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Is Atheism More Rational Posted November 17, 1995 to talk.atheism
First of all, both theism and atheism are linked via their names to a linguistic symbol: god(s). People who are theists believe the symbol relates to something real, people
who are atheists lack such a belief.
To compare atheism and theism, I will first
suggest a relationship between linguistic symbols and reality. What is the link between cultural symbols and reality? Focusing on language as the primary example of cultural symbols (although I believe others such as
art, mussic, ritual, technology, etc. could be examined as well), I would make the following observations.
First of all, it seems to me that cultural symbols (such as language) are the necessary links between mind-dependent experience and mind-independent reality. While
this may not be necessarily true in every single case, it seems to apply in every important case. It does not seem possible to think about or communicate any significant experience without the use of symbols. If
someone sticks me with a pin, I'll holler " ouch" . And, one might argue, " ouch" is not a symbol - it is an exclamation arising from my unmediated encounter with reality. But without my
symbolic interpretation of such an experience (e.g. " pain" or " injustice" or whatever other symbols I might use), the experience remains private and insignificant.
Cultural symbols seem to have both private meanings
(allowing individuals to connect them to their experience) and public meanings (allowing individuals to communicate their experience to others). This would seem to explain why on the one hand, we can find ourselves
disagreeing over the use of a word (because of the individual meanings we place on it) while still being able to communicate with each other. " Justice" may have an agreed upon dictionary definition, yet
our individual conceptions may cause us to have a difficult time agreeing on whether a particular legal action is just.
World views, IMHO, are constructed by people with shared points of view encountering similar objects. This explains (to my mind, anyway) the various disciplines or ways of
life present in society. Economists have their proper object of study, biologists have theirs. And while economists or biologists have many internal disagreements on economic or biological assertions, they will
presumably agree on the appropriateness of the major methodologies current in the field.
The variety of human subjective perspectives (individually and in community), and the variety of objects (including abstract objects such as " justice" )
that people may experience, account, IMHO, for the variety of world views. Since there are different human perspectives, and since these perspectives focus on a variety of objects, it should come as no surprise that
reality as a whole - if one accepts, in principle, the integrity and at least partial independence of a number of world views - has a pluralistic character. One recognizes that the truth of an assertion does not stand
or fall on its own, it is, rather, context dependent. For example, a statement regarding the essential nature of life will have one slant in a discussion between existentialists, another in a discussion between
biologists. And either discussion would be meaningless in the scholarly conversations of physicists, where " life" is an undefined term.
The cultural symbols that make up each world view are manipulated in rule-governed, game-like ways. If we are dealing with world
views that have a number of adherents, and that render critical judgments (in one way or another) on the symbolic moves within the world view, I believe it is easy to see the rule-governed, game-like manner in which
moves are evaluated. Even in something as subjective as poetry, if there is to be meaningful analysis, there has to be agreed upon rules for judging the adequacy of various moves.
Otherwise, one is left with pure, unevaluated, subjective expression. In the hard sciences, the ability to generate a testable prediction is one of the rules. But in a soft science, such as psychoanalysis, it is not
(although, presumably, other rules apply).
The rules governing
critical judgments regarding the adequacy of symbolic manipulation within a world view are themselves bound to the world view (or another world view). There are no " world view free" critical judgments
possible. If someone makes a statement which provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of a person's behavior, there seems to be two - and only two - grounds for disagreeing with it. The first ground is that I
have a competing psychoanalytic interpretation. I accept the overall validity of the psychoanalytic world view, but I disagree with the particular symbolic move made based on my alternative understanding of
psychoanalysis. The second ground for rejecting such an interpretation is more radical: I may disagree on the adequacy of ANY psychoanalytic interpretation. I may explain the behavior through the use of a different
model all together - e.g. behaviorism or ethnology (the biology of behavior). But the point I am attempting to make is that in the second example involving the more fundamental disagreement, one does not make the
judgment in a vacuum, one makes it from AN ALTERNATIVE world view. In this context, I would look at " rationality" as a criteria that might be profitably applied in certain world views (such as
physics), and yet be relatively useless in others (such as poetry).
