As with Godless, I picked up Atheist Universe a few weeks ago on the advise of Amazon. Overall, I was disappointed by the book. While I agreed with many of Mills' conclusions, I found that his writing style was often poor and that his arguments were not fully thought out or well presented.
The book starts out badly, with Mills engaged in a hypothetical interview in which his atheism is questioned. The "interview" is rather tedious and although it raises some good points and refutes some common misconceptions, Mills also uses it to make somewhat bizarre claims. In response to a question about whether or not atheists celebrate Christmas, he asserts that we instead "celebrate the Winter Solstice." I have never met anyone, atheist or otherwise, who celebrates the Winter Solstice (although I'm sure some people do), but I do know many atheists who celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. As the book progresses, Mills also outlines what he claims to be creationist arguments but are for the most part generalities. Certainly his hypothetical arguments represent the views of some creationists, but he generally chooses to illustrate the most simplistic of creationist arguments. It does not help the case of atheism to set up creationist straw men.
His biggest failed argument in my opinion is his discussion of the existence of hell. I am not entirely sure why the discussion of whether hell exists or not is included in the book, since this argument is entirely based on the belief that god exists in the first place, but Mills has for some reason devoted a chapter to it. Taking a look at the chapter on the basis of evaluation the merits of its arguments shows a number of places where his logic fails. First, he uses the analogy of a boy who deliberately breaks a window and whose mother promises to punish him. There are two possible reasons for the punishment, according to Mills; either to punish him for his actions or to deter him from doing it again. Since only the latter option serves a practical purpose, Mills believes that option two is the real reason why the boy is punished. This is ridiculous, as punishment based on retribution is extremely common. One only has to look at the vindictive nature of gang conflict or the legal practices in many Islamist states (in Saudi Arabia, for example, a man was recently sentenced to paralysis in punishment for accidentally paralyzing his friend). The second major flaw in his logic comes when he applies the lessons he has drawn from the window analogy to the actions of god. He states that since hell serves no purpose either to rehabilitate (since the people there are not getting out) or to deter future crimes by the person (again, they're there for the long haul) then its only purpose is retribution. Since this serves no logical purpose then god would not have created it and therefore hell doesn't exist (I would argue that since god doesn't exist then neither does hell, but apparently that's too easy for Mills). There are numerous problems with this line of argument. First, if one accepts the existence of god and therefore the possibility of hell, then hell could hypothetically be serving the same purpose as the death penalty, namely to deter others from committing the crime that the guilty party has (this doesn't work, but it that doesn't seem to matter to the proponents of either capital punishment or hell). Second, there is no reason to think, as Mills apparently does, that the Judeo-Christian god would not create hell solely as a place to punish the guilty with no further purpose in terms of either rehabilitation or deterrence of the guilty or the public. The old testament is rife with examples that prove Yahweh to be a petty, jealous, and vindictive god capable of wiping out whole cities for not believing in him or of tearing children limb from limb via bears for insulting his prophets. Such a god would surely be only to happy to create a place to eternally torture those who disobey him.
All of this is not to say that Mills does not make some good arguments. He does a good job of pointing out the hypocrisy of believing in miracles by (as he puts it) counting the hits and ignoring the misses. It is common for people to claim that miraculous healings are god's will, while sudden deaths are either put down to random chance or are part of a "divine plan." He also does a good job of pointing out that liberal Christians and proponents of intelligent design (as opposed to creationism) are arbitrarily choosing which parts of the bible to acknowledge as truth and which to ignore for their own convenience.
In general I disliked Atheist Universe. It was by turns tedious and poorly argued and in my opinion does not really advance the critical scholarship in support of atheism. Setting up straw men and logically flawed arguments only serves to allow christian apologists to claim victory in debate when they should not be able to. I would not recommend the book as a tool in convincing a believer that their beliefs are untrue.
No comments:
Post a Comment