Book Proposal: The Apatheist

 

Book Proposal: The Apatheist

Possible Subtitle: Even If God Exists, It Just Doesn't Matter

Author: S. Richard Bellrock

Genre: Popular Philosophy / Psychology-Informed Nonfiction

Estimated Word Count: 60,000–75,000 words

Status: 3 of 6-7 chapters complete; remaining chapters in progress

Overview

Most books challenging religion argue that God doesn't exist. I argue something quite different: even if God exists, it doesn't matter.

The Apatheist is an argument based in philosophy and psychology that religion's most important selling points simply fail to deliver. Faith cannot reliably tell us what is true. Sin adds nothing to our understanding of morality. Salvation solves a problem we do not have. And where religious and empirical claims come into conflict, science is the adjudicating method, never revelation.

The book avoids the question of God's existence. Instead, I ask whether religious concepts actually offer a meaningful explanation of anything, whether they contribute to human flourishing, and, indirectly, whether the cost of the faithful life is too great.

The answer, developed across six or seven chapters, is that faith, religious truth claims, sin and divine command morality, and salvation are, much like Zeus's thunderbolt, concepts that provide only an illusory explanation of the world, and that a more adequate understanding explains away.

The proposed title alludes to a position most readers have never heard of but many likely already hold: the apatheist is someone for whom God's existence is inconsequential. The apatheist is not an atheist (holding that God doesn't exist), per se, nor an agnostic (holding that we can't know). The apatheist holds the position that God may or may not exist, but regardless, religion does not do what it says on the box.

Drawing on philosophy (the Euthyphro Dilemma, eliminative reduction, epistemology, Bayesian probability, inference to the best explanation) and psychology (moral development, the overjustification effect, cognitive dissonance, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation), the book makes what aims to be a rigorous but accessible case that a life lived without reference to the divine preferrable is to the faithful alternative.

I am a former Latter-day Saint, but my argument is not directed specifically at Mormonism. I holds two Masters Degrees, including an MSc from the London School of Economics. My teaching career has included both philosophy and psychology and I try to write with the voice of a teacher who has spent decades helping students reason through exactly these sorts of questions. The result, I hope, is a book for the curious believer, the recovering faithful, and the secular reader who wants deeper arguments than "God isn't real."

*Disclosure: the target audience and comparative titles sections were generated with AI.*

Target Audience

Primary readers:

•           Readers of accessible philosophy and ideas nonfiction (fans of Julian Baggini, Stephen Law, Massimo Pigliucci)

•           Those questioning or leaving high-demand religions, particularly LDS/Mormon and evangelical Christian communities

•           Readers of secular thought and religious deconstruction literature who want arguments grounded in both philosophy and psychology rather than memoir alone

Secondary readers:

•           Students and general readers of philosophy, psychology, and religious studies

•           Book club and reading group audiences drawn to provocative arguments about meaning, morality, and faith

•           Fans of "big idea" nonfiction in the vein of Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and Sam Harris

Market positioning:

The book occupies a distinctive niche: more philosophically rigorous than most deconstruction memoirs, more accessible than academic philosophy of religion, and more psychologically grounded than the "New Atheist" canon. Where Dawkins argues God doesn't exist, this book argues God's existence is simply inconsequential.

________________________________________

Competitive / Comparable Titles

Direct comparables (similar approach and audience):

1.         The Godless Gospel by Julian Baggini (Granta, 2020) Secular ethics and whether we need God to live well. The closest comp for accessible philosophy addressing religious questions without academic jargon.

2.         Grace Without God: The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging in a Secular Age by Katherine Ozment (Harper, 2016). Explores how nonreligious Americans create meaning. More memoir-driven than this book, but targets the same reader asking "what do we lose, and what do we gain, without religion?"

3.         How to Think Like a Philosopher by Julian Baggini (Granta, 2023). Accessible philosophy for general readers. Demonstrates market appetite for trade philosophy written in a warm, clear voice.

Contrast comparables (different argument, same shelf):

4.         The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006) — The most famous "God" argument of the past two decades. Useful as a contrast: Dawkins argues God doesn't exist; this book argues it doesn't matter if He does. The differentiator is irrelevance, not nonexistence.

5.         A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (Harvard, 2007) — The landmark academic work on how secularism emerged. Too academic to be a direct comp, but establishes that the "secular condition" is a major topic of intellectual interest.

6.         Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011) — Not a religion book, but demonstrates the market for psychology-informed ideas nonfiction that changes how readers see the world. This book aims for a similar crossover effect.

 

Chapter-by-Chapter Outline

 

Chapter 1: If We Have Not the Truth

(Relatively Complete)

Alternate possible chapter title: The Unexamined Faith: Subtitle: If We Have Not the Truth

My book opens with a personal story: driving home from a Def Leppard concert in a snowstorm, I followed the lights of a truck, trusting the driver's superior vantage point, only to realize that the snow in truck's wake is what blinded me. The metaphor implies the book's central question: when we follow religious authority, are we being guided, or are we being blinded by the very thing we're following?

