Editor's Note: Spokane Faith & Values has a new feature called “Ask An Atheist” where readers are invited to submit question to our atheist writers. Here's the sevenths question that came in, and a response from one of our atheist writers.
Q. Doesn't “atheist” imply certainty about the non-existence of God? Do your reject all forms of theism like polytheism, monotheism, ditheism, pantheism, panentheism, maltheism, animism, monolatry, henotheism, kathenotheism or do you make exceptions such as the famous one Richard Dawkins does with Albert Einstein's panentheism, making the case that Einstein's panentheism was in fact a form of atheism?
A. Atheism comes in as many flavors, just as their are Christians who range from literalist Young Earth creationism believers all the way to those who don't accept biblical miracles or even the divinity of Jesus. But just as one could argue that a “Christian” who doesn't accept the divinity of Jesus is a pretty wishi-washy Christian, so too an “atheist” who has a hankering for some gods is an odd bird indeed.
As for me personally, I do not believe in any supernatural agencies, and therefore don't have to worry about worshipping them. That there are so many options I have never even heard of like henotheism or kathenotheism (I Googled them to discover they are a way of plowing through the overly abundant Hindu pantheon by treating them like vitamin supplements, ingested on a revolving schedule) shows what delights I have been missing by not buying into supernatural agency worship in the first place.
As for Einstein, he too believed in no personal god, and tossed off the term as a mushy name for nature and its internal structure. Stephen Hawking has used the term in much the same loose way. I think such practices should be discouraged. Don't use the “god” term unless you know what it means and that you really mean it.
The extent to which an atheist takes a philosophical stance that not only do they not believe in any god or gods, but that no god or gods can in principle exist (like a square circle or an honest Three Card Monte dealer) is part of the range of the belief system. I won't personally ontologically preclude the existence of supernatural agencies, maybe even ones that have since gone extinct (after all, why do we assume gods are the big ticket immortal type rather than ones that have shelf lives, like the pre-Zeus Cronos). I do find all the existing candidates extremely unconvincing, though, which would leave, I suppose, room for some exceptionally coy agency that avoids extrovert communication or miraculous hijinks in ways that could be reliably observed and confirmed. In that respect, if said supernatural agent gets grumpy because folks don't get all worshipful about him, well, its his own fault isn't it, for being such a shy introverted cuss who doesn't realize how to properly market himself.
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If the universe came into existence by pre-existent physical laws or mathematical constructs, would these be serving the same purpose as a “god”? Most atheists I know believe in some transcendent form of math or physical law. What is the difference in that sort of belief and the theist who believes in a god? To me they seem like much the same.
Bruce: fair enough point that believing prior physical laws or processes would be performing much the same causal role as good(s) would to account for why things are what they are and why are they that at all. But I balk at the use of “god” for such processes because, for me at least, it is a term that suggests a personal entity and not a steroidal version of F=MA. Words can get mushed out of all shape as it is without us letting the “god” one get coopted for natural processes.
The theist who believes in a causal god is addressing a personal being, and therefore issues of worship and doing what the god otherwise recommends comes into play. No secularist would be worth their salt if they thought for a second whether they should venerate or worship the underlying natural causual processes, or ask what would “natural process for the origin of the universe from nothing” want me to do in day to day life. So while both atheist and believer would be pondering the how and why of the universe, their answers to the question venture through very different doorways, in terms of how that relates to broader philosophy and behavior.
Full disclosure. Jim Downard is a friend of mine and we have similar world views. I just thought his reply to Bruce, whose question was very thoughtful and well phrased, was an excellent representation of the non theist point of view. Not a contrary view…but a natural view. Well stated Mr. Downard and thoughtfully framed Mr. Meyer.
Thank you both for your responses.
“As for Einstein, he too believed in no personal god, and tossed off the term as a mushy name for nature and its internal structure. Stephen Hawking has used the term in much the same loose way. I think such practices should be discouraged. Don’t use the “god” term unless you know what it means and that you really mean it.”
