Atheism: The Basics, by Graham Oppy (London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2019, ISBN 9781138506961). 190 pp. Paperback, $24.95.

A few years back, an anomaly shook up the publishing world—atheist books became best sellers. Books by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others attracted a broad readership and garnered much attention. These so-called New Atheists offered vigorous arguments against religion expressed in a tone that was often astringent and sometimes disdainful. Needless to say, religious apologists responded, often in tones at least as abrasive. My view is that, while some religious doctrines and their defenders certainly do deserve scorn, the “New Atheists” tarred with too broad a brush. Creationists, theocrats, zealots, and bigots who invoke “religious freedom” to cover their hate certainly deserve condemnation. However, not all believers are fools or knaves, as the New Atheists sometimes seemed to imply.

I became an atheist in the mid-seventies, long before the New Atheist publications. My instruction in atheism therefore came from the “old” atheists—professional philosophers who subjected theistic arguments to penetrating critique, tackling the arguments of the most able theistic philosophers and subjecting their claims to rigorous logical analysis. For these old-fashioned atheists, it was sufficient to refute theists’ best arguments. Sneers and insults were superfluous. A prime example of such an “old” atheist was J. L. Mackie, whose1981 book The Miracle of Theism remains a paradigm of incisive critique of theistic arguments.

In my opinion, the top atheist philosopher of our day is Graham Oppy. He typifies the virtues of the old-fashioned atheists in that he offers deep and powerful critiques of theism and theistic arguments while refraining from wasting time and energy on put-downs. His tone throughout is evenhanded and fair, even charitable. I fully endorse this approach. Locate the best arguments by the smartest theists, state those arguments fairly, and refute them. Refuting their arguments is the most damaging thing you can do to them.

Some of Oppy’s books, such as Arguing about Gods, are technical works addressed to professional philosophers. Laypersons would find them largely impenetrable. Atheism: The Basics is a genuinely introductory work that covers a lot in a few pages (156, not including the glossary, bibliography, and index). Books by and for professional philosophers are, of course, argument dense. The arguments are important, and Oppy does not neglect them, though, naturally, philosophers will wish for more detail. However, most people reading an introduction to atheism will have other interests as well. Who have been some of the leading atheists in history? How many atheists are there? What are some of the common complaints made against atheism and atheists? Is atheism on the wane, as some Christian triumphalists claim? Oppy addresses such questions fairly, and he cogently rebuts the anti-atheist claims. Here I will focus on what I consider Oppy’s two most interesting chapters, Chapter Five, “Common Complaints,” and Chapter Six, “Reasons and Arguments.”

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Atheists have often been defamed, and occasionally persecuted. Socrates was accused of atheism. While eloquently defending religious tolerance, John Locke famously stopped short of extending such consideration to atheists. Locke held that atheists could not be trusted because they did not believe in a god who would punish the breaking of oaths and promises. In nineteenth-century England, atheists were tried on charges of blasphemy. Even today, atheists are frequently derided. In some parts of the world, you risk your life by professing atheism. Among the common complaints against atheism are these:

• Atheists are fundamentalists.
• Atheists are political ideologues.
• Atheists hate God.
• Atheism is just another religion.
• Atheists are horrible, immoral, irrational people.

Oppy addresses these and other standard canards and libels. Let’s consider these examples in turn.

As Oppy notes, those who charge that atheists are fundamentalists seem to mean that atheists are dogmatists who adhere to the idea that there is no God with invincible certainty. It is certainly true that there are dogmatic atheists, but Oppy is right to point out that when atheists decline to engage in debate, often the reason is not that they are dogmatic but that they regard particular discussions as pointless. For instance, I will not argue with a creationist. Been there. Done that. I can point to dozens of books and hundreds of articles that simply dismantle creationism. Recently a fundamentalist contacted me and offered to debate creation/evolution. I declined and referred him to some of the sources that settle the issue. No doubt he regarded me as dogmatic, but I saw no reason to re-slay the slain. What is perceived as dogmatism may be merely ennui.

