Atheist bus slogans. Pathetic?

Canto: In the July/August 2009 issue of Philosophy Now, Charles Taylor was interviewed by Chris Bloor, a former student of his. It was a pretty soft interview, and generally unsatisfying, but I was intrigued by a particular ‘unguarded moment’, which I found particularly revealing. Here is the exchange:

Bloor: I was thinking about your recent book A Secular Age this morning and a bus passed by with an atheist [or more correctly, agnostic] slogan ‘There’s probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

Taylor:  I heard about that! It’s hilariously funny. It’s very odd, isn’t it? I’m trying to figure out why this is happening in our time. This new phenomena is puzzling – atheists that want to spread the ‘gospel’, and are sometimes very angry. I think it may be rather like the response of certain bishops to Darwin in the 19^th century. The bishops had a sense that the world was going in a certain direction – more and more conversion, and so on – and then they find they’re suddenly upset in their expectation and they get very rattled and very angry. Similarly, we’re seeing this now among the secularising intelligentsia – liberals who felt that the world was going in a certain direction, that it was all going according to plan  - and then when it seems not to be, they get rattled. So you get these rather pathetic phenomena. Putting things on buses as though that’s going to make people somehow change their view about God, the universe, the meaning of life and so on. A bus slogan! It’s not likely to trigger something very fundamental in anybody.

Jacinta: Well, where do we begin? At the beginning I suppose. When Taylor says he thinks it’s hilariously funny, I suspect it’s because he’s rattled, and so the best way to respond is to be contemptuous. To pretend it’s only to be laughed at. Next he claims to be puzzled – as if the rise of a response to increasingly in your face avowals of belief is more odd than the phenomenon it's responding to! Of course non-believers are responding with increasing irritation to the endless slogans they themselves are being confronted with on a daily basis, on car rear windows and bumper bars, on letterboxes and t-shirts, on church billboards, sometimes in glorious neon. Jesus saves, Yes Jesus loves me [and you too], Jesus is the answer, What would Jesus think, Honk if you love Jesus, Not perfect, just forgiven, etc. The word for this phenomenon is exactly the one Taylor used for the response to it. It’s pathetic.

Canto: Bravo, Jass, but you’ve stolen my thunder. To continue the analysis, Taylor speaks about atheists ‘spreading the gospel’ and being very angry. Why though, does Taylor jump from a perfectly calm and reasonable bus slogan to atheist anger? And also to an atheist ‘gospel’? Note the bus slogan has the word ‘probably’ in it – which prompted Bloor to remark, rightly, that it was an agnostic slogan.  You won’t get too many religious slogans with the word ‘probably’ in them. In fact, let’s face it, you’ll never get any, ever. Yet all this is lost on Taylor, who only sees the spread of ‘gospel’ and lots of anger, which is surely his own projection.

Jacinta:  And you know, what follows is what at first seems a slightly more insightful line of thought, where Taylor reflects on the idea that atheists thought they were winning, but the rise of creationism, fundamentalism and the like set them back on their heels, and now they’re angry and disappointed that their takeover of the world might be delayed or even abandoned. Taylor compares this to the rise of evolutionary theory, when the bishops got angry because they thought they were going to take over the world and convert everyone, but along came evolutionary theory to spoil it all. In other words, Taylor is, rather carelessly, putting evolution on the same footing as fundamentalism. But, though, Taylor likes to emphasize anger, the sense of outrage, and the often ludicrous arguments of the bishops can hardly be compared with the books being put out by the so-called new atheists. Are there any writings by the nineteenth century anti-evolution  bishops that could stand up to scrutiny today? The answer is no; they were simply fulminating, they didn’t have any decent arguments. By contrast, the new atheists do have good arguments. Some are better than others, no doubt, but none of these works are simply fulminations – even though they have plenty to fulminate against. One shouldn’t forget that the bishops were rising against a scientific theory that has since become the cornerstone of modern biology. The ‘new atheists’ are rising against the murderous and irrational nature of fundamentalism, and the threat that ‘creationism’ poses to a deeper and more open understanding of our world. And they’re making valid points about the dogmatism and the anti-intellectualism of all religious belief, and expressing a hope that we can collectively rise above this sort of stuff. There’s really no comparison, Charles Taylor. Check.