I think you are correct in terms of Stephen Hawkins, but Einstein did believe in a Pantheistic God in line with Spinoza. It did not use it as a mushy name for Nature but a fundamentally different understanding of Nature than the materialistic view that was prevalent in his time (and one that Dawkins holds). For Einstein, science was a religious and mystical experience akin to worship. Any light look of his The Merging of Spirit and Science would verify this. I don’t share his view, but I honest that he held it. Dawkins is not. Dawkins wears the tools of a cheap creationist, begging the question, redefining terms to make one of his idols one of his own. So is Pantheism a form of Atheism for you?
Your answer does walk around the question of how “God” is used. The trickiest thing it seems is tying to extraordinary complex words embedded in vast and varied vocabularies like “God” and “Existence” and tie them in a not equivalent logical formula. God understood by Trinitarian Christians, Pantheists, pantheists, Tillich like God as ground of being and the rest offers to complex to simply dismiss. To claim that all uses of the word is illegitimate and does not exists seems a circular argument that must limit the use of the words of God and Exist.
As Jim Hudlow points out that it is not all theism but a particular kind of theism that seems to be the target of modern Atheistic movement.
Ernesto wrote: “Dawkins wears the tools of a cheap creationist, begging the question, redefining terms to make one of his idols one of his own.” That’s a provocative assertion, and by all means offer some illustrations of that. Are there “expensive” creationists who don’t do that sort of thing, and is it possible to discuss any of these pithy topics without having to lay down how terms are used and how one proposes to use them? What exactly does it mean to make one of your own idols one of your own idols? Isn’t that a rather tautologous “sin” that we all have to by nature succumb to, that we believe what we believe?
That Dawkins is a full-throated atheist who refuses to give any deference to the God of Abraham in the reverence department, I will readily assent to. That is his position (and mine too, come to think of it). I’ve been slowly plowing through Dawkins’ :The God Delusion” and so far find nothing in it that I would fundamentally disagree with. Both of us are not impressed by theistic arguments, though if there is a fault to Dawkins (as well as myself) it is that he focuses primarily on the dominant religion of our culture, the Bible-based theologies, although he implies that his is a universalist position is applicable to any god belief system (though there are atheists in India who I imagine assail the Hindu pantheon with just as much gusto as Dawkins does Yahweh).
As for Einstein’s “The Merging of Spirit and Science” piece I couldn’t find a text online yet, though it appears to have been quoted a lot, but I would want to read the whole thing to assess what his position actually is. From what I can see of it in smatters I would still classify his views as a squishy deist, which is hardly a surprise. But let me affirm: I don’t claim people don’t hold such positions (covering all manner of varied forms of transcendence, spirit, etc.), I just contend as my analytical and philsophical position that they shouldn’t be calling that belief “god” because it mushes the topic all out of shape and promotes all manner of wheel-spinning crosstalk.
The recent effort by the Intelligent Design movement to hijack Darwin’s evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace as proto-IDist illustrates the pitfalls of not clarifying terms that way. Wallace, who was more of a natural selectionist than Darwin (rejecting additional factors like sexual selection), became a devout spiritualist, but had rejected Christianity full out when he was a teenager. Hence his belief that only a cosmic “Mind” could account for the origin of life, consciousness and human morality (hot topics still in the creation/evolution department) did not intersect except peripherally with the very specific Judeo-Christian Designer teh vast majority of modern ID advocates have in mind when they are giving lectures at churches (one of which I recently attended and will be reporting on in my next big post btw). Wallace’s spiritualist belief system intersects far more with 19th century occultism than with the cultural setting that ultimately spawned modern ID beliefs, which makes efforts of explicit Kulturkampf conservative Christians at the Discovery Institute trying to jujitsu his socialist spiritualism as a sock puppet for their position alternately funny and tendentious.
