Reddit reviews The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
We found 18 Reddit comments about The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I'm not sure how much my words will be of use for you, as I am myself not yet Catholic (I'm currently going through RCIA). However, I can relate with regard to a lack of Catholic friends. I'm an immigrant from India who was raised in a Hindu family; most of my friends are Indian and nominally Hindu. I've had only a couple of Christian friends in my life and never a Catholic friend. Reading and researching through books, articles, podcasts, videos, etc. have led me to the faith.
Oftentimes, in defending the faith, I have debated my family, my friends, and others close to me. It became clear to me that I needed a systematic plan if I was going to do this with any shred of ability. Here's mine. Perhaps it will be of use to you or somebody else who clicks on your post because they can relate.
In summary, I'd recommend reading the following books in this order:
God Bless and take care.
I lost my faith as a Protestant and spent a while as an agnostic/atheist before becoming Catholic. My advice would be to really work at keeping an open, receptive mind and a real desire to know the truth. A little prayer wouldn't hurt either -- whatever you can muster, even to the God you're not really sure exists. Christians believe that Truth is a living person and He's reaching out to you. If you are seeking Truth, you will find Him.
I don't know if you're a reader, but a book that helped me immensely was Orthodoxy. It's G. K. Chesterton's recounting of his transition from agnosticism to Christianity. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Chesterton will change your life. Another good book --the best modern refutation of atheism -- is The Last Superstition by Ed Feser.
Edit: typos
I'd recommend checking these out:
Plantinga, Alvin. God and Other Minds. Cornell University Press, 1990.
Feser, Edward. The Last Superstition: a Refutation of the New Atheism. St. Augustine's Press, 2011.
Plantinga, Alvin. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Eerdmans, 2015.
Pitre, Brant. The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ. Image, 2016.
Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Ignatius Press, 2017.
>i make time for my degeneracy. 1.5 hours before bed every night of whatever i feel like. chips or video games or weed or beer or porn or something. helps keep me working hard from morning til night.
That's what I told myself before I ended up hunched over every morning in a pool of my own vomit. It wasn't 'til I sobered up from constant weed and porn use that I realized I was wasting my life and destroying my brain (and dick) in the process. I have started the road to recovery and you may have things more under control than I did, but I found that returning to Catholicism from a decade of atheism is what helped me recover from my despair.
In any case, I'd look into C.S. Lewis, GK Chesterton, Dr. Edward Feser (if you're looking for proof of God from a philosophical standpoint, he does a good job of explaining Aristotelian metaphysics and debunking Dawkins-tier atheism in this book), other Christian apoligists and philosophers of which there are many.
If you aren't looking for fancy-pants academic writing, i'd go for Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton first. I haven't read it yet but I've heard good things about it. It may be a little sappy for this crowd though so there's always Nihilism: The Root of Revolution in the Modern Age by Fr. Seraphim Rose, a firebrand Orthodox priest and also an ex-atheist.
It's important to be able to stand up for the Church, so you need to learn history and apologetics. This book points how indefensibly silly New Atheism is. Don't be afraid to ask particular questions on here as pretty much every accusation that can be leveled against Catholics has been used on reddit. Take whatever good things your oldest demands and show them how the Church nurtures them and maintains them. If he wants freedom, teach him of the slavery of sin.
Pray for strength, knowledge, and patience. It's your demonstration of Christian love that will be the greatest help in bringing them back to life. Otherwise you leave it to the Spirit to call them back in time.
"I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." -Luke 15:7
You are never further away from the Church than one confession. Take 20 minutes and do a solid examination of conscience. This is not an exercise in beating yourself up. It is a way to do a thorough job of taking out the garbage, because we don't want any of it around anymore. One of the amazing things about Christ is that while we can give him beautiful gifts, we can also give him our baggage, and it its place he will give us peace. Don't be anxious if you're not sure how many times you committed a sin or if you can't remember other exact details. God knows your heart and what you are repenting of. Your local parish should hear confessions every Saturday, but you can probably also call them up and request a confession by appointment (face to face or in private) at another time.
"Once, St. Teresa was overwhelmed with God's Goodness and asked Our Lord "How can I thank you?" Our Lord replied, "ATTEND ONE MASS."
In addition to going to confession, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you begin attending mass on Sundays. Christ is the center of our faith, and he is present with us, as though he were standing behind a veil, at every mass.
I don't have a quote for this last bit of advice, but ask questions! I have at times had questions which gnawed at me like a junkyard dog, so I gnawed at the Church with the same tenacity, and I have always eventually found a completely satisfying answer.
This applies your political beliefs in particular. Our obligation as Catholics is to continually form our conscience, not to simply parrot the Church line. You're not a bad Catholic if you aren't immediately on board with everything the Church teaches. I'd suggest turning your energies to charitable but forceful questions on these topics.
