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Monday, March 01, 2010

Review of The Making of an Atheist


In The Making of an Atheist (2010. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers), James S. Spiegel engages in a task that is well-defined and focused, and perhaps maybe too focused. As a result, the book gave me mixed feelings, yet I cannot fault Dr. Spiegel as his book does exactly what he set out to accomplish. It is rather like being handed a scalpel: it’s the perfect instrument for surgery, but you wouldn’t want to carve a sculpture with one.

Thus, Spiegel’s book is very audience relative. There are certain books where I can give a blanket recommendation to everyone, as there will be “something for all types” in it. This book, however, requires one to know exactly who the audience is.

If that sounds harsh, don’t take it that way. Books that have “something for everyone” also have portions that everyone will dislike. On the other hand, with the proper context Spiegel’s book shines and I have read none better. As you can tell from that depiction, many of the things that I look at will have a relativistic factor to them: for some people they will be beneficial, for others not so much. Let me look at those first, and then get into the meat of the work.

The first “relative” factor in determining whether this book is good for you or not is the length. It’s only 130 pages long, plus some end notes after that. This makes it a fast read. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you want. If you’re like me and you’ve bought Calvin’s Commentaries, Luther’s Sermons, and the 2-volume works of Jonathan Edwards (you know the one I’m talking about—double columns filled with 6-point font text) then the shortness of this book is unappealing. But given that most of America today thinks that The Shack is a wonderful expression of theological thinking, this may end up being more of a benefit than a detriment to Christians as a whole.

The second “relative” factor is that, for those who have studied the issues, there was not much new information present in this book. This is related to its shortness, since Spiegel was forced to keep to the main points he tried to make without extraneous texts on rich alternate “bunny trails.” Again, this could be good or bad depending on what you expect from a book. It is good in the sense that Spiegel’s main points are very well defended and argued; it is bad if you think outside the box and want him to dig deeper into some of the implications, especially since his writing is so well done on his main points that you know he has the ability to treat those other issues quite well.

In any case, while there was little new information presented, if someone has never looked into Plantinga’s Reformed apologetics, or into modern presuppositional arguments, Spiegel is the perfect place to start. Indeed, Spiegel’s debt to Plantinga is acknowledged through the work, including the dedication page. And, having read both Plantinga and Spiegel, I can attest that Spiegel is much easier to follow. So once again, for the average reader, Spiegel’s book is going to be very beneficial.

Now let’s get into some of the details. As I said at the top, Spiegel has a very specific goal for this book:
…[M]y aim here is not to defend the Christian worldview nor even theism, for that matter. Rather, my purpose is to present a Christian account of atheism—an account that draws from the Bible, as any Christian doctrine properly does (p. 14)
The result is that this book is not a list of “arguments against atheists” but is instead an examination of what the Bible says about atheism. Spiegel does this by providing many proof-texts about unbelief from Scripture. The result is that whether you accept the validity of Scripture or not, if you read this book you will see that the Bible does make specific claims about unbelief.

Aside from the arguments of Scripture, Spiegel does have one interesting aspect to add. In his third chapter, he deals with the causes of atheism. This steps away from Scripture a bit and deals with some psychological reasons, the most common of which is the absence of a father-figure. As Spiegel says:
Is there any relevance to the fact that these two atheists grew up without a father? Some recent research strongly suggests that there is. In this chapter we will look at evidence for the claim that broken father relationships are a contributing cause of atheism. We will also consider evidence that immoral behavior plays a significant role in motivating views on ethics and religion (p. 63).
This is probably Spiegel’s weakest part of the book, as it relies heavily on anecdotal evidence. However, that said, it is a very strong “weak” point. In fact, while I read this chapter I was reminded of the line from the movie Fight Club where Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) says: “Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?” So that movie provided another bit of anecdotal evidence to the rest of Spiegel’s argumentation.

One must be careful with this sort of argument and Spiegel does take great pains to assure us that lacking a proper father-relationship does not guarantee atheism (p. 67). It does, however, seem to be very well correlated. This implies the question: why?

Spiegel answers:
Human beings were made in God’s image, and the father-child relationship mirrors that of humans as God’s “offspring.” We unconsciously (and often consciously, depending on one’s worldview) conceive of God after the pattern of our earthly father…. When one has a healthy father relationship and a father who is a decent moral model, then this metaphor and the psychological patterns it inspires are welcome. However, when one’s earthly father is defective, whether because of death, abandonment, or abuse, this necessarily impacts one’s thinking about God. Whether we call it psychological projection, transfer, or displacement, the lack of a good father is a handicap when it comes to faith (pp. 69-70).
This is one of those areas where I wish Spiegel could have spent more time. He did do a great job of giving background on several historical atheists, as well as many of the New Atheists, to illustrate this point (and I think those are worthwhile), but I would have liked to have seen more of the psychological science fleshed out. This is not because I think Spiegel might be wrong here. Rather, it’s because he’s right that I would have liked to see this point vigorously defended and expanded upon.

