If you’re reading this blog, chances are that your default position toward any claim is skepticism until evidence emerges to warrant belief–or at least that’s your ideal. Although skepticism is a cornerstone of critical thinking, I know that there are still areas of my life that lie unexamined. It’s not that I don’t want to be rational in those areas; it’s just that I haven’t examined them yet.
I think many people (e.g, the religious) are the same way. I know a few Muslims, a ton of Christians, a couple Hindus, and a potpourri of others. Most of them are rational people who make good life decisions based on evidence (e.g., they’d go to the doctor after breaking a bone instead of casting spells, praying, or sacrificing an animal). But they’ve closed off one area of their minds (religion) to critical examination. How do I know that they’ve closed off their minds instead of critically examining their beliefs and still maintaining faith? Because their best reasons are just so flawed…
Over the next few Thursdays, we here at SCS are going to highlight a popular intellectual (religious, political, etc.) who commits a well-defined logical fallacy in his or her line of reasoning. This week, I’m starting with Peter Kreeft, Ph.D. He’s widely respected as a thoughtful Christian apologist, and his introduction on Wikipedia indicates that some consider him the best Catholic philosopher currently residing in the United States. He teaches at the reputable Boston College and has authored more than forty-five books, drawing his theology from famous writers and apologists like Aquinas, Chesterton, and Lewis.
So, here’s the Kreeft quote. It’s a high-profile quote that was printed in Lee Strobel‘s popular book, The Case for Faith. See if you can spot the logical fallacy, like you’d spot an elephant in your bathroom:
[Atheism] is an easy answer–maybe, if I may use the word, a cheap answer. Atheism is cheap on people, because it snobbishly says nine out of ten people through history have been wrong about God and have had a lie at the core of their hearts. Think about that. How is it possible that over ninety percent of all the human beings who have ever lived–usually in far more painful circumstances than we–could believe in God? The objective evidence, just looking at the balance of pleasure and suffering in the world, would seem not to justify believing in an absolutely good God. Yet this has been almost universally believed. Are they all crazy? Well, I suppose you can believe that if you’re a bit of an elitist….So atheism treats people cheaply. Also it robs death of meaning, and if death has no meaning, how can life ultimately have meaning? Atheism cheapens everything it touches–look at the results of communism, the most powerful form of atheism on earth.
I didn’t choose a straw man here, but it should still be obvious: the primary (there are others) logical fallacy is argumentum ad populum, or the argument by consensus. How is it possible, Kreeft wonders, for nine out of ten people to be wrong? Well, hmmm….If you don’t think the majority of people can be wrong about something for the majority of history, look up topics like slavery, the geocentric model of the universe, or spontaneous generation of matter. The truth isn’t up for majority vote. People are wrong, lots of the time. Get used to it. Be skeptical. Seek evidence. Be willing to admit you were wrong when new evidence emerges, etc.
It’s also worth pointing out that he lapses into a generic non sequitur at the end. If death has no meaning, how can life have meaning? Gee, I wonder? If your old car gets towed to the junkyard, how can you possibly have enjoyed the time you spent driving it? Besides not following from A to B, I don’t even think the first premise is correct; many atheists would not claim that death is meaningless, and many would say that there are very meaningful ways to die. Meaning is something we make and give in life through our passions and relationships, not the expectation of hell or heaven after this preliminary threshold life is over.
[Oh, and the Communism=atheism bullshit is another non sequitur that we've briefly mentioned before. His discussion of people in pain still believing (some of which I omitted for length with the ellipsis) is a red herring appeal to emotion. Enough already.]
I think that his assertion that atheists hold that death has no meaning is a great window into his method of trying to make the arguments fit his predetermined conclusion. What could be more meaningful or significant than ceasing to be? To say that this has no meaning would seem to defy logic.
Nevertheless, what I quoted here is directly from Kreeft. Of course a single quote isn’t going to represent anyone’s entire set of reasons or philosophic framework, but the goal is to point out a logical fallacy in a popular author’s writing.
I’m not a roman catholic, but anyone who says that peter kreeft believes that truth is known through majority opinion has never read kreeft. If you don’t believe me, e-mail him yourself at peter.kreeft@bc.edu and post his own reply.