I'm just about done with the book.
Smith opens by portraying atheism as a victim of fear and prejudice, which, true or not, is not an argument against God. It is, rather, a crude attempt to evoke sympathy and lay claim to the moral high ground.
In claiming the status of victim and by assigning all blame to others, a person can achieve moral superiority while simultaneously disowning any responsibility for one's behavior and its outcome. The victims 'merely' seek justice and fairness. If they become violent, it is only as a last resort, in self-defense. The victim stance is a powerful one. The victim is always morally right, neither responsible nor accountable, and forever entitled to sympathy.
― Ofer Zur, Ph.D
It is true, as Smith claims, that atheism is not necessarily the end product of a chain of reasoning. Theists hear all the time that atheism is the default position. Like every other other anti-theist book I've come across, Smith's book presumes God is an abstract and emotionally activated idea whose primary function is to explain the world and establish a moral order. “Theism must be learned and accepted,” Smith argues. “If it is never learned, it cannot be accepted—and man will remain implicitly atheistic.” If he was talking about popular religion, the kind you see on TV, he might be right to some extent, but by reducing theism to nothing more than a body of learnt ideas, by arguing that the mere belief in God makes that person a theist, Smith exhibits a superficial, even childish, understanding of religion.
The second chapter of Part One argues that atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief, but rather the absence of belief. Fine. I'll give atheism that much, but that lack of belief has logical ramifications he chooses to ignore.
Smith is befuddled by the ambiguity of “god” and perturbed by the virtually universal proclamation by theists that God is unknowable. He is miffed because theism does not yield to his belief that “philosophical discussions should be as clear and precise as possible, and to restrict the concept of god to a supernatural being is in the interest of clarity.” In other words, he is upset because wants to be in control of the discussion and theists won't comply. But such clarity as he wants has all the depth of an ink stain on Teflon and is more misleading than the vagueness of esoterica. As with every other atheist I've encountered, Smith's denial of God's existence is contingent on reducing God to in
idea, which, theists contend, is absurd. God is no more an idea than reality itself is an idea; it's a realization that precedes conceptualization. He is incapable of understanding is that the idea of God is no more God than the idea of reality is reality itself: that it's the conceptualization of a value-presence that is
realized, not the Presence itself.
Smith does not even understand the proper role of philosophy—at least as theists see it. Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal and cosmic values. Philosophy—authentic philosophy—grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations. The latter, however, comes in under Smith's radar. Human beings, and I'm assuming Smith is one of them, are not the rational creatures he assumes them to be: the rationalizing mind is like a mouse riding an emotional (and biological) elephant. The elephant goes where it wants and the mind rationalizes its movement afterward.
