Self-Destruction on a Grand Scale

Holding On to the Grenade Too Long

David Hume was (and is) the enfant terrible of modern philosophy.  His scepticism was (and is) like an acid which corroded much of what went before and came after.  By putting up a barrier between the mind (rational thought) and the senses, such that there is no necessary connection between the two, he scared Western philosophers so profoundly they all got a bad case of the heebie jeebies.  Empiricism devolved into scepticism.  

The way a good many of his successors dealt with his scepticism was to ignore it.  Actually, Hume ended up ignoring it for a large part of his output.  He could not help himself.  He retreated to the  more positive, safer realm of championing empiricism--the championing of knowledge through the application of our senses to the world around us.  But he had to assume there was a connection between rational thought and empirical observation.  He also had to assert there was a connection between cause and effect that held whether empirically observed or not.

He dismissed non-empirical philosophy in a grand manner:

. . . if we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity and number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of matter of fact and existence? No.  Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.]

 Beware the universal acid--that acid so corrosive it cannot be contained and which in the end destroys all.  As Berlinski pointed out, with respect to Hume:

Analytical philosophers have been eager to commit books to the flames ever since [Hume], rather an odd vocational choice, all things considered.

Bang, Bang. You're Dead.

False Allegiances and Irrelevance

We have often observed that the materialistic atheists amongst us are often the most strident moralisers in the market place.  They are always telling us what they deem to be right and wrong, moral and immoral, evil and good.  Islam, insists Richard Dawkins, is a perverse, wicked thing.  Christianity is so morally bankrupt that any parent who attempts to teach its basic doctrines to her or her child, should suffer their children to be removed from their care.  Morally bankrupt?

Christopher Hitchens, whilst alive, thundered like a Titan against totalitarianism, communism, and any authoritarian standard within his line of sight. He thought abortion was OK, but grabbing someone off the street and torturing them was very bad form.  All of which was and is entertaining but hardly relevant to materialism or atheism, let alone their conjoint.

There is an instructive video entitled Collision in which Christopher Hitchens debates Douglas Wilson.

Hollow Men

Blind Faith and Vicious Circles

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.