Atheism, Attribute

A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion
by Anthony C. Thiselton, M.Th., Ph.D., D.D.

(Page 6 of 9)

atheism

In the broadest terms, atheism denotes the denial of the existence of God. Broadly also, it is to be distinguished from AGNOSTICISM, the belief that to know whether or not God exists is impossible.

PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION: TYPES OF ATHEISM

Many distinguish between atheism as a view of reality or ONTOLOGY (often called 'theoretical atheism') and atheism as a view that no effective difference in life or in the world is entailed in the proposition 'God exists' ('practical atheism').

Another distinction may be drawn between 'avowed' atheism that positively affirms the assertion 'God does not exist', and a broader atheism that negatively denies the existence of a deity or divine beings. LOGICAL POSITIVISM stands somewhere between this second approach and Agnosticism by denying that the assertion 'God exists' has any genuine currency. It merely expresses an emotive attitude or recommends such belief.

There are many examples of 'fringe' atheism. Socrates (c. 470-399 bce) was accused of atheism, but he merely denied the existence of God or the gods in the form such belief took in the 'superstitions' of the state religion of Athens in his time. KANT (1724-1804) affirmed the reality of God as a presupposition behind the categorical moral imperative, freedom and immortality, but denied the personal God who could act within the world-order as 'ecclesial' religion (Religion within the Limits of Reason, 1793).

TILLICH (1886-1965) affirmed the reality of God as 'Being-itself and as 'ultimate concern'. However, he resolutely insists, 'God does not exist. He is Being-itself, beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.' Tillich did not deny the ontological reality of God as the 'Ground of our being', but rejected the ascription of 'existence' to God, as implying that God is merely one existent entity among others (Systematic Theology, vol.1, London: Nisbet, 1953, 261).

QUESTIONABLE ASCRIPTIONS OF ATHEISM

While 'practical' atheism goes back into the dawn of history ('The fool says, "There is no God"', Psalm 14:1, i.e. makes no difference in life) 'theoretical' atheism is a more recent phenomenon than is usually widely assumed. Epicurus (341- 270 bce) was not an avowed atheist, for he challenged not the existence of the divine, but the divine nature: might the divine exist within the spaces between worlds, perhaps as atoms?

Most identify the dawn of theoretical, ontological atheism with the second half of the eighteenth century, although some question whether HOBBES (1588-1679) propounded avowed atheism. In Leviathan (1651) Hobbes made the pronouncement on religion that is most frequently quoted: 'In these four things, Opinions of ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of Things Causall for Prognostiques, consisteth the Naturall seed of Religion.'

Nevertheless more than half of Leviathan is concerned to defend 'true' religion against the manipulative abuse of religion to promote conflict within the civil order, e.g. between Catholic and Protestant England. Fear and superstition were the causes not of authentic belief in God, but of religious manipulation. God is 'first and eternal cause of all things', and source of 'irresistible power'. Hobbes was not an atheist.

Voltaire (1694-1778) is regularly credited with supposed atheism. He attacked many manifestations of religions and religious authority, including the theodicy of LEIBNIZ. Nevertheless, he perceived evidences of design in the world from which he inferred the existence of a supreme Being, and attacked the atheism of d'Holbach.

TWO INFLUENCES ON THE RISE OF MODERN ATHEISM

The impetus towards 'avowed' atheism derived its force from two occurrences in the late eighteenth century. First, the FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT and French revolution nurtured a mindset which, in effect, gave an obsessively high place to AUTONOMY. It was not in fact the progress of science as such that turned a tide. Many leading scientists were committed theists, including, for example, NEWTON (1642-1727).

The obsession with 'autonomy' encouraged the view that scientific method could be extended to constitute a self-contained autonomous theory of the world, or world-view: a comprehensive account of all possible knowledge. Thus d'Holbach (Paul von Holbach, 1723-89) published his Systeme de la nature (1770), in which he proposed an entirely mechanistic account of the world as a 'system'. This excluded the need to postulate 'God', and Voltaire denounced its atheism. In England R.B. Shelley would soon make a similar logical jump (1811-12) by claiming that God could not exist because God was incapable of 'visibility'.

The second major factor was Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790). Even Hume's Dialogues of Natural Religion (1779) had been sceptical rather than atheistic. However, Kant now claimed that the sense of 'order' that had impressed Newton and Voltaire was not 'there' in the universe, but part of our human categories of understanding through which we made sense of the world. They are construals or projections imposed by the human mind.

Each of these two factors encouraged further atheistic arguments. First, the view that natural science provides not simply a method of enquiry but a comprehensive world-view appeared more plausible in the light of developmental and evolutionary theories of the world and human life.

Hegel (1770-1831) held together a philosophy of progress and evolving history with belief in God, but FEUERBACH and Marx (see MARXIST CRITIQUE OF RELIGION) turned this into a humanist or socio-economic principle. DARWIN (1809-82) formulated a theory of natural selection, which others used to attribute biophysical causes to all natural change. SPENCER (1820-1903) applied Darwin's biological principle to issues of selfhood, intelligence and ethics, and was agnostic on the question of God.

Second, Kant's notion of projection was developed by Hegel's pupil Feuerbach (1804-72) to account for 'God' in terms of a human projection of the infinite. The role of projection is developed further by Marx, by NIETZSCHE, and by Freud (see FREUD'S CRITIQUE OF RELIGION).

