A move to Atheism?

(extract from Can Atheism Rescue God?)

God is one mortal helping another. (Natural History, Pliny the Elder)

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom. (Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell)

This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness. (The Dalai Lama)

For anyone who has struggled to believe, there is something liberating about being told that the supernatural is indeed an illusion and that the world in which we live is – for good or ill – all there is. But with that perspective comes the challenge to come to terms with and appreciate our own finite nature, the fact of change, sickness and death, the tragedy of human behaviour at its worst and the recognition that there is no divine judge to settle the score at the end of time. Atheism, agnosticism, humanism and other non-theistic worldviews are not easy options, but they can provide a view of life that is positive, moral, emotionally and intellectually coherent but challenging.

Professor Marcia Homiak, in a piece entitled An Aristotelian Life offers this view of the implications of belief and atheism:

I know many good people who are religious. I consider them to be good people because they are disposed to respond with kindness, comfort, and help when others are in distress or in need. They are warm, outgoing and compassionate, taking a genuine interest in other’s lives. They are optimistic, disposed to see the good in others and to see what’s right in the world…. And I know that their fine qualities of character are forged in their religious involvement… Now, some people might think that only a religious life can provide these benefits, for only a religious life, they think, can provide proper moral direction, and only God’s eternal love can ground human kindness, decency and courage…. But in my view, there are non-religious ways of life that are equally admirable and that contain these same great benefits. These ways of life are principled and coherent. Their values offer sound practical guidance for how to live. These ways of life provide for the important goods of human community, friendship and love. They are not self-centred… And they provide the resources for great psychological strength that will carry us beyond desperation and despair. (In Philosophers Without Gods, ed. Louise Antony p133ff)

In other words, both belief and atheism can support a good life. The Dalai Lama, asked whether he thought that Buddhism was better than other religions, replied that different things suited different people, and he could not say that any one religion was better than another.

This recognition of the positive value of both religious and atheist views is far more important than the arguments for or against religious doctrines. The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, for example, has argued that ‘The atheist has to maintain that it’s impossible that God exists. That is, he has to maintain that the concept of God is logically incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. The problem is that the concept of God just doesn’t appear to be incoherent in that way.’ The fallacy in his argument is that Craig has decided on his own terms for what an atheist needs to prove. In fact, most atheists don’t go around arguing that God is logically incoherent, they simply walk away from that concept and get on with examining the world in ways that don’t take the idea of God into account. The exceptions, perhaps, are the ‘New Atheists’, such as Richard Dawkins, who use 18^th or 19^th century arguments to show that God does not exist, and are therefore suitable opponents for Craig. Neither side can win in that contest, because neither seems to appreciate either the full significance of the idea of God or that of atheism. Theism and atheism are equally trivialised by simplistic argument.

Godless Reason

The term ‘atheism’ comes from the Greek atheos, which means ‘godless’ or ‘without the support of the gods’. In his book on atheism in the ancient world, Tim Whitmarsh, explains that it implied that an atheist was not controlled or ruled by gods, just as a lawless person would be anomos, or an unjust one adikos. An atheist saw no need for gods, and therefore did not take part in their worship.

Being godless has always implied taking responsibility for one’s thoughts and decisions. Socrates was said to have followed his own inner convictions rather than the example of the gods and goddesses of his day. Thus Plato, in his dialogue Euthyphro, has Socrates posing the fundamental moral question about whether something is good because a god commands it, or whether a god commands it because it is good. If we believe that the latter is the case, it suggests that we have an innate sense of what is good and right, by which even the actions and commands of the gods may be judged.

Hence, atheism challenges people to use their reason, experience, intuitions and emotional responses to shape their view of the world and guide their actions. This is directly counter to the claim made by traditional Protestant Christianity – particularly Calvinism – that human reason is fundamentally ‘fallen’ and that people are therefore incapable of wisdom and moral insight unless aided by God.

One of the immediately attractive things about atheism is that it puts no limit on what should be examined critically in terms of reason and morality. Scriptures are not to be spared, because they are seen as cultural products like any other. So, if God orders genocide in order to clear the Amalekites from their land and make way for the incoming Israelites, an atheist is free to examine and reject the morality of that order, without having to wriggle to find an alternative and acceptable interpretation. Of course, that is a difficult passage for most religious people and therefore an easy target. But the point is that, if you examine religious documents with a critical eye – even if it is just to try to find an interpretation that makes sense or is morally right – then you have accepted a measure of autonomy for human reason and moral intuition, and that paves the way for a positive interpretation of life without the need for belief in God.

