A-Theism

Readers of these posts will have noticed that I’m no fan of atheism, and likely will have inferred that I’m what people are prone to call a “theist.” It’s interesting to note that no one in the world, as far as I’ve heard, goes around proclaiming, “I’m a Theist!” The term, or whatever it represents, exists purely to stake out a position in debate: If there are atheists, there also must be the opposite, theists. In fact, “theism” exists purely as a sort of placeholder, filling a necessary position in a presumptive logical relationship. That relationship turns out to be a false dilemma.

The basis of the atheism-vs.-theism polarity is presumed to be the nonbelief or belief in God, a god, gods, etc. An atheist, by this standard, is someone who denies the existence of any such thing, and a “theist” is someone who affirms the existence of some such thing.

It’s worth noting in connection with this that the Greek word at the center of the discussion, θεος (theos), was never to the ancient Greeks a proper noun. Rather, it was a quality or category shared by certain beings: Zeus was θεος, Apollo was θεος, etc. In short, the “theo” in theology, the “the” in “theism” and “atheism,” doesn’t refer to a specific being or personification, it refers to whatever might be shared by gods and goddesses: “divinity” would be a likely translation.

But the real problem with suggesting that atheism and “theism” are equivalent but opposite positions is that it lumps together a very large number of very different belief-systems and gives them a single label based on what is really just one characteristic of each system, and not necessarily the most important. It then posits the so-labelled “theistic” systems as one monolithic mass in opposition to what is really just another belief-system, albeit one in which the salient belief is in disbelief.

This is actually the great error that Plato warned against in the practice of dialectic: When you divide things, make sure you’re dividing them where they truly differ and where the difference truly matters. For example, if you want to categorize "living things," you probably won’t get useful results if you start by dividing them into “things that call me by my nickname Mongo” and “things that don’t call me by my nickname Mongo.”

This is exactly what is going on when we divide people into “those who don’t believe in God, a god, gods, goddesses, spirits, angels, etc. etc. etc.” and “those who believe in any of the above.” The don’t-believe/do-believe dilemma forces us to suppose that one of those two positions is the only true one, instead of allowing us to scope out the full range of possibilities.

Another way of trying to say what I’m trying to say is that the differences among the putatively “theistic” belief-systems are as real and important as the difference between this theoretical “theism” and atheism. For example, fundamentalist Christianity and Taoism – is there a significant difference? Only someone totally ignorant of one or both would say no. Yet both must fall into the “theist” category, enabling the atheist to claim victory over both if he can refute either one.

This is one reason for my conviction that, as I asserted in my last post, the argument really is “not between science and religion but between naturalism and supernaturalism or between physicalism and metaphysicalism.” Because, of course, atheists aren’t only atheists, they’re holders of a worldview that includes (or perhaps requires) a denial of anything supernatural or metaphysical, but which embraces a lot of do-believes in addition to the one don’t-believe, and the unspoken do-believes would require a lot more intellectual firepower to defend.

Let’s suppose that instead of a God/no-God dichotomy, we’re actually talking about a spectrum or continuum of belief. Belief in what? must be our first question, and the answer is crucial. It seems to me that what we’re really talking about is how we explain the source(s) or cause(s) of the cosmos in which we live (and ask these questions).

The physicalist/materialist position gives us a starting point at one extreme: Everything in the universe can be explained in terms of physical cause and effect, and there is no need to believe in any transcendent cause for anything in the universe or, indeed, the universe itself.

If that’s our anchor on one end of our spectrum or continuum of belief, the opposite extreme clearly must be the fundamentalist claim that the universe exists because of a one-time act of miraculous creativity by a deity who happily violated all the laws of time, space, matter and energy to create an illusory cosmos. By this reckoning, the physical facts, the seeming relationships of physical cause and effect, are traps for the intellectually arrogant, and the true laws of existence can be known only by study of one miraculously perfect book.

What’s in between these extremes? Basically, everything that makes sense. Take your pick, study Taoism, Buddhism, classical Philosophy, “higher theology” in Christianity, mysticism in all its forms in all traditions, and even the perhaps-boring but not destructive teachings of the mainline Christian denominations and their equivalents in Judaism and Islam.

All of these traditions have value, which makes it all the more saddening when some evangelists of atheism caricature all belief as something like the “flying spaghetti monster,” which obviously was invented by someone who had been smoking copious amounts of pot and had no knowledge of religion, philosophy or much else besides his own ego.

As I said in my last post, “It’s blindingly obvious that the people who are participating the most energetically in the science-vs.-religion debate are woefully unequipped for a real philosophical discussion.” Some of the participants just want to show off their smartest-guy-in-the-room status, and truth be damned.

Let’s stop asking, “Do you believe in God?” and start asking instead, “What do you believe?”