Atheism Explained

Religions Without God

Here are some religions which do not believe in the God of classical theism:

• Buddhism. None of the sects of Buddhism accepts the existence of an all-powerful Creator God. Most Buddhists believe in the existence of devas, beings with powers far more exalted than anything human, and having little to do with humans. Like humans, devas may misbehave and be reincarnated as lower life forms. Buddhists have traditionally held that the universe has existed and will exist for ever.

• Jainism has about fifteen million members, in several different sects. It’s an old religion dating back to ancient India, though most members are now outside India. Jains have always been noted for strict morality, asceticism, and dedication to learning. They explicitly reject the concept of a Creator or controller of the universe. They hold that the universe has existed for infinite time, going through repeated cycles which will continue for ever. Jains will not usually reject the word ‘God’, but will define it in terms of abstract qualities rather than a conscious agent. Similarly, they appear to worship their tirthankaras (great sages of the past), but will always insist that they do not worship these individuals, only the virtues they embody.

• Daoism is a traditional Chinese religion. Its two main scriptures are the Daodejing and the Juangzi. Daoism is concerned with human life, personal and social. The Dao (or ‘way’) is the natural flow of things. Daoism has no concept of worship and no concept of salvation. Its central tenet is wu wei or non-interference: violent, invasive action will produce more problems than it solves.

• Confucianism is a system of beliefs in which a very vague reference to ‘heaven’ plays a small part, nothing like the central part of ‘God’ in the Abrahamic faiths. Confucians emphasize right conduct, which to Westerners often seems more a matter of etiquette than of morality.

• ‘Chinese traditional religion’ refers to beliefs currently held by most Chinese (nearly a fifth of the world’s population). It’s largely an amalgam of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, along with some ‘folk beliefs’ that are not specifically Confucian, Daoist, or Buddhist. What is called ‘ancestor worship’ is an element in traditional Chinese thinking, but it does not necessarily commit its followers to the theory that the deceased ancestors are still conscious.

• Falun Gong is a new religion, with about one hundred million followers, based on the writings of ‘Master’ Li Hongzhi. It has been banned in China since 1999. Most of the beliefs concern qigong, the traditional breathing exercises associated with Buddhist and Daoist meditation. Li has expressed views about the malign influence of aliens and about distant and finite ‘gods’, but these views are not paid much attention by rank and file practitioners of Falun Gong, who are mainly concerned with raising their consciousness, improving their health, and behaving morally.

• Shinto is the traditional folk-religion of Japan. Most Japanese follow both Buddhism and Shinto to some extent, often merely ceremonial (at weddings and funerals). Even today, more than ninety-five percent of Japanese have no contact with classical theism or anything close to it. Shinto involves recognition of numerous gods—“the eight million gods”—though ‘nature spirits’ might be a more accurate rendering of the Japanese word ‘kami’. As in many forms of non-Abrahamic religion, there are virtually no demands on what an individual personally believes. Shinto has little in the way of a distinctive morality: elaborate traditional Japanese morality comes mainly from Confucianism.

• Christian atheism is something that springs up from a hundred different places. The Death of God Theology of the 1960s has been influential, but mainly confined to theologians. The best expression of popular Christian atheism is Don Cupitt’s book, Taking Leave of God. Christian atheists work within many traditional denominations, though many find themselves most at home in the Unitarian Universalist churches.

• Unitarian Universalists have their historical roots in Christianity. Unitarians were Christians (such as Arius, fourth century C.E.) who denied that Christ was God and rejected the Trinity. Universalists (such as Origen, third century C.E.) were Christians who believed that all souls, even Satan himself, would eventually be saved. In the U.S., Unitarians and Universalists united in 1961. However, they also accepted into their ranks people who did not believe in God or an afterlife. They no longer define their denomination as specifically Christian. A recent survey of the labels Unitarian Universalists choose to apply to themselves (respondents were permitted to give more than one answer) came up with the following percentages: Humanist, 54 percent; Agnostic, 33 percent; Earth-centered, 31 percent; Atheist, 18 percent; Buddhist, 16.5 percent; Christian, 13.1 percent; Pagan, 13.1 percent.

I mention these examples of non-theistic or doubtfully theistic religion, not to recommend them—I personally feel not the slightest urge to go to church, sing hymns, or spend time performing picturesque rituals—but to illustrate that religion need not involve belief in God.

