Atheism 17 - Why NOT Atheism?

     I completed my original goal quite some while back and, having received no terribly quantitative questions or comments, have since moved on to answering those questions I would have expected to receive had this blog actually piqued anyone's interest.  I now move on to trying to amplify some of the points I merely touched on in the original posts.

    As stated way back in the beginning of all this, I was originally an atheist.  In a previous post, I explained the discoveries I made about atheism once I had started to question myself, but I never really explained why I became dissatisfied with atheism in the first place.  With this post, I aim to correct this oversight.

    Since about the 1910's - certainly by the time Jean Paul Sartre was being widely read - atheism had become inextricably tied to humanism and rationalism, as indeed it still is today.  I began to question my atheism when I began finding flaws in humanism and rationalism.

    As for humanism, the biggest problem I developed was right there in the philosophy's name.  Humanism is, almost by definition, grounded in anthropocentricity.   Everything we have learned in the last hundred years in the colleges of Biology, Animal Behavior and Astrophysics prove conclusively - even to atheists - that anthropocentricty is simply balderdash.  Apparently the only attribute that separates humans from all other species, and therefore explains our superiority, is our ability to proclaim our superiority.  Essentially, the basic problem with humanism is that it is based on the assumption that the human need and right to create and dismiss its own gods at will (including ourselves) is legitimized by nothing more than our ability to do so.  This is the same logic used by the schoolyard bully in proclaiming himself "King of the Hill."  He proclaims himself so simply because he can.  The fault here comes into sharp focus the moment a bigger bully arrives and challenges the claim.  This probably explains why humanism is largely falling out of favor in most philosophical circles these days. 

    As for rationalism, I found this to be far more problematic.  As I have continuously illustrated in these pages, I consider myself a rationalist, but I am also an artist by trade.  Rationalism has been reduced to a rather narrow premise over the decades, thus providing it's appeal to atheists.  That premise is that everything can be explained through reason.  Richard Dawkins - everyone's current favorite atheist - goes so far as to say that any concept that cannot be explained by reason (including the existence of God) is a delusion, even going to the extreme of naming his top-selling book The God Delusion.

    The problem here is in the fact that fully half of all human thought - and virtually all philosophical thought - cannot be explained by reason.  Reason cannot even explain itself.  Trying to explain reason through reason is its own trap.  Reason cannot spawn reason.  Reason cannot serve as both the judge and defendant in its own trial.  Reason alone cannot explain why this particular group of synaptic nerve impulses becomes Thought A while an identical group of impulses subsequently becomes Thought B.  As C.S. Lewis put it, "Unless the measuring rod is independent of the thing being measured, we can do no measuring" ("The Poison of Subjectivism," Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, HarperCollins, p.250).  Using Lewis' metaphor, if reason serves as the measuring rod used to measure itself, no hope of accuracy can be had, so any subsequent measurement is purely speculative, which is, of course, completely unreasonable.  Like all human thought, reason can only spring from the imagination, and therein lies the problem of rationalism.

    Coming to this realization is to dip one's toe into the waters of the great existential ocean.  Once the toe is wet, it soon becomes obvious how unbelievably vast this ocean really is and why rationalism drowns in its waves.  If, as Dawkins contends, all thought that cannot be explained by reason must, of necessity, be delusion,  then such human ideas as love, beauty, morality, hope, joy and art must all be classified as delusional, leaving one to exist in such a glum, dour, angry and disappointing world that existence itself becomes meaningless.

    Of course, having read Dawkins, I am aware that this is precisely his thesis; that reality is, in fact, completely random and totally meaningless.  With no intention to offend either Dr. Dawkins, M. Sartre, or my dear reader, I must say that, if this is the extreme to which one must go to convince oneself of God's non-existence, one must go there alone.  I have no desire to live in a world in which music, literature, love, beauty or any of the other things that give life joy, vibrancy and vitality simply do not exist, and to so determine for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that, man, I just really don't like God.

    Worse still is how this whole argument collapses upon itself with a bit of thought.  If the universe is without meaning then how could I, as a part of this meaningless universe, have ever developed the idea of meaningfulness? To what meaning am I comparing the meaninglessness of the universe?  As C.S. Lewis put it (Mere Christianity II.1): "If the whole universe has no meaning then we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.  Dark would be a word without meaning."

    I suppose that the whole "rationalism over God" thing does make sense on at least one level, however: back in October of 2021, I suggested there were three reasons one might choose to be an atheist.  One of those reasons was to relieve oneself of any guilt associated with sin.  No God, no sin.  No sin, no consequences.  No consequences, no responsibility.  If all of reality is, as New Rationalism suggests, a matter of sheer dumb luck, I can certainly not be held responsible for my participation in what is ultimately nothing more than a chaotic delusion.  We are essentially saying, "I am a d***, I enjoy being a d***, and I now have a philosophy that allows me to go on being a d*** without remorse or responsibility."  That idea seems to me to be at best sophomoric (if not, in fact, infantile) and not at all rational. Still, I install it here for your consideration.

    I have chosen to close each of these posts with the word "Pax," a Latin word meaning "peace."  In Dawkins' world, this does not exist either. When I realized that continuing to use rationalism as my excuse for atheism required divesting myself of my imagination, my artistic side demanded I re-examine my position on atheism.  Thus the journey described herein began.

    If you've started reading this blog with this post, I suggest you now go back and read the others in chronological order starting with the oldest one.  It makes more sense that way.

Pax