The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser (PDF)

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The central contention of the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention.But as Edward Feser argues inThe Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order: on the one hand, the classical “teleological” vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as mass or electric charge; and the modern “mechanical” vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion. As it happens, on the classical teleological picture, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable. Modern atheism and secularism have thus always crucially depended for their rational credentials on the insinuation that the modern, mechanical picture of the world has somehow been established by science. Yet this modern “mechanical” picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science. Moreover, as Feser shows, the philosophical arguments in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as “scientific.” As the centuries have worn on and historical memory has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be remembered as a “discovery.”However, not only is this modern philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably false. For the “mechanical” conception of the natural world, when worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called “scientific worldview” championed by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition demonstrates, the classical teleological picture of nature can be seen to find powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy, biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot possibly be made sense of apart from it. The teleological vision of the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated – and with it the religious worldview they based upon it.

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⭐Let me first admit that the other reviewers are quite right to point out the “anger” in the first chapter (Chapter three starts out this way as well). In fact, the author himself mentions that his tone will be angry throughout the book because he believes that the New Atheists must be responded to in like fashion. If this bothers you, I STRONGLY recommend that you either brush it off or skip the first chapter. The first chapter is essentially an outline, and the author makes many claims that he says he will demonstrate later on. But it is not worth it to give up on this book because the author’s tone is not the most gentle after only one chapter like another reviewer mentioned. On that note, I should point out that I always try to write as charitably and to write in a way that will not turn people off, and even I was not too bothered by the author’s tone. He does make fun a bit, but it is more clever and witty rather than just plain insults (though there are these as well). But you have to keep in mind the fact that Dawkins, Hitchens, etc being the poster boys for atheism and upheld as “intellectual atheists” is really like if all of a sudden Ken Ham and Ray Comfort were upheld as the greatest Christian intellectuals, and every time an atheist made an argument, someone would smugly talk about “Ken Ham has show…” It would be so frustrating, so what WOULD be a reasonable reaction besides anger at such stupidity?The real serious stuff begins in Chapter 2. Here the author begins by tracing through the history of metaphysical ideas (focusing on realism vs. nominalism vs. concepltualism) starting with the early Greeks like Parmenedies and Heraclitus, and going through the thought of Plato and Aristotle which corrected the errors of their predecessors. In particular, it was Plato’s theory of forms that paved the way for Aristotle come up with a metaphysics which answered the problem of “universals” while also admitting both change in things, no change in things, and bringing sense perception back from the realm of obscurity. These were the main problems facing the Greeks at this time, and it took carefully constructed metaphysics to make sense of the world. This was a VERY rewarding chapter to read through carefully and slowly. Not only do we get a strong understanding of the metaphysics of Aristotle, but we learn WHY his metaphysics are as they are- what questions was he looking to answer, what were the ideas at the time that he was trying to refute, etc. In fact, the author points out that this is a metaphysical system that is completely in tune with our intuition and the way any normal, rational person understands the world. The rub, of course, is that once we embrace is metaphysical worldview, we are well on our way to discovering God, as Feser goes on to point out in a later chapter.Feser begins to critique the New Atheists in Chapter 3. Although he is somewhat harsh, he does make it very clear how philosophically shallow they are. For example, he points out that Dawkins completely misunderstands Aquinas’ 5 ways, and claims that Aquinas never gives any reason to believe that the First Cause is all-knowing, all-powerful outside of time, etc. even though Aquinas spends hundreds of pages doing exactly that in other works. Dawkins also fails to be able to paraphrase Aquinas accurately, as Dawkins claims that Aquinas thinks that “there must be some time when nothing physical existed” and that Aquinas attempts to prove from reason (again, according to Dawkins) that “the universe must have had a beginning.” These are egregious, unacceptable errors to so blatantly misunderstand and misrepresent someone’s position. But that isn’t even teh worst of it. As Feser points out, to Dawkin’s credit, he is the only one of the New Atheists who actually spends any decent amount of time interacting with Aquinas’ arguments (or at least the shoddy caricature of them). Hitchens, Harris, and Dennet spend almost no time attempting to refute Aquinas or any other strong defender of theism like Anslem or Bonaventure. Feser does point out, however, that they all love to critique Paley (according to Feser, the favorite whipping boy of the New Atheists. One laugh-out-loud line from all of this was the line “If Paley didn’t exist, the New Atheists would have to invent him.”). Feser will go on himself to critique Paley and his design arguments, but the point is that Paley’s argument isn’t that strong to begin with and in fact, represents a HUGE point of departure from Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, the very problem that Feser has been harping upon! This is also teh chapter that goes through three of Aquinas’ proofs for the existence of God. Please, take it from someone who is a devout Catholic and had seen Aquinas’ proofs MANY times before reading this- they seem like COMPLETELY DIFFERENT arguments once one understands the metaphysics underlying it. Feser does not at all exaggerate when he says time and time and time again that the reason we don’t understand so much of medieval thought is because we have abandoned A-T metaphysics. With A-T metaphysics now in place as background, Aquinas’ ways for God are simply brilliant and utterly convincing. Even if you are a skeptic, you owe it to yourself to at least be able to correctly articulate Aquinas’ five ways with the necessary metaphysical background before attempting to refute it.Chapter 4 discusses the soul and natural law. Again, the first thing we learn is that the popular understanding of the soul is not what Aquinas had in mind. Rather, it is the form of the body, the existence of which follows immediately from A-T metaphysics. Once one understands the metaphysics, there is no debate about teh existence of the soul. Feser goes on to show why our ideas are not the same as brain states. When we grasp the idea of triangularity, for example, our idea of triangularity is the same thing as the form of triangularity. So if the form of triangularity was the same thing as a neuron firing in the brain, then that neuron would actually BE a triangle because it would be a composite of form (traingularity) and matter. This is spelled out in detail in the book, but again, it follows clearly from the suppositions. I also enjoyed the section on natural law. One thing that I was always confused about that Feser clears up is the fact that on natural law theory, something is immoral if you THWART or work AGAINST its final cause, and not if you do something that is not its final cause but neither goes against it. The example I always had in mind was having someone stand on your back (Feser gives the example of using your legs to hold up a table). The human back is not made for standing on, so doesn’t that go against natural law? No, because you don’t have to be using it for its final ends; you just can’t use it CONTRARY or against it’s final ends. I was really glad to see that point cleared up. Of course, he spends many pages carefully laying out the natural law theory before going into this question.Chapter 5 is concerned with thinkers like Descartes and Locke who abandoned A-T metaphysics which led to the mess we have today. Feser then argues all the way through the final chapter that such thinking has led to a very strange kind of materialism which believes that emotions need to be described in terms of brain chemistry and neuron firings. This sets the stage for Feser to discuss his area of expertise, philosophy of mind. He gives several arguments why neuron firings cannot be synonymous with actions/feelings. Finally, he shows how modern biology, rather than undermining final causality, actually supports the idea of final causality and that one simply cannot talk about evolution without using language very similar to the of “points towards” or “is directed to.” Feser also deals with the objection that such talk is simply shorthand for “the purpose of this agent means that this is what it evolved to do.”I have been very seriously studying the Catholic faith, Christianity in general, and theism for the past 6 years now. Most of the metaphysics in this book was brand new to me. There are so many great non-Catholic Christian apologists like Craig, Sproul, etc. who are very popular and have a lot of great stuff to say, but they do not come at the issues from a Scholastic point of view. This book will show you the beauty of the Catholic Scholastic tradition in the spirit of Aquinas. This book has really changed the way I argue for God and in fact, many of my foundations for the Christian faith.

