I recently read David Berlinski's book, The Devil's Delusion, Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. His academic background and mathematics and his ability to express himself with the written and spoken word are neither of which I profess for myself. This brief article is not intended as a review of his book. Berlinski wrote The Devil's Delusion in response to Richard Dawkins' own book, The God Delusion. Dawkins goes far and wide to do his best to inflict some notion of misery on believers by vomiting his vile contempt about God. I was neither fazed nor impressed or dismayed by it.
Berlinski has not said anything to me that I, and I hardly think I am alone, was not already aware on the pretensions of atheists, not just concerning God whom they do not know, but concerning those things of nature and the universe which they do profess to know. Berlinski, who identifies himself as agnostic, has taken it upon himself to speak favorably in defense of theists and our claims concerning God and the universe.
I have often noted about atheists that their reasoning, to be quite liberal with that term, is so very much like the same so-called fundamentalists, fundies, or believers whom they ridicule. In the same manner as some believers sprinkle liberally their speech with words such as faith, belief, atheists sprinkle their speech no less liberally with the words such as, logic and reason. Both seem to think that merely by so sprinkling their speech makes it so and makes it convincing. As a testimony of the similarities between these two I have noticed the embrace and an increase in the use by believers of the atheists' proprietary term, strawman. It is not uncommon now to hear this term bantered about by theists with theists. What can I say but that being human with all its trappings of pettiness and other human characteristics is inescapable for both.
This is a quotation which is attributed to David Berlinki specifically, from The Devil's Delusion. Unless I missed it, which is not likely as I was familiar with the quotation and expected to come across it as I read the book, the quotation does not appear in the paperback copy. I believe it may be in the jacket of the hardcopy.
“Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.”
David Berlinski is to atheism (let's be specific and real, that's atheists) and their scientific pretensions what Penn and Teller are to magicians and E.H. Schumacher [1] was to his fellow economists. Every one of these have called to account their brethren whether it be in the arenas of entertainment, economics or cosmology and quantum physics. We might recognize these individuals, by any other term, as Whistleblowers. This is the term adhered to them either when they (sometimes boldly, other times imprudently) cry out to inform the public or when they are exposed either by their own or the media. I believe we can also readily recognize the same contempt, mockery and scorn with which every attempt is made to discredit them. Rarely is there anything offered and put forward for those who hear the cry of the Whistleblower to become otherwise fully informed by those who have been exposed. Usually contempt takes from and center.
Lastly, David Berlinski shares an interesting point concerning the increasing cascade of contempt by atheists against religion (faith being my own preferred term). Berlinski sees the origin of this as arising in the aftermath of 911 attack on America. The quick reaction by atheists against religion was, I would say, no less pretentious then their other claims to which Berlinski speaks. Some atheists, particularly those who attest to having been hardcore theists at some earlier time in their lives, have some knowledge about some things which, when they are heard out, it becomes blatantly apparent that they never understood when they professed to believe those things. Then they run with those mistaken notions and mix those together with their own freshly and newly owned scientific pretensions while they ran with that mix to make a bigger and ever bigger lump. This is what they, like Sisyphus, will roll around, maybe even uphill, not as punishment, but by their own making.
