Several years before Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens made an impact on the New York Times bestseller list with The God Delusion, Letter to a Christian Nation, and God Is Not Great, S.T. Joshi published the less famous God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong. I picked up a copy of this book today at Half Price Books for $5.98 (original list price $29.88; I love HPB) and have started reading through it. Joshi explains his plan for the book in the introduction:

My aim here is to subject the arguments of a wide variety of religious thinkers of the twentieth century to close scrutiny and analysis. (p. 21)

… it is possible that I have chosen what might be termed “lightweight” thinkers to dissect. And yet, I cannot see that more learned theologians have made any more cogent arguments on the points in question. Many of the writers I discuss have attracted a very wide following among the pious, and in most cases their religious arguments have not been subject to careful analysis, so I think I am justified in treating them at length and in detail. … I have found that a study of individual theists is more fruitful than a thematic study of individual theological issues. (p. 24)

Joshi’s focus on individual theists attracted me to the book, and I will take advantage of the book’s structure by skipping around to the chapters in whatever order interests me most.

At the outset, I must say that Joshi’s admission of possibly choosing “lightweight” thinkers rings true, for a few of the chapters, at least. The table of contents calls out the following theists:

• William James
• G.K. Chesterton and T.S. Eliot
• C.S. Lewis
• William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Stephen L. Carter
• Jerry Falwell
• Reynolds Price and Annie Dillard
• Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
• Neale Donald Walsch
• Guenter Lewy

Not one of these people—no matter how many pious followers they may have—can lay claim to actual solid academic credentials as a theologian, biblical scholar, or (except James) philosopher. Dawkins at least had the good sense, in The God Delusion, to take on Aquinas and Swinburne, even if he did an undergraduate-level job of it. If Joshi “cannot see that more learned theologians have made any more cogent arguments” than Jerry Falwell, Annie Dillard, or even C.S. Lewis, that does not bode well for Joshi’s ability to discern quality argumentation.

Incidentally, Joshi himself invites this criticism, not only by bringing it up himself (a classic application of the inoculation principle) but by claiming that “religion is so widespread because people in the mass are stupid” (p. 13). Joshi helpfully clarifies what he means:

When I declare that religion is so widespread because people in the mass are stupid, I assert that they lack the information needed to make a well-informed evaluation of the truth-claims of religion. Such an evaluation requires at least a surface knowledge of physics, biology, chemistry, geology, history (particularly the history of religions), psychology, anthropology, and philosophy (or, more generally, the ability to fashion reasoned arguments or to detect fallacious arguments). It is plain that the great majority of people can claim knowledge in no more than one or two of these disciplines, and most lack knowledge of them all. Indeed, so far as I can tell, only a single individual in the entire twentieth century did possess a passing acquaintance with all these fields: Bertrand Russell, whose antireligious views are too well known for citation.

I will go further and state that even if the mass of people had the concrete information (in science and philosophy) required for an assessment of the truth-claims of religion, they would be unable to process it; their brains simply cannot digest this kind of information. Even those who are intelligent or accomplished in other fields—authors, artists, composers, even some scientists and philosophers—are insufficiently acquainted with the many other intellectual disciplines relevant to the issue. … I will happily maintain that all the thinkers whom I berate so lustily in this book were or are intelligent or accomplished in various ways—C.S. Lewis as a literary critic, William F. Buckley as a political commentator, Reynolds Price as a novelist—but not one of them had the all-encompassing knowledge in fields that are vital to gauging the truth or falsity of religion. (p. 14)

As I see it, Joshi has painted himself into a bit of a corner here. We readers must either (a) believe that Joshi—whom the book jacket identifies as “a freelance writer and the author or editor of many books” and whose website describe him as “a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction” (I knew I’d heard his name before; he edited and annotated three volumes of Lovecraft’s fiction)—is the intellectual peer of Bertrand Russell, and has sufficient command of “physics, biology, chemistry, geology, history (particularly the history of religions), psychology, anthropology, and philosophy (or, more generally, the ability to fashion reasoned arguments or to detect fallacious arguments)” to “make a well-informed evaluation of the truth-claims of religion,” or (b) conclude that Joshi is stupid.

Now I realize that in the previous paragraph I set up a dichotomy where reality calls for a much more nuanced approach, but in doing so, I simply followed Joshi’s lead starting with the first paragraph of his book:

Either there is one god, multiple gods, or none. Either there is such a thing called the human soul or there isn’t, and if there is, it either can or cannot survive the death of the body. Either Jesus Christ, if he existed, was the son of God or he wasn’t. Either Mohammed, if he existed, was God’s prophet or he wasn’t. (p. 9)

In a certain way, Joshi’s sentences are correct—but for each of the sentences above, assessing the truth or falsity of the claim depends radically on the definitions of key terms. What I mean when I say “soul” may not be what Joshi means when he says “soul,” and neither may be what the apostle Paul meant by ψυχη or what any given psalmist meant by נפש.

I have not yet read past the introduction, so I have little more to say at present. I must confess that finding blatantly inaccurate statements in the introduction raises my skepticism a bit. Consider the following gem:

… the scriptures of each of the major religions of Europe and the Middle East (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) clearly and unequivocally declares that it and it alone possesses the truth about God and the universe. (p. 19)

A bunch of you stupid people reading this have undoubtedly thought of examples that belie the intellectually superior Mr. Joshi’s assertion. You might have thought of Paul’s quotations of or allusions to Menander and Epimenides. You may have thought of the Torah’s attribution of ancient Israel’s hierarchical court system to a Midianite, or you may have thought of the apparent dependence of Proverbs 22–24 on the Egyptian Instructions of Amenemope. You might even have thought more generally about the ancient Israelite and/or Judean viewpoint, reflected in the Tanakh, that great wisdom existed among the easterners; maybe you remembered the New Testament story of the patently non-Christian “magi” coming to visit baby Jesus. To be sure, some contributors to the Hebrew scriptures claimed quite boldly that Israel had a special, even unique, relationship with God, and some contributors to the New Testament claimed that no one could truly know God without going through Jesus as a mediator—but neither set of scriptures claims that either Judaism or Christianity has a monopoly on true knowledge of God and the universe. Indeed, if you are a little bit less stupid than Joshi thinks you are, you might have realized that since the creation of the biblical canons stands near the beginning of both Judaism (as distinct from ancient the Israelite and Judean religion[s]) and Christianity, neither set of scriptures makes any claims at all about either religion as such.

You’ll have to forgive any snarkiness in the previous paragraph as reflecting Joshi’s own tone in God’s Defenders:

It will quickly be observed that this book makes more than occasional use of satire, repartee, persiflage, and other rhetorical devices not generally found in sober discussions of religion. I make no apology for such usages. I am not seeking to ridicule an argument simply for the sake of ridiculing it but because I regard it as so plainly nonsensical that it deserves to be ridiculed. I find it rather disheartening that the long tradition of poking fun at religion … appears to have suffered a decline in our overly polite and deferential age … A healthy dose of laughter would do more to shatter the pretensions of many religious tenets than any amount of reasoned argument. (p. 22–23)

What’s good for the goose is, of course, good for the gander, and I pledge not to be overly polite or deferential (to Joshi, his heroes, or his targets) as I assess his book.