Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man. Alexander Pope
Since September 11, 2001, atheism has been a triumphant and burgeoning philosophical movement. The loss of social stigma surrounding atheism has allowed more people to identify increasingly as atheists. We believe this trend is good (probably because we are both atheists). However, the debates about God's existence have followed an opposite trajectory; they are increasingly more myopic and impoverished.
The impoverishment of these debates – of which atheists are just as guilty as their theistic counterparts – consists in the constant reinforcement of a false disjunction. In mainstream discussions, atheism is identified with naturalism, and theism with anti-naturalism. Hence one must be a naturalistic atheist or an anti-naturalistic theist. By examining the anthropomorphic critique of theism, we aim to show that this is a false dilemma.
If one idles away on YouTube, listening to various popular atheists and theists debating one another, philosophical concerns are constantly framed as if the only available stances are naturalistic atheism and anti-naturalistic theism. But YouTube celebrities are hardly the main culprits of such framing. Less prominent intellectuals are also entrenched in this false disjunction.
Atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll, in his omnisciently titled book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself (2017), argues that ‘whether or not you believe in God – whether you are a theist or an atheist is part of your ontology’. That atheism or theism must necessarily imply anything about one's ontology is dubious, since beliefs can derive from one's psychology. Nevertheless, Carrol defines the naturalist view as ‘there is only one world, the natural world, exhibiting patterns we call the “laws of nature”’. This world is ‘discoverable by the methods of science and empirical investigating’ (10). Naturalism rejects the idea that supernatural claims can account for anything real. This definition fits the paradigm, and will be our operative definition, but we should note its circularity: everything must be accounted for naturalistically because everything is natural.
Another less prominent culprit, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, has misleadingly titled his recent book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, Naturalism (2011). Plantinga correctly identifies numerous famous atheists as pro-science naturalists. In 2011, Plantinga also participated in a debate with Daniel Dennett titled: ‘Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?’, and Dennett argued that most people ‘tacitly assume’ naturalism is true.Footnote 1
The framing of these debates on theism should be transparently false to anyone loosely acquainted with the history of philosophy. For instance, one can certainly be a Spinozist, Hegelian, Marxist, Kantian, Schopenhauerian, Foucauldian, Derridean, Postmodern, Wittgensteinian, or Zizekian, atheist. None of these philosophies entail a necessary commitment to either naturalism or science. Some of these positions are actually quite hostile to both. Essentially, we believe, one can be a:
1. naturalist theist
2. naturalist atheist
3. anti-naturalist theist
4. anti-naturalist atheist
Atheism and theism, as such, do not necessarily confine their respective proponents to any single ontology, or preferred epistemology (such as science).
Lacking the space or competence to evaluate every form of atheism, we want to focus on a set of atheistic arguments that were predominant in modern philosophy. We refer to these arguments as the anthropomorphic critique of religion. Put simply, God is necessarily made in our image, not the inverse. We will focus on three variations of the anthropomorphic critique. The first variation is proposed by David Hume in typically overlooked parts of his religious dialogues.Footnote 2 The second variation is Kant's (although Kant was a theist, his dethroning of theology and theological claims – as figments of an all too human understanding – is largely accepted).Footnote 3 The last variation is Ludwig Feuerbach's (which greatly influenced Marx's work).
The anthropomorphic critique could clear the air in current debates, because its veracity is devoid of any commitment to naturalism, while simultaneously demonstrating the untenability of theism. In demonstrating that there are perfectly compelling reasons to be an atheist that are entirely ungrounded in naturalism we hope to break down this ubiquitous false dilemma. We believe atheism to be true, but also believe that atheism deserves a broader development and defence, which present debates are not offering. Theists need to be exposed to a panoply of compelling atheistic arguments, to show just how inadequate their position is.
Hume
In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume's characters provide a litany of anti-theistic arguments. It is worth noting that nearly all of these rely on sceptical rejections of positive theistic positions, and not on the development of modern science, nor on a commitment to naturalism. Naturalism, being a metaphysical position, and Hume being an anti-metaphysician, provides suggestive evidence that one can be a sceptical atheist without atheism being a part of one's ontology. We want to focus on Hume's recurrent anthropomorphic critique.
The anthropomorphic critique is developed primarily in exchanges between theists Demea and Cleanthes. Cleanthes argues that if one accepts God as the supreme being, whose attributes, properties, and ordered plan are incomprehensible to human understanding, then in effect, believing in God is hardly different from being an atheist or a mystic. Believing in that which cannot be articulated, or expressed, that is, that which is totally ineffable, is in essence, to believe in no-thing. Theists who define God and his plans as incomprehensible and nevertheless assert that they know where the universe came from, contradict themselves. Like many atheists, theists are arguing that the origin of the universe and its possible teleological structure are incapable of comprehension. Merely referring to this incomprehension as ‘God’ is neither informative nor parsimonious.
