Another stupid Atheism article by "atheist" John Gray

Another supposed atheist, John Gray, has written an atheist-bashing article in which he claims, and I shit you not, "faith in reason is more ridiculous than faith in God".

Really, these so called "atheists" like Gray really ought to explain to everyone why exactly they are atheists, because I sure can't work it out. Why is atheism good enough for Gray, but he wouldn't recommend it to anyone else? I guess he's special.

Gray makes so many mistakes and misrepresentations in his piece that I just couldn't let it go without challenge. Luckily Jerry Coyne from "Why Evolution Is True" has also heavily critiqued Gray here.

I laughed when I read:
"Looking at the world as it has been and continues to be at the present time, it's belief in human reason that's childish"

Er, no, try and keep up, John dear. The world at the present time is considerably kinder than it has ever been in the past. And if we continue on our current path of reason, this trend is likely to continue. The atrocities we do see are increasingly only committed by the most fervent religious or political radicals, who eschew reason in their extremist beliefs.

As Sam Harris says in The End of Faith : "Whenever you hear that people have begun killing, intentionally and indiscriminately, ask yourself what dogma stands at their backs. What do these killers believe? You will find that it is always - always - preposterous".

Many of Gray's other statements are just as wildly off the mark. He says:
"If human beings were potentially capable of applying reason in their lives they would show some sign of learning from what they had done wrong in the past, but history and everyday practice show them committing the same follies over and over again. They would alter their beliefs in accordance with facts, but clinging to beliefs in the face of contrary evidence is one of the most powerful and enduring human traits."

Sure, people could fail to learn from history (but we haven't had World War 3 yet), but the answer is just more education and more history lessons. Sure, some people are unchanging in their views even when it's clearly pointed out that they are wrong, but this is just an argument for more critical thinking. We have so many examples of people having successfully learned from history or prior experience, and so many examples of people using critical thinking to self-correct their own views.

Critical thinking is also something Gray could do with more of.  In a very strange series of lines, he goes on to say:
"...human evil isn't a type of error that can be discarded like an obsolete scientific theory. If history teaches us anything it's that hatred and cruelty are permanent human flaws, which find expression whatever beliefs people may profess."

"Human evil" ? Who is he, Fred Phelps? Well, if that really is the case, there are two options: either do nothing and either religion or rationality will fail or, shock horror, do something about it. It may not be beyond our power in the future if we become more rational. There's great evidence that "evil" is actually just a problem in the brain, an undeveloped area or the result of previous damage. This is exactly the type of thing that neuroscience is trying to address.

Even if all of Gray's dreams are realised, and "science does find that irrationality is hard-wired into the human animal" I don't see what difference that makes. We're hard wired for God, so what? I have nothing to do with it. Just resist. 

"In Europe before and during World War Two, persecution and genocide were supported by racial and eugenic theories, which allowed some groups to be demonised. These theories were pseudo-science of the worst kind, but it wasn't this that discredited them. They were exposed for what they were by the defeat of Nazism, which revealed the horrors to which they had led. Subsequent investigation has since demonstrated that such theories are scientifically worthless. But the habit of demonising other human beings hasn't gone away. The same minorities that were targeted in the past - Jews, Roma, immigrants and gay people, for example - are being targeted in many countries today."

Again, an argument for critical thinking, something we're already trying to promote. And it's bullshit to make out that it was only the defeat of the Nazis which meant that Eugenics was exposed as pseudo-science, as many scientists at the time thought so, only they couldn't do much about it, what with the Nazis and all. And remember that the people targeting minorities he mentions are mostly extreme political groups (for the Roma, immigrants) or religious groups (for the Jews, gays).

Gray seems to be saying that the atheism movement utterly depends on every individual in the world abandoning all faith, folly and mischief and becoming a paragon or reason. Well, if that was true it would be bloody ridiculous. Luckily, it's not true: All that's required to make the world a better place is for some(not all) people to become a bit more reasonable (not ultimately reasonable). It's just a huge strawman from Gray.

We are not depending on all people becoming rational, just some people becoming a bit more rational. The more rational we become, the better chance we have to create and use our best tools to address the world's problems: climate change, religious dogma, extreme politics, overpopulation, the insatiable economic and corporate need for unsustainable growth and the greed of unbridled capitalism or communism.

His dismissal of Bertrand Russell is pretty disgraceful as well. Apparently his opinions were "ludicrously incompatible".

His final line is so frustrating and puzzling that it could take a whole blogpost to parse it: 

"The notion that human life could ever be ruled by reason is an exercise in make-believe more far-fetched than any of the stories we were told as children. We'd all be better off if we saw ourselves as we are - intermittently and only ever partly-rational creatures, who never really grow up."

It's like he doesn't even want anything to change or improve. It manages to offer both the natualistic fallacy (how things are is best) and a kind of resigned negativity that really does challange reason. He seems to have no confidence in people to be able to compartmentalise their foibles and act in a largely rational way in the secular world. The fact that religions are on the decline should be enough reason to doubt Gray's overly pessimistic "it was ever thus" meanderings.

Once we are aware of a problem, we can address it. We don't need to "make-believe" to have confidence that the level of reason exhibited by less religious people in the future will be a bit higher than our own. And better still, we don't need to forget our roots, as Gray seems to imply. To remember how irrational humanity can be, all we need to do is go back and have a look at some of his writing.