So, in the end, what are my final thoughts on this book? I think it’s a great book to give to anyone who wonders what the Bible says about atheism. Despite not directly attempting a rebuttal of atheism, I think atheists who read this book will be challenged by it too. One great thing about the book is that Spiegel is both faithful to Scripture and irenic toward atheists, and any offense that atheists might take would be the result of their dislike of what Scripture says rather than their dislike of Spiegel’s arguments.

Furthermore, since Spiegel largely pins his arguments directly on the text of Scripture, and uses Scripture that is both plain and non-contentious to orthodox Christian believers, this book ought to be acceptable to any mainstream Christian view. (Despite the use of the word “Reformed” in “Reformed apologetics,” Plantinga’s views are not synonymous with Calvinism, and thus one need not be a Calvinist to see the truth presented in Spiegel’s book. All Bible-believing Christians ought to agree with the conclusions presented, even if they disagree on other theological points.)

I also think this is a good book for anyone who has pondered reading Plantinga, Bahsen, or vanTil yet who is not studied in philosophy. This book gives a solid foundation to the basics of positions held by those three gentlemen in terms that most laymen can understand. It’s not in-depth enough to give anyone a full understanding of presuppositional and Reformed apologetics, but it will definitely get you a start in the right direction.

Unfortunately, for those who already do read Plantinga et al, you may not find much use for this book personally. But I also think that Spiegel didn’t intend to replace Plantinga, but rather to make Plantinga understandable to more people. And in that regard, I think he succeeds.

21 comments:

  1. As a Calvinist, wouldn't you think that God is the first cause for a person's atheism and that one's family life/upbringing, etc are simply the "accidents" by which that atheism is made manifest?

    In other words, that person was going to be an atheist whether they grew up in the home of John Piper or Hugh Hefner, no? The author seems to be trying to find a causal relationship where there is only a correlation.

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  2. Hmm, do I really want to discuss more topics with Robert knowing he won't answer the questions posed to him, and knowing that he will only continue to change the subject every 30 seconds?

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  3. For others who may wonder, Robert's question is flawed because he assumes it's possible for a person to be the same as who he is now irrespective of his background. Thus, Robert assumes that one can take someone out of a specific context and place him into another context as if everything would be identical.

    But consider that for minute. Suppose an alternate universe for a moment. If you had different parents than the ones you have now, would you even exist? Of course not. Some other person would exist, but the person who is identified as "you" would have never existed at all.

    One would think that Robert has had enough personal experience by now to realize that he cannot build an argument out of questions fromed via fallacies and expect to get away with it here.

    I should also point out that Robert should have used the word "Creationist" instead of "Calvinist" in his original question, as God is the "first cause" in that sense by virtue of His having created the world.

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  4. Well, I don't know a whole lot about the relevant issues in the metaphysics of personal identity, but surely it's not obvious that personal identity consists in personal history, right? I mean there are folk like Richard Swinburne who hold that a person is a soul, and it seems possible that the same soul could exist in different areas at different times in different worlds.

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  5. That body-swapping view of personal identity is more like reincarnation than Christianity.

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  6. It's not relevant to the subject of this post, but I don't see how anything in Christian doctrine implies that personal identity consists in personal history. I don't see how anything in Christian doctrine (except perhaps the doctrine of a soul, if there be such a doctrine) implies anything one way or the other on a whole lot of issues in metaphysics, let alone personal identity.

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  7. Hi Peter,

    Is this book appropriate to give to an atheist?

    How do you think he or she would receive it, assuming they'd take the time to read it?

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  8. Robert seems to be using the lazy man objection against a certain type of fatalism. I don't think this applies to many (if any) contemporary forms of hard or soft determinism.

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  9. Steven,

    STEVEN SAID:

    “It's not relevant to the subject of this post, but I don't see how anything in Christian doctrine implies that personal identity consists in personal history. I don't see how anything in Christian doctrine (except perhaps the doctrine of a soul, if there be such a doctrine) implies anything one way or the other on a whole lot of issues in metaphysics, let alone personal identity.”

    Actually, I think Scripture places considerable emphasis on the relationship between corporate identity and personal identity, with “personal history” as a link. Not merely your own personal history, but how your personal history intersects with the personal history of parents, grandparents, &c. Personal identity isn’t separable from continuities between one generation and the next.

    Moreover, you seem to be suggesting that who your parents or grandparents are has nothing essential to do with who you are. That human personalities are discrete, self-contained units, and it would be possible to trade one set of biological parents for another set of biological parents, but retain the same personality.

    Do you really think individuality is that compartmentalized? Do you really think there’s no unique, internal, essential, and an internal bond between siblings (to take one example) beyond their shared DNA?

