What do I think about David Glass’s new book “Atheism’s New Clothes” by David Glass? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
When Brian Auten said he was giving away a book from David Glass about Atheism’s New Clothes at the price of a review, I was eager to do so, especially since the book came with a high recommendation from Tim McGrew, someone who I take extremely seriously in the apologetics world. My copy of Glass’s book came in recently and within a week of starting it, I had had it read and on the first day was messaging a friend of mine saying “You must get this.”
The title of the book comes from what is known as the Courtier’s reply from that great beacon of philosophical learning that goes by the name of P.Z. Myers at his blog “Pharyngula.” The reply goes as follows:
” I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots, nor does he give a moment’s consideration to Bellini’s masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor’s Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor’s raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.
Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.
Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.
Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor’s taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.”
The basis behind this is that it’s ridiculous to say you have not read on it. Glass correctly says it is a wonderful piece of rhetoric (p. 27), but does not count as a response. The whole idea behind it is as that it is obvious that there is no God just as much as it was obvious to the little boy that the emperor was naked. It’s a wonder that something that is so obvious has been passed over by the majority world. It doesn’t matter if the new atheists think this is the case. The question they need to ask is why I should think this is the case.
Glass points to the emphasis on science that the new atheists make on page 20. He correctly shows that it has taken the place of religion. This is a criticism I have often raised where it has become the new priesthood. Glass also says on page 21 that the problem with the new atheists basing their atheism on science is that the question of if science leads to atheism is a question of philosophy and not of science.
On the same page, Glass points out that in the past, atheists have looked at the arguments for God’s existence in great detail. The new atheists do not. To make matters even worse for them, they don’t even really look at the arguments from philosophical atheists for atheism. Glass points out that Dawkins does attempt to deal with theistic arguments in chapter 3, and as critics have pointed out, this is the weakest part of the book. (Yes. Anyone who quotes Dawkins as an authority on say, the Thomistic arguments, does not know what they’re talking about.)
All of this is in the first chapter describing the new atheists, and I personally think this is the best chapter in the book.
Glass goes on to deal with the definition of faith that the new atheists put forward. He argues persuasively that the new atheists have redefined faith as belief without evidence, and then shown how silly this is, which is in fact something any Christian philosopher or scholar would agree with, and yet in thinking that they have shown how silly this concept is, the new atheists think they have destroyed the notion of faith.
On page 39, Glass shows how Sam Harris briefly points out that Paul Tillich has a different definition of faith, but says that anyone is free to redefine faith as they want and bring it into conformity with some ideal. As Glass points out, this is in fact what Harris himself has done, as well as the rest of the new atheists! Nowhere do you see any NT lexicons cited that will say that this is what the biblical writers meant by faith. It is something they believe without evidence. Perhaps we should remember what Hitchens could say. “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
An amusing example on page 40 is Glass citing Harris who says:
“Of Hebrews 11:1, Harris claims that ‘read in the right way, this passage seems to render faith entirely self-justifying: perhaps the very fact that one believes in something which has not yet come to pass (‘things hoped for’) or for which one has no evidence (‘things not seen’) constitutes evidence for its actuality (‘assurance’)’ ” He then goes on to set up a scenario where he thinks Nicole Kidman has a love for him and that this must be the case. How else does one explain the feeling?
As Glass points out, this is probably the clearest example of someone making the text say what they want it to say. Absent is any real exegesis of the text, yet this does not stop the new atheists! If one approached a science experiment the way they approach the Bible, the new atheists would be outraged, and rightfully so. It is because of their presupposition in advance that religion is ipso facto nonsense that they think the text does not deserve any real study.
After this chapter, Glass goes on to talk about science and faith. Is there really a conflict?
Glass does a fine job of showing there is no ultimate conflict. Of course, there are times the fields overlap and can seem to be contradict, but this has not been established. This situation also exists with science and history or science and philosophy. The idea that there is a major conflict came from people like Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the 19th century. A better look could be found in a work edited by the agnostic Ronald Numbers called “Galileo Goes To Jail.”
Glass on page 84 shows that this is readily apparent in their problem with miracles, something scientists like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, etc. never had a problem with. The new atheists claim that belief in miracles means one rejects science presupposes that all events are brought about by natural laws. Of course, this would follow if there was no God, but that is the question being raised. It is saying “It is irrational to believe in miracles if there is no God.” Is anyone seriously disagreeing with that?