The answers you receive might be a good way to explain your change of heart to your friends and family. For example, "I thought Dawkins and Hitchens were pretty convincing until I learned that they don't even engage actual Christian scholasticism." I'd recommend Edward Feser for those two.
Depends on what you're looking for, but Augustine's Confessions is highly recommended.
If you like intellectual things, The Last Superstition is good thick read.
I commend you to start doing some personal research on acquainting yourself with the literature defending the rational justifiability of Christianity. The work of professional analytic philosophers persuaded of Christianity like William Lane Craig and Edward Feser would be, I think, indispensable to your intellectual development if you would give them a chance. Reasonablefaith.org has amassed tons of material answering just about anything you could ask about or argue against Christianity (see the Q&A section, popular articles section and podcasts). His work Reasonable Faith sets out a defense of Christianity in general, offers various defenses of God's existence and explicates the historical evidence for some of the New Testament's most central claims (such as the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth).
Edward Feser's latest book Five Proofs of the Existence of God systematically defends the five most historically significant arguments for the existence of God, which have survived scrutiny and enjoyed wide assent for centuries, the present ignorance of which in mainstream atheism and academic philosophy says nothing about the arguments themselves and everything about the (pitiful) state of contemporary philosophy (not to mention the quality of religious discourse today). His book The Last Superstition is a more approachable but less ambitious project rebutting the arguments of and generally responding to the "new atheist" movement (championed by Richard Dawkins and his ilk).
It so happens that Dr. Feser was an atheist for about 10 years after he began his studies of philosophy and, subsequently, he experienced a complete shift of paradigm that he attributes to his studies of the arguments for God's existence and the general truth of Christianity. That's not to say he must be right or that he's therefore impervious to bias, but I hope it helps cast doubt on the popular atheist assertion that Christian belief can only consist in emotion-driven fideism.
I wouldn't expect to find every conclusion of both of these writers to be compelling or convincing (I personally disregard Craig's arguments from contemporary astrophysics simply on the grounds that the science they adduce is subject to future revision, for example), but the general impression I hope this will make to you is that extremely intelligent, reflective Christians who can offer an articulate and well-reasoned defense of their beliefs aren't hard to find.
David Bently Hart and C.S. Lewis would also be worth looking into.
As for critiquing the atheistic worldview indirectly, I think the points made in this essay are quite salient. In it it is argued that atheism is impossible to be lived out consistently and that, therefore, no self-described atheist is capable of manifesting logical consistency in their lifestyle or with respect to the peripheries of their belief systems and fundamental presuppositions about the value of human life, the meaningfulness of the concept of morality, and so on.
I should also add that educating yourself on theology in a systematic fashion would be extremely helpful in learning to defend Christianity (after all, you can't really defend an idea you have yet to completely understand or define). There's a long lecture series on Reasonablefaith.org under the "defenders class" with a curriculum on theology that I think would be an excellent resource and, perhaps, a place to start.
I'm also open to talking to you if you're interested. God bless!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D40EGCQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
It's that book.
He's also got a blog.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
Could search through there where he talks about atheism/atheists.
I'll take a stab at answering this. Credentials: I'm a PhD student in artificial intelligence who does philosophy as a hobby.
The short answer is that Feser's critiques are basically valid for current computers, but I'm highly skeptical that they would extend to full artificial general intelligences when we build such things.
First, some background. Feser is a neo-scholastic or neo-Thomist; his philosophy is grounded in an Aristotelian worldview as mapped out by Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages. Because of this tradition, he tends to focus a lot of analysis on Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, efficient, final) and their implications, and to use words like "substance," "artifact," and "causal powers." This worldview is a significant departure from most modern literature on philosophy of mind, and most philosophers of mind today would reflexively call his arguments confused and outdated (I tend to agree, although I think they have more merit than people give them credit for).
The modern philosopher who argues most similarly to Feser with regards to philosophy of mind is John Searle, whom Feser references several times in the article. Here, Feser is mostly trying to avoid using Aristotelian jargon, making an argument more in line with Searle's terminology and thus more intelligible to modern thinkers, though he still slips in a reference or two to "causal powers". (In fact, Feser believes that the human mind is immaterial and created directly by God, though he claims that this is irrelevant to the point he is making in the article; see his book The Last Superstition).
In the blog post, Feser is not refuting the best current philosophy of AI, but rather a strawman with a shallow pop-philosophy understanding of computation and mind. To be fair, these criticisms are warranted because many people actually do make the mistake of thinking that the brain is exactly like a computer, or that current AI programs actually have the beginnings of minds. Feser rightly points out that neither thing is true: the comparison between human brains and current computer architectures is merely superficial. Brains have many properties that we do not yet understand and do not capture in computers. Conversely, computers today, even those programmed with "artificial neural networks," are not remotely brainlike or conscious.
