The Atheist's Primer is a revised abridgement for the general reader of the author's student-edition work The Atheist's Creed (2010). It opens with an interesting ‘Atheist's Creed’, consisting of six creedal statements, and offers both a potted history of atheism – from Ancient Greece to today – and jargon-free analysis of classic philosophical arguments for atheism. Palmer argues that the focus on Darwin, and Science and Religion issues in New Atheism, has eclipsed attention to properly philosophical arguments for atheism, although these have constituted the ‘principal landmarks in the history of atheism’ (p. 10). He thinks in particular that the omission of Nietzsche in contemporary atheist polemic is glaring: he is, he claims, ‘perhaps the most potent force within the whole arsenal of continental atheism’ (p. 11).
Palmer mentions as the ‘heavyweights’ of the atheistic tradition Feuerbach, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and Sartre, alongside contemporaries like Ernest Nagel, Richard Dawkins, Michael Martin, and Daniel Dennett. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this work is the author's focus on Ricoeur's ‘masters of suspicion’ (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) in his telling of the history, and his high estimation of their importance for contemporary philosophical defences of atheism, as well as his appeal to recent continental atheistic defences (e.g. Onfray) as a balance to the treatments of Anglo-American New Atheists.
In chapter 1, ‘The meaning of atheism’, Palmer helpfully runs through some important definitional issues which need to be addressed in any work of this kind, clarifying that the Atheist's Primer is an exercise in positive atheism rather than merely in negative atheism. Chapter 2, ‘The origins of atheism’, traces the roots of western philosophical atheism to classical Greek philosophy, which reappeared after the middle ages in figures like Bruno and Vanini. Palmer gives a central place to Hume, ‘the greatest philosopher ever to write in English’ (p. 32), in his telling of the history of atheism, as the heir, he argues, to the sceptical teachings of classical antiquity.
In chapter 3, ‘Two arguments for God's existence: an atheistic critique’, Palmer moves on to consider two philosophical arguments for theism – from cause and design – and then proceeds to examine their refutations. At times the author seems a bit brief with the theistic arguments, ignoring quite well-known contemporary theistic counterarguments to their famous critiques (for instance, the ontological argument is dismissed cursorily by appeal to Kant). He outlines the cosmological and design arguments, and then their critiques (focusing mainly on Hume – although acknowledging that Hume is not an atheist in the strict sense).
Hume is a central authority for Palmer – ‘the criticisms that Hume now advances cannot be overestimated and for many philosophers they remain decisive’ (p. 45) – and he devotes a fair amount of space to running through the Humean arguments, finally presenting Hume's naturalistic speculations about design as supplemented and confirmed by Darwin. He also briefly – although somewhat too briefly – touches on the contemporary anthropic teleological argument and its critique.
In chapter 4, ‘The problem of evil’, Palmer discusses historically salient theodicies, focusing in particular on Hume's critique of Leibniz's theodicy argument. He then turns to formulations of the logical (or deductive) argument from evil, and discusses at length Mackie's concession that Plantinga refuted it by appeal to the free-will defence. While also conceding this, Palmer endorses Mackie's response that God is still guilty of gross negligence. He also considers formulations of the evidential (or inductive) argument from evil, offering a historical survey of (British) historical precedents (Shelley, Mill, etc.) to Rowe's contemporary defence of the position. Following that, he examines what he calls the ‘second great theodicy’ (after the free-will defence), namely, the ‘Argument from soul-making’, as espoused in the contemporary context by John Hick. Palmer runs through Hick's exposition of the position, and then critiques it, homing in on cases of ‘dysteleological’ suffering. He complains that Hick ultimately retreats into mystery when faced with meaningless suffering, and concludes that the problem of evil ‘remains for many the decisive and unanswerable objection to the existence of God’ (p. 75).
In chapter 5, ‘Morality and religion’, Palmer directs his attention to criticisms of the moral argument for God's existence, which he regards as the weakest theistic argument. He surveys alternatives to God for generating absolute moral laws, briefly examines the Euthyphro dilemma, and looks at objections to divine command theory, as well as the problem of hell and the wickedness, as he argues, of Pascal's wager.
He then turns in a long fourth section to Nietzsche's critique of religious morality (‘no attack upon Christian ethics can equal it’, p. 88). Here Palmer lends his support to Ricoeur's account of the ‘philosophers of suspicion’ and their importance. However, his enthusiasm for Nietzsche seems a bit unexpected given his apparent support in the immediately preceding pages for something like Kai Nielsen's humanistic world-view, according to which moral atheists, even in the absence of an overall purpose to life, can have ambitions to ‘reduce human pain and suffering and to foster happiness, love, comradeship and fraternity’, which are ‘commitments invariably shared by the believer’ (p. 87).