Canto:  Yes, and to get back to the atheist/agnostic bus slogan, Taylor seems quite miffed, and threatened by it. That’s why he says he finds it hilarious. He’s expressing his contempt. But let me repeat his little hissy fit about the bus slogan, and I’ll ask you to imagine that he’s talking about Christian slogans, the slogans we’re all so familiar with.

So you get these rather pathetic phenomena. Putting things on buses as though that’s going to make people somehow change their view about God, the universe, the meaning of life and so on. A bus slogan! It’s not likely to trigger something very fundamental in anybody.

Spot on, Chaz, you’re right – these mind-numbingly fatuous Christian slogans won’t change anyone’s mind about the fundamental issues, will they?  Maybe they just use them to remind everyone that, hey, we’re god-botherers, we’re in your face and we’re not going away. And maybe atheists are playing a bit of tit for tat. But you know there’s an imbalance here. I mean, how many atheist slogans are there by comparison to Christian slogans? One in ten? Hardly. One in a hundred? Come now. One in a thousand? Well that’s getting closer, but it’s still not close. And you know that. You really need to think things through a bit, mate.

the historical jesus, part one

Canto: It's December 25, the day when Christian propaganda comes to the boil. Today I was outraged and infuriated by a presentation on Channel 7 called 'The Christ Files', dubbed 'a search for the real Jesus'. Familiar territory? Of course - the Jesus Seminar, and its successor, the Jesus Project, has been engaging in this task for many years now. The difference is that the creators of 'The Christ Files' are far more interested in propaganda than research.
Jacinta: Yes, I noticed that this show was given a 'G' rating. Anything by the Jesus Project would probably be rated MA, as confronting the innocent with disturbing truths about the bullshit being fed to them, and the children before them, for centuries. But for a more accessible argument for the likely non-existence of Jesus, try this site. The grammar is often execrable, and the language a bit tortuous, but it provides a good summary and starting point. But let's have some fun with The Christ Files.
Canto: Well, I couldn't bear to watch more than five minutes of the TV program, but I'm trying to recover a certain scholarly distance. The website claims that it is 'neither a work of fanciful scepticism nor of Christian propaganda'. As for the 'fanciful scepticism' dismissal, scepticism about Jesus is based on plenty of real problems. Firstly, if Jesus existed and drew all the crowds mentioned in the gospels, why is there not a single contemporary comment about him outside the gospels? Not even Philo Judaeus, a precise contemporary of Jesus who wrote extensively about Judaeism in Jerusalem at the time, makes any mention of this figure, presented as so towering in the gospels. There is no contemporary evidence of Jesus whatsoever. That's not fanciful scepticism, that's fact. Secondly, all of the more outlandish claims for Jesus link him to mythical figures of the past, such as Horus, Mithras and Hercules. There is more evidence that the Jesus persona was cobbled together from earlier myths than that he actually existed. There is no evidence, for example, of his trial or execution. And as for the 'Christian propaganda' denial, it so happens that Dr John Dickson, the author of The Christ Files, is the 'Director of the Centre for Public Christianity', somewhere in Australia. You could surely not get a more vested interest than that. If I was writing a satire on some dude pushing his religious barrow while claiming to be objective, I couldn't think of a more worthy public title for him than that.
Jacinta: Actually we'd be wary of using such a title, people would think we were being too heavy-handed.
Canto: Absolutely. Well our exuberant narrator and author, John Dickson, in a series of videos available online, tries to convince us of the authenticity of Jesus. First he tells us that two billion people believe in him, as if that counts for something.
Jacinta: Far less than two billion people believe in the theory of evolution. Must be a crock.
Canto: Yes, it's about evidence, not a popularity contest. He then goes on to talk about the message of Jesus and how it has transformed individual lives and modern culture. But just what is this message? Is there any coherent take home message from the gospels? I think not, and our companion at the new ussr has been examining the gospels painstakingly to see if he can uncover some clear moral message, but without much luck.

ending with an overview

scarily irrepressible vitality

Jacinta: It raises the question of what would constitute evidence for the virgin birth.
Canto: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'd want DNA evidence. Or rather, evidence of no DNA, since clearly the god that did it doesn't have any DNA.
Jacinta: Yes, I was thinking there might be DNA from Mary's side, but then that would make Jesus only a demi-god, and what a theological problem that would make.
Canto: The Arrian heresy would return with a vengeance.
Jacinta: Of course this question is allied to the larger one. What would constitute evidence for the existence of a deity?
Canto: Well, scientists tend to rule out supernatural claims from the outset. Russell Berg, a microbiologist, has written a little essay in a recent issue of Philosophy Now, in which he provides 'fifteen criteria  for scientificness'. His very first criterion is 'Does the theory use natural explanations?' Here is his rationale:

Thales of Miletus, the first recorded natural philosopher, believed that natural events have natural explanations, not divine. This rejection of explanations invoking gods or spirits led to the need for natural explanations and the development of the scientific method. Untestable supernatural explanations act as stoppers which prevent or retard further enquiry or research.