Quick sidebar: the usage of the word "intelligence." Feser seems to use the word "intelligence" interchangeably with "mind" or "consciousness," but I would not equate those things at all. They are separate axes of description. To an AI researcher, "intelligence" means something like "competence at achieving goals." It is clearly possible for machines to be more intelligent than humans in this sense: the program AlphaGo is more intelligent at playing the game of Go than human experts, though it does not understand what it is doing or have a mind per se. In the future, we will have machines that are more competent than humans at achieving nearly any goal, and this is what we would call an artificial general intelligence (AGI). What Feser (and also Searle) really means to argue is that such an AGI could never in principle have a mind or a consciousness, merely an unconscious simulation of those things.
Okay, finally, on to the actual arguments presented in the post!
Here Feser is using variations of one primary argument that was also made by John Searle: physical systems are never intrinsically computational because the very notion of "computation" is observer-dependent. In other words, whether or not something is called a "computer" is relative to how some observer is analyzing the physical system, and is not any intrinsic property of the system. Therefore, it is a category mistake to equate "mind" with "computation," because minds exist independently in reality but computation does not! For example, a Go-playing AI is only a computational system when we mentally associate the program's inputs and outputs with the state of a Go board; otherwise is it just an electrical circuit performing meaningless physical bit flips, an artifact, a dead thing. If we try hard enough, we can interpret any physical system as a computer: in some sense, a glass of water is a perfect computation of itself. Does than mean a glass of water is intrinsically computational? No, it's only computational with regards to how we are viewing it.
So the logic goes something like this:
So, does this succeed in proving that advanced artificial intelligences will never have minds? No, I don't think it does. What it does succeed in doing is pointing out how naively equating the mind with the concept of "computation" can lead to bad magical thinking.
As an student working in AI, I can tell you that the way the word "computation" is used here is a bit simplistic and naive. Modern AI researchers do not think this way. It's true that computers and brains are extremely dissimilar in operation, but "computation" itself is a general conceptual model that can describe both. When we says that brains "compute" this or that, we are using mathematical models of computation to explain certain data and to make certain predictions about how the brain works. We are not saying that the brain is somehow fundamentally a computer; rather, that features of its operation can be understood as computational in a certain context. But that's also exactly how we treat computers! Fundamentally, what we call a computer is not some magical artifact performing some mystical metaphysical function of "computation"; rather, it is a physical system that can be mathematically understood as computational in certain contexts. But with computers, we have designed them to be hyper-optimized to align with our conceptual models of computation. Transistors are designed to have two physical states: "on" and "off", and this allows us to easily represent their state with the symbols 0 and 1, and perform analysis from there. The brain, designed by evolution, is not optimized for intelligibility, but nevertheless we can draw computational analogies with extra effort.
So what we have are two physical systems, the brain and modern computers, both of which can be modeled computationally (one more easily than the other), neither of which are intrinsically computational as physical systems. So how do we decide whether one or the other is capable of being conscious?
Clearly brains can be conscious, because we are brains and we have consciousness. But how do I, as a single brain, know that you, another brain, are actually conscious? I don't - this is the famous problem of Other Minds. I am making an inference to the best explanation - you have a brain like mine, and your behavior is like mine, so I am inferring that you probably have a mind like mine.
But now suppose we have a highly intelligent computer which passes the Turing test. Does it have a mind? It's certainly acing the behavioral similarity criterion, but the problem comes when we try to use the physical similarity criterion - how do we score the similarity between a silicon architecture and a brainlike architecture? In one sense, the two are made of different materials and are nothing alike on a microscopic level, so we might think that there is no way to tell if the computer is conscious. On the other hand, we can draw higher-level computational analogies between our brains and the algorithm being run on the silicon. The fact that computational descriptions are observer-dependent is beside the point - all models are observer dependent - the point is that it can be argued that physical systems described by similar computational models probably share other properties as well, such as mental states. This is an inference to the best explanation. Given what our minds do when they represent concepts, we can build very close analogs to these processes into the operation of the AI. The more we learn about the brain, the more likely it seems that mental properties are invariant to different low-level descriptions of systems, depending only on higher-level causal properties easily modeled by computations; if so, then minds are multiply-realizable, and computers can have minds.
(Continued in a reply to this comment because too long to fit in one post)
Peter Kreeft (popular level) has a great handbook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0038BR1UK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Edward Feser is very good. See: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D40EGCQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
And: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser-ebook/dp/B0754MJFMG/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=ZGZBEGJ6ZCH5G8ZAB2W2
Any topic you want to learn more about specifically?
It's called essentialism, it goes back to antiquity and has undergone a huge revival in contemporary thought (it arguably never left). It was the prevailing thought prior to the "enlightenment" literally forming the basis for the natural sciences and the rationale behind taxonomy. It can go by other names like real essentialism, neo-Aristotelian essentialism, new essentialism etc. and is related to Thomism, Aristotelean metaphysics, scholasticism et al.