In the 1950s, communism was regularly denounced as “godless.” In turn, atheists were associated with communism and radicalism. One of the most durable calumnies against atheism is that atheism in the form of Marxist/Leninist or Maoist communism was responsible for mass murder. Oppy’s answer is succinct but decisive:

If we look for a fundamental explanation of the atrocities committed by communist states, we find it not in those states’ commitment to atheism, but rather in their commitment to doing whatever it takes to make it the case that ‘workers control the means of production. (90)

As for atheists in the United States today, Oppy cites statistics indicating that slightly over half (51 percent) of atheists and agnostics identify as liberal. However, 45 percent identify as conservative or moderate. These and other studies indicate that there is no political consensus among unbelievers, and so there is no substance to the claim that atheism is a political ideology. I would add that atheist philosophers who I have read included conservatives, liberals, Marxists, and libertarians.

As for the claim that atheists hate God, Oppy notes the obvious rejoinder that it is impossible to hate a being one considers nonexistent. Of course, a fictional character can stir real emotion. As Oppy amusingly comments, though one may feel real fear watching a cinematic monster such as Godzilla, nobody runs from the theater to alert the army of an imminent kaiju attack. Even when immersed in a monster movie, we know that it is just pretend. So, atheists feel real disgust when reading genocidal passages in the Old Testament, but they regard the vindictive tribal deity who orders those massacres as a fictional character. The ones that really anger them are the religious apologists who tie themselves into logical and ethical knots trying to justify those abhorrent stories.

At bottom, what the God-hating charge really amounts to is the smear that atheism is not based on serious intellectual conviction but is due to moral depravity. I have read otherwise respectable religious writers who say that atheists are largely motivated by the desire to indulge their sexual appetites without the inhibition or guilt that belief in God would incur. Obviously, this is just vilification. Atheists have sometimes turned the tables on theists and accused them of base motivations, but such sneering contests get us nowhere.

One of the most common charges against atheism is that it is just another religion. However you conceive of religion, it is clearly a complex thing with many different elements and aspects. However, as defined by Oppy, atheism is simply the bare bones claim that there are no gods. There are fleshed-out atheist worldviews, of course. Is it claimed that atheistic worldviews are based on faith? Atheistic worldviews, like all other worldviews, require judgment and commitment, and if this is all the charge asserts, it is trite. Further, Oppy notes that religions have all sorts of complex requirements that atheism lacks:

Atheism is distinguished from religion by its lack of requirements in connection with designated behaviours and practices, hierarchies, institutions and organizations, leaders and holy people, moral codes, public service, sacred objects, sites, and texts, and the like. (95; emphasis in original)

I would add that atheism, except for the bare denial of gods, has no creed or orthodoxy. In short, atheism per se just does not look much like a religion.

Finally, there is the charge that atheists are just horrible, horrible people. Atheists are immoral, ignorant, irrational, and just plain awful. I think that many atheists would simply dismiss these accusations as redounding against the accusers and revealing their own ignorance and bias. To his credit, Oppy offers rational argument even here. For instance, as to the charge of ignorance, Oppy cites a Pew survey of religious knowledge that asked various groups thirty-two questions about religion (101). Atheists and agnostics scored highest with an average of 20.9 correct answers. White evangelical Protestants scored 17.6; White Catholics 16.0; and White mainline Protestants were lowest at 15.8. That is, atheists and agnostics seem to know more about religion than the religious. Oppy does a thorough job of citing copious evidence to expose every lie and debunk each malicious insinuation against atheists.

Oppy does not directly address a question that seems salient to me: Why are atheists hated, even to a homicidal degree? I do not have a theory, and I would be interested in hearing if Oppy does.

