It is a conclusion, not a belief...

Sorry to have to do this once again, but I must commandeer the blog so I can rant a bit.

I just read a piece by Alister McGrath entitled "The Twilight of Atheism", and I have to say that I was underwhelmed by the whole thing. It is basically several pages of a discussion of why atheism is declining as a way of looking at the world and why this is potentially a good thing. The problems with this article are many in number, but they all stem from what I believe to be McGrath's misunderstanding of the atheist position and the reasons for atheism. The misunderstanding goes something like this: atheism is a belief which requires as much faith as belief in God, and therefore it must operate in a manner similar to other belief systems.

The problem with this understanding of atheism/agnosticism is atheism is not a belief system, but rather a conclusion. People who are atheists don't believe that there is no God. Rather, in their minds they have examined the evidence for such a being and found it lacking. There are many proofs of the existence of a supreme being, but for an atheist none of them hold muster. For example, the cosmological argument states that the Earth and the universe had to come from something (a prime mover, or first cause), and that something is God. But then the question becomes, where did God come from? If the universe is so complicated to have needed a builder, then surely the one who built the universe must be equally complex. So who built God? Theologians attempt to answer this question by stating that God has always existed or that God is outside of the Universe and space/time. If God could have always existed, then why not the universe? And a God outside of space/time sounds like little more than defining God to fit the problem.

There are many other so-callled proofs of the existence of a supreme being, but they all fall flat when one considers them to their logical conclusions. The only one that makes sense, and indeed is one that I could get behind, is the proof of God from personal experience. People experience God in their everyday lives and as such they are convinced of His existence. This works well for them, and I can accept that they have had a personal experience which is different from what I have had. I can't discount this because for these people it is obviously true. If everyone had personal experiences with God or gods or the supreme being of their choice and left everyone else to their own experiences, things would be fine. But this is not the case. Evangelicals often state that it is this personal relationship with Jesus that brings them joy and strength, but unfortunately it doesn't remain a personal relationship - it becomes a public one in which anyone who doesn't accept Jesus is wrong and doomed to hell. So the argument from personal experience can fall flat if used to try and show that one religion is right and the others are wrong. If your personal experience was good enough for you as a Christian, why wasn't the experience of a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Taoist, etc. good enough for them? If you are willing to accept personal experience as a proof for God, you must also be willing to accept that others have different personal experiences and that they are all equally valid.

But I digress.

Back to McGrath and the fall of atheism. He goes on in the article to discuss how atheistic communities do not thrive as well as those based on religion.

Christian churches have long been the centers of community life in the
West. People want to belong, not just believe.

The growth of community churches has helped meet this need. There is a
sense of belonging to a common group, of shared common values, and of knowing
each other. People don't just go to community churches; they see themselves as
belonging there. At a time when American society appears to be fragmenting, the
community churches offer cohesion.

I can't argue there. Churches do a wonderful job of bringing together people under the common banner of belief. However, here is where his assumption about atheism being a belief gets in the way. Since it is not a belief, atheism doesn't have a core set of ideas and doesn't serve well as a common ground for disparate groups of people. Get 100 atheists in a room together and there is a chance that none of them will have anything in common with one another outside their atheism. Sure, little groups of soccer fans, Harry Potter fans, computer gamers, science geeks, etc will form, but the core of those groups will be something other than their atheism. McGrath is right, this is a problem, but it is not a major one in that most atheists already know this and wouldn't expect to be able to find a community atheist group.

I would suggest that the concept of belief centered community groups could, in fact, be a bad thing for society. Consider the pentacostal church down the street from me that proudly displays a sign that says "Biblical Truth is not Politically Correct!" This sign frightens me every time I see it because if you have read the bible and take it literally, there are some scary (and downright evil) "biblical truths" in there. Like the "truth" that homosexuals will burn in hell, or the "truth" that the earth was created in 6 days. People in this community keep hearing the same messages all the time from other members of the community and as a result, we have an entire group of homophobic creationists on our hands.

McGrath then goes on to discuss the institution of atheism:

Atheist thinkers are more than happy to appear on the nation's chat shows to
promote their latest books. But they have failed to communicate a compelling
vision of atheism that is capable of drawing and holding large numbers of
people.

and

The failure of atheism to capture the public imagination in the West reflects
its failure to articulate a compelling, imaginative vision of a godless future
that is capable of exciting people and making them want to gather together to
celebrate and proclaim it.

Again, the confusion of what atheism is and is not. If Atheism were a belief system or a religion or a political movement, we might expect that atheists would be clamoring to capture the imagination. Since it is none of those things (at least not at its core) there is no need to articulate a compelling, imaginative future with no god any more than there is a need to articulate a compelling, imaginative, future in which natural selection played a part in the evolution of organisms. To an atheist, they are the same thing - both evolution and atheism are conclusions based on evidence. They can strive to explain the reasoning behind the conclusion, but there is no reason to recruit people to a particular conclusion. What writers like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, etc., do is try and explain why atheists have reached a particular conclusion, not necessarily drum up support for an exciting new way of living.

Among the strangest of the arguments McGrath puts forth as to why atheism is in trouble is through a quotation of John Updike. In reference to whether atheisms has a future, he says:

No doubt it does—but not an especially distinguished or exciting future. Listen
to John Updike: "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic
uninterestingness as an intellectual position." I have to confess that I now
share his catatonic sense of utter tedium when I reread some of the atheist
works I once found fascinating as a teenager. They now seem simplistic, failing
to engage with the complexities of human experience, and seriously out of tune
with our postmodern culture.

Having been part of the creation/evolution debate for many years, I find this to be more than a little amusing. I am not sure I would say that atheism possesses a "drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position". It is far from uninteresting. What causes a star to explode? How did the process of photosynthesis evolve? Why do giraffes have long necks? Why are we here? Ask most of the religious people in this country and the answer to all of the above questions is "God", or "god did it". End of intellectual interestingness. Talk about failing to engage complexities of human experience.

In this increasingly globalized world it is imperative that religious and non-religious groups understand each other as completely as they can. McGrath's piece only furthers ignorance when it comes to atheism and those who are curious about it deserve better.