Wynn, Mark

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Asbury Theological Seminary

Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 22 Issue 1 Article 7 1-1-2005 Nielsen, NATURALISM AND RELIGION Mark Wynn Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Wynn, Mark (2005) "Nielsen, NATURALISM AND RELIGION," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 22 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol22/iss1/7 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. BOOK REVIEWS Naturalism and Religion, by Kai Nielsen. Prometheus Books, 2001. Pp. 506. $40 (cloth) MARK WYNN, University of Exeter In this collection of essays (old and new), Kai Nielsen offers a characteristi-cally clear and forthright formulation of a perspective for which he is already well known. There is not much in the book that engages in detail with recent developments in analytic philosophy of religion; indeed, Nielsen comments that because of its habitual neglect of certain questions, philosophy of religion in this style fails to make any serious demand upon our attention: "I suppose we could analytically reconstruct and conceptual-ly clarify Mary Baker Eddy's metaphysical tract too, but that would hardly enhance interest in it or further our understanding of the significance of religion. These analytical philosopher-theologians need first, against the antimetaphysical arguments of Wittgenstein, Davidson, Rorty, and Putnam, to give us some reason to think that there is in the sorts of things they are doing something significant" (p. 20). A second, related difficulty for mainstream analytic philosophy of religion is that it is "very rationalis-tic"; rather than worrying about new versions of the traditional proofs, "what is crucial to face instead is whether we need a belief, however over-whelmed with intellectual impediments, in a Jewish, Christian or Islamic God to make sense of our lives and to live really human lives" (p. 21). In these remarks, Nielsen sets two kinds of challenge for contemporary philo-sophical theology: to confront the difficulties inherent in any kind of meta-physical claim, and to consider whether religious commitment can be understood, and perhaps justified in some degree, by reference to its con-tribution to human flourishing. Let's take these challenges in tum. Nielsen evidently thinks it rather obvious that a metaphysically commit-ted kind of religious belief is intellectually defective. Indeed, thinking in particular of the metaphysical dimension of religious belief, he comments: "I remain utterly flabbergasted that reflective, intelligent, and informed people ... can be believers" (p. 393). Naturally Nielsen wonders whether his inability to understand the commitments of 'intelligent and informed' people raises a question about whether he has fully understood what is at stake here. Even so, the very obviousness of the case for atheism, from his point of view, seems at times to get in the way of a detailed presentation of FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY Vol. 22 No.1 January 2005 All rights reserved 99 100 Faith and Philosophy the requisite arguments. Quite a lot of the time, Nielsen's case proceeds by allusion to what are taken to be the established findings of other philoso-phers (Hume, Kant and the quartet of Wittgenstein et al cited above figure largely). In this spirit he wonders: "Must we continue to redo ... the work that Hume and Kant did so well before us? Should we continue to play the role of Philo? Standing where we stand now to do any of these things seems to be extremely Quixotic" (p 67). In general terms, Nielsen's stance is that theism comes in two varieties, the anthropomorphic variety (taking God to be some sort of Olympian entity) and the non anthropomorphic: the first has been falsified, and the second is incoherent (p. 33). So even if the stars were to spell out "God exists" (reading "God" nonanthropomorphically), this would no more help than if they were to spell out "procrastination drinks melancholy"; in such a case, "we know that something has shaken our world, but we know not what" (p. 279). As one would expect, Nielsen's case against nonanthro-porn orphic theism has at times a verificationist feel. For instance, he com-ments that (by comparison with judgements such as "Britain is indepen-dent of Germany"), "to say that something is independent of the world has no such clear sense or - so at least it seems - any sense. How do we identi-fy that something is independent of the world?" (p. 474) But elsewhere, he is careful to argue that some strands of his case for naturalism are free from verificationist assumptions, and he acknowledges that verificationism can be only part of a larger case against theism. Here he offers this retraction of his earlier views: "What we need to see, and what I for a long time did not see, is that the verificationist arguments do not play the central role in the critique of religion that I, and many others, took them to play" (p. 486). A number of arguments establish, Nielsen thinks, the simple contradictori-ness of key theistic ideas, so freeing his case from over-reliance on verifica-tionist assumptions. For instance, he rejects the notion of an "infinite indi-vidual" on these grounds: "Something could not be an individual unless she or it were differentiated from other individuals or things. But something that is infinite cannot (logically cannot) be so differentiated .... for some-thing which is infinite is not bounded" (p. 473, Nielsen's emphasis). Similarly, "We do not understand 'made out of nothing.' That at least sounds like a contradiction in terms. To make something, even a tune, to say nothing of a pie, a ship, or a proof, is to make it out of something" (p. 474). It is worth noting that it is not only theism that falls foul of Nielsen's strictures; so also does a claim such as "physical objects exist," for: "What empirical evidence could prove or disprove it?" (p. 448) What should we make of this case? While in admiration of the clarity and robustness of its formulation, and the range of its references to the philosophical literature, I find Nielsen's stance at times overconfident, and dependent upon overgeneralizing or in other ways oversimplifying claims about what religious belief involves. For example, leaving aside the fact that a long tradition of philosophical theology has wondered about the sense in which God may be adequately characterized as an "individual," is it so obvious that the notion of infinity as it operates here signifies some-thing like "all encompassing" or "all inclusive"; given suitable spelling out, that would make for a contradiction, but shouldn't this just alert us to the BOOK REVIEWS 101 need to think harder about what theists have