Grayling Agreed with Knowlton

As I was reading A. C. Grayling's book, The God Argument, a while back, I wondered how what I was reading would look to Dr. Charles Knowlton, a “free enquirer” who lived and died nearly two centuries ago. I thought I’d compare some parts of Grayling’s arguments for humanist ethics that jumped out at me, to Knowlton’s thoughts on the same questions. I wasn't surprised by how closely they agreed, but I think it's worth discussing the fact that the humanist approach Grayling took has roots not only in the ancient world, but in the recent history of freethought.

One of the first statements Grayling made at the outset of Chapter One was that "the major reason for the continuance of religious belief in a world which might otherwise have long moved beyond it, is indoctrination of children before they reach the age of reason, together with all or some combination of social pressure to conform, social reinforcement of religious institutions and traditions, emotion, and (it has to be said) ignorance – of science, of psychology, of history in general, and of the history and actual doctrines of religions themselves" (p. 13).    

Knowlton’s way of expressing this was remarkably similar:

There are many reasons why the majority may be in error. From their cradles they may have been trained in error—so thoroughly trained thus, that they have not even that degree of doubt which leads to enquiry. Indeed, they may have been taught to believe that it would be wrong in them to doubt, and is praiseworthy in them to refrain from enquiry—that he is the best boy who eats the porridge messed out to him and holds his tongue. It may be that there is a class of men, generation after generation, who have an interest in inculcating opinions which are in fact erroneous, and to make it part of their business to spay and castrate, as it were, the infant minds throughout the land, before they arrive at the age of reason, that they may be tame and humble followers throughout their lives! (1845, Address of Dr. Charles Knowlton Before the Friends of Mental Liberty at Greenfield, Mass., And Constitution of the United Liberals of Franklin County, Mass.)

Grayling discussed the unreality of religious language, saying the formulas recited by religious apologists depend on a “distinction between a capacity to imagine or fantasize something and the capacity to conceive of it—that is, form a coherent concept of it.” As a result, Grayling said, “we can say things (and imagine that we sort of understand them) that do not express coherent thoughts” (p. 20). Knowlton talked about the same phenomenon in his debate with Origen Bacheler, claiming Bacheler’s words about God carried no understandable meaning because “we can form no conception of that which is altogether different from any thing that has ever acted upon either of our five senses, and hence we can form no conception of the eternal existence of matter, but we can also form no conception of the eternal existence of a something else called God” (1838, Speech of Dr. Charles Knowlton in Support of Materialism Against the Argument of Origen Bacheler, the Great Goliah and Champion of the Cross, in 1836).

Grayling explained and refuted the most popular arguments used by religious apologists (Knowlton called them “religionists”) to prove the existence of their deity.  The most common of these is the argument from design, which Grayling mentioned had its most famous expression in William Paley’s 1802 book, Natural Theology.   Knowlton refuted this argument in his 1836 debate with Bacheler in a way that suggested he was familiar with Paley’s argument (which leaned heavily on both the watchmaker story and the formation of the eye), saying, “Because a house must have had a builder it by no means follows that matter must have had a maker. Nor can I see any analogy between the construction of a watch, for instance, and the growing of an eye. In the case of the watch, the several parts are first made separately and then put together; but the eye grows, and even in its own parts, its own vessels, assists in the progress of its growth.” Grayling mentioned that Paley was ignorant of modern biology. So was Knowlton, but he still saw the flaw in equating mechanical design with organic growth.

While discussing the ontological argument for a deity, which tries to “prove” its claim from a priori assertions, Grayling mentioned this approach has been repurposed by contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who claims everyone has a “sensus divinitatis,” an intuitive knowledge of (Plantinga's idea of) the deity. Knowlton saw through the ethnocentrism of this claim in 1833, remarking sarcastically in a letter he wrote from prison regarding William Ellery Channing’s Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion: “What a pity, when they were about it, the miracles had not been such as to cause the supernatural light, so much needed, to extend to more than one fifth of the human family in the space of eighteen hundred years” (March 17, 1833 The Boston Investigator). Knowlton also took the opportunity to refute Channing’s argument for miracles in this letter from the Cambridge jail, saying “I admit that an acquaintance of mine whom I believe to be honest may satisfy me that he has a conviction of having witnessed a miraculous event; but when a story is handed down to us by nobody knows who, but probably interested persons, that eighteen hundred years ago one or more men witnessed a miraculous event, the case is very materially altered.” The question isn’t about the violation of natural laws at all, Knowlton said.  It’s about testimony.  

In the second half of the book, Grayling proposed the humanist position as a solution to the problems caused by supernaturally-based morality. The difference between the morality of religion and the ethics of humanism, Grayling said, is that humanism proceeds from a study of the world and of human nature. “For there are objective facts,” he said, “about human needs and interests that constrain any possible morality” (p. 187). In an 1833 speech, Knowlton remarked, “is it not strange that a class of men should have so long presumed to tell us how we are made, what sort of things we are, and what will become of us when we are dead, when they have never made man their study? A knowledge of man, as an animal, ought to lie as a foundation upon which all systems of morality, and all laws relating to the moral conduct of individuals, be founded” (1833, Two Remarkable Lectures Delivered in Boston By Dr. C. Knowlton on the Day of His Leaving the Jail at East Cambridge, March 31, 1833, Where He Had Been Imprisoned For Publishing A Book). Finally, the ethics and the moral code proposed by Grayling are nearly identical to those of Knowlton and his fellow free enquirers.