GOD AS A HUMAN PROJECTION? ATHEISM OR
'NON-REALIST' BELIEF?

Feuerbach began his journey with a quasitheistic world-view, but (in his own words) moved from 'God', through attention to 'reason', to 'humankind'. He concluded that 'God' is a name for humankind's highest aspirations, which are 'projected' upwards and outwards. These human values are 'objectified', i.e. transposed into an objective entity 'out there' (see OBJECT).

Feuerbach's notion of a 'non-objective' God has come to be known as an 'anti-realist' or 'non-realist' concept of God, as advocated in the writings of CUPITT (b. 1934) (see NON-REALISM). FEUERBACH insisted that by projecting human ideals and human dignity onto this 'God' humanity reduces its own stature.

In response, theists perceive this speculative theory as a reductionist view of God. God has become a mere human construct (discussed under Feuerbach, below). The I-Thou interpersonal relationship explored by BUBER has been dissolved. Prayer is talking to oneself. Is a non-realist 'God', God?

In his work The German Ideology (1845-6) Marx (1818-83) draws upon Feuerbach's materialist world-view to serve his own promotion of socio-economic forces as the driving motivation of ideas as well as history. In particular he perceived religion as a repressive, reactionary and oppressive force which threatens the struggle of the working classes for socio-economic emancipation.

'GOD' AS SERVING PARTICULAR 'INTERESTS':
NIETZSCHE AND FREUD

The work of Nietzsche (1844-1900) is atheistic. The basic drive of humankind is the 'will to power'. However, religion, and Christianity in particular, promotes a manipulative ascription of power to priests and to hierarchies, while ensuring (like democracy) that the masses are characterized by the 'slave' mentality of humility, mediocrity and self-denial.

Nietzsche anticipates later anti-theists by arguing that religious language relies on 'a mobile army of metaphors' that can be manipulated to serve interests of power. This is worked out especially in The Twilight of the Idols (1889) and The Antichrist (1895). 'God forgives him who repents' means 'him who submits to the priest' (The Antichrist, aphorism 26 (in Complete Works, 18 vols., London: Allen & Unwin, 1909-13, vol. 16, 161)). To experience 'salvation' means 'the world revolves around me' (ibid., 186; aphorism 43).

Freud (1856-1939) always saw human nature in biophysical, neurological terms, as the metaphor that he uses for 'forces' within the self shows (the ego, the superego, and the id in its unconscious depths). The problem of neurosis reflects conflicts between these forces deep within the self. However, these can be projected outwards, so that, for example, conflicts between guilt and aspirations of self-worth may be 'objectified' into the face of a fatherly God who both judges and gives grace.

Freud's theories are complex, and the above summary is too simple. He viewed religion as an 'illusion', although he did not go as far as calling it a 'delusion', which is plainly false. Like Nietzsche and Marx, he saw 'God' as performing an instrumental role to serve particular human interests. This conflicts with theistic beliefs in God as a 'Beyond' who is transcendent and the Ground of all being (see TRANSCENDENCE).

Atheistic critiques of religions from France, Germany and Austria may seem to be more powerful, at least at an existential level, than Anglo-American accusations about the logical problem entailed in arguments for the existence of God, or the problem of evil. What kind of God should we expect to be capable of logical demonstration or observable as an empirical entity?

All the same, the critique of religion as serving power-interests (Nietzsche) or a way of coping with the inner conflicts of neurosis (Freud) need not logically apply to all religion and all claims about belief in God.

Indeed, many theists find Nietzsche and Freud constructive in facilitating the sifting out of inauthentic from authentic truth-claims in religion. Among Christian theologians, MOLTMANN, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hans Kiing have addressed these issues head-on. Ricoeur, (b. 1913) utilizes Freud's work on self-deception for hermeneutics, without subscribing to his non-theist, mechanistic world-view. (See also EMPIRICISM; EXISTENTIALISM; GOD, ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF.)

attribute

In the most general terms, an attribute is a characteristic, feature or trait, ascribed to a person or object (in word history, Latin, ad, to, and tribuere, to ascribe). In philosophy the classical exposition of an attribute emerges in ARISTOTLE. He divides the world into substances, each of which can be characterized by its attributes.

Strictly, Aristotle understands these attributes to receive their characterization under the categories of time, place and relation. In Thomas AQUINAS the term becomes extended.

In classical THEISM it was long customary to speak of the attributes of God (e.g. holiness, wisdom, sovereignty, love). However, many modern theologians believe that this fails to take due account either of the TRANSCENDENCE of God as Other, or of the dynamic purposiveness of divine action. It risks encouraging the distorted notion of God as a static object, even as a mere object of human thought, rather than as an initiating Thou who is 'Beyond'. (See also BUBER; MOLTMANN; GOD, CONCEPTS AND 'ATTRIBUTES' OF; TILLICH.)

© 2002 Oneworld Publications All rights reserved.

About the Author

Anthony Thiselton is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham, and Canon Theologian of Leicester Cathedral and Southwell Minster, UK. His academic career has involved fellowships in both the UK and the US, he has lectured around the world, and has published seven books and over 50 papers.