Philip Kitcher

LIFE AFTER FAITH by Philip Kitcher provides a thoughtful and well-researched examination of how secularism can respond to the challenges of life.

A professor of philosophy, Kitcher uses his knowledge of both religion and secularism to address an imagined critic. Chapter by chapter he skillfully engages the reader in increasingly deeper discussions of the issues and arguments surrounding the creation and justification of a meaningful life without religion. His frank and well-articulated show more discussion provides a positive alternative to society’s historic reliance on religion. Each chapter focuses on commonly asked questions from issues associated with mortality to the meaning in life.

The author’s conversational writing style make even the most complex discussions enjoyable to read and easy to comprehend. Kitcher acknowledges the purposes that religions have traditionally served and is concerned that contemporary atheists ignore the role of religion in the lives of many humans. He skillfully explains why people are draw to religion and continue to practice rituals instilled in childhood throughout their lives. Pointing out strategies religious people use to defend their religion, he provides persuasive arguments for why religion isn’t necessary in today’s society. Kutcher states that “faith is belief that outruns the evidence available to the believer.”

The author stresses that secularists can’t rule out the possibility that new evidence may be presented because throughout history humans continue to build knowledge. He notes that “soft atheism acknowledges the bare possibility of the transcendent, but regards the present assertion of any such aspect of reality as entirely unwarranted.”

The book features discussions on a wide range of issues but places emphasis on the relationship between ethics and religion noting that the secular view of ethics allows for new information and change. Rather than putting religion in a negative light, the author prefers to focus on the positive. He notes that people like Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesus, and Buddha have all sparked thinking about important topics and provided a framework for developing arguments outside their connections to particular movements or religions. The author notes that these people can be “recast as initiators of a thoroughly secular conversation.”

Kitcher’s innovative approach is best reflected in his discussion of how humans possess a mixture of factual beliefs and value judgements. He stresses that humans are impacted by their feelings. From the varied perspectives of early abolitionists to the impact of Dicken’s works on Victorian reader’s views on poverty, the author does an outstanding job providing detailed examples from history to help readers understand the connection between facts and feelings. He stresses that emotions often associated with religion such as joy, gratitude, respect, and awe can all be connected to ethical traditions that don’t require religion. Kitcher states that “my version of secularism places humanity at the center of value. It does not need a detour through some dim and remote transcendent. Nor does it see vivid vindication of human worth in supposing, whether literally or metaphorically, that we are children or servants of God. My naturalism conceives us as both creators and loci of value.”

The author does an extraordinary job addressing abstract concepts in an accessible way. Using easy to understand examples, Kitcher walks the reader through each chapter laying out his arguments. However, this isn’t a book for beginners. Those without a background in the work of Hume, Kant, and others may momentarily feel lost. However those with a limited background in philosophy will be able to follow the author’s clear arguments and well-organized narrative. A chapter by chapter list of sources provides the reader with background information. In many cases, additional explanations are also provided.

Throughout the book, Kitcher focuses on ways that secular humanists can have a fulfilling life without religion. For those readers just beginning to let go of their religion, this book may be very useful in helping them make the transition to a meaningful life without religion.

For happy secular humanists like this reviewer, the book provides useful suggestions for talking with religious friends about the secular humanist perspective on life. By employing cases from literature, mathematics, and other fields, readers can easily identify examples that connect with their backgrounds and philosophies. I highly recommend this innovative approach to secular humanism.

ARC NetGalley show less

On John Stuart Mill by Philip Kitcher is a wonderful reading of Mill's larger body of work than many readers usually get.

Most of us might have been introduced to Mill through perhaps one essay, or parts of an essay, within a very specific context. While this doesn't necessarily give us the wrong impression of his thinking it does give us a very narrow window into it. Combine that with how his progressive, for the time, ideas have become more commonly accepted, we can easily dismiss him as no show more longer relevant. This volume corrects that idea through presenting both a wider assessment and a far more nuanced one than we often get.

I found this to be both an enjoyable read and one that made me go back and reread what I had read and read for the first time much I had missed. Kitcher doesn't try to make a case for Mill being unproblematic or always entirely "correct" in his thinking. But he does suggest we read Mill from a 21st century perspective while also remembering the context of the time in which he was writing. This allows us to critique without dismissing, and also gives us the opportunity to understand his thought in a wider context.

