Is Atheism a Culture or Just No-God Belief?

The more I study science, the more I believe in God~ Einstein

Defining Atheism

Atheism, contrasted with theism, in the broadest sense, is a belief negating the existence of a God or any other deity ever existed or exists. Though evidence of atheism can be traced back to the classical Greek period as theism is from the Greek word for God (or gods) and the Greek negative ‘a’ prefix plus ‘theos’ meaning God, coined the words ‘atheist’ and ‘atheism’—one who does not believe in God or gods and or religion. Although from ancient times to the modern age, there have been many thinkers who were atheists, we don’t find anyone has proved that atheism is a philosophy, a social discipline, a way of life, or a system that guides those who do not believe in God and any religion. From ancient to modern times, the term ‘atheism’ has frequently been applied to those who disbelieve in the popular gods. This was the case with Buddha, Anaxagoras, Thales, and Socrates, and there is a long list of philosophers appearing during the European Renaissance who were atheists like Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and prominently Friedrich Nietzsche who bluntly pronounced ‘God is dead,’ followed by many more. But apart from their atheistic belief, they presented diverse educative branches of philosophy of life from materialism to skepticism, moral to religious, political to social, and many more.

Thus we must now ask, “Do the atheists, do so merely out of raw will, or fear, or personal preference, or private taste, or do they sincerely hope to do this on an evidentiary basis?” Usually, atheists insist that something like history, science, truth, or logic is on their side; and that something like credulity, superstition, and foolishness is essentially on the other side. Do they mean that thousands of scientists like Isaac Newton, and philosophers like Immanuel Kant were foolish to believe in God?  In this article, I want to discuss that today, “Is Atheism a Culture or Just No-God Belief,” or is it nothing more than saying “no God, no religion?”

Atheism Today

Today, without any doubt atheism is on the rise everywhere in the world. Authors writing on atheism are appearing among the bestsellers defining atheism as respectable which has never been seen before. People read and listen with great interest to the new atheists Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and some others, who armed with arguments are on the warpath against the theists emphasizing that there is no God and following a religion is absurd. They represent an ‘affirmed and open-minded atheism’ joined to guarantee freedom from religious belief, promoting their views of purging the world of all religious practices.1 But listening to them and reading their books, one finds atheism is simply an absence of belief in the existence of God. Going through Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Hitchens’ God is Not Great, Harris’ The End of Faith, and The Moral Landscape, I did not find what kind of social order is presented by these great atheists for those who would follow them and dispense away their religious beliefs and social way accepting their slogan of no-God. There are many other books on the same subject, but everywhere I see only easy and simple pronouncements of ‘no God;’ nothing like the Communist Manifesto by Carl Marks (who was also an atheist). However, some atheists profess that they follow science, but science and morality are poles apart. Others advocate that the way of ethics and morality will be the final way of life after the world is purged of religious beliefs, but ethics and morality are the core of every revealed and traditional religion also.

Thinkers, so far, disagree whether atheism is a philosophy or a discipline presenting a way of life, or it is just a conscious and explicit rejection of deities and millennium-old religious discipline. If atheism is neither a philosophy nor an ideology, then, is atheism a godless slogan without a social order, or a way of life? But the scientists maintain since ‘nothing comes out of nothing’ so there must be something or some source creating everything. Among these viewpoints thinkers are tempted to philosophize, is atheism—which offers a distinct take on life’s mysteries without belief in a Supreme Being—a modern thought without a socio-political order or just a godless faith? My purpose in presenting this article is not just to discuss, ‘no-God’ or the ‘Creative God of Love and Mercy,’ but rather, what kind of discipline and way of life atheism proposes to all those who neither believe in God nor in any religious culture and traditions!

Causes of Atheism

So far, atheism seems to be a realization that there is no proof of a Supreme Being. Religion is taught by the parents or the society to children who are born faithless. The atheists further argue that since every one of us is born faithless, the burden of proof lies not on them to prove that there is no God, but on the theists to provide a rationale for God’s existence. But, what about the child born in an atheistic family, which belief, culture, or way of life the atheistic parents will teach the newborn? Some profess that atheistic families should bring up the newborn within an ethical and moral order. But the same is true with the religions which have a far stronger cultural, ethical, and moral order. The negation problem means that the ceiling on the God hypothesis is simply too high for atheism. It is not possible to be an atheist on adequate scientific evidence—when a notable scientist Albert Einstein says, “The more I study science, the more I believe in God.” What kind of an intellectual belief sets epistemological standards so high for itself that no one can possibly meet them when it is ‘a-’ + ‘theism’ – that is, the negation of the positive claim of the theists’ existence of God. By doing this, atheism has put itself proof less; for negatives can be extremely hard to prove.² Atheists think that their conviction bears no burden to prove anything at all remaining adherents to a proper defense for its basic claim, that is, the claim of the non-existence of any gods which leaves atheism an irrational analogy.