⭐A common saying in philosophy is that you can read a book and enjoy it very much, even if you agree with not a word of it. In the case of Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, that is not entirely the case; I enjoyed all of the book, but I strongly disagreed with the last quarter of the book. Allow me to review the books contents, before pointing out my disagreements. I should also say to those of you who are not initiated in philosophy, this book can serve as a good introduction, as Feser has a remarkable talent for being able to bring even the most difficult of concepts down to a level that the layperson can understand. Further, Feser is a very funny guy, and I found myself having to put down the book as I was literally laughing out loud.Feser’s book, as the title indicates, takes aim at the so called New Atheist movement, which began with Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith and culminated with Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. A central theme of the literature of the New Atheists is that religious people are blinded by faith (which they define as the will to believe something when there is no evidence to believe something), and religion needs to be eliminated in order for society to flourish. Feser’s argument is that the so-called war between science and religion is a myth, and that in truth the war is between two rival philosophical systems: classical teleological philosophy (the philosophy of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas) and mechanical philosophy (what we would today call naturalism and materialism). Feser argues that the latter is demonstrably false, and that the rational thing to do is to return to classical philosophy.Chapter one of the book sets up the basics tenets that Feser will defend. Chapter two consists of a retelling of the early history of western philosophy, beginning with Thales and giving particular emphasis to the metaphysical ideas of Plato and Aristotle, showing a particular deference to the latter. Chapter 3 is arguably the best chapter of the book, because this is where Feser shows that the New Atheists (Dawkins in particular) do not understand what they are talking about when it comes to the classical arguments for God’s existence, because they do not know the difference between metaphysics and empirical science. Feser does an excellent job in explaining very abstract arguments in this chapter and makes a powerful case for them that even a naturalist like myself cannot fail to be compelled by, even if I find them faulty in the end. At any rate, Feser shows that the arguments are worth taking seriously and that many people do not understand what the arguments are really trying to say. Chapter four continues with the Aristotelian trajectory, stating that if you accept the Aristotelian/Thomistic conception of reality then you also have to accept the natural law theory of morality. I found this part questionable, since Aristotle was not a natural law theorist, but Feser makes a good case for the theory, if one already accepts the metaphysics that he sets out. I definitely agree with him that our metaphysics precedes our ethics.As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, where I began to disagree with Feser was in the last quarter of his book, chapters five and six. Chapter five talks about how (according to Feser) modern philosophers abandoned rather than refuted Aristotelianism, and embraced mechanical philosophy and materialism. This is a bit of an overstatement, because Aristotelianism was not abandoned by modern philosophers; only Aristotelian causation and classification of science was abandoned. Other aspects of his philosophy (such as virtue ethics) are still defended by materialist philosophers. Aristotle sought to know what things in themselves were; or as he formulated it, what there end goal or purpose was. Modern philosophers saw this as a waste of time, and modern science looks at causal relations between objects; its nature or essence is not needed. So, while certain elements of Aristotle were abandoned, it is false to say it was abandoned completely. A good way to think about this is by comparing Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics. You can still explain gravity and velocity through Newtonian means, but that is not the complete picture of things. Newton was superseded, but not abandoned. The same can be said of Aristotle.A considerable amount of the book is focused on eliminative materialism, which Feser defines as a brand of materialism that eliminates the mind. This is false; eliminative materialism states that folk psychology is false, not that there is no such thing as the mind. I was extremely disappointed with Feser’s caricatures of materialism, because they are similar to Dawkins’ caricatures of God. Perhaps Feser should take his own advice from time to time.Overall, I highly recommend this book. Whether you are a theist, an agnostic, an atheist, a naturalist, a skeptic, or anything in between, you will enjoy the book. You will not agree with everything (as is the case with any book), but you will be better off for reading it and maybe question whether your own beliefs are built on as strong a foundation as you might have thought. A compelling, thoughtful read overall. Thank you Dr. Feser.

