To be fair, I couldn't read either book all the way through. The one was like reading a book-length version of one of Lacewing's emotion-based rants and the other was just the same old stuff we hear form other atheists only a bit more informed—though still wholly ignorant as to what religion is really about.
Either the living God is, or he is not. Either the ultimate Reality is alive, conscious and intelligent, or it is not. If it is, then it is what we call God. If it is not, it must be some form of blind process, law, energy or substance entirely devoid of any meaning save that which man himself gives to it. Nobody has ever been able to suggest a reasonable alternative. To say that Reality is quite beyond thought, and therefore cannot be designated by such small, human terms as “conscious” and “intelligent” is only to say that God is immeasurably greater than man. And the theist will agree that he is infinitely greater. To argue that Reality is not a blind energy but a “living principle,” an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” is merely to play with words and indulge in terminological contradictions. A “living principle” means about as much as a black whiteness, and to speak of an “impersonal mind” is like talking about a circular square. It is the result, of course, of misunderstanding the word “personal” as used of God—as if it meant that God is an organism, form, or composite structure like man, something resembling Haeckel’s “gaseous vertebrate.” But the word is not used at all in that sense. From many points of view the term “personal” is badly chosen, but it means simply that God is alive in the fullest possible way.
If the ultimate Reality is indeed a blind energy or process devoid of inherent meaning, if it is merely an unconscious permutation and oscillation of waves, particles or what not, certain consequences follow. Human consciousness is obviously a part or an effect of this Reality. We are bound, then, to come to one of two conclusions. On the one hand, we shall have to say that the effect, consciousness, is a property lacking to its entire cause—in short, that something has come out of nothing. Or, on the other hand, we shall have to say that consciousness is a special form of unconsciousness—in short, that it is not really conscious. For the first of these two conclusions there neither is nor can be any serious argument; not even a rationalist would maintain the possibility of an effect without a sufficient cause. The main arguments against theism follow, in principle, the second conclusion—that the properties and qualities of human nature, consciousness, reason, meaning, and the like, do not constitute any new element or property over and above the natural and mechanical processes which cause them. Because Reality itself is a blind mechanism, so is man. Meaning, consciousness, and intelligence are purely arbitrary and relative terms given to certain highly complex mechanical structures.
But the argument dissolves itself. If consciousness and intelligence are forms of mechanism, the opinions and judgements of intelligence are products of mechanical (or statistical) necessity. This must apply to all opinions and judgements, for all are equally mere phenomena of the mechanical world-process. There can be no question of one judgement being more true than another, any more than there can be question of the phenomenon fish being more true than the phenomenon bird. But among these phenomena are the judgements of the rationalist, and to them he must apply the logic of his own reasoning. He must admit that they have no more claim to truth than the judgements of the theist, and that if rationalism is true it is very probably not true. This is intellectual suicide—the total destruction of thought—to such a degree that even the rationalist’s own concepts of mechanism, unconscious process, statistical necessity, and the like, also become purely arbitrary and meaningless terms. To hold such a view of the universe consistently, one must separate oneself, the observer, from it. But this cannot be done, for which reason a contemporary philosopher has complained that man’s subjective presence constitutes the greatest obstacle to philosophical knowledge!
Now this is pure nonsense. Man’s subjective presence is, of course, the very condition of knowledge both of the universe and of God. It is precisely the existence of man in the universe as a conscious, reflecting self that makes it logically necessary to believe in God. A universe containing self-conscious beings must have a cause sufficient to produce such beings, a cause which must at least have the property of self-consciousness. This property cannot simply “evolve” from protoplasm or stellar energy, because this would mean that more consciousness is the result of less consciousness and no consciousness. Evolution is, therefore, a transition from the potential to the actual, wherein the new powers and qualities constantly acquired are derived, not from the potential, but from a superior type of life which already possesses them. -- Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit
Watts is wrong about one thing: some rationalists do maintain the possibility of an effect without a sufficient cause. That's because their will-to-disbelieve, instead of being used as a defense against charlatans and fakery, involves a depth of skepticism that is indistinguishable from complete cowardice—fear of committing to something logically necessary but outside one's physical control.
What atheism protests most, methinks, and rightly so, is the “domesticated” god, the god of the televangelists and institutional religions; a god that is bounded by human ideas and beliefs. I can empathize with that. But Watts' argument doesn't say anything at all about God, only that God is. It suggests, however, something that is objectionable to both atheists and theists: that Meister Eckhart was spot-on when he said, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”