In his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins begins by using the term ‘religious’ in a favorable sense, but then settles on equating religion with belief in God. This is a bit parochial. Religion in all its diversity is a fascinating arena of human conduct, and we can’t begin to understand it if we keep on relating it to the peculiar Abrahamic worldview. In this book, I have to focus on classical theism, but please bear in mind that theism is not religion, and atheism is not essentially opposed to religion.

God and Immortality

Two of the three Abrahamic religions now dominate the world of organized religion. Christianity still has by far the biggest following of any religion, and Christianity is still growing worldwide. Fertility rates are falling in every country, but more slowly in the poorest countries, so Christianity and Islam are increasing their share of world population. The big story is the rapid conversion of many millions of people to Pentecostalism—often, but not exclusively, from Catholicism. Both Christianity and Islam are strongest among the low-income populations of the Third World: both wither on the vine when exposed to modern capitalism.

Can You Prove It?

If you get into a discussion about the existence of God, especially with people who are not accustomed to such discussions, you will usually find that the word ‘proof’ is tossed around freely. Pretty soon, someone starts making assertions about what can or cannot be proved. People will often solemnly tell you that you cannot deny the existence of God until you can disprove it, though the same people would consider it quite loopy to say that you can’t deny the existence of leprechauns until you can disprove it.

At one time the English word ‘prove’ meant what we now mean by ‘test’. So, the sentence translated in the King James Bible (1611) as “Prove all things” is now best translated as “Test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). (This would be excellent advice if we had unlimited time and other resources. Since we have to economize, it should be replaced with something like ‘Hold nothing immune from possible testing’.) The meaning of the word ‘prove’ has gradually shifted so that ‘prove’ has come to mean ‘demonstrate’ or ‘substantiate’.

In today’s English, ‘prove’ has several distinct meanings. The strictest meaning refers to a proof in mathematics or logic. Given a few premisses (assumptions we start from) we can prove such results as Pythagoras’s theorem in geometry. This kind of proof is entirely a matter of reasoning, and it can be laid out very clearly, step by step. If you can’t find a flaw in the reasoning, you have to accept the result of the proof (that is, you have to accept that the conclusion does follow from the premisses; where you get your premisses is another matter).

In U.S. courts of law, there are two main conceptions of proof, which we saw being appealed to in the O.J. Simpson trials. Simpson was first tried for murder in a criminal court, where the standard of proof of guilt is ‘proof beyond any reasonable doubt’. When he had been acquitted, there was a civil trial, which requires a lesser degree of proof: ‘proof on the preponderance of the evidence’.

When scientists talk about proof, they may be referring to a purely mathematical and logical exercise, showing that a certain result follows from certain assumptions. Or they may be using the term in a more loose way, where ‘prove this theory’ means ‘find some evidence that tells in favor of this theory’.

Science proceeds by accepting or rejecting hypotheses. A hypothesis is a guess, a stab at the truth, preferably one which has been so precisely formulated that it can be tested by definite observations. The existence of God is a hypothesis, but it is not the kind of hypothesis that can be tested by definite observations. It’s difficult to imagine someone looking into a microscope or a telescope and exclaiming: ‘Wow! This means there is a God after all!’ Discussion of the existence or non-existence of God usually doesn’t turn on particular observations; it most often turns on more general considerations of the kind we call ‘metaphysical’.

Both theists and atheists often assert that, on some particular point, their opponents have ‘the burden of proof’. I think that making any such claim, in this context, is a mistake. ‘Burden of proof’ is a useful concept in legal trials, where, as a matter of practical administration, we have to let the defendant go or hang him. I can see no place for it in discussion of a factual question like the existence of God.

Three Types of Unbelief

Someone who does not believe in the existence of something—and the something can be leprechauns, kangaroos, global warming, alien abductions, or God—may or may not assert the nonexistence of that something. If the person fails to believe in the existence of something while not believing in its nonexistence, we can call that person an ‘agnostic’.

‘Agnostic’ is a word deliberately invented by T.H. Huxley in 1869 to refer to anyone who, like Huxley himself, had no belief in God but was not prepared to deny God’s existence. Prior to that date all ‘agnostics’ had been recognized as atheists. ‘Atheist’ comes from two Greek words meaning ‘without God’ and ‘agnostic’ comes from two Greek words meaning ‘without knowing’. An agnostic, then, is someone who ‘does not know’ whether there is a God or not.

To the Victorian ear, ‘agnostic’ sounded a lot less threatening and more respectable than ‘atheist’. However, a number of avowed and notorious ‘atheists’ have been agnostics by Huxley’s definition, including the celebrated nineteenth-century atheist Charles Bradlaugh.