12/7/2014 The Atheist's Guide to Reality, By Alex Rosenberg

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The Atheist's Guide to Reality, By Alex Rosenberg

Manjit Kumar

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

There are plenty of books that make the case for atheism, but Alex Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality isn't one of them.The American philosopher maintains that religious belief is immune to rational objection. There's little point, argues Rosenberg, inpreaching to the unconverted. His aim is to enlighten the converted by arguing for what an atheist should believe, since there'smore to atheism than simply "there is no God". He begins by rebranding atheism as "scientism" so as to better describe whatatheists "do believe". First, an atheist has to understand the science, then accept its "irrefutably correct answers to the persistentquestions". What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is themeaning of life? Ditto.

Rosenberg's scientism is built on accepting well-established laws of physics as the basic description of reality. He argues that thephysics tells us just about everything we need to know about how the universe works. We can extend this to chemistry andbiology, and then, with an appeal to Darwinian processes, everything else. For Rosenberg, almost everything we think of as havinginherent value or meaning, from morality to the idea of a self, does not. He wants us to let go of our many illusions, such as theconcept of free will. Being "scientistic" means treating science as the "exclusive guide to reality" and accepting that it "enablesatheism to answer life's universal and relentless questions".

Rosenberg argues that atheists are assailed on all sides by attempts to sow doubt about the completeness and credibility ofscience. Worse still, some of those questioning the reach of science are people with impeccable scientific qualifications. Rosenbergwants to clarify "what our attachment to science... really commits us to".

There's much that Rosenberg writes one can agree with; as for the rest, it's at least thought-provoking. If you can't swallowscience's answers as interpreted by Rosenberg, he has one last piece of advice: "Take a Prozac or your favourite serotoninreuptake inhibitor, and keep taking them till they kick in."