The acceptance of a particular world view's authority or validity as a whole seems to be prior to acceptance of particular manipulations within a world view so accepted. If
one accepts historical science (for example) as providing the most adequate interpretation of past events, then one can argue (within that agreed upon framework) regarding individual historical hypotheses. But the
acceptance of that historical framework is prior to the acceptance of any particular statement made within that framework. By the same token, if one believes that physics is the ultimately valid world view, than one
will only value statements whose home base is other world views if those statements can be interpreted as or translated into the language of physics. And yet, the statement " Statements are only valid if they can
be interpreted as or translated into the language of physics" cannot, itself, be interpreted or translated into the language of physics. The acceptance of a particular world view as providing the most
adequate interpretation of reality of a whole MUST either be unconditional or circular, because if it is justified through reference to a different world view, than it is that different world view which is believed to
provide the most adequate interpretation.
So, how does all this
relate to the thesis that atheism can be presumed no more rational than theism? First of all, I've been assured repeatedly (on talk.atheism) that the only common denominator regarding atheists is that they lack belief
in god(s). Or, the way I would state it, a theistic world view evaluates the word " god(s)" as meaningful and instantiated. Atheistic worldviews evaluate the word " god(s)" as not
instantiated and, possibly, meaningless (or, at the least, undefined). Therefore, it seems to me, there could be any number of atheistic world views containing other irrational beliefs (say, about ghosts or telepathy)
which would, nonetheless, remain atheist world views. Moreover, it is certainly possible that one may adopt a possible atheist world view based on a belief which itself is irrational. " I am an atheist because
the IPU appeared to me in a vision and assured me that there are no gods" is hardly justifiable on rational grounds. And, though this be more controversial, I would consider " I am an atheist because
Christians slaughtered people in the Crusades" to be equally - though not so obviously - irrational. For the question of God's existence is certainly independent of the moral actions of those who claim to
believe in God, just as the complete body of science cannot be dismissed because a handful of scientists are creationists. So, if it can be agreed that there might theoretically be any number of atheistic world views
that are not rationally derived, than we are left with those atheistic world views where the explicit justification for acceptance is the premise that theism is BY IT'S NATURE irrational, leaving the rational person
with no choice other than to be an atheist - or, with world views which simply lack the term " god(s)" . But, IMHO, the only NECESSARILY irrational aspect regarding theism is that its foundation assumption
(i.e., some variation of " there is a God who is disclosed in nature and history" ) cannot be rationally justified from within a theistic world view. But this seems (to me, anyway) to be no different a
situation than that of any other world view - including world views which lack the term " god(s)" (weak atheism). This similarity, I believe, is most noticeable in arguments with fundamentalists.
Fundamentalists, IMHO, are the most rational folks in the world. If you accept their one, foundational assumption (i.e., something along the lines of " there is a perfect God who is revealed via a perfect
revelation (the Bible)" ), the rest follows quite logically. That is why, incidently, you cannot convince a Fundamentalist regarding the errancy of the Bible. When they state that the Bible is inerrant, they are
not communicating the results of some exhaustive search of the Bible. They are instead declaring the rules of the " game" they are playing: " we are reading the Bible such that there are no errors
in it." This " knowledge" is not rationally justified - it is simply a revealed truth (to the Fundamentalists). And this " rule declaration" function is also noticible, I
believe, when one examines the concept of causality in physics. When physicists assume that every event in the universe has a cause (whether that causality is construed in the determinism of macro events or the
indeterminism of quantum events), they are not communicating the results of some exhaustive inventory: they are stating the rules of the game. But the decision to play the game itself - whether that game be the
physics game (or any of the other atheist games) or the fundamentalist game (or any of the other theistic games) - comes from somewhere outside the game. Oddly enough, the decision that " only those statements
are valid which can be deductively or inductively established objectively through reason" is not, itself, a reasonable statement. For how would one justify it, other than by assuming it in the first place?
A statement which performed a similar function in theism would be categorized as revelation - explicitly affirming that it's validity is being claimed as a given. But in world views in which revelation is not an
option, by what criteria does one evaluate one's fundamental criteria? Return to top of page.Return to Apologetics page. Return to Return to The Inclusive Christian |
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