This is not to claim that human reason is always right, nor to denigrate intuition, inspiration and profoundly moving experiences. It simply opens up all human culture – both religious and secular – to the same level of scrutiny.

Simplicity helps. William of Ockham, a 14^th century thinker, is famous for an argument known now as ‘Ockham’s Razor’. Usually summed up as ‘Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity’, this is the principle that, if there is a choice of explanations, one should go for the simplest, and the one that requires fewest assumptions. Whereas a theist might feel the need to show that everything in the world comes about because it is willed by God, the atheist or non-theist, can simply admit that, even though there are many things we do not understand, we can investigate them without also having to factor in an external deity. So atheism may be an easier option intellectually.

If there is no god, we assume that everything has a natural cause. That does not imply that we already know everything there is to know about nature, since all earlier scientific theories have been shown to be inadequate, and it is therefore likely that our present theories will one day be regarded in the same way. It merely suggests that we do not need to think in terms of supernatural agency to explain the unexpected.

Atheism is motivated by naturalism, but this is not the same as materialism, which effectively says that the world comprises physical entities, and nothing else. This is more problematic, because it then has to explain human culture and thought. It needs to account for our own experience of being human, of being more than a physical body. Generally, materialists are prepared to say that, when material objects get to a certain degree of complexity, they take on new sets of characteristics, which build into character, language, culture and so on.

But the problem with a full ‘eliminative materialism’ is that it argues that minds, thoughts and all other personal and cultural features of life are no more than material operations. It claims that, if I describe myself as ‘happy’ or ‘in love,’ there is nothing that corresponds to that happiness or love, other than the corresponding firing of neurons in my brain or the operation of my hormones and various chemical reactions in my body. Of course, nobody would deny that brains and hormones are the physical locus of being happy or in love; they certainly have a lot to do with it. However, in terms of my experience of the world, what is experienced is not the same as a description of the underlying physical operations. It is this extreme form of materialism that tends to give atheism a reputation for nihilism, since it tends to reduce value, meaning and moral choice to impersonal physical activity.

Suffice to say that atheists are not wedded to eliminative materialism and are as involved in the rich, multi-layered experience of human life as anyone else.

atheist values

Broadly speaking, secular humanism claims to be based on honesty, integrity, altruism and equal respect for all. It recognises that humans have no God-given place within the scheme of things; they are what they are, nothing more but nothing less. But it also includes a sense of wonder at nature, an acceptance of the value of human life, an acknowledgement of the place of humankind within the scheme of evolution, and courage in the face of death and finitude.

However, these humanist values would be shared by most believers, and there is no doubt that atheist humanism, although rejecting its supernatural elements, has been influenced by religious morality and values. Nietzsche saw such humanism as one of the continuing ‘shadows’ of God, as we shall see in chapter 14. But it is equally possible to argue that these values are fundamental to human flourishing, whether or not linked to any supernatural beliefs, so atheism does not necessarily depend on religion for these values, but simply shares them.

However, in some quarters, atheism continues to have a bad reputation. The assumption is that you cannot trust an atheist, because he or she accepts no divinely ordained moral authority. In a court of law, you were traditionally asked to undertake to tell the truth by swearing on the Bible, on the assumption that you acknowledged it as the symbol of absolute authority. More to the point, atheists have generally been regarded as free spirits, and therefore a danger to the authorities and to those who want to impose conventional moral standards.

So should you trust an atheist? I would argue that, since atheism implies taking responsibility for your own life, including the values by which you live, then atheists are to be trusted (or not) on the same basis as religious believers.

When Nietzsche observed the growing atheism of his day, his major concern – expressed by the ‘madman’ who proclaims the death of God in his well-known parable – is that the horizon of values and meaning is wiped away by the killing of God, and hence the world becomes darker, colder and sinks towards nihilism. He feared that, without a sense of meaning and purpose, which had previously been seen as given by ‘God’, we find ourselves in a situation where values and meanings are optional and not open to rational discussion. Nietzsche had his own remedy for that, as we shall see.