According to James S. Spiegel, generally speaking, atheists are morally deficient beings who are for instance blinded by their own rampant sexual deviances, or led astray by troublesome relationships with their fathers. One of Spiegel’s predominant arguments to explain the existence of atheists is a poor relationship with one’s father. His major support is Paul Vitz who teaches psychology at New York University, who was an atheist until his late thirty and is now a practicing Roman Catholic, having published his highly controversial work, Faith of the Fatherless (1999), argues that “atheism of the strong and or intense type is to a substantial degree generated by the peculiar psychological needs of its advocates,” which he expresses as the “defective hypothesis”—the notion that a broken relationship with one’s father predisposes some people to reject God.³

It is my conviction that both theism and atheism are based on the human psychology of life—a subject that Charles Darwin avoided discussing in his theory of evolution. Paul Vitz applies his observation to Sigmund Freud, who maintained that religious belief arises out of psychological need. According to Freud, people project their concept of a loving father to the entire cosmos to fulfill their wish for ultimate comfort in a dangerous world. According to Freud, once a child or youth is disappointed in or loses respect for his earthly father, belief in a heavenly father becomes impossible. . . In other words, an atheist’s disappointment in and resentment of his own father unconsciously justifies his rejection of God.3 Here is an eye-opening paragraph from The Heart of Man by Erich Fromm—a therapeutic psychologist born in Germany and taught for ten years at Columbia, Yale, and New York University—is worth considering:

A child starts life, with faith in goodness, love, and justice. The infant has faith in his mother’s breast, in her readiness to cover him when he is cold, to comfort him when he is sick. This faith can be in the father, mother, grandparent, or any other person close to him; it can be expressed as faith in God. In many individuals, this faith is shattered at an early age. The child hears their father lying in an important matter; he sees the cowardly fright of the mother when she is brutally beaten or abused by his father making the child frightened and neither one of the parents, who are allegedly so concerned for him, notices it, or even if he tells them, pays any attention. . . Sometimes, in children who are brought up religiously, the loss of faith in God as being good and just is shattered. . . Often this first and crucial experience of shattering of faith takes place at an early age: at four, five, six, or even much earlier, at a period of life about which there is little memory. Often the final shattering of faith takes place at a much later age; being betrayed by a friend, by a sweetheart, by a teacher, by a religious or political leader in whom one had trust.⁴ 

A study conducted by Dr. Joel McDurmon reveals that atheists use less brain function. A new study performed at York University, Toronto Canada, used targeted magnetism to shut down part of the brain. The result: belief in God disappeared among more than 30 percent of participants. That in itself may not seem so embarrassing, but consider that the specific part of the brain they frazzled was the posterior medial frontal cortex—the part associated with detecting and solving problems, i.e., reasoning and logic. In other words, when you shut down the part of the brain most associated with logic and reasoning, greater levels of atheism result. You’ve heard the phrase, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”? Apparently, this study if true, is for me it’s no less than a big surprise wanting more evidence from the neuroscientists. (From: On Consciousness).^53.2%

Conclusion

‘Common Truth’ of billions of human beings does not need any evidence, whether it is belief in God and His revealed religion of world’s 33% Christians, 17.7% Muslims, 0.3% Jews, 3.2% Sikhs, Taoists (believing in many gods), Shiniosts based on worship of gods—close to 60% of the whole mankind—or even those with godless faiths, like Confucianism more like a philosophy, Buddhism based on Buddha’s teachings, Hinduism believing in Brahma as watching god, doesn’t need any evidence. Every faith, revealed or traditional has a way of life, a socio-political discipline based on culture and traditions except ‘atheism’ which is based on negation and negation only. Without a deity, atheists find a vacuum in their lives and stare at the face of the theists when they are left with no choice but to follow the customs and traditions of religious cultural and even ritual traits of their parents or grandparents. Judo-Christian-Muslim God is a creative God who has created ‘man in his own image’ and is not out there to be seen by the atheists; He is nearer to man than his jugular vein. Stephen Anderson, sternly judging a cause celebre, at the end of his article Atheism on Trial in the journal Philosophy Now, presents the final verdict here:

Why then, we might ask, is atheism so popular? Why does it enjoy so much grace in the public eye, and why is it so often the default position in the academy? The motives cannot be philosophical, for atheism is not a position that can be compelled or sustained by logic. It is perhaps tempting to observe that something more visceral is at work. Ignorance? Evasion? Faddism? Or posturing? (After all, there is a considerable difference between wanting to appear intellectual and actually being intellectual). Whatever the case, it’s hard not to see that reason has left the building. . . As the Tanakh says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’.” That looks justified. Even by our most charitable account, we have seen that atheism is a disingenuous, bombastic claim to certainty, one without evidence or logic. What then can one call it but foolishness? ⁶

Anderson in the same article says, “I can think of no atheist of recent time more celebrated than Late Anthony Flew who died a Deist, having no account of his transformation titled; there is–A God (No crossed out).” ⁵ So the subject, Is Atheism a Culture or Just No-God Belief, has brought me to the conclusion, that I have myself witnessed some atheists who died as theists. In my experience, I have helped some atheist friends to take the dead body of a beloved wife or the body of a young daughter or son who were brought up as atheists to a mosque for funeral rites and to be buried in the Muslim graveyard with full religious rituals.

Finally, since the number of atheists is increasing day by day, they are still living as individuals just like the homo erectus who in the animal kingdom were living without an idea of a deity and through their journey of evolution, according to Thomas Hobbes, they in the state of nature were “living as solitary and selfish individuals who would have no choice but to make reciprocal social contracts.” It is time atheists should frame an ATHEIST’S MANIFESTO or a CHARTER OF ATHEISM providing a guideline for their Atheist Clan, to live and act their own way. Presently the atheists are just condemning the theists, beating the drum of no God, no religion, but without paying attention to their own way of life and establishing their own culture in which there is no place for religion or a deity to follow.

Notes:

1. Anderson, Stephen: Atheism on Trial: Philosophy Now Issue #109; p. 30

2. Ibid., p. 32.

3. Spiegel: The Making of an Atheist, Moody Publishers, Chicago, 2010; pp. 61-62.

4. Fromm, Erich: The Heart of Man, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1964, pp 28-29.

5. americanvision.org/12630/atheists-embarrassed-study-proves-atheism-uses-less-brain-function/ Dr. Joel McDurmon‎ 10‎/‎26‎/‎2015

6. Anderson, Stephen: Atheism on Trial: Philosophy Now Issue #109; p. 33.