Meet the candidates: Atheism

Atheism is triumphed as the most intellectual worldview today. Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford has been said to make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. He has said that “it is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane.” I’ll get to evolution a little later, and although it is not strictly an atheistic theory, it certainly grew out of an atheistic worldview.

Atheism is an old worldview, with a history tracing back to the ancient Greeks. Philosophers such as Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus had largely atheistic worldviews. Empedocles said that all matter was composed of just air, water, earth and fire, and that everything could be explained by their interactions. Socrates believed that through human reason, we could acquire knowledge and perfect humanity. Epicurus believed that the human soul, thought and emotion could be explained by the movement and collision of atoms, and that at death the soul’s atoms would disperse so that we could no longer exist. Although most modern atheists would disagree with much that these ancient philosophers wrote about, many of the key atheistic theories were developed by these men.

Though there have been many atheists after these Greeks, it took off widely during the nineteenth century. Atheism today is mostly non-institutionalised; there is no single leader and no books, texts or creeds that are widely accepted. Dawkins is held in high regard by many atheists who see him as their spokesman, however there are just as many who disagree with him. That’s a brief rundown on the history of atheism.

At the most basic level atheism simply says that there are no gods, no spirits and indeed no spiritual realm. This means that there is nothing out of this world; the supernatural is impossible. The physical material world we see and touch everyday is as Carl Sagan said, “all that is or ever was or ever will be.” These beliefs are known as naturalism. This is a purposeless universe. It is governed by directionless physical processes, and these processes must be the same processes that made the world and universe we see today, and must be the same processes that rule the future. A few atheists have said that as the natural processes describe all the world we see, they must also describe our minds and so our emotions such as love are no more than a biochemical reaction to external stimuli. Science and the pursuit of knowledge is widely seen as a wonderful thing that can and will provide all the answers to our questions about life. But to an atheist, they are the only answers that can be accepted. Any other options, such as anything to involve the supernatural, must be rejected, even if the evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

So what does atheism say about the world? Through naturalism it says that the current physical processes are the same as those of the past. The current scientific community believes that these processes point to the origin of the universe, earth and life as being through the Big Bang, stellar evolution and biological evolution. Many religions provide other explanations, however they all introduce more than the natural world, and they involve different unique events. To an atheist, these explanations are unacceptable.

As well as denying the existence of a spiritual realm, atheism also denies the existence of an afterlife and most would agree with Epicurus that after death the soul simply ceases to exist (if they even accept the existence of the soul).

Perhaps surprisingly, atheism has much to say about morality. However it is first important to realise that as there is nothing but the natural world, any meaning or significance that we have is only what we give ourselves. It’s personal, it’s powerful, but it’s very subjective. No one ever has the same experiences. We all have different opinions and feelings about everything. To an atheist, all values are subjective, relative and non-absolute.

This extends even to such basic concepts as “good” and “evil”. They must be defined only by what the collective community decides as a whole. The community’s consensus can change, but it usually takes much time, as if only a few disagree, they’ll be ignored or marginalised. However if the majority of a culture do change their minds, even “good” and “evil” could completely change their meanings. What is now completely unacceptable could change to being acceptable under certain situations, to being acceptable regardless of the situation.

As morality is relative, salvation is a meaningless concept to atheists. Most people believe they are basically good and so have done nothing deserving punishment, and so don’t need to be saved. And as they don’t believe in an afterlife, there is nothing to be saved for. These are major differences from all the other religions discussed tonight.

So if all meanings and morality are relative and likely to change, why is atheism attractive, and why are its adherents largely consistent in what they believe? Most atheists are also humanists, who, like Socrates, believe that mankind can perfect itself. The Humanist Manifesto says that “Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behaviour, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.” It is widely believe that with wisdom and hard effort we can improve out world significantly. The only limits we have are ones we set for ourselves. In fact even the mindless physical processes move us towards bigger and better things, such as evolution and natural selection, which, without any mind of their own, manage to improve ecologies, develop survival strategies against natural disasters and even in the absence of threats will work to improve the creatures’ lives. Beliefs like these are inspirational to many atheists.

I hope that is a fair and somewhat complete description of the atheistic worldview. As a Christian I disagree with much that atheists believe, and most of all, their core assumptions. I do not believe that the physical world is all there is. When I think of things like consciousness, free will, creativity and self-awareness, I see large parts of being human that cannot (at least presently) be explained by the natural processes we see. Most atheists would believe in a deterministic universe, however I believe that the human soul, mind and will are non-deterministic. Non-deterministic life also refuses the possibility of describing the universe with the same processes for all time. History shows us that the world has been shaped by many large unique events. If there are unique events, then we cannot be sure that the present is the key to interpreting the past, and the present is also almost entirely useless in predicting the future.

I think that the largely secular governments we have now are morally unreliable. They have legalised much that I would call wrong, and there are no guarantee that they will protect anything we now consider good and normal. Although most people would never support the legalisation of paedophilia, I think that it is a definite possibly for the future. Consider perhaps what might happen if the age of consent was lowered or removed. Statutory rape would no longer be illegal. It might not take much to then legalise all consensual paedophilia, especially if a gene was found that seemed to indicate a genetic preference for younger partners. I hope this never happens. Or as philosopher Peter Singer has argued, “mentally impaired babies have no greater rights than certain animals” and so we have as much right to kill them as we do our farm animals. But might not someone later argue that there is little difference between the mentally impaired and the physically impaired? Who then would decide which physical impairments are enough to kill our children? Some parents already abort their children for having nothing more than cleft pallets, a condition which surgery can easily cure and which would have little impact on the person’s life even if they did not have the option of surgery.

In regard to humanism, I feel that the examples we have from the twentieth century governments have shown it to fail. Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot were all atheistic men who lead their countries into horrific evils. The twentieth century was one of war. Some say there were more wars than before, and some say there were as many as in centuries before, but I don’t think anyone can honestly say that atheistic humanism has prevented such massive destructions of life. Ironically one of atheism’s most famous philosophers, Nietzsche, predicted in the nineteenth century that the twentieth century would become the bloodiest in history. Richard Dawkins has said that goodness is basically altruism, and that we are biologically programmed to be good based on kinship and reciprocal altruism. But is that really a system of morality if it doesn’t extend to any more than our family and friends? I think that the last century showed that without a belief in the sanctity of all human life, mankind can be incredibly immoral to anyone it finds a fault with. It seems humanism leads to altruism towards only those you feel a strong connection with.

Lastly I disagree with the main premise that through human reason we can answer our questions about life and the universe. As the Greek philosopher Protagoras said: “With regard to the gods I cannot feel sure either that they are, or that they are not, nor what they are like in figure, for there are many things that hinder sure knowledge: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.” I do not think that we can answer many of our most important questions alone, we need someone to reveal the answers to us. That someone is Jesus, who said that God the father had “hidden things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children,” and that “No one knows the father except the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him.”

Thank-you for your time.