In The Secular Age, Charles Taylor sees the arrival of postmodernism as a crucial turning point, marking the end of the period in which liberal values and modernism provided an alternative to traditional theism. There is plenty of evidence to support that suggestion. Our era is given to the multiplicity of explanations and views, with little to distinguish between the rationally valid, the superficially appealing but probably false and the downright bonkers! Conspiracy theories on the internet are ‘liked’ and spread. For those whose information about the world comes from social media, such theories, however little supported by reason and evidence, become an alternative reality.

Is this new? I doubt it – from the more far-fetched stories about Jesus that abounded in the Early Church but failed to make it into the canonical gospels, to the lurid details of saints and martyrs, to the elaborations of the lineages in Mahayana Buddhism, some people have always been fond of the bizarre, illogical and emotionally appealing. In a world where reality is harsh, miracles have an enduring appeal.

But behind most of the earlier periods in which such fantasies thrived there stood a tradition of philosophy and theology that attempted to hold it in check. That is what is now lacking in a world where metanarratives are unwelcome, reason seen as suspect and data always open to alternative interpretations.

Atheism, in applying a genuinely agnostic approach to all claims, should help us guard against any cultural product – whether it is a modern fantasy game, or an ancient religious text – being taken at face value. At the risk of being boring, it encourages us to check everything out.

Religion without God

Over the years, some atheists have done themselves no favours by presenting their views as a post-Enlightenment phenomenon and an evolutionary development beyond an earlier era of primitive superstition and religion. To assume that religion is all about ‘belief in God’ is parochial. The evidence for the validity and benefit of non-theistic religions is overwhelming.

In Ancient India, Carvaka (also known as Lokayata) was a school of philosophy that rejected the existence of gods and the concept of karma. It developed at about the time that Gautama and Mahavira were teaching what were to become the Buddhist and Jain worldviews, and was probably well established by 600BCE, although more as a general tendency of thought than a single organised philosophy. The name ‘Lokayata’ is possibly derived from ‘the views of the people’ – in other words is was a general assumption of the populace, rather than a school of teaching. If so, we have evidence that atheism, as a practical view of life, was alive and well more than two and a half thousand years ago. Carvaka argued that experience and reasoned evidence were the only valid basis of knowledge, that there was no eternal soul, and therefore no life after death, no need for priests and ceremonies, no heaven or hell. This is pragmatic atheism. It is impossible to know how widespread these ideas were, because they were regarded as non-orthodox, and therefore not promoted by any of the later religious groups.

Against a background of urbanisation in northern India and a wide range of beliefs and practices, Siddhartha Gautama (c563-483), known as The Buddha, taught his radical alternative to the conventional religions of his day. There is a profoundly existential side to Buddhism. The final words of the Buddha to his followers was that they should work out their own salvation with diligence – in other words, that his teaching did not offer a set of beliefs which would lead them to the ultimate goal, but a set of tools with which they should work their way towards it. Above all, personal integrity was seen as the key to its path, along with an attempt to avoid what is, to use Sartre’s term, simply ‘bad faith’. In addition to this, and as a natural result of its approach, Buddhism is wary of any doctrinal debate. The act of attempting intellectual explanations is itself a hindrance.

Buddhism does not start with beliefs, but with the observation that everything that happens depends upon causes and conditions. Hence, everything and every situation is subject to change and eventual decay. The key to develop wisdom and compassion is to train the mind to see things as they really are, rather than following a fantasy of what we would like them to be. The fundamental attitude of early Buddhism is non-theistic and secular. It is a path to be followed, not a set of doctrines to be accepted.

This approach, taken by early, Theravada and Zen Buddhism, does not automatically imply atheism in a Western sense, but it renders the concept of God irrelevant to its spiritual path. As it developed and spread, the Dhamma – as the Buddha’s teaching is called – took on features of religion, with images, acts of devotion, and a host of different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Hence, Buddhists today might sound quite ‘religious’, but at its heart the Buddhist tradition is pragmatic and secular. Few would try to deny that Buddhism is a religion, in the sense that it offers an overall view of the world and a set of moral values, but it is certainly not theistic in the Western sense. The Dalai Lama describes himself as an atheist, although he is quite happy to speak about God in the context of other religions.

