Review of "In God We Doubt" by John Humphrys

I recently read a book by John Humphrys called "In God We Doubt". It irritated me so much I penned a review for Amazon. Here it is, edited slightly for context:

Humphrys has a problem. He doesn't believe in God, but finds the implications of a purely natural universe bleak and depressing. And so, like many, if not most atheists in the UK, he decides to call himself an 'agnostic' instead. Surely, if he looks hard enough, he can find some excuse to believe in 'something', thereby rescuing his worldview from the dark nihilistic depths of dreaded atheism? This book is like looking into Humphrys' mind while he argues with himself, a great clash of reason and denial.

Humphrys doesn't like the resurgence of Enlightenment thinkers who are open about their disagreements with religion and he goes out to irritate those readers from the outset: characterising Richard Dawkins as a bully who 'knows there is no God', and who would tear a comfort blanket from a starving child in the name of truth, and dismissing Christopher Hitchens as a 'clever clogs'.

I couldn't help myself - I was annoyed by these characterisations, particularly because of the assumption being made that religion is a subject that ought to be afforded special gentility simply because many people have chosen to take those beliefs very seriously. But it's hard to imagine Humphrys describing as a bully a man who, say, vociferously attacks someone's political views because he believes them nonsensical, and religious belief is, after all, a choice.

However, I have to accept that, although if you page carefully through 'The God Delusion' you will never find Richard Dawkins claiming to 'know' there is no god, neither could it possibly be fair to label him arrogant or a know-it-all, this is precisely how a lot of people see him and we admirers of Dawkins must accept that. We ought to be aware of the way agnostics see us.

What is pretty unforgivable, however, are some of outrageous presumptions he makes later in the book about what atheists believe. It reaches its most offensive with a list of seven things that "sum up the attitude of those militant atheists". They include such monstrosities as "Believers are mostly naive or stupid", "The few clever ones are pathetic", and "If we don't wipe out religious belief by next Thursday week, civilisation as we know it is doomed". His excuse for such virulent vilification? : "I make no apology if I have over-simplified their views with that little list: it's what they do to believers all the time." How...immature.

Well Mr Humphrys, I know a lot of atheists and I don't think they put a tick in any of your boxes. But even your tyrant of 'militant' atheism, Richard Dawkins, could not possibly be characterised with such superlatives. What Humphrys, like many self-described agnostics, is missing is a sense of just how ridiculous the world seems to someone who has come to see the great religions as superstition no less absurd than the almighty Xenu. It's hard to imagine Humphrys reining in his scepticism when discussing Ronald Reagan's use of astrologers to help him make presidential decisions, or Tony Blair's use of Tarot Readers or whatever other New Age claptrap his wife is into this week.

Sniping at atheists aside, the thing that strikes you most about the book as you're reading the first two-thirds of it is - in what sense is Humphrys not an atheist? In a slightly disordered, conversational way, Humphrys dismisses all the arguments for the gods of religion. He doesn't believe in any kind of benevolent, involved deity, and he is convinced of that. That makes him unambiguously an atheist - so what's all the soul-searching about?

He eventually shows his cards in the last few chapters, and it is a dreadfully disappointing hand, but, again, says a lot about the way people think. His first target is morality. He gives a laudable description of how evolutionary biology explains the origins of moral impulses (sniping at Richard Dawkins' reverence for Darwin as "perilously close to worship" on the way), but at the end asserts that there must be something more. How does he justify this? "Follow this thinking to its logical conclusion and you reduce human beings to the level of a marauding, oversexed chimpanzee. Kindness and the other virtues make us what we are...a world without kindness, altruism, generosity, empathy and pity would be unimaginable". In other words, he doesn't like the sound of there being no transcendental, other-worldly quality to our moral urges, therefore it can't be true. Way to go, denial!

He uses the terrible 'ought' argument of C.S. Lewis to back up his point. Apparently, if we're in a situation where two instincts are in conflict, one selfless and one selfish, we know that we 'ought' to do the selfless thing, such as risking ourselves to help someone in need. So what is driving this 'ought' judgement? The argument that follows is utterly scatter-brained, with facile assertions sharing space with arguments for one side that have already been addressed by the other. "By any Darwinian measure the stronger [urge] is bound to be self-preservation." Says who? Regarding the progress of the moral zeitgeist over the centuries, "We have only moved in one direction". This is either tautological, or false (we can hardly claim that the fall of Athens led to improvements in the moral baseline, to cite just one example). "We are more than the sum of our genes - selfish or otherwise". He claims that the moral superiority of selflessness cannot be explained by social convention because if it were simply convention we would expect it to be different in different societies. He (and Lewis) never click that the veneration of selflessness may be a necessary property of society. In fact, no attempt is made to look for a biological or sociological explanation, it is simply asserted that there is none.

