The Rhetoric of Albert Mohler

Some time ago here in the US, there was a television commercial for Jif peanut butter, featuring a mother making some peanut butter sandwiches for her children. The advertisement ends with a voice-over that says, "Choosy moms choose Jif."

This is a classic example of prejudicial language (more here), suggesting that any woman who doesn’t buy Jif peanut butter is an unfit mother.  It’s never explained why Jif is better than other brands, nor admitted that a mother might have good reasons for choosing something else besides Jif.

I was reminded of this by when I read the final paragraph of Albert Mohler's post about an essay in the WSJ on the subject of God and evolution. Mohler ends by saying that:

Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one. Careful readers of The Wall Street Journal will come to the same conclusion.

(my italics)

Mohler would lead us to believe that only careless readers would consider Armstrong’s theistic views legitimate. The savvy readers of the Wall Street Journal (and presumably, Mohler’s blog) obviously know better. 

He attempts to undermine her credibility right away, introducing her by saying:

She is a critic of "fundamentalism" on whom the media can depend for comment.

Here Mohler is suggesting that the reason the media can depend on her is because she's a critic of fundamentalism, as if she were a mere talking head.  Mohler doesn’t mention that Armstrong’s criticism of religious fundamentalism is taken seriously by the media because she’s a respected scholar of religious history and philosophy.

Notice also that Mohler puts the word “fundamentalism” in scare-quotes, as if there were no such thing, and only an unserious person would describe religion as such.  But on we must go.

Armstrong is advocating a form of theistic instrumentalism, which has a long pedigree (as she herself explains). Models are judged by their utility, instead of by their correspondence to objective reality (which is what theistic realists advocate).  It is a position that has been famously articulated by British theologian Don Cupitt. (More info here.  I learned about Don Cupitt and theistic instrumentalism by reading the book reviewed here.)

Note that Dawkins is saying what theists will say about you if you tell them that God's existence is not important:

Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

Mohler responds by doing exactly what Dawkins predicted he would do: call Armstrong an atheist.  He doesn't attempt to refute Armstrong's argument (well, not directly); he simply calls it "superficial" and "theologically reckless" (whatever that means). Nor does he bother justifying his own theistic philosophy - its rightness is simply assumed. You would think that Mohler would use this opportunity show how his own religious philosophy resolves certain theological problems that Armstrong’s does not, but he doesn't do that. Instead all he does is accuse her of being an atheist, just like Richard Dawkins!

Mohler's argument is that if you accept Armstrong's theistic views, then this bad thing will happen to you (you'll be an atheist, because Richard Dawkins says so). Therefore Armstrong's theistic views are false (and, by extension, Mohler's own theistic views must be true). But this is a logical fallacy, known as the appeal to consequences (more here and here).