While Buddhism moved elsewhere, Indian religious thought established itself in different schools, of which I want to mention only one – the Vedanta. Sankara (788 – 880CE) presents a non-dualist approach to the relationship between the self (Atman) and underlying reality (Brahman). Immediate awareness of the ‘ground of being’ (in a western sense) is described as the identity of Atman and Brahman in ‘sat-chit-ananda’ (being-consciousness-bliss). The idea of Brahman, is possibly the closest we get to the idea of God as ‘being-itself’ or ‘reality-itself’ in Western theism. It sees Brahman as impersonal and universal, but also as personally experienced and something with which the self can identify. Expressed in the phrase Tat Tvam asi – ‘You are that’.

This sense of transcending the self and becoming at one with the ‘all’, is also found in the Buddhist thinking of Nagarjuna and in Islam with Ibn al Arabi, a 12^th century mystic. The crucial thing here is not that these traditions were atheist, Ibn al Arabi was certainly not, but they share a sense of identity between the self and the Absolute that goes beyond description and empirical existence. Ibn al Arabi speaks of the ‘supreme reality’ (Al haqq) of which Allah is a personal manifestation. Like the Brahman of Hinduism and the Sunyata (Emptiness) of Buddhism, ultimate reality goes beyond imagery or argument.

Bede Griffiths (in A New Vision of Reality, Collins, 1989) makes a very clear distinction between the ordinary world of space and time, which is destined to pass away, and the eternal reality. To be aware of it

… means passing from the present mode of consciousness, which is conditioned by time and space, into a deeper level of consciousness which transcends the dualities external and internal, subject and object, conscious and unconscious, and become one with the non-dual Reality, the Brahman, the Atman, the Tao, the Word, the Truth, whatever name we give to that which cannot be named. It is this alone that gives reality to our lives and a meaning to human existence. (op cit p226)

This is the key to the mystical tradition in each religious culture, but it is more than that. It is a spirituality that is based on denying exactly the sort of deities that atheism also rejects. It is talking about a form of awareness, rather than an objective existence. To appreciate Brahman, one needs a good dose of ‘atheism’ (in the sense that it is ‘not this’ and ‘not that’) but to deny the reality to which the word Brahman points is self-contradictory. Atheism here is a necessary correction to a superficial literalism.

We have contrasted atheism with belief in gods, but in terms of these mystical traditions, and much Eastern thought, the gods are no more than a manifestation of a deeper reality. That reality, I will argue, is closer to atheism than what passes as literal or popular theism. One can certainly follow Buddhist, Taoist or some Hindu traditions while at the same time, in Western terms, remaining atheist.

Some Eastern traditions emphasise practical ethics and social harmony. In ancient China, Mohist thinkers were sceptical of the validity of religious rituals and believed in a pragmatic approach to ethics, emphasizing impartiality and benevolence. In terms of living in harmony with the nature, you have the whole tradition of Taoism, and for social cohesion, the long tradition of Confucianism. There is no scope here to explore these, but in Understand Eastern Philosophy I explain why it is possible have a serious moral and social system without the need to believe in ‘God’ in the Western sense. Living without God does not inevitably lead to chaos, anarchy or nihilism.

Some years ago, on a visit to Japan, I sat for a while before the sand garden in the Kounji temple in Kyoto. The carefully raked lines of sand exactly matched the surrounding landscape and buildings. Sitting there, one could almost breathe in a sense of harmony, and with it an aspiration to internalise it. There is no way to give an adequate rational explanation of that experience, but it seeps into one’s consciousness.

Buddhist spirituality is without superstition. There is no magic involved in devotion to a Buddha image, just the quiet recognition and internalisation of certain qualities. Stories, images, actions – all become part of a ‘religious’ practice, with parallels in Western religions, or in the gods and spirits of Eastern practice, but they are not metaphysical entities separate from the people engaged in the acts of devotion.

This non-theistic experience suggests that there is scope for atheism to encourage theism to go deeper, to recognize that, however valuable and emotionally engaging its imagers and rituals might be, there is the recognition of a reality that is both transcendent and immanent – that within which we ‘live, move and have our being’ – which goes beyond ‘God’ in any form that can be defined. Hence theism and atheism can become unlikely partners in the attempt to rescue the religious impulse from those who, by defining it narrowly, deny it credibility in the eyes of those who are not already committed to its doctrines.

Thus, within Buddhist culture, there are images and narratives that depict both wisdom and compassion, and a whole range – for Mahayana Buddhists – of Bodhisattva images, laden with symbols to express values and provide guidance. An atheist, observing this spiritual tradition, is not challenged to believe something on trust, nor to accept propositions without evidence. What happens is… exactly what happens. The action is the action, the moment of quiet counting of the breath is only and simply that. There is no separate, spiritual world to which others have no access; no secret formula to guarantee enlightenment.

