There is an argument floating across the public sphere at the moment, namely that atheism is a belief in the same way as theism. The argument goes that just as theists cannot prove God (the cosmological argument of a ‘prime mover’ is not sufficient to constitute a rigorous proof, certainly not of all that theism involves) atheists cannot prove that God does not exist. As such, atheism constitutes a belief just as much as theism does. I would like to write briefly on why this is bollocks.
Atheism is about ‘knowing’, not about ‘believing’. It does not constitute a hypothesis, and thus cannot be considered a belief. Atheism remains (and will hopefully remain) thoroughly grounded in the scientific method. Atheism is largely concerned with several questions, including but not limited to: ‘where did the universe come from?’; ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, ‘What is origin of life?’; ‘How does the universe work?’; ‘Do ethics have any authority and where might such authority come from?’ etc. In attempting to answer these and other questions, atheism proposes various hypotheses and then sets about testing them. One such hypothesis is the theory of evolution, which has largely been accepted and incorporated into our current scientific paradigm. That is not to say that the theory of evolution is sacrosanct, or that atheists consider it ‘true’. It is a tested hypothesis to which no equally tested refutation exists. As such, for the time being, atheists accept it and work with it as a fact. If a rigorous refutation does come about then the theory of evolution will need to be abandoned and our paradigm changed. This process of conjecture and refutation is the principle of falsification that underpins modern scientific method. It was originally thought up by Karl Popper as a means of getting around the problem of induction.
Crucially, the principle of falsification does not admit anything to be considered a ‘truth’. Everything remains merely a hypothesis. The emphasis is on refutation, not the establishment of truths. Establishing truths runs into a host of problems owing to issues in inductive reasoning. Induction is about making inferences. For example, if I drop an egg on the floor a hundred times and every time it smashes to pieces, I can infer that dropping an egg on the floor will cause it to break. However, there is nothing to suggest that when, in a few minutes, I drop another egg on the floor it will not float up to the ceiling. There are other problems with induction, namely those elucidated by Hume, by they are quite complex so I will leave them aside at this point.
Theism is quite different, because it involves a hypothesis, namely that ‘God’ does x and y, including being the cause of the universe, the origin of ethical authority and both Jesus’ father and Jesus himself. One reason why many scientists get incensed by theism is that the God hypothesis can’t be proved and, in fact, religious belief is premised on God being unfathomable. As Kierkegaard says, theistic religious is about ‘faith in the absurd’.
By contrast, to say there is no good argument to show atheism is true is meaningless, because atheism is not a hypothesis, it is an attitude. The atheist exists in a state of tense ignorance. The atheist acknowledges his ignorance. The atheist has questions but no answers. The atheist is tense because the atheist wants answers, good ones. God is not a good answer because it relies precisely on belief. Atheists want to know, they want evidence, not a convenient solution that transcends truth, especially when that theory comes with all the baggage theism does.
Atheism is not a belief, it is a method. Even the central tenets of atheism—the theory of evolution, mathematics, quantum mechanics, micro-biology, carbon dating etc—are merely hypotheses that can be discarded. They are of a very different nature to the ‘word’ of the Lord, which is written into the firmament and makes claim to objectivity.
Atheism is neither a belief or a method and it does not have 'tenets'. Neither does Theism. Theism is the belief in existence of god(s) and atheism is the lack of belief in the existentce of god(s). Atheism, like theism, can be part of an ideology, but neither can be an ideology by themselves. You seem very confused about these things.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I quite understand your point - is it merely semantic? If you were to look up Atheism in a dictionary where single sentence definitions are required then absolutely it will say something like: ‘disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.’ (dictionary.com). But this is in part because atheism originally emerge as a counter to theism and is still defined in the negative. In the last half century or so it has come to increasingly be synonymous with scientific method. Atheism as a movement, at least among academics, is not about the hypothesis that God does not exist, but about being committed to scientific method. Science and its associated processes have not ‘proven’ God in a way that is acceptable to science or even to a priori reasoning. I concede that for a great many atheists it is merely a belief in the non-existence of God, but I contend that they are pseudo-atheists as they have not put adequate thought into their position. I do not think that Hitchens, Dawkins, Onfray, Russell or the other popular atheists see it so much as ‘God does not exist’ as ‘God is a stupid idea’ or meaningless one. The God hypothesis is unscientific because it is un-testable and irrefutable, and falsifiability underpins modern scientific method. I concede that describing atheism as a method is drawing a long bow, but I was merely trying to make the link with science explicit. Your comment seems, at times, to be overly embedded in a logical positivist position that is only as strong as logical positivism, which continues to be extensively criticised (though that is not to say I don’t think it is valuable).
DeletePerhaps such popular atheists should describe themselves as agnostic, but this would require their definition of theism to exclude monotheism or the omni-God, as that idea can never be a good hypothesis. The potential for various cosmic entities with a range of powers might become testable at some point, but the potential for a God ‘outside’ the universe who is by nature unfathomable will never be testable. I have published elsewhere on my disappointment over the number of atheists who do think of it as a belief and/or cannot answer fundamental questions that atheism brings up, such as where ethics gets its authority from once God is done away with.
Regarding your point about ideology, I must disagree. If you look at someone like Dawkins or a typical Jehovah’s Witness you will find that an enormous portion of their values, ethics, political views, attitudes and worldview, among other things, stem from their atheism or theism. I fail to see how theism and atheism then cannot constitute an ideology but only be a part of one. Are you merely suggested that theism is part of religious ideology and is insufficient as a term in and of itself? Are you arguing that Jesus had a Christian ideology and that theism was a merely a part of that?
I wrote the piece above because as an atheist I get deeply incensed by theists who claim that I have a faith of sorts. I do not. Where I do not have an answer I admit ignorance and speculate. I am more than happy existing in a state of tension in regard to things of which I have no good knowledge. It was in part to this tension that Nietzsche was referring when he spoke of building bridges over abysses. I was trying to describe the attitude of the atheism movement rather than contribute to the Oxford dictionary definition of atheism.
ALso, if you don't mind me saying, I thought your last comment about me being 'very confused' was rude and quite unnecessary. I'm formally trained in logic and a casual peruse of this blog would, I hope, show that I am not a retard. I understand that when I put things in the public domain I am asking to be criticised, but that is quite a different thing from being insulted.