Myopic new atheism reasons something like this: science and Unbelief is reasonable because it is evidence based, which then becomes subject to human reason. Religion has no evidence, and employs no reason. Believing something for which there is no evidence is childish at best, madly delusional at worst.
Poor old Sam Harris jumps into the trap showing that he has not considered the fatal weakness of his own position:
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them "religious"; otherwise, they are likely to be called "mad", "psychotic", or "delusional". [Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 2004), p. 72.]Hold on a minute there, Sam. Just a mild challenge: without presupposing the authority of reason, and without employing it, please establish and warrant its authority and veracity. You cannot? No. So your arguments are merrily swirling around in a vicious circle? Now, let's just revisit the meaning of "mad", "psychotic" and "delusional" again, shall we.
Or consider this example of arrogant, haughty foolishness:
The theist argument that science and reason are also based on faith is specious. Faith is belief in the absence of supportive evidence. Science is belief in the presence of supportive evidence. And reason is just the procedure by which humans ensure that their conclusions are consistent with the theory that produced them and with the data that test these conclusions. [Victor Stenger, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (New York: Prometheus Books, 2009), p.15.]The vicious circle remains firmly in place, despite Mr Stenger's willing blindness. Supportive evidence. Why is the evidence supportive? What evidence persuades you that it is authoritative? More evidence. But more evidence is equally subject to your sensory observations, non? Without appealing either to your sensory observations, or to reason, establish the credibility and trustworthiness of both. Since there is nothing outside of man to which you can appeal, or upon which you can presuppose the authority and trustworthiness of either evidence or reason, you are lost in the depths of darkness from the get-go. Where we come from we call that wilful ignorance.
Immanuel Kant has been hailed as the one who provided Western philosophy with its own archimedean point. It is said he established the veracity of reason and made room for faith. He did neither, but when you are clutching at straws, anything will do. Kant had been disturbed by Hume's scepticism. He wanted to escape Hume's scepticism over human observation (and, by implication reason). He did neither. He made it worse.
Kant knew that Hume was right. If you base knowledge upon human observation, presupposing the autonomy of man, you are on a hiding to nothing. He grasped the nettle. Let's not worry about whether there really is a world "out there". Let's just celebrate the fact that our senses tell us there is something out there and go with that.
We no longer need wonder whether our visual images match some objective external world, or whether induction and causation apply to objects outside our minds. All we really care about, Kant triumphantly claimed, is the world of ideas within our skulls. That's all we can know anyway. There's no long a question of whether our sense are reliable, of whether our ideas accurately match the world. [ Mitch Stokes, A Shot of Faith to the Head (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), p. 35.]We can never know things as they really are, according to Kant. We can only know as our senses and minds project upon reality. We can only know things as they seem to be. Hume's sceptical doubt became turbo-charged by Kant.
Chaps like Harris, Stenger, Dawkins et al. parade around trumpeting reason, rationality, evidence, science even as they hide the dirty secrets of Hume and Kant away in the cupboard. They collectively ignore them--because they have no answer to give. The trumpeting of their autonomous "evidence" based "reason" is hollow to say the least.
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