Abstract
In a recent article in this journal, Andrew Johnson seeks to defend the “New Atheism” against several objections. We provide a philosophical assessment of his defense of contemporary atheistic arguments that are said to amount to bifurcation fallacies. This point of discussion leads to our critical discussion of the presumption of atheism and the epistemic justification of atheism.
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Notes
For the sake of this essay, we use “acceptance” and “belief” interchangeably. Moreover, as we are not concerned here with adherence to any of the named positions for non-evidential purposes, it is assumed that subjects who “believe” or “accept” claims in this context do so because they implicitly or explicitly consider those claims to be reasonable.
Johnson also assumes this definition when he summarizes Ehrman’s argument as follows: “Since atheists are mortals just like everyone else, isn’t their belief in God’s non-existence unjustified?” (Johnson 2013, p. 8) Later, Johnson takes issue with Ehrman’s and others’ point that atheists claim knowledge or certainty that there is no God, but Johnson never distances himself from the position that atheists believe that no God exists. (Johnson 2013, p. 12)
Corlett works with a slightly different definition of “agnosticism” here, but the charge is equally effective in terms of the definitions we present.
J. L. Mackie frames the problem of evil as a sort of internal incoherence argument: “This problem seems to show not merely that traditional theism lacks rational support, but rather that it is positively irrational, in that some of its central doctrines are, as a set, inconsistent with one another.” (Mackie 1982, p. 150)
It seems that according to Morris, one is in a “good epistemic position” relative to a proposition if and only if, in the case that proposition were true, (1) “. . . its truth would be indicated by some positive epistemic considerations in its favor . . .” and (2) “. . . should there be any positive epistemic considerations for the truth of the proposition, one would have them, or most likely have them.” (Morris 1985, pp. 222–223)
See McGrath (1987, pp. 56–57).
To be able to defend the belief that it is not the case that God exists on the basis of the lack of justification for believing that God exists, one must not simply lack justification for believing that God exists but be able to defend the belief that one lacks justification for believing that God exists.
Condition (3) is offered on the assumption that belief is a condition of justified belief.
Also see Lehrer (2000, pp. 108–109).
References
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Corlett, J. A. (2010). The errors of atheism. London: Continuum.
Flew, A. (1972). The presumption of atheism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2, 29–46.
Holland, A. (2001). Consistency in presuming agnosticism. Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, 4, 82–89.
Johnson, A. (2013). An apology for the new atheism. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 73, 5–28.
Lehrer, K. (2000). Theory of knowledge. Boulder: Westview Press.
Mackie, J. L. (1982). The miracle of theism. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
McGrath, P. J. (1987). Atheism or agnosticism. Analysis, 47, 54–57.
Morris, T. (1985). Agnosticism. Analysis, 45, 219–224.
Shalkowski, S. A. (1989). Atheological apologetics. American Philosophical Quarterly, 26, 1–17.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the referees for this journal for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper
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Corlett, J.A., Cangelosi, J. Atheism and epistemic justification. Int J Philos Relig 78, 91–106 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9484-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9484-z