Drawing on the my upbringing in the LDS Church, where leaders themselves urged intellectual honesty ("If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed"), this chapter establishes the dialectic method, the Socratic spirit of inquiry, and two central claims: faith is not a legitimate way of knowing, and religion does not deliver on what it promises. The chapter introduces the themes the book will explore: faith, morality, sin, salvation, and the relationship between religious and scientific truth claims.

The chapter ends with the observation that the unexamined faith is not worth believing, providing my project its philosophical (Socratic) lineage and possibly the first chapter its title.

Chapter 2?: Through Faith Tinted Spectacles

(In progress)

The title is derived from a discussion of the emerald tinted spectacles donned by Dorothy and her companions upon arrival at the Emerald City (in the Wizard of Oz book, not the movie)

This chapter argues that faith is not a legitimate epistemological method in it cannot produce knowledge, and it cannot adjudicate between competing truth claims.

I proceed by examining what happens when someone attempts to justify a faith claim. Any attempted justification falls under one of two descriptions: either it begs the question (assuming the authority of faith to justify faith), or it suggests a means of testing the proposition (in which case the proposition ceases to be a faith claim and becomes an empirical or logical one).

If the justification is question-begging, it becomes impossible to adjudicate between incompatible faith claims. The Mormon's faith, the Muslim's faith, the Hindu's faith, and the Scientologist's faith all rest on equally (un)justifiable grounds. Faith, by its nature, cannot resolve this deadlock.

If the justification provides a means of testing, then faith has been replaced by reason, evidence, or empirical inquiry and the "faith" label is redundant.

Either way, faith fails as a way of knowing. I connect this epistemological argument to the practical observation that every culture spontaneously generates incompatible religion-like sets of beliefs and practices, all each equally unjustifiable, and that the adherent's confidence in their own tradition is better explained by geography and culture than by truth.

Chapter 3: Zeus's Thunderbolt, Euthyphro's Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin

(Complete)

This chapter argues that sin does not exist, even if God is real.

Sin is to morality as Zeus's thunderbolt is to weather. Just as the thunderbolt was "explained away" once electrical discharge was understood, the concept of sin is eliminated once morality is properly understood. I try to eliminate the role of a divine lawgiver, and the very value of sin as a concept, through a discussion the Euthyphro Dilemma.

The Euthyphro Dilemma, drawn from Plato's dialogue, asks: Does God command an act because it is virtuous, or is an act virtuous because God commands it?

The first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is that if God commands it because it is virtuous, then virtue exists independently of God's will, making God irrelevant to morality.

The second horn is that if it is virtuous because God commands it, then morality is arbitrary and God could command murder, rape, or genocide, and these would by definition be virtuous.

Both horns are unacceptable, even to the believer. Therefore Divine Command Theory is false. Sin, defined as willful violation of divine command, does not exist.

Over the decades of discussing this with my students, I have developed many metaphors and analogies to help illustrate: a school zone sign with no school, a mother's rule about eating vegetables, a taxi passenger who slows down for children only because a sign tells him to. Each illustrates that moral value is prior to authority, not derived from it.

I try to make a point that I am not arguing that there is no such thing as morality, just that God and Divine Command contribute nothing to our moral understanding.

(Note: I published a version of this argument about 5 years ago. "Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us" in Sunstone Magazine. The chapter expands and develops the published essay.)

Chapter 4?: The Externalization of the Locus of Moral Control

(Complete, but I don’t have a catchy title for it (yet))

The natural objection to the eliminative reduction of sin: "What's the harm if I choose to follow God anyway?"

The answer draws on principles of social and developmental psychology. When morality is sourced externally (including from God's commands), from the threat of punishment or promise of reward, significant harmful consequences follow

The Overjustification Effect: Extrinsic motivation (reward/punishment) reduces intrinsic motivation. If you refrain from wrongdoing because God will punish you, you have no need to develop internal reasons (like calculation of consequences, empathy, duty, moral reasoning) for your behavior. The external motivator displaces the internal one.

Moral Development: Research by Piaget, Kohlberg, and others shows that healthy moral development moves from external authority and punishment (the norm during childhood) toward internalized moral reasoning (in adulthood). Divine command morality mirrors (is?) authoritarian parenting, which, on every measure studied by the social sciences, produces worse outcomes than authoritative (inductive) parenting. Religious morality keeps believers in a childlike obedience-based moral stage.

Anecdotal evidence: The chapter draws on the my experience as an edicator. A nursing student who says the only reason he doesn't beat his wife is that God forbids it. A former missionary who, upon losing faith, experiences a traumatic moral collapse because he never developed internal moral tools. A coworker who believes he would be a drug addict without LDS dietary rules, despite 30 years of stable behavior.

The Satan problem: In addition to externalizing the source of morality (God and His commandments), religion also externalizes the source of immorality (Satan). Believers can diminish responsibility for their own moral failures by attributing temptation to external forces. The belief that Satan targets the most righteous paradoxically transforms moral failure into an indicator of spiritual distinction.