Even when Kitcher is placing Mill's writing in conversation with the other thinkers of his time he does so with enough explanation of those others than the reader doesn't need to be well-versed in Bentham, Kant, or even Coleridge. This makes the book accessible for any interested readership. This is important because part of this reading of Mill is putting his ideas in conversation with today's issues. In this, I think Kitcher succeeds very well.

I would recommend this for anyone at all interested in philosophy as well as anyone seeking new ways to think about the issues we face today. Mill may not give us answers but he can offer us new ways to approach the problems.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

In a conversational style, Mr. Kitcher lays out a reasonable position for a non-dogmatic atheism. The two problems he sees with a dogmatic religious position are the symmetry problem and the problem of identifying value. The symmetry problem arises when one takes a position based on faith. The problem of value arises when one asks the question of who decides what the correct values are. Even if you say the bible has the correct values, you have to decide who provides the correct show more interpretation. In either case, you are thrown back on human fallibility.

In either case, evidence becomes irrelevant, all faith positions become epistemologically equivalent, and you must appeal to a non-faith based criterion to adjudicate between them. In the end, Kitcher says, no matter how you slice it, humans...real living breathing humans decide what is valuable and what counts as important. The human community has decided that is not OK to exterminate whole classes of human beings from the planet based on their ethnicity, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or beliefs...haven't we?

Two things I wished he had addressed more strongly is the stunted lives religious people live. The presumption is always that religious people have more fulfilling lives. I have found in practice, the opposite.
Secondly, I wish he had addressed more strongly the fact that the source of values is separate from the legitimation of values. This is analogous to Popper's distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.

That one finds one's values from the Hebrew bible, Christian bible, Muslim bible or satanic bible is largely irrelevant from the issue of the legitimation of those values.

Satan can speak truths and lies...how does one discern? This is the crux of the Islamic problem of the satanic verses of the Koran.

It is a book well worth reading if you have any interest in these issues. show less

I just finished this book last evening. It is an easy read being a synoptic treatment of the evidence supporting darwinism and the modern intelligent design criticisms. Kitcher takes us through the historical discoveries that undermined the biblical creation stories. For example, the earth is clearly much older than the bible indicates. There is no evidence for a worldwide Noah's flood. The evidence was so overwhelming that christian scholars, such as the Reverend Adam Sedgewick whom Kitcher show more quotes, had to admit that the biblical view was wrong. Biblical literalism was untenable after this point.

Kitcher takes ID seriously but ultimately finds that it is just the argument from design. ID has much to say against natural selection, but nothing positive to say about an alternative process. It is dead science having been buried long ago.

I was suprised by some other reviewers mentioning the 'Jesus Seminar'. Kitcher does not base anything on this group. In fact, they are not even in the index. They are only mentioned in two places. One, were he quotes their opinion on the effect of Mark's Ecce Homo scene where Pilate presents jesus to the mob. Let me quote it. "That scene, although the product of Mark's vivid imagination, has wrought untold and untellable tragedy in the history of the relation of Christians to Jews. There is no black deep enough to symbolize the black mark this fiction has etched in Christian history."( page 100 ). He quotes this where he is discussing the 'sitz im leben' of the gospels' composition. The other place is when Kitcher refers back to this quote on page 162. Kitcher makes no use of them for anything. He relies instead on older scholars such as Wellhausen and others who did the early work on figuring out how the bible was written. In fact, by 19th and early 20th century standards of biblical criticism, the Jesus Seminar is a very conservative group. A critical scholar like Joachim Jeremias ( not mentioned by Kitcher ) would say that the 'abba' saying by jesus is the only thing we can trace back to jesus with any confidence. Everything else he said or taught can be found in non-biblical sources.

Of course, as the old saying goes, you can't argue someone out of something that they weren't argued into. Creationists don't believe what they do for intellectual reasons but for emotional reasons. Kitcher ends up discussing what it might mean to be a christian if you do take the book seriously. It is what I call a 'post-critical naivete'. One knows that the stories are just that. In the community of fellow christians, one finds support, hope and a sense of transcendence.

If you want a short book dealing with these issues then this is your book.

There is no lack of books on this topic, but for those wanting to dig deeper into the critical scholarship of the bible you might want to consider some of the following books.

Who Wrote the Bible, Richard Friedman

The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, Werner Kummel

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman

Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman

The Historical Jesus Question: The Challenge of History to Religious Authority, Gregory Dawes

And the classic of all classics

The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer show less