 Jacinta: Well hallelujah to that, though I think Berg has it the wrong way round. It was the need for reliable, consistent, testable explanations, and our gradual uncovering of these explanations, that began to undermine the need for invoking gods and spirits. But let's wrap up our treatment of this Williams essay. Does Williams make any valid or worthwhile points?
Canto: Well, he criticizes Grayling for his treatment of the religious as irrational - though he's unable to quote Grayling as actually saying this, and then he launches into a defence of religion as practised by many people who are far from irrational. Again he quotes John Gray: 'Unable to account for the irrepressible vitality of religion, [humanists] can react only with puritanical horror and stigmatize it as irrational'. But the fact is that 'humanists', or secularists or sceptics, or atheists, or antitheists, or agnostics, or non-believers, are an even more diverse breed than Darwin's barnacles, and many, in fact I'm sure most of us, recognize the everyday reasonableness of the religious, and also of flat-earthers and numerologists and homeopathists. Williams wants to encourage dialogue 'on the common ground of our shared humanity', and that is probably a good idea, but it is hard work. Our scientific understanding of the world has reached the sophistication it has today by ignoring religion rather than by seeking an accommodation with it. Flat-earthers and creationists rarely change their minds. People don't actually enjoy beating their heads against a brick wall, they prefer to keep the company of like-minded types - but that too has its dangers.
Jacinta: Yes but it's hard to know what to say to someone who believes that his particular god suspends the laws of nature occasionally. Of course, as with someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens, you can point out the unlikelihood, the difficulties involved in something happening to her without the rest of the world detecting it and being affected by it, and so on. But it's such hard, and often unrewarding work. The writings of so many so-called 'new atheists', it seems to me, display much of this frustration and fatigue. Yet they've unleashed something, it seems, something that flatly contradicts John Gray's ridiculous assertion that 'secular ideology [sic] is [being] dumped throughout the world..' It's a new fighting spirit, full of wit and eloquence, as well as a new enthusiasm for exploring religion and belief systems generally, how they're made and maintained, what they mean in evolutionary terms, their place in our individual and collective psyche. I'm enjoying the show.

more assertions

Canto: Okay so let's move on to other claims by Williams. A whole section of his essay has the title 'Mere assertion', no doubt echoing Mere Christianity, as Williams seems to be fond of C S Lewis. Of course, Williams is accusing Grayling of making assertions without providing evidence, but there are plenty of assertions of the same kind made by Williams. Well, not of the same kind, actually, because, to me at least, the assertions Grayling makes seem eminently reasonable, while many of Williams's assertions are frankly ludicrous.
Jacinta: Let me provide the examples. He asserts that belief in God [i.e. Fred] is reasonable, that belief in miracles is reasonable, and that religious thinkers are generally smarter than non-religious ones. For this last assertion he borrows the words of a cheap polemicist I've had occasion to deal with in the past, namely John Gray:

One cannot engage in dialogue with religious thinkers in Britain today without quickly discovering that they are, on the whole, more intelligent, better educated and strikingly more freethinking than unbelievers (as evangelical atheists still incongruously describe themselves)

Gray is a kind of modern, dumbed-down and pedestrianized version of Friedrich Nietzsche, who prides himself on giving all and sundry a serve, changing his own position at whim in order to do so. The good thing is that his polemical swipes can shake off your complacency and make you wonder if what he's saying might actually be true. So you go off and examine some contemporary religious thinkers, find that they're trotting out the same old bullshit, and you also investigate the secularists, none of whom, of course, are going around calling themselves unbelievers, and many of whom are doing very interesting empirical work on the psychology and evolution of religion, for example.
Canto: Mere assertion indeed. What does 'better educated' mean?  Better educated in theology? A lot of the debate these days revolves around the religion-science nexus, and it's pretty clear from Gray's writings that he knows bugger all about science, so he probably rejects the idea of scientists as properly 'educated'. And 'freethinking' - there's a useful term for allowing anything in. Maybe it's 'freethinking' to argue that the virgin birth is plausible...
Jacinta: Oh yes, let me tackle that one. Williams claims that Grayling's sceptical remarks on the immaculate conception of Jesus...
Canto: Wasn't it an angelfuck?
Jacinta: Whatever, that they were 'pure bluster'. Presumably that's mere assertion with a dose of inarticulacy added to the mix. Here's Grayling:

‘ask a Christian why the ancient story of a deity impregnating a mortal woman… is false as applied to Zeus and his many paramours… but true as applied to God, Mary and Jesus… Do not expect a rational reply; an appeal to faith will be enough, because with faith anything goes.’[39]

Canto: Oh, so the god did it then? I wonder if she struggled. We could have him up for rape.
Jacinta: Don't distract me. We now come to the funniest part, because Williams then cockily proclaims that 'unfortunately for Grayling, this sweeping generalization is demonstrably false.' He claims this because he knows of a Christian philosopher who has argued that there's evidence to support the truth of the virgin birth. Unfortunately for Williams, those arguments are rare and usually vapid, and don't at all undermine the general claim that most Christians, when pushed, will fall back on faith on this issue.
Canto: Yes, it seems Williams is mucking up the distinction between a generalization and a universal truth. Grayling is clearly not saying that it's universally true that Christians appeal to faith on the virgin birth, but that they generally do.Williams's finding of someone who has tried to argue about the evidence doesn't negate the generalization.
Jacinta: Yes, and Christians would do better to stick to faith than to try to reason their way out of this one, if Keith Ward is anyone to go by. He's the Christian philosopher in question, and here's his best argument:

 ‘The strongest argument for the veracity of these accounts is that it is very hard to see why they should have been invented, when they would have been so shocking to Jewish ears… there are two independent sources of the virgin birth stories; and that increases the probability that they were founded on historical recollections.’[40]

 Canto: Wow, that's really convincing. I mean we are talking about a supernatural entity impregnating a woman, right? Two sources - what does that mean, two eyewitnesses to the fuckery? I'll bet not. And most Jews would be shocked by the idea, so it's unlikely it was made up. Fuck, surely he's joking. Or, yeah, maybe he's one of those delightful freethinkers Gray gets excited about.

God's name

Jacinta: Well it's a theological problem in that none of this has any grounding at all - it's a discussion about the non-existent clothes of the emperor. In order for theological argument to get started it seems that certain assumptions have to be made, for example that it's at least possible that the cosmos has a supernatural origin or that there possibly exists something other than natural, observable, measurable, phenomena. If you see no reason to accept such assumptions then theological speculation will forever be a closed book to you..
Canto: Yes this is the very heart of the matter. If you simply accept this world with all its complex phenomena you stand accused as lacking 'spirituality' or imagination whereas if you accept some kind of noumenal 'other' world which is by its nature non-observable, non-measurable, non-definable, then you allow anything in. Far more than the Judeo-Christian creator-god, which is just one of an infinity of conceptions.
Jacinta: And even 'he' can be conceived in an infinity of ways There are just no empirical guidelines, no boundaries. But let's get back to the essay we're critiquing. If we keep going along in this way, disputing it point by point, we could easily finish with something of book length. We'll have to pick and choose a bit more.
Canto: Okay, let's be choosy. First, when Williams claims, as he does often enough, that belief in God is reasonable, he's referring to a particular god, the god called God, and he's taking advantage of the generic element in the particular name.
Jacinta: Yeah that's right, the Judeo-Christian god should be called Fred, to show that if belief in Fred is reasonable, then why not belief in Thor or Ganesh or Astarte? Surely belief in any of them is just as reasonable. And if not, it needs to be shown why not.
Canto: Yes, again it's the problem that if you rule in the reasonableness of that god's existence, in any or all of its interpretations, then you'd surely be ruling in any supernatural being's existence. For how do you assess the reasonableness of one god's existence rather than another's?
Jacinta: Yes, as we've said before, calling your god God is an ingenious piece of semantic legerdemain which niftily disguises the fact that this god is just one among many, most of them extinct, having passed away with the civilizations and cultures that gave rise to them. Expose the semantic legerdemain, and Judeo-Christians are compelled to explain why the creator of the universe decided to make himself known to homo sapiens only a few thousand years ago in such and such a place, in such and such a manner. Yet many Christian theologians don't see this transformation of a local god into a BOO as a problem, let alone considering the problem of the plethora of other gods and other supernatural entities.
Canto: Yes, they overlay their anthropocentrism - naturally, we're the 'special creations' of the deity - with ethnocentrism - naturally, our god, having conquered the world [as we see it], is the only real god.
Jacinta: The only god deserving of the name.