The repentance paradox: If morality is determined by eternal consequences, but repentance means even the most heinous acts can be forgiven, then there are effectively no eternal consequences. The system undermines its own foundation.

The chapter concludes: God may exist, but the moral plan attributed to Him is so profoundly flawed as to be irrelevant, even antithetical, to genuine moral development. No God worth worshipping would legislate such a profoundly flawed moral system.

Chapter 5: Salvation

(In progress)

What exactly is religion supposed to be saving us from?

This chapter dismantles the concept of salvation by examining its foundations:

The Fall of Adam and Eve: The doctrine of salvation (in Christianity at least) is predicated on a fallen state inherited by the human family from the sin of the original humans. Surely this only applies if the Eden story is to be taken literally. But Adam and Eve (and young earth creationism more broadly) are demonstrably false. Evolutionary biology, genetics, and anthropology have eliminated the possibility of a single ancestral pair from whom all humanity descended in the way Genesis describes. No literal fall means no inherited fallen state. No fallen state means no need for redemption from one.

Saved from sin? A previous chapter already established that sin is not real. If sin doesn't exist, there is no consequences of sin to be redeemed from. The entire soteriological framework collapses.

The broken self: Religion teaches that humans are inherently broken, sinful, and incapable of moral self-governance without divine intervention. This chapter argues that the framing of human nature as fundamentally broken is psychologically damaging, creating dependency on the very institution that pronounces the diagnosis. They can only sell the cure if they can convince you that you are sick.

Chapter 6: Science and Religion

(In progress)

This chapter argues that religious and scientific propositions, when they address the same reality, are incompatible, and that science always emerges triumphant.

I examine the interplay between religious and scientific claims throughout history: the motion of the Earth, the age of the universe, the origin of species, the nature of disease, the origins of human consciousness. In each case, religious explanations have been displaced by scientific ones.

Even when a religious claim turns out to be true, that truth is demonstrated through scientific methods, not through faith or revelation. Science is the adjudicating method for claims about reality. Faith was already argued to be unable to adjudicate between competing claims. If one faith claim is demonstrated to be true in comparison to competing truth claims, it does so based on empirical justification, not better a “faith method.”

I consider common counterarguments: the "non-overlapping magisteria" position (Stephen Jay Gould's claim that science and religion address different domains), the "god of the gaps" retreat, and the claim that science itself requires faith. Each is shown to fail under scrutiny.

Chapter 7 (maybe chapter 2): The Logic of Knowing — Bayesian Probability and Inference to the Best Explanation

(Possible — in development. The location of this section in the book is still up in the air. It may be a standalone chapter near the beginning, or it may be folded into the chapter on science and religion))

This chapter could serve as a culminating "how do we know anything?" chapter, introducing general readers to the underlying logic of scientific reasoning and rational explanation, or it could serve as a foundation for the science/religion discussion.

Bayesian probability (the mathematical framework for updating beliefs in light of evidence), and Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) (the principle that we should accept the explanation that best accounts for the available evidence) are presented as the superior tools to replace faith as epistemological methods.

The chapter would argue that these principles are the implicit logic we use every day when arriving at understanding. The friend who claims to have seen a UFO, the doctor diagnosing a patient, the detective solving a crime, all use Bayesian reasoning and IBE. The chapter would try to draw out the readers existing use of these principles, expand upon them, justify them, and show how they can be applied more generally.

 

Author Bio and Platform

S. Richard Bellrock holds an MSc in Philosophy of Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MA in Philosophy [from a North American University--don't want to dox myself just yet], and an honors BA (with distinction) in Psychology and Philosophy (from the same North American University]. He has taught philosophy and psychology at five post-secondary institutions since 2000, including developing an original course on the Epistemology of Faith. He also works in addiction and mental health recovery.

His essays have appeared in Sunstone Magazine, including "Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us" and "The LDS Proselytizing Mission as Hazing," the latter a detailed interdisciplinary study applying hazing research and cognitive dissonance theory to religious socialization.

The author writes under a pen name. His dual background in philosophy and psychology, formal training in both fields, extensive teaching experience, and work in mental health, gives him a unique interdisciplinary authority. His LDS upbringing and deconstruction provide personal narrative texture and credibility with the large and growing audience of readers questioning high-demand religions.

*Disclosure: the “Why this book, why now section was generated with AI.*

Why This Book, Why Now

The "New Atheist" wave of the 2000s (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett) argued that God doesn't exist. Two decades later, that argument has largely been had. What hasn't been adequately addressed is a more useful question: even if God exists, does religion add value to human life?

The Apatheist answers that question by examining religion's core deliverables, faith, sin, morality, salvation, truth, and concluding that each fails to deliver what it promises.

Rates of religious disaffiliation are at historic highs across North America. The author’s previous LDS Church is experiencing a well-documented wave of departures. Books about religious deconstruction are a growing market. But most deconstruction literature is memoir-driven; this book offers something different: a rigorous, warm-voiced argument that stands on its own merits, not on the author's personal pain.