Jim,
I would gladly provide the Dawkins’ quote for you asked for. First, cheap can mean low cost, hence your expensive commit or it can mean what my context suggests, inferior product. From chapter one in God Delusion:
“Lets remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist’s metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.”
Lets look at that quote closely, shall we. It certainly would have flunked any beginning anthropology class. First, Theism means belief in God. Dawkins first defines theism in a very narrow way in what many would call a monotheism. I love his statement of ” In many theistic belief systems,..” true but equally true is many do not. But he needs such a narrow few to pull off his argument. I love his making pantheism some poetic symbolism for Nature and end with the pithy but wrong Pantheism is sexed up atheism. If if pantheism is sexed atheism why was Mr. Dawkins so furious with Antony Flew for coming to a very similar position as Einstein toward the end of his life.
I love how then goes on to quote several monotheists anger with Einstein because he was not a monotheist. Well, Dawkins is correct, Einstein was not a monotheist, he was a pantheist. Dawkins is as wrong to claim him as an atheist as many monotheist that claim him. Einstein was a pantheist. If fact, it could argued that his pantheism was the reason he could never accept Quantum physics. Einstein was not a monotheist, nor a polytheist, nor a panetheist, nor even a atheist, he was a pantheist. Was a theist, well pantheism is a type of theism, so yes he was. And like I pointed out, when Dawkins was confronted with a living pantheist, we went on the attack.
Again, I notice the rest of your response had to do with Monotheism and not Theism in general. Being a Monotheist myself, I do not claim that Einstein was one. But he believed in a similar God which Spinoza believed in, a pantheistic God.
That Ernesto perceives the Dawkins quote as something qualifying for flunking that “beginning anthropology class” usefully characterizes our differing perceptions of things. I have no problem with what Dawkins wrote as a perfectly practical general summary of how theists and desists differ. That things could get harder in defining how pantheists or other -ists fit in reminds me of the furious debates among “communists” or yore between Stalinists and Trotskyites and syndicalists and all manner of -ists that likewise appear as so much hair-splitting today.
Beware how far we open that door. After all, is it really true that the Christian Triune God qualifies as “monotheism” at all? That Christians can square their circle by triangulating it doesn’t minimize the problem of a three-in-one God (news to those Hebrews after all), but for the purpose of general terminology I can accept including Christians as monothesists because in a sense they retain that concept.
For me though, apart from a historical note, I really don’t care what Einstein’s views on God were, any more than whether his personal life is a useful case study for “sex lives for cosmologists”. Theistic thinking, as a subset of philsophy in general, is not a field where I tend to defer much to authority. In a rather fundamental way here I think everybody gets to play here and prior thinkers may have useful insights but not much more.
One of Stephen J Gould’s complaints against creationist attacks on evolution was that it was clear that they did not bother to engage evolution to understand it, rather the skimmed it looking for clinks in its armor. He would get would get into arguments with others biologist when he would introduce a hypothesis that would challenge some aspect of evolution like his punctuated equilibrium, he would hear arguments like biologists had to present a united front. Of course, Gould, being a scientist, reject such notions. Science is primarily a process of wonder.
Dawkins and many of the GU atheists repeat the same process as the creationists Gould complained about. It is clear Dawkins only skimmed beliefs of others to dismissed them, not bothering to engage them as a scientist. When he was asked about this about his response was “Would you need to read learned volumes on Leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?” Such a silly antirational thinking (If you don’t bother to understand leprechology, why write a book purpose to dismiss it. And when it is pointed out that you don’t even understand what purpose to dismiss, you answer with a pithy quote that in fact acknowledge your own ignorance. If you want to understand the thinking of Creationist, this is the same process, dismiss what you don’t bother to understand.)
Many non-believing scientists like T. M. LUHRMANN and Dr. Andrew Newberg who actually engaging religion with science. Their work adds to human knowledge. Dawkins work on religion is less science and more secular leprechology.
kbddin