meant by "infinite"? There are, certainly, some forms of theism (for example, "first cause" theism) which seem to invite objections of broadly this kind; but doesn't this sug-gest that we need to distinguish between kinds of theism, and the sense in which they speak of God as "infinite," with greater care than Nielsen does here? Similarly, the argument against the notion of creation out of nothing seems overquick. Theists themselves have often challenged the coherence of notions which are not straightforwardly contradictory (such as the notion of an uncaused event), so they have reason to have some sympathy for the sort of project in which Nielsen is engaged here; but in these cases too, the alleged incoherence is not just obvious. And if Nielsen's principles commit him to the thought that "physical objects exist" is not factually meaningful, then some at least will conclude: so much the worse for the principles. Even Nielsen's treatment of the case of the stars seems overcon-fident. This example seems mostly comical, but if nothing else, perhaps such an event ought to make us think anew about our capacity to assess a priori the limits of metaphysical possibility. What of the second strand of Nielsen's case, which on his view address-es issues more deserving of discussion? We want to know why it is that theism is unfit to contribute to human flourishing. Part of the problem seems to lie with the tendency of believers to seek certainty: "Here we can see a crucial difference between a religious stance and an utterly secular one, and again we find good reasons here for being secularists. It is a cul-tural achievement to be able to abandon the quest for certainty" (p. 66). More seriously perhaps, Nielsen supposes that "a Christian morality is very different from a secular one" and that it is "irresponsible" to advocate such a morality for: "Such indiscriminate love of our enemies or to see no one as our enemy can only lead to grave harm for us" (pp. 455-6). In place of this ideal, Nielsen offers "mutual reciprocity." Here again, the case sure-ly invites elaboration. Do all varieties of religious belief aim at certainty? And even where they do aim at certainty, do they understand the notion in the same way? Nielsen's case seems to presuppose an identification of reli-gious certainty with something like fanaticism, but here again it is not diffi-cult to find a more sympathetic reading of the notion as it has informed religious practice. Of course, Nielsen recognizes in principle the need to attend to different forms of religious belief (and he makes a similar move himself, on p. 98, when defending naturalism from an overgeneralizing charge of fostering a "tragic vision"), but his conception of the sort of life that is consistent with religious commitment still seems somewhat truncat-ed. Similarly, there are various understandings of what it means to "love one's enemy," not all of them (many of them?) implying (as Nielsen seems to suppose) passive accommodation of the wishes of aggressors. Even so, there is much that "philosopher-theologians" can learn from this book. Notably, while Nielsen advocates naturalism, it is emphatically a non-scientistic kind of naturalism, one that remains open to the "norma-tive" dimension of human life, a dimension that believers too will want to safeguard against the encroachments of familiar kinds of reductionism. Similarly, Nielsen upholds (against "relativism") the possibility of dialogue across traditions (pp. 411-14). This view suggests that appeal to "revela-102 Faith and Philosophy tion" need not after all imply ethnocentrism or the arbitrary privileging of one tradition over others (contrary to what Nielsen himself maintains) (p.67). On~ these issues, in spite of himself, Nielsen provides some helpful pointers to the shape of a more acute philosophical theology. The Rationality of Theism, edited by Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 292. $32.95 (paper). JEANINE DILLER, Independent Scholar With thirteen previously unpublished essays by prominent philoso-phers, Copan and Moser argue in this volume that theism "better resolves major philosophical questions than do its alternatives, including its most influential intellectual rival, naturalism" (3). The argument comes in three stages. Part I of the book consists of preliminary considerations designed to ready both the mind and the spirit to consider a sustained argument for theism. Part II is the positive piece of this argument and the core of the book. Like Swinburne's The Existence of God, the work of Part II is meant to comprise a cumulative case--the arguments presented are "to be consid-ered not in isolation from, but in combination with, one another" (9). Part III presents responses to two objections to theism: the argument from inco-herence and the problem of evil. Let me begin by examining Davis' discussion of the ontological argu-ment, and some related content from Taliaferro's discussion of the coher-ence of theism. Davis sets himself the manageable and useful task of reply-ing to Michael Martin's criticisms of Anselm's and Plantinga's versions of the argument. I will focus here just on his treatment of Martin's critiques of Anselm. One of Martin's complaints is that, even if existence is a predicate, it does not add to the greatness of things for, e.g., undesirable things. Davis' reply is ingenious. He suggests that we read the term "greatness" in tlLe argument as "power, ability, or freedom of action," even if this is not all that Anselm might have meant by it, because this notion "at least has a chance of making the ontological argument work" (98). This reading guar-antees, contra Martin, that "exists" is a great-making property, since an existing thing will necessarily, for better or worse, have more power than the mere concept of this thing (100). Davis' "power" reading of "great" also helps him respond to Martin's second criticism, from Gaunilo, that he can construct "parallel ontological arguments" to prove the existence of the greatest conceivable lost island, etc. Davis develops a dilemma to argue that there can be no such things. First, if we try to conceive the greatest conceivable lost island "in terms that islands can possibly have, properties like temperature, the beauty of the scenery," and so on, "these properties have no intrinsic maximums ... so there logically can be no 'greatest conceivable lost island'." But if instead we try to conceive the island in a wider sense of "conceive," and allow it to take on predicates that islands cannot possibly have, then "the greater we 

Kai Nielsen, NATURALISM AND RELIGION

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Kai Nielsen, NATURALISM AND RELIGION

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