    It seems to me that you’re approaching the issue far too abstractly. Why not take a more empirical approach? Isn’t it fairly evident that parents, siblings, and children tend to share certain personality traits in common?

    In that respect, they belong to each other, comprise a part of each other–which hardly makes sense if one set of relationships is basically interchangeable with another.

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  10. Alright, I suppose I can ask the question: what do you think a person is? What's your view? A 4D space-time worm? A soul? A psychologically continuous set of person stages connected by real memories? A human animal?

    I don't have any set view as of now, but none of these views are obviously true, which Peter was acting as if one of them was.

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  11. TUAD asks:
    ---
    Is this book appropriate to give to an atheist?

    How do you think he or she would receive it, assuming they'd take the time to read it?
    ---

    Depends. I don't think they will find a convincing argument to reject atheism. However, they will hear an explicit statement from Scripture that shows atheism is based on an immoral rejection of God, and because that is true and is being proclaimed, God can definitely still use it to bring someone to Him. I do think, however, that this would not work as a straight up apologetic for atheists, but would be more useful as a "here's what the Bible says about you" text.

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  12. Steven asked:
    ---
    Well, I don't know a whole lot about the relevant issues in the metaphysics of personal identity, but surely it's not obvious that personal identity consists in personal history, right?
    ---

    I think it is. I mean, when I consider who I am, what I think, how I think, etc. I am overwhelmed by how much of an impact various little aspects of my life have affected me. Before I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I went two years without REM sleep and as a result I had severe depression--I can guarantee you that I did not think the same way then as I do now. That is, my logic was different. What was rational then is irrational now, and vice versa. This is just one concrete example where my environment totally affected my thinking (I could give examples if you need them).

    But personal history I think also extends through genetics. People have different intelligence levels because of their parents. This is simple biological fact. People are also more stubborn or less depending on genetics, etc. None of these things are set specifically in stone, but there are definite correlations there.

    Finally, when it comes to trusting God specifically, it's a matter of trust--and that means that people who've been hurt by someone they trust will have more difficulty trusting God too.

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  13. Steven said:
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    I don't have any set view as of now, but none of these views are obviously true, which Peter was acting as if one of them was.
    ---

    Are you refering to this? "If you had different parents than the ones you have now, would you even exist? Of course not."

    If so, I would stand by that being obvious. You are who you are; anything you're not, you're not. You can imagine different hypotheticals, but none of them are actualized. There is only one you, and that is the you that exists. Therefore, if anything happened other than the way it did to get to you now, the "you" that exists in that hypothetical is *NOT* identical the the "you" that does exist in reality. Whether the change is big or small is irrelevant--there is definitely a change.

    And yes, that's obvious because the purpose of the hypothetical is to think about what would be different in such a hypothetical universe. If nothing is different, there's no point to the hypothetical.

    So the very existence of the hypothetical is predicated on there being a difference between the "actual you" and the "hypothetical you" which means it just is a "different you."

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  14. Thanks for the review, the book sounds interesting.

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  15. Peter writes: "For others who may wonder, Robert's question is flawed because he assumes it's possible for a person to be the same as who he is now irrespective of his background."

    I assume no such thing. "Same" in what sense? The person may indeed be different in terms of tastes, opinions, prejudices, education and other superficial things.

    Nevertheless, you can have the Bible read to you every day from the time you were born until you were 18 by God-fearing parents, attend worship services weekly, even become a pastor. If God's "decreed" you to become an apostate, it's going to happen.

    What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense as a Reformed believer to suggest that one's ultimate spiritual outcome would have been somehow different had one's earthly circumstances been something else, as if some factor outside of God's fiat determined one's salvation or damnation (which I think is what this book is suggesting).

    Have I misread the book's premise?

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  16. Rob Zechman said:
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    What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense as a Reformed believer to suggest that one's ultimate spiritual outcome would have been somehow different had one's earthly circumstances been something else, as if some factor outside of God's fiat determined one's salvation or damnation (which I think is what this book is suggesting).
    ---

    This assumes that the ends have nothing to do with the means, and that God can will any particular end without concern for the means by which the end will obtain. But that is simply pure fatalism, which is NOT Calvinism.

    God ordains means as well as ends. Some of those means are causal means. That is, the means themselves guarantee the end intended. Thus, God may ordain that someone die of a stroke, and the means to that is a weakening of his blood vessels in his brain, and that may be caused by a poor diet. Now God certainly could one day just rip a hole in this person's blood vessel, but that's not how He operates. He operates through the means toward the end.

    See, fatalism says that you have an end in sight and no matter what you do, you cannot change that end. Calvinism says that there is an end in sight, and it is because of what you do that you will get there. And thus, if someone is ordained to be an atheist, God could very well use poor relationship between that person and his father as the catalyst to do so.

