Atheism and the Limits of Certitude

In a previous post I addressed the possibility that atheism is a religion.  I was forced to reject this possibility, suggesting instead that atheism, like theism, was nothing more than a religious opinion concerning the existence (or not) of deities.  Formal religion, I argued, came not from belief in a deity, but from the implications of that belief for the lives of believers.  Deism, for instance, would not be a religion, since it accepts creation by a deity who set initial conditions, but made no demands on adherents for religious practice.  Judaism and Islam were discussed (briefly, inadequately... I know) as theisms that derived a set of practices from what they thought about the creator and their relation to "him," creating religions that were essentially orthopractic.  Christianity took this a step farther and added a number of things (i.e. the Trinity, transubstantiation of the Eucharist, etc.) to practice, creating a faith based on proper belief, orthodoxy.  Finally, by analogy to atheistic religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, along with secular movements like Communism, suggested that some atheists do act in a religious manner.

I wanted to pick this thread up now because a number of discussions I have had, with both believers and non-believers, have convinced me that something important is going on and that this illuminates another way some atheists are acting like their more traditionally "religious" counterparts.  It was also stimulated in part by an "atheist mythology" suggested by John Shook at the Center for Inquiry.  Shook, I think, is on to something here.  What he has reached, it seems, is the problem of certitude among a large segment of the atheist community, the certitude I wrote about in the post linked above and which contains the beginnings, one suspects of an atheist fundamentalism.

Atheist fundamentalism begins, as does religious fundamentalism, with absolute certitude on the "god question."  Of course the answers are diametrically opposed, but the commitment is still the same.  Atheist fundamentalists are absolutely certain that there is no god (they are even more certain that there is no God, but I'll come to that in a bit).  Science, they suggest, has killed god, a claim that goes even farther than Stephen Hawking's recent assertion that the Big Bang could have proceeded without God (or god).  Even the chief prophet of the New Atheism isn't that certain.  In "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins classified himself as "agnostic...to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden."  On his seven-stage scale, with seven representing absolute certainty that there is no god, Dawkins said he was a six leaning towards seven.  Of course, there isn't much in the rest of the book (remember, according to the title belief in god is delusional) to buttress that moment of humility.

When one  atheist suggests to another that, however remote the possibility, a deity might exist, there are generally two responses from these atheist fundamentalists.  One is to immediately conflate any suggestion of a deity with the Abrahamic god.  Another is to demand incontrovertible proof of God's (the capitalization here is deliberate) existence.  Can't provide it?  There is no god (or God).  QED.

I will answer both of these points in a way that I hope does not compromise my atheism, since I would hate, hate, hate to be branded a heretic in the non-religion.

On the question of the existence of a deity, it needs to be repeated: admitting the possibility of a god, presumably a creator (for what else, in this universe, would define a god) is far from endorsing any particular vision of god.  It is suggesting a minute possibility that theism, as a religious opinion, might be correct.  From my own atheistic standpoint, I would argue that, if there is an intelligent creator, the deists have come closest to describing such a being.  If there is a watchmaker, this designer seems to have wound things up and let them run according to fixed rules.  History lacks credible evidence of "divine interventions" in the lives of men; science sufficiently explains the workings of the cosmos.   These two facts are enough for me to discard the deist position and consider myself an atheist.

On the question of proof, I can only shrug and sigh.  Divinity, ultimately, is not amenable to proof; ancient and medieval theologians knew this, despite attempts to use logic to prove the existence of God.  While history can teach us that divinity doesn't show up in the historical record and science can teach us that the universe can get along fine without it, neither can as yet definitively rule it out; absence of evidence, as it is said, is not evidence of absence.  The leap from this uncertainty to either atheism or theism is ultimately a leap of faith.  I am an atheist because I do not believe gods exist.  I am an atheist not because science has proved there is no god, but because neither history nor science has provided evidence for god.

Those capable of absolute certitude on this question, whether they embrace a cosmos that does not or cannot have a designer or a cosmos that absolutely must have one have, it seems to me, surrendered their faculty for wonder.  Lack of complete data requires a humility that is lost when we are so certain.  Whether you believe in god or God or gods, or none at all, without the occasional doubt that touches the minds of all thinking people, what are we?  Even those most identified with holiness, for example Mother Teresa (whether you think her a saint or the worst kind of sinner), admit to the occasional moment of crisis in which they feared they were alone in the universe.  For atheists and theists alike, who live in a universe of wonder, one that is stranger not only than we do think but than we can think, completely shutting down any possibility is the worst failure of imagination.