There is little difference here between atheist and theist views. Each offers a sense of direction. The Buddhist path builds on the observation of universal change and the dependence of each thing upon its context, whereas the theistic approach, like that of the Stoics – as we shall see later – requires the individual to recognise and align with a universal reason. Both approaches include images as a stimulus to reflection; both engage the emotions as well as the intellect.

A shrug or a wager?

Agnosticism – sometimes offered as a halfway house to atheism – is a total copout; little more than a shrug of the shoulders! When Thomas Huxley coined the term ‘agnostic’ he argued that you should never accept as true anything for which you have insufficient evidence. That’s absolutely fine, but does anyone really believe that, with a bit more evidence one way or the other, we’ll finally know whether or not God exists? That would make sense only if ‘God’ were taken to refer to an obscure and distant object that might be identified – and that notion of deity hovers between blasphemy, idolatry and a contradiction in terms. If God is infinite, he has no boundaries and there is nowhere he does not exist. So the demand for evidence is pointless. If you are truly ‘agnostic’ you should be atheist, even if you feel personally committed to the idea of ‘God’ or find it culturally useful.

We now come to what I consider one of the saddest and most distasteful of all arguments: Pascal’s infamous ‘wager’.

Blaise Pascal, a 17^th century Catholic mathematician and philosopher, presented belief as a matter of pragmatic choice, based on the assumption that God will reward believers with heaven and consign atheists to hell. He argued that, if you don’t believe in God, you gain little (except avoiding the inconvenience of being religious) but run the risk, if you are proved wrong, of God’s wrath. However, if you believe in God and he exists, you get heaven as your reward, but if he doesn’t you are no worse off. Hence it seemed to Pascal that belief was the safer option. Based on self-interest and the ability to fool an omniscient deity, it represents the worst of all possible worlds – religious belief as insurance against a world controlled by a capricious and vengeful God.

To avoid paralysis, we sometimes have to act upon insufficient evidence – as when we enter into a relationship or marriage. In effect, we have to take a bet. But, please, not Pascal’s!

it really doesn’t matter

There is a moment – whether in silent prayer or meditation or just sitting quietly – when thought evaporates and one is left balanced on nothing, carried forward on the tipping wave of experience, surfing the present moment. At that point, belief in God is irrelevant. You ‘know’ beyond any doubt; you sense yourself to be fully alive. If you want to use ‘God language’, then God is the reality of which you are a part. Conceptualise that, and it becomes trivial and false. Attempt to describe it, and you become a fool.

But how best to resist the danger of being misunderstood, or even of misunderstanding yourself? You take your pick – either you opt for atheism, recognising that reality is never adequately described by God language, or you opt to be theist and say that God is that within which you live, move and have your being. Tell people that you live in God, if you dare, but it may raise a few eyebrows.

But in the end it really doesn’t matter; you choose whichever form of language you find most helpful.

In his wonderfully clear introduction to atheism, Julian Baggini sets out the logical arguments that might persuade someone to be atheist rather than theist. If you are at a moment of existential crisis, uncertain whether you should be a fundamentalist believer or a rabid atheist, then you might find his work of great value. However, you might also find yourself in a minority, and some may regard you as weird or obsessed. The fact is, most people do not make a rational choice when it comes to fundamental beliefs, they inherit beliefs from their family, friends and culture, and they either continue with them if they find them helpful, or reject them if they conflict with their own experience of life and the many other things that they believe. In spite of Kierkegaard, life’s seldom really a matter of Either/Or.

The debate between theists and atheists should not be about whether there is something objectively ‘out there’ that has a label ‘God’ attached – that is just too simplistic – but about how we choose to see the world and our place within it. That’s not a subjective cop out, since our ‘view’ corresponds to how we actually experience the world. One thing is for certain; there’s no claiming a majority view here. The number of believers of various sorts and the number of non-theists, or atheists, or agnostics, or followers of religions that do not require belief in gods of God, are both so huge that, whatever you believe, you are in good company.

[This piece is an extract from my recent book Can Atheism Rescue God? (and vice versa). For more information about this and my other publications, along with free notes for students and articles on various aspects of Philosophy, please visit: https://essexthinker.com]

Thanks for reading this!

Dr Mel Thompson