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Oppy’s sixth chapter, “Reasons and Arguments,” considers arguments for atheism. He begins by offering some definitions. As we saw, atheism is just the claim that there are no gods. Theism is also given a minimalist definition: It is the claim that there is at least one god. After this, things start to get confusing. It seems to me that Oppy’s definition of worldview is excessively technical for a book aimed at lay readers. Rather than try to work with his definition, I will offer my own and hope that it does not do violence to his ideas.

In reality, hardly anyone is a minimal theist or atheist, asserting no more than the bare existence or nonexistence of one or more gods. Typically, theists and atheists develop whole worldviews. What is a “worldview”? A worldview is a complex set of beliefs of many different sorts that collectively express one’s basic, comprehensive view of reality. For instance, a theistic worldview will generally affirm not just the existence of some god but God, the god of the omni-predicates—such as omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness—a god that is an incorporeal being, supremely holy, creator of the universe, answerer of prayers, etc. Further, a theistic worldview will encompass beliefs about many other topics, such as an afterlife, salvation, morality, and even politics. Of course, such a worldview entails minimal theism, the existence of at least one god, as an essential element. An intellectually respectable worldview should be consistent, coherent, and compatible with established facts and the best confirmed theories.

Oppy also develops the concept of the “big picture.” A big picture is the set of particular beliefs pertaining to a theistic or atheistic worldview plus what Oppy calls “data,” that is, beliefs that are shared between informed theists and atheists—e.g., the laws of physics. Actually, I see no reason to add the term big picture. It seems to me that worldview is commodious enough to encompass one’s whole view of the world, including information, such as the laws of physics, that are not logical consequences of one’s theistic or atheistic commitments.

Oppy identifies five ways of arguing against theism (117). I paraphrase these below:

• Atheism is the default position. That is, atheism prevails unless sufficient reasons, arguments, or evidence can be given for theism.
• Theism is meaningless.
• The best theistic worldviews are logically inconsistent.
• The best theistic “big pictures” are inconsistent.
• The best theistic big pictures are less “theoretically virtuous” than the best atheistic big pictures.

Oppy gives the first three types of arguments rather short shrift. (1) He rejects the claim that atheism is the default position and argues that, prior to an examination of the evidence for x, neither the affirmation nor the denial of x should have any automatic advantage. Theists and atheists, in their “big pictures,” both attempt to offer comprehensive explanations—“theories of everything,” we might say—and each has an equal burden of supporting its theory. (2) In the heyday of logical positivism, claims about gods were dismissed as meaningless because they were neither analytic truths nor empirically verifiable. The demise of logical positivism also meant the demise of the “verification theory of meaning” that recognized as meaningful only analytic and empirically verifiable claims. (3) Arguments imputing inconsistency to theistic worldviews, such as those asserting that the divine attributes singly or jointly entail contradictions, overlook the capacities of theists to make adjustments to obviate contradictions. If, for instance, it were shown that omnipotence entails a contradiction, a theist could—and some do—simply deny that God is omnipotent.

I think more could be said about (1) and, perhaps, (3). I call myself a “default physicalist,” that is, I take it that it is obvious to everyone that a physical universe exists but not obvious to everyone—and certainly not to me—that there is, in addition to the physical universe, a transcendent, spiritual, or supernatural realm of reality. It is obvious to me that there is a physical universe, but I am aware of no sufficient evidence for the existence of gods, ghosts, souls, Platonic ideas, juju, mana, or “The Force” from the Star Wars movies. I am therefore within my intellectual rights to demand that proponents of those putative realities offer sufficient evidence for their existence and to stick with my default physicalism if such evidence is not forthcoming. As for (3), there do seem to be some real puzzles, at least for some theistic worldviews. For instance, if God is conceived as timeless, that is, as not existing in time, then it is hard to see how God could know, for instance, that today is Tuesday when and only when, in fact, today is Tuesday. God might know timelessly that Tuesday is after Monday and before Wednesday, but how can he know that today is Tuesday when for a timeless being there is no today, yesterday, or tomorrow? Thus, God’s timelessness might contradict his omniscience. However, as Oppy would suspect, maybe theists could just adjust their definition of “omniscience.”

