It appears to be a brute fact that there just is that indefinitely immense collection of finite and contingent masses or conglomerations of things and processes the phrase “the universe” refers to. People can come to feel wonder, awe, and puzzlement that there is a universe at all. But that fact, or the very fact that there is a world at all, does not license the claim that there is a noncontingent reality on which the world (the sorry collection of things entire) depends. It is not even clear that such a sense of contingency gives an understanding of what such a noncontingent thing could be. Some atheists think that the reference range of “God” is so indeterminate and the concept of God so problematic that it is impossible for someone fully aware of that reasonably to believe in God; believers, by contrast, think that, though the reference range of “God” is indeterminate, it is not so indeterminate and the concept of God so problematic as to make belief irrational or incoherent. It is known, they claim, that talk of God is problematic, but it is not known, and cannot be known, whether it is so problematic as to be without a religiously appropriate sense. Agnostics, in turn, say that there is no reasonable decision procedure. It is not known and cannot be ascertained whether or not “God” secures a religiously adequate referent. What needs to be kept in mind, in reflecting on this issue, is whether a “contingent thing” is a pleonasm and “infinite reality” is without sense and whether, when people go beyond anthropomorphism (or try to go beyond it), it is possible to have a sufficient understanding of what is referred to by “God” to make faith a coherent possibility.
Finally, it will not do to take a Pascalian or Dostoyevskian turn and claim that, intellectual absurdity or not, religious belief is necessary, since without belief in God morality does not make sense and life is meaningless. That claim is false, for even if there is no purpose to life there are purposes in life—things people care about and want to do—that can remain perfectly intact even in a godless world. God or no God, immortality or no immortality, it is vile to torture people just for the fun of it, and friendship, solidarity, love, and the attainment of self-respect are human goods even in an utterly godless world. There are intellectual puzzles about how people know that these things are good, but that is doubly true for the distinctive claims of a religious ethic. The point is that these things remain desirable and that life can have a point even in the absence of God.
Kai E. Nielsen
Citation Information
Article Title: Atheism
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 07 June 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/atheism
Access Date: August 10, 2019
Additional Reading
The article “Atheism” in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 174–189 (1967, reissued 1972), and the article “Agnosticism” in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 1, pp. 17–27 (1968), give sophisticated conceptual elucidations of the concept of atheism. See also Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 2, pp. 173–190 (1922); Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 1, cols. 866–870 (1950); Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed., vol. 1, cols. 670–678 (1957); George Klaus and Manfred Buhr (eds.), Philosophisches Wörterbuch, 6th rev. and enl. ed., vol. 1, pp. 125–129 (1969); Enciclopedia filosofica, 2nd ed., vol. 1, col. 557–562 (1968); and Kai Nielsen, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1982). A classic extended history of atheism is Fritz Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendland, 4 vol. (1920–23, reissued 1963). See also Jacob Presser, Das Buch “De tribus impostoribus” (1926); John Mackinnon Robertson, A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern (1957, reissued 1972); Henri Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601), new ed., rev. and augmented (1971); and Cornelio Fabro, God in Exile: Modern Atheism (1968; originally published in Italian, 1961). Modern atheism is treated in Charles Bradlaugh, Champion of Liberty: Charles Bradlaugh (1933); Baron d’Holbach, The System of Nature (1756–96, reissued 1970; originally published in French, 1770), and Common Sense (1795, reissued 1972; originally published in French, 1772); Arthur Schopenhauer, Complete Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. by T. Bailey Saunders (1896); Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1854, reissued 1972, trans. of 2nd German ed.; originally published in German, 1841); Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1896; originally issued in German, 1883–92); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (1955); Thomas H. Huxley, Collected Essays, vol. 5 (1894); and Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic’s Apology, and Other Essays (1893), and History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1902, reissued 1963). Powerful contemporary defenses of atheism, together with some religious responses, are given in Norbert O. Schedler (ed.), Philosophy of Religion (1974).
Contemporary analytical discussions of atheism include Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (1966); Richard Robinson, An Atheist’s Values (1964, reissued 1975); Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (1957); Kai Nielsen, Skepticism (1973), and Reason and Practice (1971); Sidney Hook, The Quest for Being, and Other Studies in Naturalism and Humanism (1961, reprinted 1971); and Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (1958, reissued 1968). Two anthologies that give the core debate between belief and unbelief are Malcolm L. Diamond and Thomas V. Litzenburg, Jr. (eds.), The Logic of God (1975); and Alasdair MacIntyre and Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism (1969).