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

The reply to nihilism about unity and truth is therefore straightforward, and we can agree with the substance of what Küng says about this. His reply to nihilism about goodness or value is trickier and more controversial. He quotes with approval the view of H. Sachsse that there is a present and pressing need for the development of “relevant and practical norms” (Chapter 45). He concedes that “ Today less than ever can we call down from heaven ready-made solutions, or deduce them theologically from an immutable universal essential nature of man.” He concedes, too, that “There is in fact what Nietzsche called a ‘genealogy of morals’”—that is, that concrete existing ethical systems have been developed by a socio-historical process—and that today we have to “ work out ‘on earth’ discriminating solutions for all the difficult problems. We are responsible for our morality” (Chapter 45). All this is strikingly similar to the main theme of my Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [14] 3. See n. 7 to Chapter 6, Chapter 13, above. —and, what is more important, it is in itself an adequate reply to nihilism about value. But then Küng seems to slide to a very different thesis (Chapter 45):

Any acceptance of meaning, truth and rationality, of values and ideals… presupposes a fundamental trust in uncertain reality: by contrast with nihilism, an assent in principle to its fundamental identity, meaningfulness and value… Only if the reality of the world and man, as accepted in fundamental trust, is characterized by an ultimate identity, meaningfulness and value, can individual norms of genuinely human behavior and action be deduced in an appropriate way from this reality and—decisively—from the essential human needs, pressures and necessities…

This is radically different. Now Küng is suggesting that we must after all postulate an objective value from which (along with the empirical facts of human needs, and so on) we might deduce specific norms. But this is an error, and in contrast with it we must hold fast to the thesis that value itself is a human and social product. This is not to deny, however, that there is an ethical variety of “fundamental trust” which is needed at the basis of our moral systems. We require, perhaps, a confident hope that we can find principles of co-operation in the midst of competition. This would be a generalization of the practical “precursive faith” of which William James speaks: only if people trust one another before each can be sure that the others are trustworthy will they have a chance of establishing effective cooperation.

There is, then, a reply to nihilism about goodness or value, which again can be seen to be reasonable in itself, and not in need of any further justification or support. But it is significantly different from the reply that Küng gives. Or rather, he both suggests this reply and slides to a different one.

But where, we may ask, does God come into all this? With comic condescension, Küng allows that “ On the basis of fundamental trust, even an atheist can lead a genuinely human, that is, humane, and in this sense moral, life,” and that “ Even atheists and agnostics are not necessarily nihilists, but can be humanists and moralists” (Chapter 45). Nevertheless, he now makes the crucial step in the direction of theism: “It must now be obvious that the fundamental trust in the identity, meaningfulness and value of reality, which is the presupposition of human science and autonomous ethics, is justified in the last resort only if reality itself—of which man is also a part—is not groundless, unsupported and aimless” (Chapter 46).

No. This is not obvious at all. Indeed it is false, and Küng’s own argument shows it to be false. The kind of fundamental trust that counters nihilism about truth and “unity,” the “critical rationality” of which he speaks, is reasonable in its own right for the reasons he has given. And the same is true of the motives for the invention of value. There is no need to look for or postulate any “ground, support, or goal” for reality. The broad hypothesis that there is some order in the world is one which it is reasonable to adopt tentatively, but also to test; and it has been strongly confirmed by the inquiries which have (implicitly) tested it. Likewise, though the inventing of moral values has gone on mainly spontaneously, it is reasonable in the sense that it is only by having the attitudes which that invention expresses that we are able to live together without destroying one another. Each of these is defensible on its own: neither needs any further support.

But it is upon this utterly unwarranted step that Küng bases his further case for a god. He is seeking not, indeed, a demonstrative proof, but an “indirect verification,” of God as the supposedly required primal ground, primal support, and primal goal of all reality.

He first asserts that “ If God exists, then the grounding reality is not ultimately groundless… the supporting reality is not ultimately unsupported… evolving reality is not ultimately without aim… and reality suspended between being and not being is not ultimately under suspicion of being a void.” He adds that while this hypothesis opposes nihilism, it can also explain the appearance of nihilism: reality appears to be ultimately groundless, unsupported, and aimless “Because uncertain reality is itself not God.” Similarly, the hypothesis that God exists can give ultimate meaning and hope to one’s own life; but it can also explain the appearance of meaninglessness and emptiness here “Because man is not God” (pp. 566–568).

By contrast, he thinks, atheism would imply an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust in reality, and therefore the danger of “the possible disunion, meaninglessness, worthlessness, hollowness of reality as a whole” (p. 571).

Küng concludes that “ Affirmation of God implies an ultimately justified fundamental trust in reality. If someone affirms God, he knows why he can trust reality.” Hence “there is no stalemate between belief in God and atheism” (p. 572). Though this affirmation “rests, in the last resort, on a decision” (p. 569), because there is no conclusive argument either for or against it, yet “trust in God is by no means irrational… I know… by the very fact of doing this, that I am doing the right thing… what cannot be proved in advance I experience in the accomplishment,” and this provides “ a fundamental certainty.” Thus understood, “ Belief in God… is a matter not only of human reason but of the whole concrete, living man” (pp. 573–574).

I have summarized Küng’s argument as far as possible in his own words, because a paraphrase would not only detract from its eloquence but also risk distorting a view that contains so many complexities and contrasts. My criticisms must, and can, be briefer.

Küng’s final step seems to claim that the very act of believing in God is self-verifying; but he gives no reason at all for this claim. The act may carry with it a conviction of certainty: the relief of ceasing to doubt is pleasantly reassuring. But this is purely subjective: to rely on this would be merely another form of the assumption that there is a kind of experience which guarantees the objective validity of its content or intentional object which Küng himself has rightly dismissed (p. 533). Alternatively, the suggestion may be that in postulating a god one is postulating that which grounds both itself and everything else. But to claim that the very content of this postulation gives it objective certainty is to employ yet again the ontological argument, and Küng has rightly dismissed this too (pp. 533, 535).