Atheism: varieties and arguments

Program / Course 18: World Religions / Lesson 4.2

What you will learn

• Define atheism and distinguish its main varieties.
• State the main arguments atheists give, in a form atheists would accept.
• Describe the Christian replies, and the points where atheist critics make real contact.
• Avoid common caricatures of atheists, and of Christian replies.

The big idea

Atheism, in the most common sense, is the position that there is no God. Some atheists define it more broadly as simply not believing in any God, which includes people who have never considered the question. Atheists give reasons: the problem of evil, the lack of convincing evidence, the success of natural explanation and the claim that religion is a human product. Christians reply with arguments of their own. Atheists are as varied in character and morality as believers, and a fair account of their position starts with their stated reasons.

Key terms

Atheism

Lack of belief in God or gods (the broad sense), or the positive belief that there is no God (the narrow sense).

Naturalism

The view that nature, studied by science, is all that exists, so there are no supernatural beings or causes.

Problem of evil

The argument that the existence and amount of suffering is hard or impossible to reconcile with an all powerful, all good God.

Theodicy

A reasoned attempt to explain why a good God permits evil.

Secular humanism

A worldview that bases ethics and meaning on human reason and experience, without belief in God.

Evidentialism

The claim that beliefs should be held in proportion to the evidence for them, applied by some atheists to religion.

Projection theory

The proposal, associated with Ludwig Feuerbach, that God is a projection of human wishes and qualities.

Background

Atheism in the sense of denying the gods is very old. Some Greek and Indian thinkers doubted or denied them. In the early church, Christians were themselves called atheists by Romans, because they refused to worship the gods of the empire. Open and articulate atheism in Europe grew in the eighteenth century with writers such as Baron d’Holbach, and in the nineteenth with Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and J. L. Mackie gave careful arguments, and today writers such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and many philosophers present naturalist cases.

In the United States and Europe, a significant fraction of people now say they have no religion. Not all of these are atheists, but many are. Their reasons are varied: some are intellectual, some are moral and some come from painful experience of religion or of loss. A student should take each seriously.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Varieties of atheism

Atheists differ. Some are strong or positive atheists, who claim that no God exists. Others are weak or negative atheists, who say only that they have no belief in God because they find the case unconvincing. Some, like many in the tradition of Marx, hold that religion is an illusion that harms society. Others, like many secular humanists, are friendly to religious neighbors and join in common causes. Some, such as the Buddhist or the Jain, belong to a religion that has no creator God, which is a different case.

Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead, which he meant as a cultural diagnosis: Western society no longer believed, and the moral consequences would be severe. He saw clearly that giving up God would shake the foundations of Christian ethics, and he did not think that most atheists understood this.

Step 2: The problem of evil

The best known atheist argument is that of evil. If God is all good, he would want to prevent suffering; if all powerful, he could prevent it; yet there is great suffering, such as the pain of children and of animals. Therefore, the argument says, there is no such God. A logical version holds that the two are contradictory, and an evidential version holds that the amount and kind of evil make God improbable.

Christian replies include the free will defense: God permits evil because he values free creatures who can love, and some evil arises from their misuse of freedom. Others stress that suffering can be redemptive, that the evils seen may be outweighed by goods beyond human view, and that God has himself entered suffering in Christ. Alvin Plantinga’s work is widely thought to have answered the logical version. The evidential version remains debated, and many Christians admit that no explanation is complete.

Step 3: Evidence and explanation

A second argument is that there is no sufficient evidence for God. The atheist holds that claims about reality should be proportioned to evidence and that religious claims fail the test. Science explains many things once attributed to God, such as disease, storms and the origin of species, and the atheist expects further gaps to close. Naturalists say that God is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Christians reply that the existence of the universe, its order, the existence of consciousness and moral truth are better explained by God than not, and they offer arguments such as the cosmological, the fine-tuning and the moral arguments. They add that a belief may be reasonable without being proved by argument, an idea developed in Plantinga’s work. They also point out that science works within an assumption that nature is orderly, a fact that science does not itself explain.