In fact, Dawkins says the last word was written on this by Hume. (It’s strange that for the new atheists who claim to want to use the latest research, that they look at the 18th century and don’t look to see if any interaction has taken place since then.) I refer the reader to my review of “Miracles” by Craig Keener that can be found here.
The next two chapters deal with the origin of the universe and fine-tuning respectively. This is not my area of expertise as the arguments are scientific rather than metaphysical. I leave that to the reader who has an interest in that area. The next chapter we will look at deals with the Boeing 747 argument of Dawkins.
Glass points out that Dawkins has said that science has set us free from religion, but instead his Boeing 747 argument is a philosophical argument, one that comes from Hume in fact. If it is science that deals the death knell, why is it that Dawkins wanders into philosophy? If Dawkins is allowed to give a philosophical argument against God’s existence, shouldn’t he consider more seriously the philosophical arguments for God’s existence? Before someone says that he has done that in chapter 3 of The God Delusion, I suggest you realize that his understanding of the arguments is incredibly shallow, even of the ones I don’t agree with, such as the ontological argument.
It would have been good for Glass to give more arguments on how a doctrine like the simplicity of God can deal with much of this. The argument is metaphysical and it is my contention that much of our problem in the debates we have today in many areas is that we have neglected the area of metaphysics. Interestingly, most people who I debate with don’t even know what it is, but they know that it is nonsense!
The next chapter is on evolution and the origins of religion. Glass is correct in showing that the origin of an idea does not go against the truth of the idea. Suppose that God exists. Could it not be the case that He would wire our brains through an evolutionary process in such a way that we would come to realize that He exists? (This could be expanded later on with Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism that Glass gets into later on.)
Glass points out on page 188 that Dawkins brings up cargo cults and says that it seems that Christianity almost certainly began the same way and spread with the same speed. Any evidence of this? Nope. It is amazing how far one can get without evidence! All you need is a theory that you think is plausible. Dawkins, of course, does not bother reading something like Rodney Stark’s “The Rise of Christianity.”
Chapter 8 deals with morality and the problem of evil, an area the new atheists lack in, especially since we have something like “The Moral Landscape” by Harris. In fact, Glass points out that if goodness is well-being, then if religion promotes goodness for people and their well-being, then it would seem that Harris should be in favor of religion. Dennett has even shown some beneficial aspects of religious belief.
Glass shows that the new atheists have this idea that for the Christian, the only place they get moral guidance is from the Bible. I have argued against this position for some time. It is my contention that something is not moral because the Bible says so, but the Bible says something is or is not moral because it is. Glass also points out that the new atheists when looking at tyrannical societies like Stalin’s, say that Stalin’s behavior was the kind of behavior religious people have (Even though Stalin was staunchly anti-religious) and so their reigns of terror are the fault of religion anyway!
Glass also shows that the new atheists do not spend much time with the problem of evil which is usually the best argument used against theism. The new atheists have not on their own established any metaphysical basis for morality. When it comes to looking at the claims, the new atheists once again ignore evidence. For the new atheists, evidence is only something a Christian has to provide. The new atheist doesn’t have to.
The ninth chapter is about the Bible. The reason many chapter reviews are getting sparse now for me is that many of these arguments are dealt with by other authors. This is not to say Glass does a bad job of that. He does a great job. Taking care of the new atheists today is like shooting fish in a barrel. As I have said before, we should thank God for the new atheists. They are injuring their own side and helping to wake up ours.
One amusing point in here is that the new atheists argue that the Bible was written by ignorant men. Glass responds that this is in fact the case. The writers were ignorant and we’ve never said otherwise. As can be expected, the new atheists do not deal with evidence. When the new atheists make a claim about the Bible, it is obvious who they go to. It will be a writer like Bart Ehrman, John Loftus, Robert Price, or Dan Barker. Interacting with any Christian scholarship that opposes is out of the question. After all, such people are ipso facto deluded and why waste time with people who are deluded?
Much of this continues with the tenth chapter on Jesus and the resurrection. Glass amusingly tells of how Dawkins says the Da Vinci Code is fiction, and rightfully so, but when Dawkins talks about the formation of the canon, one would be hard-pressed to really show the difference between the two views. Again, it is another case where the new atheists ignore evidence. In fact, Dawkins and Hitchens even say it can be questioned if Jesus existed at all. To say that is a serious question in NT studies would be like questioning descent with modification to biologists.
