I first became interested in my non-religion and atheism in the year 2000, shortly before the so-called ‘New Atheism’ movement began to kick into gear with Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith. Back then, there were not many good resources to be found, even on the internet. The word ‘blog’ was more or less unheard of and only a small group of people were writing in ‘online diaries’ such as OpenDiary.com (started in 1998). Good books were even more scarce. The only books that I came across that dealt directly with the subject of atheism tended to be dry as dust philosophy books. One of the best examples of this is George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God (which I devoured as soon as I received my copy).

One might jokingly refer to these authors as part of the “Old Atheism.”

Unlike these books, the books being produced by the New Atheists are engagingly written and targeted towards a mass popular audience. Nevertheless, those dusty old philosophy books on atheism do, in fact, contains some real gems that tend to get to the heart of the matter in a way that only philosophers can do, with their overbearing concern with premises, logic, and argumentation. Last night I happened to pull another one of these off of my shelf and flipped through some pages that I had bookmarked: Walter Kaufmann’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy, which was published in 1958 and is still in print. Kaufmann’s book drags along through the first couple of chapters, leaving only the most determined reader to get to the meaty gems near the center. The following are some choice excerpts to nourish you:

On the Ontological argument (“God is, by definition, perfect. And perfection entails existence. Therefore, God, by definition, must exist”):

“There is a difference between a perfect being – whatever may be meant by that – thought of as existing (rather than as dead or as a chimera) and a perfect being which in fact exists. From the definition of God we can only learn how he is to be thought of, not whether he exists.” (165)

On proving God’s existence in general:

“Can one prove God’s existence? Yes, but this does not mean that God exists…we can construct an indefinite number of proofs of God’s existence. If Jesus was trustworthy, God exists; Jesus was trustworthy; therefore God exists. The construction of premises from which the existence of God will follow as a valid conclusion is a mere matter of ingenuity: valid proofs of God’s existence are not hard to find. The crux is whether any such proof can be based on plausible premises… All valid proofs are if-then propositions: if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. When the argument is valid, those reluctant to admit the truth of the conclusion need only question the premises. Even where there are no other grounds for doubting the trustworthiness of any witness, the fact that he advances a dubious belief is sufficient ground for asking whether he could not have been mistaken at least once.” (168-169)

“Even an astounding competence in mathematics [here he is referring to Blaise Pascal] provides no safeguard against pathetic pitfalls when it comes to arguments about religion. Some people think that the existence of some scientists, especially atomic physicists [in the 1950s, atomic physics was at the cutting edge of science and receiving the lion's share of attention], who hold traditional beliefs creates a strong presumption that these beliefs must be true. Clearly, it does not.” (171-172)

What does it mean to say that God really exists (and does not merely exist as an idea in the mind or on paper)?

“Furthermore, the word ‘exists’ raises problems of its own. If it is meant in the same sense in which Moses might have existed, the sense in which chickens and chairs exist, most people would say that God does not ‘exist.’ The assertion of such spatial existence would immediately raise the question where, in what particular location, God could be found.

Those asserting God’s existence have therefore often maintained that there are different modes of existence. That is a doubtful doctrine…Even if it were legitimate to speak of different modes of existence, what could be meant by asking whether God ‘exists’? Saying that God exists in the same sense in which mathematical points exist would be hardly less atheistic than saying that his existence is comparable to that of unicorns. Those asserting the existence of God have sometimes recognized this difficulty  and contended that God’s mode of existence is unique, that he does not exist in the same sense in which anything else exists but in a sense peculiar to himself. Logically, however, this is not different from saying that God does not ‘exist.’” (177-178)

“In sum, terms applied to God do not mean what they generally mean. Those who say that God exists do not really mean that he ‘exists’ in the same sense in which anything else exists. Those who say that God is being-itself, or a spirit, or love, do not mean these terms in any ordinary sense. But if terms applied to God do not mean what they generally mean, if they have a unique meaning when applied to God, then all such talk about God is conducted in a peculiar language with rules of its own.” (178)

Indeed – and with rules that are completely unknown and unknowable! One could get away, in chess, with calling the Bishop a fool and the King a Devil, because the underlying rules would remain the same. However, to say that God ‘exists’ is to say nothing at all if by ‘God exists’ we mean something entirely different from what we normally mean when we say that something exists. Without the rules there is no game to play.

“To understand the peculiarities of theology, one must remember that theology, and indeed any systematic discussion of God, was born as a defensive maneuver. It is the product of a distinctive historical situation. Claims of a less sophisticated age have been exposed to rationalistic attack when theology appears to salvage the tradition.” (180)

“Seeing that ‘God’ is so far from being a univocal [one meaning] term and that the terms applied to him by theologians are admittedly not intended to mean what they generally mean, it is no exaggeration if we conclude that most statements about God are essentially ambiguous. They cannot be called true or false.” (181)