Analysing ‘Objecting to God’

Abstract

In this book, Colin Howson disputes the proofs for the existence of God. Howson is an ardent defender of Bayesian inference, a method of logical statistical reasoning. The book will please the unbeliever, but will prove bitter and deeply unfair to believers. The first part (chapters 1 and 2) intends to discredit the religious phenomenon. Howson uses the usual style of polemical atheists that touches the heart more than reason. So this part can hardly be taken seriously as a rational discourse. All religions are sketched and gruffly censored as totalitarian systems responsible for much suffering, immorality, racism and oppression. They are enemies of freedom, especially in matters of sex, politics, science and culture. These ad hominem arguments are weak and commonly used to blame all biased types of ideologies whatever they are: political, religious, atheistic, etc. But Howson is silent about many historical episodes which show that atheistic ideologies are at least equally repressive and intolerant (e.g. Soviet, Chinese, Cambodian and Ethiopian communisms). Howson presents the new atheists as respectful people unjustly suspected of intransigence. But on the other hand, Howson describes religious people and believers as opportunists, greedy, hypocritical, coveting power and privileges. Most of these claims are unfair. At pages 6–7 and 60, the Pope and Yahweh himself are compared to Stalin, and Jesus is pictured as cruel since he condemns some people to hell. Howson also questions the historicity of Christ, ignoring non-Christian sources. In short, monotheistic religions are dangerous because they are insidious, by claiming the infallibility of their primitive ‘holy’ scriptures and their theodicies designed to conceal their internal inconsistencies and conflicts with science. The free and responsible lives of atheists are threatened by religious myths which