The Courtier’s Reply vindicated

In 2006 P.Z. Myers coined the term “The Courtier’s Reply” to describe a type of criticism commonly issued toward recent atheist literature, especially Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Luke at Common Sense Atheism has two good summaries and brief discussions of this and two other common critiques of atheists, here and here.

The term “Courtier’s Reply” is a reference to the fable of the emperor who has no clothes. In defending the emperor, so Myers’ fiction goes, the courtier challenges critics to consider all kinds of detailed theory and sophisticated writings regarding fabrics, etc. Clearly, however, these things aren’t relevant to the critics if the emperor just has no clothes. This is supposed to be analogous to those who condemn Dawkins and other atheist authors for not engaging the most sophisticated forms of Christian theology. It seems to me that Luke, linked above, couldn’t have chosen better examples than these excerpts from Terry Eagleton:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology
…
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope?

Luke understands the problem with such Courtier’s Replies as being that they just don’t matter – “If no Creator God exists, then no theology of grace or salvation is true.” In this way the Courtier’s Reply is characterized as a kind of straw man. “Sure,” you might say, “Moltmann’s account of hope is compelling; but my argument shows that God doesn’t exist.”

In his more recent post Luke quotes some other people who argue not that the Courtier’s Reply is a straw man, but that it evidences a kind of hypocrisy. Luke quotes one commenter who says:

[Believers] have no problem with rejecting… all other religions [without studying them]. Apparently, they and we can reject all those out of hand, but their’s must be given serious consideration, and we are not to stop considering it until we accept it.

Luke ends his post with five questions that are really illustrations of one question, which is: Why is it that religious believers can reject all other religions, and plenty of other beliefs, without embarking on a scholarly investigation?

That should be enough introduction. Here are two responses to the two versions just described, respectively.

(1) I agree with Luke that theological writing, insofar as it is descriptive of purported theological facts that assume the existence of God, is immediately undermined if God does not exist. If an atheist argues that, say, the existence of evil precludes or makes unlikely the existence of God, it won’t do to reply that David Bentley Hart is sophisticated and worthy of reading. Up to this point, the thesis seems trivially true.

But I doubt very much that many replies of this sort can be found. Certainly Eagleton can’t be accused on these grounds; he is just applying a truism of intellectual responsibility, that one should engage positions at their strongest. There is also an ancillary principle, which is that one should interpret opponents charitably. To illustrate the first major principle, suppose the target is the existence of God. You should start by asking: What are the strongest arguments for God’s existence? It doesn’t matter if most religious people don’t read, understand, or even agree with academic works on this matter. Unless your point is merely to (de-)convert large numbers via the abandonment of standard intellectual virtues, you should hold yourself to this (less rhetorically satisfying) standard. But in the current environment, especially on the Internet, that’s a pretty easy “should” to ignore. Few polemicists, and fewer of their followers, seem to care at all about truisms of intellectual honesty. The second principle, that one should interpret opponents charitably, can be followed even if you slack off on the much harder prior principle. To interpret an opponent charitably, figure out what the strongest possible formulation is of the most plausible statement of her view, then attack that view, charitably attributing it to your opponent as you proceed.

So: It’s not that Dawkins has to study Moltmann’s theology of hope before giving his Boeing argument. Rather, before developing the Boeing argument Dawkins should study the best design arguments; before he criticizes the idea of atonement, he should study it; before condemning the God of the Old Testament he should read representative interpretations; etc.

(2) The other criticism of the Courtier’s Reply says that religionists are hypocritical for not deeply investigating the claims of the myriad views they reject. This critique has a kind of prima facie plausibility. The basic structure of The Courier’s Reply seems to be:

(a) Atheist rejects X
(b) Atheist hasn’t considered the best formulations of X
Therefore, either
(c1) Atheist is not worth responding to
or
(c2) Atheist is unjustified

But it seems like each step can be rewritten by replacing “Atheist” and “X” with “Christian” and “Greek Mythology” respectively.

Notice that we should be suspicious of this objection, since it seeks to undermine a pillar of epistemic virtue. So either religious believers are just being hypocritical in their correct criticism of Dawkins, or special considerations have arisen. First, there is a crucial contextual element of Courtier’s Replies missing from such formulations – namely, that atheist authors are (1) publishing widely-read polemics and (2) purporting to be authorities on the topic they are writing about. These facts, conjoined with truisms of intellectual virtue expressed above, confer an especially strong obligation to investigate. I say especially strong simply because the truisms of intellectual virtue apply even if someone is not publishing books or purporting to be an authority. They become even more stringent if we do engage in these activities. If we are morally and intellectually serious, we will hold ourselves to such standards.

The implication here, which I readily accept, is that if religious believers want to speak publicly and authoritatively on, say, Islam, especially if they are trying to convince people away from Islam, they are obligated to become familiar with the best arguments, most compelling presentations, the most genuine and rich forms of Islamic life, etc. The same goes for Greek Mythology, Flat-Earthers, etc. If I want to publish a refutation of Flat-Earthers, I have to familiarize myself with their best arguments.

Certainly I don’t want to publish or speak at all on Flat Earth; nor do I accept the theory; nor do I read the best literature! Is there hypocrisy here? Clearly there is not, because I’m not claiming to refute any arguments or positions. I have some kind of loose argument of the form: I learned some stuff I don’t remember in school that was convincing, I trust scientific consensus, etc., therefore I think Flat Earth is false. Something akin to this is permissible in the atheist case. The atheist can say, “I have found atheist arguments convincing, I have no particular reason to investigate Christian claims, I infer from my atheism that Christian theism is false.” That’s a fine way to go. But once you’ve decided to engage arguments and positions in debate, and especially once you’ve decided to publish and speak as an authority, you are no longer welcome to this leisurely approach.