Fortunately, Glass does give the positive case for the resurrection of Jesus and how NT historians do take the claim seriously. It is the central question of Christianity and it is one that is historical and it is a wonder that the new atheists do not spend more time on it. Well, it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that the new atheists have reached a verdict beforehand so why bother with evidence?
The final chapter is on the question of if life has meaning. This is not an argument I use so I will not be critiquing on it.
The person who is highly familiar with Christian apologetics will get some out of this book and is thus worth reading, but there will also be much that has been seen before. This is not the fault of Glass of course. It’s just that there is so little in the new atheists that there is not much that needs to be said. Still, the book comes with great recommendations from people like Paul Copan and John Lennox and for good reason. The first chapter I still think is the best and I’m pleased to see chapter two is there as I do think Glass is pioneering some in this field.
In conclusion, I do recommend this book and I look forward to seeing what else Glass comes out with.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
David Glass’s web site can be found here.
Tags: Atheism's New Clothes, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, David Glass, P.Z. Myers, Pharyngula, Richard Dawkins, Saints and Sceptics, Sam Harris
Deeper Waters 
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
You (and/or Glass) appear to have misunderstood what “the Courtier’s reply” is aimed at. It’s aimed at this sort of exchange:
atheist: There’s no good evidence that gods exist, and many good reasons to consider all of them imaginary due to human fallibility.
theist: But have you read Aquinas/Lewis/this encyclical/that apologist?
The theist in the above is doing a Courtier’s reply; instead of addressing the basic objections of the atheist, they are pointing to more elaborate belief systems and arguments built up from premises that the atheist doesn’t accept. This isn’t helpful.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
Actually, we do understand it. That’s the problem. The new atheists are assuming that the information is just false at the outset. Yes. If they’re taking on theology, they need to at least have some basic understanding in theology.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
Precisely. The average Internet atheist has concluded that there is “no good evidence gods exist” based on watching a few YouTube videos by “NonStampCollector”. When we ask if you have read Aquinas, et al, it’s not so much an argument as it is a way to ascertain just how stupid an individual we are dealing with — eg, whether pearls are being cast before swine.
The “Courtier’s Reply” is nothing more than a ploy used by ignorant atheists who don’t have the intelligence to deal with the arguments presented to them.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
“The new atheists are assuming that the information is just false at the outset.”
No.
The atheist is not convinced; this is not the same as assuming it’s false.
And if you understood how it was used, you would not have written “The whole idea behind it is as that it is obvious that there is no God just as much as it was obvious to the little boy that the emperor was naked,” as that isn’t the point of the reply.
“Yes. If they’re taking on theology, they need to at least have some basic understanding in theology.”
If religions turned away converts until they *also* understood theology, this might be reasonable. However, since Christianity doesn’t require converts understand theology, it’s an entirely unreasonable demand that people who reject it understand theology.
“The average Internet atheist has concluded that there is “no good evidence gods exist” based on watching a few YouTube videos by “NonStampCollector”.”
You seem to be a theologian of the sort who just makes up “facts.” Typical.
“When we ask if you have read Aquinas, et al, it’s not so much an argument as it is a way to ascertain just how stupid an individual we are dealing with — eg, whether pearls are being cast before swine.”
Well, I can see I’m dealing with a typical insulting Christian.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
That’s because you’re acting like a typical ignorant fundy atheist. But like the man said, you want to come play at Theologyweb and explain what it is I allegedly “make up,” come on over and I’ll give you the tanning of your life, little man. I’ve been dealing with small fry like you for over 15 years now — so I know good and well what the average Internet atheist uses as a source, time and time again:
* A crap site like evilbible.com or Skeptics’ Annotated Bible or Why Won’t God Heal Amputees
* Some YouTube jackass like NonStampcollector, ProfMTH, crazypills2, or alley43
* Some “new atheist” whiner like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens, or one of their followers, whose expertise is in some other field, and who promotes idiocy like Jesus not existing, the Inquisition executing 10 times the population of Spain, etc.
* A fringe loony like Robert Price, Hector Avalos, or Thomas Thompson
99 out of 100 Internet atheists I have dealt with in the last 15 years have been of this category. So don’t give me any crap about me allegedly “making up facts.”
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov
“That’s because you’re acting like a typical ignorant fundy atheist.”
That’s no reason for your insults. I have no interest in you at all. Bye.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
(actually, since the original is unsigned, I don’t know if the first replier is also the original author; if so, strike the bit about “you would not have written” since it doesn’t apply)
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
Brian: No.
