Christopher Hitchens - The Portable Atheist - Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

One main strand in Küng’s thinking brings him close to Hume’s Demea, who stands for an infinite and incomprehensible god against the anthropomorphism of Cleanthes. But then we should recall how Hume uses Demea’s view to prepare the way for Philo’s skepticism. A god as indescribable and indeterminate as the one Küng seems to offer provides no purchase for reasoning, nothing of which argument can take hold in order to support the thesis that such a god exists.

Nevertheless, Küng claims to have given an argument. As we saw, he says that his “Yes” is “justifiable at the bar of critical reason.” Against such writers as Norman Malcolm and D. Z. Phillips, he says firmly that “the question of truth cannot be avoided. And this truth can be tested by experience, as we shall see, by indirect verification through the experience of reality” (p. 505). And again (p. 528):

No, theology cannot evade the demands for confirmation of belief in God: Not a blind, but a justifiable belief: a person should not be abused, but convinced by arguments, so that he can make a responsible decision of faith. Not a belief devoid of reality, but a belief related to reality.

Part of his case consists of his replies to the various arguments for atheism, essentially various proposed natural histories of religion. As we saw there, despite the weaknesses of some oversimplified theories, a satisfactory natural history of religion can be outlined. Küng’s criticisms come in the end to no more than what we have conceded and stressed, that such an explanation of religious beliefs is not a primary argument against their truth. He still needs a positive argument for theism; and indeed he tries to give one.

He concedes (p. 533) that “There is no direct experience of God.” Equally he explicitly rejects (though for inadequately stated reasons) the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs (pp. 534–535). But he says that though “the probative character of the proofs of God is finished today,” yet their “non-demonstrable content” remains important. For the ontological proof, he offers only the (deplorable) suggestion that it should be “understood less as a proof than as an expression of trusting faith”; but, as we shall see, he really uses the cosmological and teleological arguments in an altered form—indeed, in a form that has some resemblance to Swinburne’s, in that he proposes that “belief in God is to be verified but not proved” (p. 536). Küng, however, combines this with echoes both of the moral proofs and of the will to believe: “an inductive lead does not seem impossible, attempting to throw light on the experience of uncertain reality, which is accessible to each and everyone, in order thus—as it were, by way of “practical reason,” of the “ought,” or (better) of the “whole man’—to confront man as thinking and acting with a rationally justifiable decision that goes beyond pure reason and demands the whole person .” Since his argument thus brings together several different strands, we may be able to use discussion of it to introduce the fulfillment of the undertaking… not merely to examine separately the various arguments for the existence of a god, but also to consider their combined effect, and to weigh them together against the various arguments on the other side, before reaching our final conclusion. This conclusion will be reached in section (b) below.

For Küng the question is not whether we can or cannot advance from an already established knowledge of the natural world, or of consciousness, or of morality, to further, specifically theistic, hypotheses or conclusions. His strategy is rather to argue that in present day thought rationality, both speculative and practical, is threatened along with theism by a pervasive tendency to nihilism. This nihilism, of which he finds the most powerful exponent in Nietzsche, is summed up as the denial of the three classical transcendentals: there is no unity, no truth, no goodness. Man deludes himself in thinking he has found any totality, system, or organization in events; he has sought a meaning in events that is not there; there is no absolute nature of things nor a “thing-in-itself”; the world is valueless and purposeless. Nihilism presents itself “as insight into the nothingness, contradictoriness, meaninglessness, worthlessness, of reality” (Chapter 44).

Küng insists that “ The thoroughgoing uncertainty of reality itself makes nihilism possible, whether in practical life…or in philosophical or unphilosophical reflection. ” Moreover, it is irrefutable: “ There is no rationally conclusive argument against the possibility of nihilism. It is indeed at least possible that this human life, in the last resort, is meaningless, that chance, blind fate, chaos, absurdity and illusion rule the world ” (Chapter 44). On the other hand, nihilism is not provable. It is not a priori impossible that “ in the last resort, everything is nevertheless identical, meaningful, valuable, real ” (Chapter 44). Consequently the basic question is, “Can nihilism be overcome, and, if so, how?” (Chapter 44).

The fundamental alternative, Küng says, is between trust and mistrust, “in which I stake myself without security or guarantee…either I regard reality…as trustworthy and reliable—or not”—a choice which he explicitly compares with Pascal’s wager (Chapter 44). Fundamental trust, he adds, is natural to man, it makes us “open to reality,” and “ The Yes can be consistently maintained in practice, ” whereas the opposite of each of these holds for fundamental distrust (pp. 443–446). There is a “way of critical rationality ” which is ‘ a middle way between an irrational ‘uncritical dogmatism’ and a ‘critical rationalism’ that also, in the last resort, rests on irrational foundations ”; it is a “ completely reasonable risk, which, however, always remains a risk ” (Chapter 44).

So far so good, though Küng has rather exaggerated the threat. That there is some reality is beyond doubt. The extreme of nihilism would be to deny that reality is discoverable or understandable; but there is no serious case for this denial. Küng differentiates the critical rationality which he defends from the “critical rationalism” which he rejects (and which he finds, perhaps mistakenly, in Karl Popper and Hans Albert), on the ground that the latter dispenses, as the former does not, with any critical examination of the foundations of our knowledge and so involves an irrational faith in reason. We can agree that nothing is to be exempt from criticism, not even the critical method itself, though of course not everything can be criticized at once: while we are examining any one issue, we must take various other things for granted. This precludes the attainment of certainty, and it should exclude the search for certainty. But there is no great mystery about this, nor any great modernity. Some of the essential points…were made by William James in defence of a fallibilist, experimental, but optimistic and risk-taking empiricism. As James says, a risk which gives us our only chance of discovering the truth, or even approaching it, is indeed a reasonable risk.

Further, the assumption that there is some order, some regularity, to be found in the world—not necessarily strict causal determinism—both is a regulative principle which we can and do use in developing and testing other hypotheses and also is itself a hypothesis of a very broad kind, which in turn is open to testing and confirmation. [13] 2. See the Appendix to The Cement of the Universe (see n. 2 to Chapter 1, Chapter 3, above) and “A Defence of Induction” (see n. 9 to Chapter 8, Chapter 21, above). This seems to be the main thing that Küng means by “unity,” so this too is covered by “critical rationality,” that is, by a fallibilistic but optimistic empiricism. Such an approach, whatever name we give it, can thus be seen to be reasonable in itself, and not in need of any further justification or support.