If you know me, you know that I’ve written plenty about this subject before, but some topics remain evergreen. This is particularly true when the waters are chummed by someone as provocative as Ben Shapiro. I won’t worry too much about refuting the entire 13 minutes of fast-talking Ben’s presentation but there are a couple of points in here that are worth tackling. You should listen to it carefully and take notes.
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Ben begins by addressing the concept itself: What is Atheism vs. what is Agnosticism?
He also adds and then ends with the famous “is/ought” dilemma - the notion that human beings cannot derive how they “ought” to act from facts regarding what “is” about things that human beings can observe in the world, claiming:
“Atheism cannot establish a moral framework; there is no way to bridge the gap between what is and what ought to be.”
This is the most interesting charge he makes, but it is ultimately flawed.
I. Definitions and Assumptions
These topics are each probably enough to write entire books about yet they seem easy enough to discuss that we should get down to it.
For starters: Atheism is merely the idea that the null hypothesis of cosmology is the assumption that there is/are no god/gods and that the burden of proof when people make claims about the existence of such things rightly lies entirely with those making that claim. Atheism is little more than simple epistemic humility informed by a variety of logical maxims ranging from Occam’s Razor to Hitchens’ Razor (we’ll leave Hanlon’s out.)
Occam and Hitchens conveniently interlock here: All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the most likely and that which is asserted without evidence can be refuted with the same.
Therefore, atheists (under atheism properly understood) should not be in the business of making logically unfalsifiable statements as if we are adherents to a mirror universe religion where the non-existence of deity is treated as an article of faith. There also exist varying levels of strength of the claims that one could make with regard to the certainty that human knowledge could produce about the potential existence of the divine ranging from the weakest sort of agnosticism (knowledge of the existence of God is fundamentally unknowable!) to complete, metaphysical certainty of its non-existence (God simply cannot exist!)
The proper position for atheists - a shorthand I will accede which denotes the mindset of people who have all but metaphysical certainty that God doesn’t exist - is somewhere in between these; that we should default to the skeptical assumption of non-existence but that this assumption may be overturned by proper evidence.
The same threshold of evidence exists for a variety of speculated things from the existence of bigfoot to the Loch Ness monster to UFOs - each of whose existence could be demonstrated with the location of a corpse, captured craft or even a clear and unambiguous photograph of the same. To say that we have more evidence of UFOs than of God is probably not wrong.
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, but before you devote yourself to a proposition of this manner, wouldn’t some shard of proof be nice?
Atheists object principally to the arbitrariness of religious belief and to the credulousness required to uncritically accept what religions tell us we must believe. This is before we get to the fact that all too frequently, whether or not a person accepts a particular theological notion has much more to do with who their parents are and what their beliefs consist of than almost any other variable.
II. Somewhere, David Hume is crying
Why oh why, do theists break out the is/ought paradigm as if this is a knock-down, game-ending assumption to be used against the un-churched? Is it because they think it cuts through the thorny, Gordian knot of reality by introducing their own form of Manichaeism or is it merely that they haven’t read John Rawls yet? The world may never know.
Fortunately for us, we have the benefit of philosophy and philosophers who have had 2,000 years to think about these questions and whose opinions aren’t frozen in aspic. So, just what the heck are we talking about here?
Ben raises the age old contention that “ought” (in this case, what is “good” for humans) cannot be derived from what “is” (knowledge about objective reality) and that this represents an insuperable chasm which the religious are here to assist us with leaping.
We could begin by asking the fairly obvious “Which religion are we talking about here?” but that is a bit snotty, so I’ll simply say that this is a question whose answer depends strictly upon what level of resolution you’re attempting to answer it at.
Sam Harris answers the is/ought dilemma at the macro level by means of a thought experiment: Imagine an existence featuring the worst possible suffering for everybody on the planet; the most horrible degradation and misery your mind can generate. Then, imagine its opposite: a world where every person enjoys the greatest satisfaction and actualization - not simply hedonic pleasure but genuine, lasting happiness - and ask yourself: which of these states of being is “good” and which is “bad”? More importantly: what set of moral precepts push us towards the one and away from the other?
Sadists are gonna sadist, but for the mentally normal this test at least provides a set of cardinal directions defining the possible spectrum of outcomes for all humans. This is of course a very high-level analysis that only tells us the general direction that we should be going towards though and doesn’t give us the sort of granularity required to make decisions about more picayune questions like “should we make marginal changes to welfare policy and tax rates?”
If Harris handles the scale of the large, Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” test can help to fill in the places between the poles. In order to figure out the ought, simply ask yourself: if all things were otherwise equal and you were a person who was going to be born with random attributes into one of a multitude of societies, what is the sort of society (and what what type of rules) would you rather be born into? It’s a hell of a powerful question because it asks that we employ the knowledge we have about human history in order to make such a judgment. Under what set of moral preconditions have human beings of practically any type flourished?
Of course, using another analytic tool that is available to us (history) indicates that morality is itself contingent and mostly derived from standards of behavior defined by man’s existence as a hominid with certain biological and social needs, and a strong tendency towards violence when resolving disputes over property, territory and mates. “Ought” for mankind is all too frequently governed by what “is” or more precisely: what is possible for creatures such as ourselves. Add in the fact that the simple Manichaean test (the idea that decisions are either all good or all bad) is frequently misapplied at sufficiently granular levels of analysis when we would be better off asking such questions from the perspective of what tradeoffs a particular idea generates.
III. Ben and a red herring
The ultimate problem with Ben’s opening and closing statement is that he insists upon asking for something which is simply not on the menu to do a song and dance number on his table right before he gets down to eating it. By that I mean his contention that:
“Atheism cannot establish a moral framework; there is no way to bridge the gap between what is and what ought to be.”
Aside from the fact that I’ve just spent a few paragraphs discussing the very idea that many people (who just happen to be atheists) have spent a lot of time and effort trying to suss out precisely what elements of moral philosophy are required for people to live “a good life”, the statement is just balderdash.
Atheism such as it is consists of nothing more than a statement about what the default epistemological assumption regarding the existence of the divine might be; asking that also it provide an all-encompassing and comprehensive cosmology and moral framework or be rejected as somehow lacking and false is the classic definition of a false dilemma.
I suppose it is the sort of thing the religious are prone to do because their frame of reference is a holistic philosophy that covers not just the beginning and end of reality as we know it but also everything that we’re supposed to do in between. Sorry to disappoint.
As it turns out, the concept of atheism isn’t up to answering many of these questions. But that’s alright: people who are atheists merely have to rely upon things like the accumulated knowledge of our species, including “history,” “philosophy,” the consolations of literature, science, - and yes, even religion - to understand the world as we find it. Life is complex. It grows more complex as we learn more about ourselves and the world. Incorporating that complexity into our every-growing moral philosophy is the work of the rest of humanity’s existence and is a prospective project. Fast-talking Ben gives short shrift to those who all too often share his overall goal: that of bettering humanity’s condition.