⭐This book was aimed at people like me who assume that belief in any form of God is a sign of wishful thinking, stupidity, ignorance or intellectual dishonest. In the modern world, God is regarded as the result of “faith alone”, that can be found by someone when they have an epiphany at the “bottom of a whiskey bottle” or they “hear voices”. God is not seen as the result of rigorous intellectual enquiry carried out by honest people over centuries.The author introduces us to this intellectual enquiry by removing faith and any mention of specific Gods and Holy books from any monotheistic world religion. The author goes all the way back to Aristotle, Aquinas and St Augustine. He explains the ideas of potentiality, actuality, form, matter, the 4 causes (material, formal , efficient and final).He explains how these relates to a number of arguments for God such as the “Unmoved Mover”, “the first Cause” and “the supreme intelligence”.He makes a robust defense of the idea that modern science has negated or invalidated ancient philosophies. The author maintains that modern philosophers have largely ignored ancient ideas. They have assumed that because Aristotle’s “physics” is wrong his metaphysics” is wrong. This hasn’t been proved to be the case yet. Yes, Aristotle may have had the wrong model for the solar system but this doesn’t mean his ideas about the underlying nature of reality is wrong. He shows that Aristotelian philosophy is in-fact totally compatible with modern science and in many cases removes many of the absurdities and contradictions of modern materialism. He also has great relish in explains how Dawkin “memes” and Darwinism itself logically leads back Aristotle’s ideas (“new Essentialism”, Nancy Cartwright)Understand this book has aided my understanding of humanity in general. The major monotheistic religions have billions of followers. Ignorantly dismissing them as “crazies” isn’t a sign of their intellectual failures. It’s my failure to acknowledge and understand how reality can be legitimately perceived in ways that aren’t based upon “materialism” alone.

⭐Superb book. Already lent it to friends. Quite ‘American’ in style, which may put-off some corners of British academia, but if this was to stop anyone reading it, it would be a pity. Well arranged arguments built from the ground up: a real education in scholastic and Aristotelian concepts and the resulting arguments for the existence of God. You may not believe in God by the end of the book: but if you don’t understand the Aristotelian basis for the scholastic proofs of God’s existence, it won’t be the author’s fault – and so for the atheist or agnostic honestly seeking the best of the theist (specifically Christian) arguments in defence of God’s existence, this book is the best modern book on the subject I have read. Highly recommended.

⭐This book is obnoxiously written, however it is a brilliant introduction to classical theist theology. Still a recommend.

⭐Great introduction into the western classical philosophy with a strong focus on the idea of the monotheistic god, natural law and immortal soul. The book gets emotional and insulting every now and then – but as Feser explains in the beginning, it is a reaction to even more emotional and insulting books of neo atheists and thus was meant to be written by this type of language.

⭐A brilliant book which explains the philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas and destroys the inane cult of materialism.

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