And finally he discusses the comfort that religion brings, and how dare we horrid atheists disturb that. I am open to the possibility that religion's sedative properties may outweigh its ill effects, but the arguments Humphrys uses are so lamely one-sided. For instance, he describes how a couple whose two daughters were killed in a road accident were able to come to terms with their loss through the knowledge that they had gone to heaven, and were even able to forgive their killer. No mention of the secular alternatives to wishful thinking, other than to dismiss them out of hand. No mention of the downsides of such denial - whether it might be easier, in the long term, to move on from such a loss if you've accepted they're really gone. No question that forgiving the killer was a noble thing to do.

Humphrys' style is casual, conversational, and sloppy. Quite apart from the mistakes that others have mentioned (calling Sam Harris "Sam Smith" for several pages must be considered almost unforgivable), he switches back and forth between points with no clear direction, spatters his rhetoric with childish retorts, fails to provide references for anything - like I said, it is like listening to him arguing with himself.

However, in many ways, this book ought to be read. It gives a genuinely interesting insight into the minds of a great proportion of the population. Confused, and in deep denial. Just don't let Humphrys get away with the suggestion that the agnostic position is the 'hard' one. Hard to justify, yes, but trivially easy to take up without justification, as most people do.

Absolute morality is an oxymoron

I was listening to Peter Hitchens and Christopher Hitchens arguing the other day and it set me thinking, as I have in the past, about absolute morality and how it is not just non-existent, but ruled out by definition. Peter Hitchens' main thrust in this row is that, regardless of whether or not an atheist behaves morally, if they do not believe in a moral absolute then there is no way they can claim that anything they do is 'good' or 'bad' - everything is arbitrary. He says you can make choices on pragmatic grounds but your claim that one choice is 'better' than another has no authority over another person's claim of the opposite.

Leaving aside for the moment how an atheist does justify their choices in moral terms, I want to argue that absolute morality is in fact a contradiction. Morality, by definition, excludes the possibility of being absolute - by which I mean either a property of reality, or imposed (or 'declared') by an outside agent, such as a creator god.

It is absolute morality, not subjective morality, that is arbitrary, or more specifically, divorced from the consequences of actions and choices. I believe a necessary definition of morality is that moral choices have desirable consequences. If you break the connection between consequences and the original rules, the rules cannot be moral. Rules imposed by an outside agent, whether a god, or a ruler, or just someone other than yourself, can only ever be laws, they cannot form a foundation for morality, precisely because the imposer can choose them at whim. Rules cannot simply be labelled moral.

One might simply assert that this is not true, that precisely because of the difficulties of subjective morality, of the need for absolutes (such as were articulated by Peter Hitchens), consequences must be only secondary, or irrelevant. First let me argue merely rhetorically - if a law from above or beyond were to lead to something horrific - genocide, say - how could anyone, in all honesty, say it is moral? Of course, people have done, but mostly they try to claim that the beneficial consequences are merely hidden from us, helping to prove my point. However, more rigorously, once divorced from the consequences the rules become arbitrary, as I stated. If you need to understand this problem consider the circular argument: This action is moral because it is the way God wants me to act. Why must I act the way God wants me to act? Because God's commandments are moral.

Let us consider, then, a kind of absolute morality in which the rules are chosen because they bring about desirable consequences. Desirable to whom? I would contend that no action can be considered moral unless the outcome is desirable (in some way) for the individuals involved - otherwise we are left with the conundrum of how we evaluate the moral worth of the consequence. In other words, it is perfectly clear that a ruler may impose laws that have immoral consequences (apartheid, say).

What if the ruler's laws have consequences that are desirable for the individuals involved? If this is the case, can we not learn for ourselves which rules bring about those consequences? We have struck the main point here. The source of moral reasoning is the consequences, not the rules. If we know what consequences we desire, we can reason our way to the rules; the rules themselves are derivative, and never absolute.

A possible way out of this is if the desirable consequences are created by the law-giver. Punishment and reward, in other words. I argue that such rules can never be moral. You cannot invent morality through power, that reduces to the absurd conclusion that morality lies with the powerful. I asked this question to the Bible Answer Squad once, and the response was that God was the exception in this case. Such an assertion could be made anywhere along any line of reasoning, it is hardly compelling!