Step 4: Religion as a human product

A third group of arguments explains religion away. Feuerbach held that God is the projection of human ideals. Marx called religion the sigh of the oppressed and the opium of the people. Freud treated it as a wish-fulfilling illusion. Modern cognitive science of religion suggests that humans are inclined to see agency in nature. These explanations are suggested as reasons to doubt that religious belief tracks reality.

Christians answer that how a belief arises does not decide whether it is true: a person can have a mistaken reason to believe a true thing. They add that the same method could be turned on atheism, which also has psychological explanations, and that some of these thinkers, such as Freud, offered speculation more than evidence. Some Christians accept a part of the critique, noting that Scripture itself condemns idolatry, the making of God in human image.

Step 5: Morality and meaning without God

Atheists commonly reply that people can be good without God, and the evidence shows that they are. Many hold that ethics rests on human flourishing, empathy and reason, and that the purpose of life is made by people. Christians agree that many atheists live good lives and note that conscience is, in Paul’s words, written on the heart (Romans 2:14-15). The disagreement is whether moral obligation and human dignity have a foundation without God. Some philosophers, including some atheists, think they do, and others think the case is difficult.

Christians must also take seriously that atheists are moved by moral anger at religious violence, hypocrisy and cruelty. The history of the church includes real wrongs, and the atheist critique sometimes points to them accurately.

1. What is the difference between not believing in God and believing that there is no God?
2. Which atheist argument do you find strongest, and why?
3. What do Christians say to a person whose loss has made faith impossible?
4. Can a person be morally serious without God, and what does the answer imply?
5. Where has the atheist critique of religion been right about the church?
6. How would you describe an atheist’s view of life’s meaning in a way that an atheist would accept?

Examples

Different perspectives

Atheist

Atheist thinkers hold that the burden of proof lies with the one who asserts God, that natural explanations suffice, and that the problem of evil weighs strongly against God. Many also insist that atheism is not a faith or a dogma, and that it carries no creed or code. Atheists disagree among themselves on ethics, politics and the value of religion.

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches that God’s existence can be known by reason from creation (Catechism 31-35, Dei Filius). It also teaches that atheism can have many causes, including the failings of believers, and that those who deny God with sincere conscience are not to be judged (Gaudium et Spes 19-21). The Church calls for dialogue.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology says that God is beyond being as human thought grasps it, and that therefore both naive belief and simple denial can miss the mystery. Orthodox thinkers often say that atheism may reject an idol, a false picture of God, and that the true God is known by encounter. Orthodox philosophers such as David Bentley Hart argue against materialism.

Protestant

Protestant apologists include classical evidentialists, who offer arguments for God, and Reformed epistemologists such as Plantinga, who hold that belief in God can be properly basic. Others, in the tradition of Kierkegaard, doubt that faith rests on argument. All agree that atheists should be treated as neighbors.

Scholarly

Philosophers of religion remain divided. Surveys show a majority of academic philosophers as atheists, with a substantial minority of theists. The problem of evil and the question of whether fine-tuning supports theism are active debates.

Why it matters

Atheism is the most direct challenge to Christian belief in the modern world, and many Christians will meet it among family and friends. Knowing the arguments in their strongest form is part of honesty. It prevents the habit of answering a caricature, and it shows where Christian replies are strong and where they rest on faith.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which argument do you think a Christian should take most seriously, and why?
2. How would you respond to a grieving friend who says that suffering has ended her faith?
3. In what ways might the atheist critique of religion help the church?
4. What does it say about your own beliefs that you can state the atheist position without distortion, or cannot?

Independent assignment

The strongest atheist case

In your notebook, write about 300 words giving the strongest argument for atheism, stated so that a thoughtful atheist would say you have understood. Use at least one atheist author’s own words in paraphrase. Then write about 250 words with the best Christian reply, and note where the reply admits difficulty. Do not mock either side.

Further study

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Problem of Evil Read for the logical and evidential forms of the problem and the main replies.
• Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil Read for the free will defense against the logical problem of evil.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (The Gay Science) Read the passage on the madman and the death of God, section 125.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fine-Tuning Read for the argument from fine-tuning and objections.
• C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain Read for a Christian treatment of suffering.
• Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God, read with care about who is meant.
• Job 38:1 God answers Job out of the whirlwind.
• Romans 2:15 The work of the law written in their hearts.