    You also asked:
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    Have I misread the book's premise?
    ---

    Yes, because (as I wrote in the review) Spiegel makes it clear that this is not a guarantee of atheism, like you are wanting to make it. It is a correlation, however, and one backed by a lot of anecdotal evidence indicating there's a lot of substance to it.

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  17. Peter: it isn't obvious that I couldn't exist in a different world where my personal history is different.

    Surely it could still be me that exists even if I had not decided to blink at the exact moment when I did, some two seconds ago.

    Neither is it obvious that if the body I inhabited had different genetics then the present one that I now inhabit, for instance, that then I'd be a different person than I now am. You would have to disagree with Plantinga's replacement argument for substance dualism, which he uses in his paper "Against Materialism" (pdf), if you're going to hold to that, which I don't think is just some small price to pay.

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  18. Steven said:
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    Peter: it isn't obvious that I couldn't exist in a different world where my personal history is different.
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    Yet this hypothetical you doesn't have any existence, and never will. You only imagine that you could have done things other than you did. But could you have actually done other than you did? I maintain that you cannot, even if you imagine that you could have done so.

    Suppose you do an action, A, at time T. There are only two options available--either A was done based on all the sum factors that are involved in your decision making faculty, physical abilities, desires, intellect, etc. (that is, all the things that combine to make you "you"), or else A was an accidental, arbitrary action that occurred to you.

    If A is accidental, it's hardly fair to say "you" did A. But if A is dependent upon who you are, then it necessarily means that the person would would do non-A is not you, so to have done otherwise is to render you a different person than you are now.

    Now you could perhaps argue that there are indeed "accidental" events that impact people. If you go this route, it means that you can only look at actions that happen completely independent of who you are.

    Yet it's worse than that, for the outcome of that event has only two options. Either it changes who you are (in some meaningful way) or else it does not change you in any meaningful way.

    If it changes you in any meaningful way, then you are no longer the same person that you would have been had that action, A, not occurred. Yet if A does not change you, then can such an action be meaningful? Has it really impacted you?

    In other words, you're stuck with accidental things occurring to someone without impacting them in any way in order to maintain that "you" still exist in any relevant fashion in such an alternate universe.

    This brings me to your blinking example. There is far more going on behind the scenes then I think you realize. Suppose you you choose to blink three seconds from reading this sentence. That means A = "choose to blink @ time T." And this action then goes into everything I put above. Of course, you could also choose to refrain from blinking at that time. Yet, whichever action you do, it is either based on who you are, such that you either *are* the one who would blink or you *are* the one who would not blink--and the sum total of all the features that compose you is different between these two options; or else this decision is arbitrary and really has nothing to do with you anyway. (I'm focusing only on this part because the possibility of "accidental" actions doesn't seem to matter to your argument.)

    Now you may argue that the difference between the two individuals--the one who would act and the one who would not--is very slight, and that they have far more in common than the one minor thing they differ on. But A) this ignores the sensitivity to initial starting conditions illustrated by the chaos theory and B) only one of these is ever actualized--the other will never come to pass and it will never be anything but an imagination.

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  19. BTW, I'll also add that I'll read your link later (it's bed time and I have to work tomorrow--well, later this morning). However, my argument is that a person's soul is not just his spirit, but includes the totality of his being. That is, you are body and soul. God created the physical and your physical existence is not simply an empty shell that can have different spirits put into it, such that your spirit is the "real" you. This is precisely why the afterlife is not disembodied spirits wandering about, but involves a resurrection.

    God created people to be physical creatures. Our bodies are as much a part of our identity as our minds, and they are linked. So it's not possible for my mind to be put into your body and vice versa and have us emerge as if we're both the same people, just in different bodies now. (A result of this is, of course, that I reject the sci-fi concept of mind transference, although it might still make a fun plot.)

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  20. Steven said:

    Neither is it obvious that if the body I inhabited had different genetics then the present one that I now inhabit, for instance, that then I'd be a different person than I now am.

    Well, if you had a different genotype than the one you currently have, much of it would be expressed in a different phenotype. So on this level "you" would certainly be different.

    I suppose you might counter that the real "you", your soul, is unchanged even though your body may be changed.

    But would you deny it's possible for your soul to be affected by your physical body at least in some limited sense? For example, let's say the current you doesn't have a genetic predisposition to colorectal cancer. However, let's say the new you has a different genotype which does predispose you to colorectal cancer. As a result, let's say the new you develops colorectal cancer. The current you never had to struggle with colorectal cancer. But the new you does. At a minimum, wouldn't this new you have a different outlook on life as a result of his battle with colorectal cancer? Or plug in a condition like albinism. Or to move away from diseases and such to normal genetic differences, suppose you were of a different ethnicity. Obviously one could multiply examples.

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