What about morality as a property of reality? Can the universe impose a moral law? Let us consider how we would detect such a thing. We would do so by examining the consequences of our decisions. In other words, even if it were possible to impose morals on reality, it would be irrelevant. Good choices would bring good results and that is how we would know.

Once we have successfully identified 'desirable consequences', and not the mind of God, as the source of moral reasoning, we quickly realise that ascertaining the desirable consequences is tricky. People's desires are often in conflict. We are forced to conclude that not only is morality not absolute, but it is changing, and elusive. This is a big problem for some people. But consider this: you are captured by a highly intelligent, but primitive tribe of cannibals, who are going to eat you. To them, you are morally no different from an animal. How would you reason with them to get them to set you free? You could scream at them about how they would go to hell, or how we are all made in the image of God, until you were blue in the face, but that is not reasoning, it is assertion, and these cannibals don't know about your religion. No, you would try to identify common ground, consequences that both you and the cannibals find desirable, and on that ground attempt to show them how their actions are undesirable to them.

This is what morality is. It is the outcome of reasonable people coming together, first to establish what are the shared desirable consequences, and then to reason as to how to bring them about. We can see how morality cannot be clear-cut, because if it were it would become close to being absolute, and absolute rules cannot be moral. Morality is nothing substantial, nothing tangible, it cannot be by definition. And that is a good thing, since the obsession with absolute morality has for centuries kept power in the hands of the powerful, and those who claim to be able to read the mind of god.

Hitchens' unjustified assertions about Iraq

I admire Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great) so much mainly because I love his aggressive no-nonsense style. I wouldn't want everyone in the world to be like him, but it is great to have a few of them. I've even admired his stance on Iraq, because he makes many very good points.

But I think I've managed to distill his opinions on the war down to their ultimate flaw. Essentially, we are presented with the option: interfere, accept inevitable deaths in the conflict and after, and provoke more terrorism and hatred of the West, while possibly arresting the progress of irrational regimes towards the manufacture of cataclysmic weaponry; or don't interfere, choose diplomatic means, and in the mean time accept inevitable deaths caused by those regimes and the possibility of them acquiring that weaponry. And he chooses the first and asserts vociferously that it is the lesser evil. We must promote civilised governance and stop theocratic regimes from getting nukes. But he doesn't seem to be able to argue for that.

Deaths and suffering and oppression are inevitable if we do nothing. But far more deaths and suffering are inevitable in the short term if we provoke aggressive war. How does Hitch know that in the end, the invaded nation will be better off? He cannot count the potential dead. But he can make a good estimate of how many will die because of war. And how can he know that the provocation that invasion creates won't actually accelerate the acquisition, and use, of apocalyptic weaponry by some group or some nation? He cannot know this for sure.

Neither can I know that the diplomatic route is safer. But I can look at history. And history tells me that sweeping changes to a country's governance and culture only come about over decades and centuries, not through any one imposition by some group promoting a new way of life. Such conflicts can only make relatively small changes, in the big scheme of things.

Democracy was not imposed on England after the Civil War, the emancipation of women not caused in one swoop by the Suffragettes or by the publication of The Female Eunuch, freedom of religion didn't suddenly 'switch on' after the French Revolution or when The Age of Reason hit the desk of King George or Thomas Jefferson. The closest thing I can think of to a culture-changing conflict was the American Civil War, 'causing' the abolition of slavery, but the conditions that set up the two conflicting parties were brought about by a whole array of earlier events and discourses.

There are probably many counter-examples, but it does seem to me that in the case of the Middle East, the changes that will bring about peace, reason and democracy will likely be closer in speed of action to those that brought it to the West, than a bit of a fight and a decade or two of aftermath. Surely the most likely causal agencies will come from within these countries, as they did for us, and as they seemed likely to do in Iran until we blundered into the region again and made the authorities crack down and the youth harden their attitudes.

Perhaps the reason Hitch makes the assertions he does is because this time there is more urgency, because Iran could get a nuke soon, and with their apocalyptic vision of the world they could be tempted to use them without any thought for the consequences. But it seems to me there is an easy argument that it is our actions in the middle east that provoke this outcome, just as much as our inaction.

The point is that Hitchens is too damned sure of himself. Normally he's quite carefully rational but on this point he seems to be making unjustified assertions simply because he cannot be seen to back down even slightly from the corner he backed himself into. So come on, Hitch, tell us why you think the fast, aggressive route is more likely to prevent Armageddon and reduce suffering than the slow, diplomatic, educational, evolutionary route? I'd love to know.