Some contemporary authorities on the subject include Kripke, Oderberg, Putnam, Edward Feser (that's where I got the Tarzan example from).
Once you wrap you head around the history of philosophy and metaphysics this shit will blow your mind. There's a lot of heavy lifting involved but a good intro starting point would be the last Superstition by Edward Feser, it appears as a theistic apologetic and is quite polemical at the beginning but once you get into it it's probably one of the finest introductory books on the subject.
If you want a good history of philosophy with responses to basically everybody, Fr. Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy is pretty good.
Here's the first volume: https://www.amazon.com/History-Philosophy-Vol-Pre-Socratics-Plotinus/dp/0385468431/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579301&sr=8-4&keywords=frederick+copleston
Edward Feser deals with both the New Atheists, Enlightenment thinkers, and Old Atheists in The Last Superstition, Aquinas, and Neo-Scholastic Essays. Fr. Garrigou Lagrange's Reality is also worth it.
The Last Superstition: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism-ebook/dp/B00D40EGCQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579343&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+superstition
Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Edward-Feser/dp/1851686908/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1543579366&sr=8-6
Neo-Scholastic Essays: https://www.amazon.com/Neo-Scholastic-Essays-Edward-Feser/dp/1587315580/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579366&sr=8-5&keywords=edward+feser
Reality: https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Synthesis-Reginald-Garrigou-Lagrange-P/dp/1477582401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579439&sr=8-1&keywords=reality+garrigou-lagrange
Honestly, I tend to think Van Til's Presuppositionalism is a better system than a lot of Catholic philosophy. His book Christian Apologetics is probably his easiest to read, though I'll admit I've had more access to his ideas from his defenders than his actual writing: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Apologetics-Cornelius-Van-Til/dp/0875525113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579550&sr=8-1&keywords=christian+apologetics+van+til
In a less theologically charged but similar category are Alvin Plantinga's Where the Conflict Really Lies and Warranted Christian Belief: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Conflict-Really-Lies-Naturalism-ebook/dp/B005X3SAHY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579615&sr=8-1&keywords=where+the+conflict+really+lies+science%2C+religion%2C+and+naturalism
https://www.amazon.com/Warranted-Christian-Belief-Alvin-Plantinga-ebook/dp/B0059EQ4DY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543579634&sr=8-1&keywords=warranted+christian+belief
Your mind needs a break. You have to allow yourself to take one.
I get the exhaustion. I struggled with faith vs. atheism but eventually had a spiritual/emotional experience that convicted me in holding fast to my faith. But years later I encountered materialist philosophy and my world was rocked. So as you mention, I was missing a logical link. I just finished Robert Spitzer's "The Soul's Upward Yearning". It's one of the most comprehensive books I've ever read on the evidence/clues for our transcendent nature. Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition" is good too.
But even if you don't read those....know at a basic level that atheism/materialist/eliminative materialist philosophy has a veritable s***-ton to answer for and are not nearly as strong of positions as they make themselves out to be. Catholicism is unique in that it has a robust philosophical root going back to Aristotle/Plato. Give your head a break, let your heart talk to God and give it a go when you feel ready again. Faith is a gift, remember that. You have to ask for it.
> Can you enlighten me to the introduction to the subject?
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism-ebook/dp/B00D40EGCQ
Enjoy it.
> Oh? When you were asked to prove how eternal torment was justified through temporary discipline, you called it an analogy.
Oh God...
I didn't call it an analogy. Read more carefully, please. I used an analogy to point out how naive it is to claim an immaterial existence is torment in itself. The torment isn't punishment, but a consequence of how you chose to live your material existence. For instance, if you indulge too much in food or sex, you'll have a hard time living an eternal life without that. Is it really that hard to understand?
What would an "effect" look like to you? Are you chasing after a feeling? I'm going to repost something I already posted today:
> In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas argues that we do not change God through our prayers; rather, by praying, we “obtain what God has appointed.” Basically be the change you wish to see and use prayer to find out what that change is.
Also if you are curious about strengthening your faith I always recommend this book. Be warned, there is some HEAVY metaphysics in there.
Thank you again. It sounds like I should combine that work with this one, since the latter one seems to be more introductory than the former.
I would start with Edward Feser's introductions to Aquinas.
If you're a total newbie, this should serve as a good launching point to begin to study Aquinas himself. There are of course more thinkers than Aquinas (I'm very partial to Anselm over Aquinas in many matters), but the skills and habits of mind you acquire in understanding Aquinas are useful for reading other thinkers in the tradition.
There is of course also no substitute for getting to know your pagan philosophers, in particular Aristotle and Plato. Try Aristotle's Eudemian ethics or the Republic by Plato.