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A critique of athiesm

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Submitted by terren on 03/12/2004 - 18:52

Atheists hold the belief that if God exists, they will be able to know it. This is based on the idea that if something exists, it will be observable (the so-called objectivist point of view).

This worldview has been wildly successful when it comes to understanding the physical properties and behaviors of matter and energy. We've been able to vastly increase our understanding of reality, thanks to the simple philosophy that all phenomenon have an observable cause. No longer do spirits and demons cause disease; complex weather systems, not angry gods, are responsible for droughts.

However, this worldview doesn't do so great when it comes to understanding the human mind, or beauty, or love. We aren't much closer to understanding how the human mind and the physical brain are related to another than we were at the dawn of the enlightenment. Sure, we understand lots of things about the brain - but the mind/body dilemma is as severe as it's ever been. One of our top philosophers, Daniel Dennett, is so committed to the objectivist point of view that he refuses to acknowledge that consciousness exists. In his philosophical writings, we are all zombies, incredibly complex machines, but that ultimately we have no free will at all. This is the kind of absurdity that arises from taking the objectivist point of view too far.

So while objectivism is a great tool for understanding the physical domain of stuff, there are big problems with trying to use that for non-physical domains. And God, by any definition, transcends the physical plane. In other words, God is not just stuff.

Atheists treat God as if God is merely stuff, and expect the objectivist test to still hold true. This is a blatant misunderstanding of what God is, an attempt to fit all reality into the domain of the observable. Unless one is content with the idea that we are mindless zombies, we need to acknowledge that there are areas of reality that exist, yet are not observable.

I respect atheism, when it is a plea to not believe in superstition. I used to be atheist, until I slowly came to realize that there were too many things about my world, that I cared about, that could not be explained from a rational point of view. I sought to understand how nature could be so beautiful, and how people could be the way they are. I am fascinated with the human mind, and the minds of animals. I came to appreciate that there is a dimension of our reality that lies beyond rational understanding, but that guides the physical world in real ways.

My journey from that point on was to explore this new dimension, and in every way it was a spiritual journey. This kind of journey is always hard, because you don't have the luxury of being able to reject things because they have no physical basis in reality. In this world, there very well may be spirits - or maybe they are just hidden aspects of our own minds, the collective consciousness of Jungian philosophy.

To say that I have a more complete understanding of my reality because of this journey (which is far from over) would be an understatement. Indeed, I have learned more truths and observed more unexplainables than I ever could have if I limited myself to what I could understand. Ultimately, it is my own experience that provides the most compelling critique of atheism.

I think atheism, too, serves for some a similar role to religion, when viewed through the prism of Karl Marx's famous thought that "religion is the opiate of the masses". Atheism, for some, effectively ends the conversation when things turn to matters of spirituality, to the big questions, to the need for humans to find meaning in their lives. There are some atheists for whom this is not true, who are not closed to those same areas of reality, and this is the sort of atheist I can admire.

In other words, atheism gives some people the same excuse to not further self-exploration that religion often provides. For these people, atheism is as much a matter of faith as the religious folks they detest. Rather than look for evidence of God, they reject God outright, which is simply easier, and as I said, requires faith. They are what they hate in others - faithful to a belief for which no evidence exists.

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