The atheist is not convinced; this is not the same as assuming it’s false.
Reply: I didn’t say the atheist. I said the new atheist. Real atheists who actually know how to put forward an argument make an effort to read the other side.
Brian: And if you understood how it was used, you would not have written “The whole idea behind it is as that it is obvious that there is no God just as much as it was obvious to the little boy that the emperor was naked,” as that isn’t the point of the reply.
Reply: Um. Yeah it is. The whole idea is one does not need to study the theologians. The problem is obvious and no arguments from theologians will change that.
Brian: If religions turned away converts until they *also* understood theology, this might be reasonable. However, since Christianity doesn’t require converts understand theology, it’s an entirely unreasonable demand that people who reject it understand theology.
Reply: Then you’re someone ignorant of what goes on here since I’ve gone after the whole convert idea numerous times. Getting people on emotional highs to come to Christianity is not a good thing. All people planning on making Jesus Lord need at least a basic understanding of what’s going on.
Brian: You seem to be a theologian of the sort who just makes up “facts.” Typical.
Reply: Tell you what. How about you come to TheologyWeb.com. I have a Deeper Waters section. You can come and challenge us on all of the “made-up” facts.
Brian: Well, I can see I’m dealing with a typical insulting Christian.
Reply: Whine whine whine. Here you go and tell us we’re making up facts and then you whine because you get that we want to see the intellectual level we’re dealing with. Go through the new atheist books and see how many times the intellectual ability of Christians gets insulted. Yeah. It doesn’t help for you to come here and play the victim.
It also doesn’t work.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
Brian: That’s no reason for your insults. I have no interest in you at all. Bye.
Reply: If you really thought that, you would have abandoned the new atheists a long time ago. You don’t. It’s okay if new atheists do it, but not Christians. This is just an excuse to avoid dealing with real arguments.
November 12, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
“I didn’t say the atheist. I said the new atheist.”
That’s still not correct. You’re just straw-manning now.
“The whole idea is one does not need to study the theologians.”
Yes, but that’s because every statement from them is based on assumptions not granted. I likewise don’t need to investigate the convoluted writings of geocentrists because I don’t agree that the sun orbits the earth.
“Then you’re someone ignorant of what goes on here since I’ve gone after the whole convert idea numerous times.”
I was referring to religions, not your particular writings.
“Tell you what. How about you come to TheologyWeb.com.”
I was replying to J. P.Holding’s uncited statement.
“Whine whine whine.”
Again, I was replying to J. P.Holding’s statement.
“Here you go and tell us we’re making up facts and then you whine because you get that we want to see the intellectual level we’re dealing with.”
I only accused J. P.Holding of making up facts. However, it’s pretty clear that there’s no reason to talk to you anymore either.
November 13, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
There goes the fundy atheist with his tail between his legs.
For some reason that always happens when you ask them to respond to arguments with facts rather than with vacuous assertions.
November 13, 2012 at 10:12 -04:00Nov |
Brian: That’s still not correct. You’re just straw-manning now.
Reply: Oh really? Let’s see.
Brian: Yes, but that’s because every statement from them is based on assumptions not granted. I likewise don’t need to investigate the convoluted writings of geocentrists because I don’t agree that the sun orbits the earth.
Reply: Oh. So I was incorrect in saying that the new atheists think they don’t need to study the theologians, and here you go and say it anyway! Sorry, but if you read the great thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas and others, they lay out their case entirely and do all they can to avoid assumptions. I suppose I could say “I don’t need to read P.Z. Myers because he assumes naturalism and since I don’t agree with it, I won’t bother, but I will write plenty critiquing naturalism. Real people interested in learning study even that which they disagree with. People who aren’t, don’t.
Brian: I was referring to religions, not your particular writings.
Reply: Ah. So it’s okay for you to make statements based on assumptions not granted….
Brian: I was replying to J. P.Holding’s uncited statement.
“Whine whine whine.”
Again, I was replying to J. P.Holding’s statement.
REply: Or you could show up.
Brian: I only accused J. P.Holding of making up facts. However, it’s pretty clear that there’s no reason to talk to you anymore either.
Reply: Ah. So the new atheists can tell me I’m deluded and I believe without evidence and such and that’s okay. The new atheists can insult Christians all they want to. However, as soon as Christians get tough on atheists, that is unacceptable!
If this was really a concern to you, you’d avoid the new atheists as well.
February 19, 2013 at 10:12 -04:00Feb |
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