Philosophical Atheism: A Review

 

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

 

Ernest Nage’s essay, “Philosophical Concepts of Atheism” appeared first in Johnson E. Fairchild’s 1959 philosophy anthology, “Basic Beliefs: The Religious Philosophies of Mankind,” and then, in 1997, in Peter A. Angeles’ “Critiques of God: Making the Case Against Belief in God.” Nagel stated that his purpose in writing the piece was to “show how atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.”

“No!” I wanted to shout at the open book. “Atheism has no connection to religion beyond the suspension of belief in its claims pending sufficient evidence to the contrary.” I pressed on, determined to debunk Nagel’s tagging of atheism as a philosophy and a component of religious thought. Atheism, I would counter, is simply the disbelief in a god or gods. Nothing more. Nothing less. To call it a philosophy is like calling creationism theory a philosophy. Mere disbelief does not make a philosophy of atheism. To insist on the atheist philosophy argument play too easily into the laughable theist claim that theism is a religion.

Nagel begins with a definition of theism as the view “that the heavens and the earth and all that they contain owe their existence and continuance in existence to the wisdom and will of a supreme, self-consistent, omnipotent, omniscient, righteous and benevolent being, who is distinct from, and independent of, what he has created,”

That is a definition of a transcendent god, but it does not address pantheism. Did Nagel feel that pantheism was not subject to criticism? Or that it is not a part of “the great tradition of religious thought”?

Also, defining atheism as a philosophy presented a greater challenge that forced the author to break atheism into two categories and four sub-categories: (1) “those which hold that the theistic doctrine is meaningful, but reject it either on the ground that (a) the positive evidence for it is insufficient, or (b) the negative evidence is quite overwhelming; and (2) those who hold that the theistic thesis is not even meaningful, and reject it (a) as just nonsense of (b) as literally meaningless but interpreting it as a symbolic rendering of human ideals.”

That, too, aroused some kickback from me for the “or” in (1.a.) and (1.b.). Why not “and?” Can’t we question supernatural claims for both insufficient positive evidence and overwhelming negative evidence? Of course it can. I do not see why an atheist cannot hold both positions, and that (2.a.). is an added legitimate position. Nagel appeared to claim that the three positions are mutually exclusive. I contend that they are not.

 

It is when he takes on theists’ arguments for the existence of their god that his essay shines. He dismantled the argument from design, and the cosmological and teleological arguments. His thoughts on the ontological argument- the claim that because God is a perfect being, “he is one whose essence or being lacks no attributes.” Nagel’s debunking caused a problem: Repeating Immanuel Kant, Nagel said that “existence” is not an attribute. Understanding that premise is above my pay grade. Why is it not an attribute? His answer to the question requires a greater education in philosophy than I currently hold. So, I will put that into the category of “weak atheists’ arguments” until I can better understand the attributes of existence. And why it is not itself an attribute.

Moving on.

Speaking of weak arguments, tackling the argument from design is- for someone of Ernest Nagel’s intelligence, like shooting fish in a barrel (pardon the cliché). He first takes apart the watchmaker argument on which so much of the argument from design depends, and then he dismantles the “Divine Mathematician” segment of creationists’ insistence on filling any hole in scientific knowledge with a supernatural deity.

Then, we come to my favorite: the Problem of Evil. Apologetics for evil have been so thoroughly debunked that it would be redundant to discuss Nagels’ disposal of them. It, like the argument from design, is beneath Nagel’s attention. That he expended ink and intellectual energy on the topic can only mean that such apologetics were a common response to unbelief in 1959.

 

Having dismissed the common claims of evidence for a supernatural being or beings, Nagel turned his attention to his stated purpose in drafting the essay: to “show how atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.”

 He wrote that “philosophical atheists have not shared a common set of positive views, a common set of philosophical convictions which set them off from other groups of thinkers.” On asserting that “there has never been a what one might call a “school of atheism,” he then sets out from there to establish a school of atheism. He rejects from discussion of philosophical atheism the “’village atheist’ whose primary concern is to “twit and ridicule those who accept some form of theism.” Those of us who have suffered gross and minor injustices at the hands of Christians for our refusal to join their club reject his rejection, Nagel’s off-handed dismissal rings hollow. The “village atheist” with some training in rhetoric can display the intellectual capacity to debate supernaturalism from a philosophical perspective, but he can also engage feral religion in metaphorical back-alley brawls.

He parses philosophical atheists into three major groups: (1) those which “reject the assumption that incorporeal agents can exercise a causal agency.; (2) atheists generally agree that “controlled sensory observation is the court of final appeal in issues concerning matters of fact,” a wordy way of saying that the empirical method (of which I considers methodological naturalism as a significant component; Nagel does not elaborate) is the final arbiter in disputes of fact; and (3) philosophical atheists “have generally accepted a utilitarian basis for judging moral issues. It is on this claim that I wrestle with. Years ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with that, but reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” changed my mind about utilitarianism as a basis for morality, but I have yet to find its replacement.

In summary, “Philosophical Concepts of Atheism” offers effective arguments against the claims of the existence of a supernatural entity or entities but falls short of providing evidence that “atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.” He wrote an otherwise brilliant essay that would have served better if his stated purpose had been to debunk common arguments for supernaturalism.

##