveness of a nation's justice system and a culture's willingness to report crimes than they are a measure of actual incidences of violence...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Preaching to the (equally ill-informed) choir, September 1, 2011
This review is from: The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Paperback)
If, as Spiegel asserts, immorality leads to atheism, then the most immoral nations on earth would have the greatest number of atheists, and it is likely that the most atheistic nations on earth would also be the most immoral.
In fact, the exact OPPOSITE is far more true. The United States is the most devoutly religious of all highly-developed nations. It also has among the highest percentages of violent crime, illegal drug use, broken homes, the greatest number of armed conflicts, and other demographic markers.
Contrast this with the nations of Scandinavia, who are among the least religious people in any "first-world" nations. They are among the least violent, least criminal, most peace-loving, and have the lowest drug use, etc. If religious belief is supposed to bring about virtue, it has had no such effect, and if its absence is supposed to bring about vice, it is likewise unsuccessful at doing so.
Japan provides yet another example. Among the most peaceful and well-behaved societies on earth today, they have become much more secular than they were during the 1930s and '40s, when religion was used to stir them to violence, hatred and intolerance. It is the *absence* of belief in Japan that has improved their culture.
Spiegel's book just trots out the same tired old tropes about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot being supposedly "atheistic" (in fact, they were not; they merely replaced the structure of the Church with their own version: the cult of the leader).
Finally, if, as Spiegel claims, immorality leads to unbelief, America's prisons would be filled with atheists. In fact, the opposite is true. Study after study has clearly shown that prisoners are far more likely than non-prisoners to have religious beliefs. I'd like to see Spiegel try to explain that fact.
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31 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An Angry Theist, May 21, 2010
This review is from: The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Paperback)
Spiegel attempts in this book to show that atheism stems from two sources: (1) lack of a good father figure, and (2) a desire to escape religious moral proscriptions. The only problem is that he doesn't establish either thesis at all, and engages in some extraordinarily poor argument along the way.
It would be two cumbersome to point out all of the various errors made in this book. Spiegel claims that atheists cannot live happy lives. The a priori assumption is that a belief in personal immortality is necessary to live a happy life. But this question cannot be settled on the basis of armchair reasoning, but requires some empirical justification. Spiegel offers none. I had to wonder whether Spiegel has ever known an atheist personally. I'm an atheist and can honestly say I'm not living a life of despair. Were the ancient Greek philosophers, many of whom did not accept any notion of personal immortality, living lives of despair? One might at least consult Aristotle on this.
Spiegel offers the fine-tuning argument in order to bolster his claim that the existence of God is quite obvious, and thus atheists must be willfully rejecting God rather than rejecting his existence on rational grounds, but he doesn't consider seriously or accurately the objections to the argument. The one objection he mentions is the notion of the multiverse view, seriously considered by contemporary physicists, that there could be many numerous universes. His response is that this has not been demonstrated. But he misses the point of the objection. The fine-tuning argument relies on an often unstated premise, viz., that there is only one universe, or at least significantly restricted number of universes. So long as the multiverse view is a possibility this premise remains unsubstantiated. The fine-tuning argument is thus in limbo.
But now, what is his evidence for his two main contentions cited above? A list of a few prominent atheists whose fathers died young or were bad fathers, and a similar rather limited list of atheists whose behavior, according to Spiegel's lights, was immoral. That's it! No social scientist would accept the legitimacy of this methodology. Spiegel is trying to argue a causative claim. His evidence on the basis of any legitimate methodology is insufficient to even establish correlation, let alone causation. (I say "by his lights" since his chief moral complaint is sexual immorality, involving sexual promiscuity, open marriages, and homosexuality. This is simply tendentious, since although there are religious grounds to objecting to these, a nonreligious person might very well find no reason for objection. If so such people are not trying to "escape" moral opprobrium by atheism.)
Along the way we get claims that are so completely unfounded that it is a surprise, at least to me, that they are raised at all. To clinch his claim that atheists are willfully rejecting religion Spiegel adopts a Calvinist notion of the "sense of the divine" or "sensus divinitatis." Somehow he thinks his readers should nod their collective heads to a notion that hardly comes from an unbiased source. And further claims become even more ridiculous. "Consequently, the most one can do is `struggle furiously' against the awareness of God and the fear it evokes. However, if the sensus devinitatis is universal and cannot be squelched, then how can there be atheists?" (106). Again, I must wonder whether Spiegel knows any atheists personally. For one, I will assure him that I'm not struggling mightily against any "sensus divinitatis." But the argument becomes even more absurd: "Even small children have a sense of the divine, even if the lack the linguistic or conceptual tools to effectively communicate this" (107). I think John Locke offered a sufficient argument against this in his objection to the doctrine of innate ideas. To put it simply, how in the world do you know this?
The arguments offered in this book are so bad that the question is begged as to why the author ever wrote it. One explanation is, of course, intellectual obtuseness. He simply was incapable of recognizing how bad his arguments were. I think a more charitable interpretation, however, is revealed in a passage that refers to a main source, the psychologist Vitz. " While some might be critical of any attempt to psychologize the phenomenon of atheism, Vitz notes: `We must remember that it is atheists themselves who began the psychological approach to the question of belief'. Turnabout, as they say, if fair play" (64). This is nothing but tit for tat. Unfortunately it is rather bad tit for tat. I must admit some degree of embarrassment that this book comes from someone whose chosen profession I share.
Signed,
An atheist who had a wonderful father, adopted atheism at the age of thirteen because I realized I had no reasons to believe theism, and whose sexual life has been, well, rather sedate.
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