Work being critiqued: 'Contra Grayling' by Peter S Williams

Reminder: BOO = Benevolent Omnipotent One..

definitions and the value of theology

Canto: So, Williams rejects Grayling's definition of religion simply because lots of people would disagree with it, because everybody has her own concept of it, and it's notoriously difficult to define. Williams doesn't attempt to define it himself. And yet, though he can't or won't define religion, he has no hesitation in saying this:

With Keith Ward, I think it clear that: ‘religion does some harm and some good, but most people, faced with the evidence, will probably agree that it does a great deal more good than harm, and that we would be much worse off as a species without any religion'.

Unfortunately, without a clear or even a vague definition of religion to go on, nobody can assess the truth or falsity of this claim. It is, quite simply, meaningless.
Jacinta: Good point, Canto, and what's to stop a person defining religion as 'that which makes me do good things and think good thoughts'? If only philosophizing were always this easy. So now let me go on with Williams's attempt to undermine this claim by Grayling:

‘Apologists for faith are an evasive community, who seek to avoid or deflect criticism by slipping behind the abstractions of higher theology, a mist-shrouded domain of long words, superfine distinctions and vague subtleties, in some of which God is nothing… and does not even exist… But religion is not theology; it is the practice and outlook of ordinary people into most of whom supernaturalistic beliefs and superstitions were inculcated as children when they could not assess the value of what they were being sold as a world view; and it is the falsity of this, and its consequences for a suffering world, that critics attack.’[9]

Williams's first objection is that theology, as a specialist field, naturally uses specialist language and engages in necessary subtleties, and he quotes some abstruse terminology that Grayling himself has engaged in to prove his point. He objects, of course, to the inference that theologians are intellectually irresponsible, which he considers 'a hasty generalization at best and a straw man at worst', and grumbles that Grayling provides no evidence for this suggestion of intellectual irresponsibility.
Canto: An absurd objection, in my view. Grayling doesn't provide evidence for this logic-chopping and evasive abstraction because he assumes this theological habit to be self-evident. He assumes everyone will recognize what he's talking about.And I certainly do. I mean, does William seriously imagine for even a split-second that it would be difficult to find such evidence? Read Augustine of Hippo on the existence of the soul, read Anselm of Canterbury on the so-called ontological argument, read the interpretations of Moslem theologians in Karen Armstrong's History of God, just to name a few examples familiar to me, but really you'll find a superabundance of this sort of thing in just about any work of theology, to such an extant that theology and evasiveness might be considered synonyms.
Jacinta: Yet theologians might be quite sincere in their ink-wasting labours to square the circle, to turn faith into reason. Their evasiveness might be a genuine search, their distinctions without differences may make all the difference in the world to their subjective sense.
Canto: Yes, this is a problem. But is it a theological one?