Palmer himself seems to claim that Christian and secular morality overlap in content, so the invocation of Nietzsche's ‘revaluation of all values’ here comes as something of a surprise. What would Nielsen make of the Nietzschean affirmation of ‘noble morality’ (Palmer seems to offer quite an anodyne account of it)? Palmer clearly likes it for its debunking potential, but it would have been helpful if he had spelled out how his apparent commitment to a kind of humanism – as stated, for instance, in the fourth creedal statement in his ‘Atheist's Creed’ – fits together with Nietzscheanism, even if, as he rightly states, albeit briefly, the equation of Nietzscheanism with Nazism is simplistic (pp. 97–98). Also, in contrast to his treatment of Freud and Marx in chapter 7, Palmer does not seem to look in a similarly nuanced way at Nietzsche's account of the origins of Judaeo-Christian morality. Whereas his later endorsement of Marxist and Freudian accounts is carefully hedged around with qualifications and concessions about their theoretical and empirical shortcomings, his endorsement of Nietzsche's genealogy seems relatively unqualified.
In chapter 6, ‘Miracles’, Palmer takes a sceptical look at some putative miracle cases (the shroud of Turin, Lourdes, etc.), and discusses the scepticism even of prominent theologians about miracles (Tillich, Schleiermacher, Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss, Ritschl, von Harnack, Bultmann). He then moves on, in a second and third section, to consider atheist arguments for the impossibility, and improbability, of miracles. In the former case, he looks at McKinnon's updated version of Spinoza's argument, and also surveys the historical arguments of deists, and especially Thomas Paine. Again, appeal is made to Hume – his case for their improbability – to rescue difficulties with the impossibility argument against miracles. He also briefly considers Hick's case for religious pluralism as a way of meeting Hume's point about the relativity of miracle claims in different religions, but maintains that Hick's case must be dismissed, pointing to irreconcilable differences between the religions.
In the final, seventh chapter, ‘The motivations of belief’, Palmer considers religious experience, but points out the diversity of conversion experiences (including conversions to dangerous sects), which casts doubt, he argues, on their veracity, since they cannot be used to support incompatible religious claims. Again, Hume does important work for him here. Palmer identifies these ‘subjective elements’ (i.e. putative religious experiences) as the ‘greatest obstacle’ to atheism (p. 127). Also, through a discussion of James, Jung (and, briefly, Tillich), he argues that the argument from beneficial effects fails, because a false belief could also bring good moral benefits.
Turning to consider debunking explanations, Palmer writes that ‘at this point … atheism flexes its muscles as never before’ (p. 130). But here the author, I think, misses an opportunity: rather than considering the latest waves of debunking arguments based on the new bio-psychological explanations of religion (as exemplified by figures such as Atran, Boyer, Dawkins, and Dennett) – these are briefly mentioned but bracketed on page 158 – he turns instead to Marx and Freud.
This is a choice which makes sense in terms of the author's stated interest in shifting the centre of gravity of the current atheist–theist debates away from its current bio-psychological focus. However, the ‘wishful thinking’ theories have recently been critiqued by figures like Boyer, as at best only contributing a small part in the total explanation of the origins of religious belief and behaviour. Somewhat surprisingly, Palmer – in a perhaps somewhat overlong explanation of Marxism – champions Marx's historical materialism as well as the substructure–superstructure analysis and the Marxist diagnosis of religion as a mechanism of oppression. But it is not made clear, for instance, how historical materialism would fit with his apparent endorsement elsewhere of contemporary atheists who endorse evolutionary naturalism. Strikingly, after making such a strong pitch for the Marxist critique of religion as ideology, he goes on to note its questionableness, conceding that religion is not always on the side of oppression, but also liberation. Palmer's simultaneous praise of Marxist explanation and his admission of its serious shortcomings felt at times a bit disorienting, and might have benefited from some further clarification.
In the case of Freud, he puts significant theoretical weight on the speculations about religion in Totem and Taboo, the theory of the Oedipus complex, etc. Palmer treats psychoanalysis as ‘empirical’ and ‘scientific’ (pp. 152–153). But again, in the immediately following pages, he admits the theoretical weaknesses of the historical and anthropological claims of Freudian psychoanalysis, and some further clarification about why this does not significantly compromise his case might also have been helpful here. There is also some interesting brief reflection in this chapter on the possible value of continental figures like Lacan and Ricoeur for constructing contemporary philosophical defences of atheism.
In his conclusion, Palmer insists on the importance of rejecting religion on moral, and not just metaphysical, grounds, since religion ‘misdirects human resources away from the primary duty of improving the human lot’ (p. 158). He ends on an agnostic note: it is not clear whether the optimist or pessimist atheist is right about human nature. But returning to Nietzsche, he favours optimism: pessimism is not the appropriate mental attitude to the human condition, but rather ‘joyous acceptance of what this all-too-brief life offers’ (p. 159). Echoing Kai Nielsen, he states that even where there is no absolute purpose to life, purposes can be achieved in individual lives, and he finally concurs with Camus's words: ‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy’ (p. 160).
A common thread in Palmer's treatment is his indebtedness to Ricoeur's analysis of the ‘masters of suspicion’, and his concern to alert the Anglo-American reader to continental as well as analytic philosophical resources in the tradition of avowed philosophical atheism. Rather than just making the case for their salience in any adequate history of atheism, Palmer seems to want to recommend figures like Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche to contemporary Anglo-American atheist readers as of contemporary theoretical value for the philosophical defence of atheism. At this point many atheists might want to demur. But Palmer's book is a refreshing, jargon-free take on the history of atheism which, spanning the analytic–continental divide, covers a very broad range of philosophical arguments putatively warranting atheism, and it can be recommended to the general reader as a lively and accessible introduction to philosophical atheism.