Whatever one’s “big picture,” surely one must admit that deep, genuine evil exists in the world. It has therefore often been argued that the existence of evil is inconsistent with the existence of God. That is, it is argued that the propositions “God is omnipotent,” “God is perfectly good,” and “evil exists” are mutually contradictory. If God is all powerful, he can eliminate evil; if God is perfectly good, he wills the elimination of evil; if evil exists, therefore, either there is no all powerful god or no perfectly good god, that is, there is no god. The existence of evil therefore threatens the theistic big picture with inconsistency. However, Oppy notes that also there is much wiggle room for theists. They might, for instance, deny that a perfectly good being would will the elimination of all evil. Perhaps some evil, even a great deal, is necessary for the achievement of a greater, redeeming good. Speaking personally, it seems to me that some evils are so bad that they are irredeemable, even by an all powerful being. Yet there seems to be no argument that can compel a theist to agree. Thus, Oppy concludes that the effort to invoke evil to demonstrate inconsistency on the part of theists is not a winning move.

Finally, can atheists offer a better comprehensive theory of reality than theists? That is, are the best fully fleshed-out atheistic big pictures more theoretically virtuous than the best theistic big pictures? Theoretical virtue comes down to two factors: (1) The minimization of “theoretical commitments,” defined by Oppy as “minimization of numbers and kinds of entities to which big pictures are committed, and minimization of numbers and kinds primitive ideas and numbers, kinds and complexity of fundamental principles used in the framing of big pictures” (120–121). And (2) explanatory breadth and depth. In short, virtuous theories explain a lot in simple terms. Oppy compares theistic and atheistic big pictures in terms of these criteria and concludes that the latter are clearly more virtuous in that they explain as much in more parsimonious terms.

I certainly agree with Oppy’s conclusion, but I think that much more could and should be said in support of atheism. Indeed, one atheist blogger lists over sixty arguments for atheism.¹ Further, the existence of evil presents other challenges to theism than to threaten it with inconsistency. Is theism the best explanation of the existence of so much apparently gratuitous suffering, or, as atheists claim, is the best explanation a theory that posits an impersonal ultimate reality that is incapable of being a moral agent or making plans? If theists insist that all suffering happens in accordance with an unknowable divine plan, then we are entitled to ask how that “plan” looks any different from no plan. Indeed, the very idea of a theistic “explanation” needs critical scrutiny.² Appeals to divine agency might, in principle, be informative in circumstances we can imagine. In general, though, and especially in the history of science, such “explanations” have merely been markers of our ignorance or devices for obfuscation.

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Oppy’s other chapters provide a wealth of information about the history, sociology, and demographics of atheists and atheism. Some of the most engaging parts of the book are the brief biographies of atheists, past and present. These show that atheism is an ancient and cross-cultural phenomenon. Given the hostility shown toward atheists in the past and in the present, no one can accuse these individuals of lacking the courage of their convictions.

Any fair-minded person reading Oppy’s book would see that atheism is an intellectually and ethically responsible position. Atheism is not the mirror image of religious fundamentalism, and neither are atheists ignorant, immoral, or political ax-grinders. Atheists are quite willing to go toe-to-toe with the best arguments that religious apologists can give, and they have subjected those arguments to intense, rigorous, and thorough critical scrutiny. But, of course, despisers of atheism are not fair-minded, and they will not bother to read Oppy’s book. There is no need to return their scorn. Just follow Oppy’s example and dismantle their claims.

[1] Ex-Apologist Blog, Six Dozen (or so) Arguments for Atheism, https://exapologist.blogspot.com/2019/09/sixty-arguments-for-atheism.html.

[2] Dawes, Gregory W., Theism and Explanation, Routledge, 2009.