Text being criticized: 'Contra Grayling', by Peter S Williams

Religion: some definitional problems

Jacinta: I just want to point out that this concern with 'the existence of evil' or 'the problem of evil', a concern that maybe Williams has, and Plantinga and other theistic philosophers, is itself a problem for secularists - and a major one.
Canto: Yes, we tend to look beyond good and evil. Nietzsche's title resonated with me from an early age, and I've been deeply suspicious of those terms ever since.
Jacinta: Yes and this is by no means a rejection of morality, it's a recasting of morality - not so much in less objective terms, but in less transcendent terms. And it goes back a long way. The ethics of Aristotle, as I recall, were all about human flourishing - what he called eudaimonia. Examine what it is that humans need in order to flourish, to be at their best, and try to create those conditions. That's at the heart of morality.
Canto: Yes, and even religious intentional communities follow that advice. They create all sorts of rules and prohibitions, while also accentuating the positive forces required, to create what they see as a harmonious, flourishing community. Of course, the problem is that many outsiders see those communities as stifling and deadening. In other words there is disagreement about what makes a community truly flourish. Essentially, a disagreement about morality.
Jacinta: Ok, let's get back to the Williams essay. The idea that nobody has ever established that the existence of a BOO is logically inconsistent with the existence of 'evil' - supposing this to be true - would surely only excite a confirmed theist. The fact remains that the existence - in spades - of unwarranted suffering, not only for humans but for every other species capable of suffering, is a huge problem for believers in BOOs. Why would a creator-BOO create such an extraordinarily messy, painful, harsh, frustrating world in which, to take, one example, billions of sperm cells are released to their deaths on a regular basis in order that a few occasionally manage to fertilize egg cells?
Canto: Ours not to reason why, mate.
Jacinta: So enough about evil...
Canto: Williams next looks at Grayling's definition of religion. Now, definitions of religion are notoriously disparate and contentious. Grayling doesn't attempt anything too comprehensive, but the definition he provides is fine as far as it goes - and I might add that his definition is clearly an attempt to focus on what he sees as the problem of religious belief:

 ‘by definition a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely in their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it [etc.]’[7]

Unsurprisingly, Williams takes issue with this definition, but his reference to non-theistic Buddhists, Deists, Aristotelians, Pantheists, etc, as examples of the 'religious' who sit outside Grayling's definition, seems to me ridiculous. Anti-theistic Buddhists are probably not religious by definition, Aristotelians surely aren't, and I'm not sure at all about Pantheists. The point is, Grayling is looking at the heart of religious belief, not at the flaky, intellectualized edges. And certainly he would be backed up by many an analyst of religion in terms of the centrality of the supernatural entity's intense interest in human affairs. This isn't just the case for BOOs, but for ancestor spirits and other forces and entities in religious belief systems around the globe.

Jacinta: Yes, religion may be notoriously difficult to define, but we've come to know well enough what its most unhealthy aspects are. You're not likely to find them in Deism, Pantheism or Buddhism.

Text being criticized: 'Contra Grayling', by Peter S Williams

Reminder: BOO = Benevolent Omnipotent One.

Contra Williams 1: on BOOs and the arbitrary nature of nature

Canto: Peter Williams is a Christian philosopher who has written an essay, 'Contra Grayling: A Christian Response to Against All Gods'. The Grayling book was published in 2007, so the essay is quite recent.
Jacinta: In his introductory remarks, Williams points out that Grayling's objection is to the irrationality of religous belief or beliefs, rather than their falsity. Williams feels that this overly minimizes the importance of the true/false distinction, but I don't think this is a vital issue. To me, Grayling's decision to focus on rationality is due to the well-known difficulty to prove the non-existence of a supernatural being, or effect, or state of affairs. Instead of getting bogged down in particular, peculiar details, better to look at the broad sweep of reality as we have come to understand it, especially as developed over the past few hundred years by a growing community of scientists, researchers, theorists and analysts, and to measure the rationality of belief systems against that growing consensus.

Canto: Maybe - I detect a problem there with rationality being almost defined as concurrence with consensus. In fact,Williams is right to say that truth should not take the hindmost, but that leaves us in the near-impossible position of testing the truth of every crackpot metaphysical notion that anybody could come with at any time. Overall rationality must have some place.

Jacinta: Well argued, mate. But now I want to consider this quote from Williams, which includes a quote from Grayling:

Grayling nevertheless recasts even so traditional a de facto objection to theism as the logical problem of evil as a de jure objection to its rational respectability: ‘To believe in the existence of (say) a benevolent and omnipotent deity in the face of childhood cancers and mass deaths in tsunamis and earthquakes [is an example of] serious irrationality.’[4] Grayling does nothing to elaborate an actual argument to this effect, and he appears to be ignorant of the fact that: ‘philosophers of religion have cast serious doubt on whether there even is any inconsistency involving the appropriate propositions regarding evil and God’s alleged properties.’

