Book review: The Miracle of Theism (J.L.Mackie)


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J.L.Mackie

THE MIRACLE OF THEISM

Arguments for and against the existence of God

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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
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This book is a professional philosopher's view of theism. Although
Mackie was an atheist, he takes the subject seriously here, something
which he thinks it deserves.

The book has two main parts. In the first we get a discussion of the
traditional arguments for the existence of God together with modern
attempts to update them. Since Kant, however, "proofs" of God's
existence have mostly fallen out of favour and other ways of justifying
belief have been sought; these are considered in the second part of the
book.

Mackie starts by reviewing Hume's treatment of miracles. Hume held that
it was unreasonable to believe in Christianity without miracles, but he
also thought that the evidence in favour of miracles could never be
strong enough to make it more probable than not that they had occurred.
It is unclear whether Hume himself was a deist or a frank atheist.

After a fairly brief consideration of Descartes' views, Mackie goes on
to treat the ontological argument at some length. So far as I can make
out, this seems to consist in defining God as a supreme being and then
saying that such a being must necessarily exist. I have to admit that I
have never seen the force of this argument myself (it seems too much
like trying to lift yourself up by your bootstraps), but some modern
philosophers have taken it up and put it into modern dress, though
Mackie does not find their views to be persuasive.

Other chapters in this part of the book look at Berkeley's immaterialist
position, cosmological arguments, moral arguments, arguments from
consciousness, and arguments for design, before taking up what is surely
the most difficult question for any theist, the problem of evil.
Attempts to show that the presence of evil in the world is compatible
with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent god are called
theodicies. Not surprisingly, Mackie has little difficulty in
demonstrating that no theodicy worth the name will stand up to logical
criticism.

We hear a lot of talk these days about the need for a Designer of the
universe, as evidenced by the existence of "fine tuning" in the laws of
nature. Even such a well-known atheist as Antony Flew apparently found
it persuasive enough to make him change his mind. Mackie advances
several objections to such arguments and echoes Kant's view that the
most they could do would be to support the existence of an architect god
but not a transcendental creator. Even this, however, is an unnecessary
extrapolation.

In the second part of the book Mackie looks at claims based on religious
experience and natural histories of religion. Here he draws a good deal
on William James's classic "The Varieties of Religious Experience". No
kind of psychological experience, Mackie concludes (in contradiction to
James), can justify postulating a supernatural source for such
experience.

An argument for religion that is quite often advanced today is that its
being so widespread in all societies means that there myst be a natural
psychological need for it. But Mackie makes the telling objection that
this is, if anything, evidence against the truth of religious claims,
since it would explain "why religious beliefs would arise and persist,
and why they would be propagated and enforced and defended as vigorously
as the are, even if there were no good reason to suppose them to be
true."

Some philosophers, such as (the to me impenetrable) Kierkegaard, have
made a positive virtue out of the lack of any proof or evidence of the
existence of God. "I believe because it is absurd." Mackie does not
think that Kierkegaard has made this position intellectually repectable,
a view I have to agree with. An alternative approach is to try to keep
religion going without any factual belief system at all. Don Cupiitt
(not mentioned here) would, I suppose, be one of the leading advocates
of this radical solution. But the distinction from frank atheism is hard
to discern.

This is probably one of the most comprehensive modern philosophical
treatments of theism from an atheistic standpoint. Though largely
jargon-free it is not light reading. It is somewhat technical in places
and close attention is required throughout if the arguments are to be
understood. The lack of a bibliography is unfortunate, although
quotations are referenced in footnotes; these features give it a
slightly old-fashioned character. Anyone who is seriously interested in
the philosophy of atheism would be glad to have it on their shelves, but
for a more accessible, although still thorough, discussion of the
atheistic position it might be better to look at The Ghost in the
Universe, by Taner Edis.

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%T The Miracle of Theism
%S Arguments for and against the existence of God
%A J.L.Mackie
%I Clarendon Press
%C Oxford
%D 1982
%G ISBN 0-19-824665-X
%P 268 pp
%K philosophy, religion
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