David Aikman’s The Delusion of Disbelief is a somewhat rambling rebuttal to recent critiques of religion by Dawkins, Harris, et al. The jacket announces that Aikman is a former Time correspondent and bestselling author, with a Ph.D. in Russian and Chinese history. The quality is a bit lower than I’d expect from someone with those credentials, but in any case is one more data point in my attempt to get a general picture of recent anti-atheist literature.

I’ll start with the few points I agree with. Aikman (p. 12-13) quotes philosopher Michael Ruse Dawkins and Dennett could end up inadvertently helping creationists in the courtroom. (citation via an article by Madeleine Blunting in The Guardian). As an example of the rambling nature of the book, it isn’t clear what Aikman thinks the significance of this is, but I’m OK with it. I have serious doubts about the coherence of church-state separation, and tactics shouldn’t take precedence over truth.

Aikman also catches Hitchens in a tidy contradiction: “Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.” vs. “We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion.” (Aikman p. 29) This sort of sloppy use of the word “belief” is a major pet peeve of mine, and I’m happy to have one more example of it exposed.

Unfortunately, those two points are about all I have for the good. Now onto the bad. Aiken plays the “atheists are rude” trope hard (p. 7), but the rhetorical mix is rather odd: civilized people “conduct discourse with respect and courtesy” while “barbarians club one another.” He confuses description, recommendation, and metaphor: it’s not pure description, because he says its often violated in politics and talk shows, but then politicians and talking heads aren’t literally clubbing each other. It’s a way of saying “how mean” without anything more substantial, and distracting attention away from the fact that mean doesn’t equal incorrect. Similarly, Aikman claims that religious explanations of the universe are “less arrogant,” (p. 195) words that have no clear significance in this context, beyond an attempt to shut down debate with sanctimony.

A major theme of the book is the effect of religion on society. Sometimes, we just get sloppy history: Christianity is recommended over Islam on the grounds that Christian countries tolerate criticisms of religion (p. 40), which ignores the fact that this wasn’t true for most of Christian history. He’s shocked at Hitchens’ attacks on Augustine and Calvin, but doesn’t discuss Hitchens criticisms, or mentioning that it is a matter of historical record that Calvin made a point of getting one of his theological opponents killed (p. 52). The Pilgrims are described as seeking religious freedom (p. 137), even though historians know they were really seeking the ability to impose their own brand of Christianity rather than have Anglicanism imposed on them. Long-debunked myths about Thomas Jefferson and religion also get their due (p. 144–mostly been debunked by Ed Brayton, among others.)

There are also plenty of confusions, starting with a confusion about the meaning of the word “atheist.” Atheism “makes the very strong assumption that there is no authority for rightness or wrongness of human behaviour outside of human beings themselves.” (p. 100) Even if some atheists believe this, it isn’t part of the definition of “atheism.” Nazism is blamed on atheism because it “grew out of a sustained philosophical rebellion against religious faith.” (p. 101) But not every rebellion against religion is atheism, or else we would have to claim a lot of non-Christian theists atheists. Though Aikman is honest enough to admit Hitler wasn’t an atheist, Hitler “acted out his policies as though atheism were true” (p. 133). But atheism contains no policy recommendations. The most bizarre point in this category is when Aikman gets around to listing examples of badly behaved atheists, and cites Theosophist Annie Besant! (pp. 174-175)

Tied up with this is an utter incomprehension at the thought of objective moral values. Since atheists think there’s no God for morality to be contingent on, obviously they must think morality is contingent on human opinion, right? At one point, Aikman goes so far as to suggest atheists are committed to thinking morality would have to be contingent something like a poll of college professors! (p. 122) But the entire point of thinking morality can’t be contingent on God’s whims is that it can’t be contingent on anybody’s whims. Aikman’s position is really a horrible one. When he declares that if there were no God and Hitler had won WWII, then Hitler would have been right (p. 34), he comes very close to declaring that morality is simply a matter of power.

Oddly Aikman himself seems a little shaky on the idea of objective morality. At one point, he complains that “Harris wields the sabre of moral and ethical judgement as if there has never been any dispute among people of goodwill over what constitutes good and what constitutes evil.” (p. 32)–as if disagreement over whether female genital mutilation is wrong keeps it from being wrong. Similarly, Aikman notes that in Dawkins’ criticisms of the old testament, “Dawkins is after a larger point, though, and isn’t merely highlighting those episodes of the Old Testament that seem cruel and even barbaric to the modern sensibility.” (pp. 41-42) Indeed, but part of the point is that the Old Testament really is barbaric, not merely that it seems barbaric.

Though it doesn’t dominate the book the way discussions of morality and society do, there is some material on religion science. Some of it amounts to repeating discredited appeals to authority: rebutting appeals to Gould’s authority on the subject by re-quoting Gould and saying “look how intolerant Dawkins is.” But the question isn’t who’s best at showing off their tolerance: the question is whether Gould is right, or Dawkins is right, in their dispute. Aiken also appeals to Whitehead on the supposed Christian foundations of science, which is mostly weaseling: Whitehead admits there are also roots in Greek philosophy, and refrains from worrying too much about what any particular people actually believed by appealing to something supposedly implicit in Christianity for centuries.

Finally, one truly bizarre point deserves mention: there’s a possibly approving citation of Jean Baudrillard’s books The Gulf War Did Not Take Place and The Spirit of Terrorism: Requiem for the Twin Towers, which claimed the September 11th attacks didn’t happen. Except, apparently Baudrillard admits that these events did happen, and merely uses “happened” in a different way from ordinary English–what he means to say, I think, is that their psychological, political, and media impact was out of proportion to the actual events. A good example of how striving to be novel can get in the way of intelligent conversation.