Canto: De facto and de jure? Please explain.
Jacinta: Hmmm, well the general sense, I think, is that there are objections to particular facts, and there are blanket objections which amount to a general law. The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga makes much of this distinction, but I'm not so much interested in this right now as I'm interested in the so-called 'problem of evil'.
Canto: Yes, let me get stuck into that one. Williams takes the 'logical problem of evil' straight from Plantinga, but the fact is, no modern secular philosopher raises the 'problem of evil' when discussing religion - and neither does Grayling in the above quote. He is looking at the 'problem of needless suffering', it seems to me, or the problem of the unfairness of nature, or of fate. Grayling doesn't mention 'evil' in this quote, and I doubt if it features heavily in his book. The concept of 'evil' is outmoded in philosophy, and most certainly in psychology. It is a barrier to effective understanding. What Grayling is on about is exactly what Darwin was on about when he famously wrote:

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

Nobody would wish to claim that these wasps are evil, nor that the situation itself is an evil one. For a start it would be of no use to our understanding of the situation.
Jacinta: Yes, Darwin and Grayling are bringing our attention to the amoral facts of earthly existence, in which there's a superabundance of pain and suffering and death and destruction, with the thin thread of life weaving itself forward through it all. And all Williams has to say is 'that isn't an argument, or even the beginning of an argument, against the existence of a BOO.'
Canto: A BOO?
Jacinta: A Benevelont Omnipotent One, of course.
Canto: Well done, Jass. And the point is, logic or no logic, rational or irrational, many people find the large-scale existence of unwarranted suffering a more than sufficient reason for rejecting the existence of a BOO.
Jacinta: Yes, and I think the onus is very much on the believer to provide rational grounds for believing in a BOO, given the amoral facts aforementioned. I think Grayling's statement, quoted above, would be given wide assent by secularists, though I'm not entirely comfortable with the term 'serious irrationality', given that I'm not overly impressed with the 'rational/irrational' distinction. The claim that what some philosophers of religion wrongly describe as 'the problem of evil' is logically consistent with a BOO seems to me overly technical and point-missing. But we might look at that further next time.
Canto: Boo to that, I say.

finishing a task, and preparing for another

now this looks interesting...

Jacinta: Okay, so the ever-complacent reviewer Luke Pollard next tells us that Williams 'discusses' the view that 'explaining the prevalence of religious belief in evolutionary terms negates any truth that it may hold', a view he attributes to Daniel Dennett. He provides us with no further detail about the discussion however.
Canto: Well I would think that explaining religious belief in such terms almost requires you to be an unbeliever.
Jacinta: Mmmm, maybe. I'm not so sure about that. I would rather object to the use of the singular - religious beliefs vary enormously and are often contradictory. Further, I think most religious believers never even consider their beliefs in terms of truth or falsity. They're just part of the belief system they're brought up with. Once you're thinking in terms of truth and falsity, you're on your way toward adopting scientific methodologies, and simple faith is already starting to crumble.
Canto: Yes, and I think Dennett is right, if that's his position, though I think he would phrase it quite differently.
Jacinta: Quite. Anyway, Pollard goes on to praise Williams for engaging with the 'new atheist' arguments in a logical, constructive way, unusually for a popularist book. However Pollard doesn't give us any real evaluation of any of these arguments, so when he writes of 'a new level of civilized debate' offered up by Williams, we can only take his word for it.
Canto: Or not, as the case may be.
Jacinta: Quite again. So he goes on about Williams' precise and logical style, again without providing evidence, but hey it's only a one-page review, but he really ends it on a bum note, saying that because it is well-written it will 'probably be burned as heretical'.
Canto: What the... So what is he saying, that atheists, or 'new atheists', hate well-written books on religion by Christian philosophers and prefer to burn them rather than engage with them, and like to employ the religious term 'heretical'? Yes, complacent really is the word for this Pollard guy, Jass. Or maybe fatuous.
Jacinta: Yes and don't you just love the way religious 'thinkers' constantly project religious terminology onto secularists, like describing them as obsessed with heresy, or having faith in science... But now it's time to get onto the real thing, not a review but a real philosophical essay by Peter S Williams.
Canto: Yes, I've already found much to get stuck into in Williams' attempt to rebut A C Grayling's claims in Against all Gods. Unfortunately we haven't read the Grayling book, but we've read a few polemics against religion in two of Grayling's essay collections, The Form of Things and The Heart of Things, and we've read an excerpt of Against All Gods, the essay 'Can an Atheist be a Fundamentalist', which is reprinted in the Christopher Hitchens-edited The Portable Atheist. So we're quite familiar with Grayling's overall position...
Jacinta: And essentially in agreement with it, I'd say. So let us sally forth into the fray.
Canto: Oh, sally, let's.