There is a corollary problem with God's supposed incomprehensibility. Hume's characters show that any attempt to render God comprehensible necessarily entails rendering God anthropomorphic. When we discuss God's nature, plans, or existence, we deploy reason, experience, or some combination of the two. However, reason seems to be a property of humanity, which entails ordered and sequential thinking, in space and time, is bound by certain limits and conditions, and is prone to error. The way we understand reason, in general, is the way we understand human reason, because human reason is the basis of our understanding of reason in general. Thus, if God reasons, plans, orders, thinks, etc., he starts to sound remarkably similar to any mundane entity, and is now limited and bound by human considerations. Similarly, when we argue for the nature of God based on experience, or describe God from our experiences, we must utilize our human faculties of touch, taste, sound, sight, etc. All of which are fallible instruments. When we say that God sees x, or God hears our prayers, these claims derive their meaning from our understanding of our own human sensuous faculties.
The only way to untether God from humanity is to attempt to describe him as outside human reason, or outside human experience, or having faculties and properties distinct from human reason and experience. Of course, as soon as we try to describe that which is outside human reason and sense-experience, we must use these faculties and thus contradict ourselves, or else have literally nothing intelligible to say. One could bite the bullet and accept a description of God in purely human terms, but then God is no longer a supreme being, but a mundane one. ‘If we abandon all human analogy … I am afraid we abandon all religion and retain no conception of the great object of adoration’ (113).
Yet human analogy is feeble. It is unlikely that the divine attributes are commensurable with human attributes. In fact, more than unlikely. ‘[L]et us beware,’ Hume's character Philo warns, ‘lest we think, that our ideas anywise correspond to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resemblance to these qualities among men’ (53). Philo argues that anthropomorphism is invalid with respect to establishing the existence and attributes of any theistic object, because our concepts are limited to this world: ‘Our ideas reach no farther than our experience: We have no experience of divine attributes and operations: I need not conclude my syllogism: You can draw the inference yourself’ (53).
The inference, too terrible to draw explicitly, is that we have no idea of God. The concept of God is entirely empty, because the contents of our concepts derive from the world of our experience, and God is not the object of a possible experience. Notice, however, that this is an epistemological argument; it does not decide the issue of the real ground (natural or supernatural) of this world. In other words, Hume's epistemological argument technically leaves open the real grounding of the universe, be it God's reason, or some natural generative operations. This point is important, since it helps establish the independence of the debates between theism/atheism and naturalism/anti-naturalism.
Kant
Kant provided a version of the anthropomorphic critique, demonstrating that theism, which ascribes anthropomorphic predicates to a deity, is technically meaningless.Footnote 4 Kant's critique, however, has a friendly twist: the anthropomorphic use of predicates in theism may be justified, but only insofar as it assists natural science research (contra mainstream atheism).
Kant begins his critique by pointing out that our only concept of a God is deistic. But this concept is entirely empty; there is no intuition which corresponds to it. To the degree that we are able to ‘think’ this concept, we must do so ‘in analogy with a real substance’ (552–3). Once we do so, we realize that nothing in experience corresponds to our concept of a deity. Hence, the theistic conception of God lacks a clear meaning. Crucially, Kant argues that our concepts are meaningful only in relation to a possible empirical experience. But God is precisely not the object of a possible empirical experience (Star Trek V notwithstanding). That's because all empirical experience is based on sensory experience with material objects – and God, by definition, is not a material being. There is, therefore, no possible sensory experience of God as the object of that experience, insofar as God has no material basis.
Nevertheless, the concept of God – though meaningless in itself – can be used instrumentally in natural science. That's because we are rationally required to assume a certain ‘purposiveness of the arrangement of the world’ (566). Kant just means that reason tells us that all of nature is interrelated. If we don't assume so, we will not be able to comprehend nature systematically.
Here the concept of God can be salvaged. For although the concept of God may be meaningless, it is not therefore useless. By applying empirical, human predicates, like ‘intelligence’, to our empty concept of a deity at the root of nature, anthropomorphism can be helpful to certain individuals as a heuristic in the discovery of systematic relationships in nature. The working scientist, for example, can ask of a natural event: ‘How would an intelligence arrange this matter?’ And Kant thinks a secret causal mechanism which explains the natural event might be found, which might otherwise have lain undiscovered if the scientist hadn't assumed an intelligence to be at work. Hence, anthropomorphic theism, while strictly speaking meaningless, is nevertheless pragmatically justifiable in scientific practice.
But notice that, whatever the merits of naturalistic research, and of co-opting theism for its benefit, Kant's anthropomorphic critique is independently established on epistemological-semantic grounds. We cannot know anything about God simply because he lies beyond the possibility of experience. For Kant, no empirical predicates (such as ‘intelligent’, ‘wise’, etc.) are meaningfully ascribable to a supposed entity lying beyond the bounds of possible experience, even if they are scientifically useful. For meanings are only meaningful, as a function of knowledge, if they intend an object that can be intuited in an experience. This is the heart of the anthropomorphic critique of theism; and, as an epistemological-semantic fact, it is quite independent of naturalism.
One might object: ‘But isn't Kant's limiting of our concepts to possible sense-experience already a declaration of naturalism? And isn't this shown by the fact that, as soon as we admit the restriction, we are not even able to say that theism is meaningful?’ What is lost in this objection is the fact that Kant is actually attempting to secure an agnosticism about the root cause of the systematic constitution of the world. As Hume pointed out, reason might be behind the systematic constitution of the world, but so too might the natural principle of generation. Kant epistemologically secures both as possible answers to the question ‘what is the cause of the systematic order of nature?’ That's because the cause of the whole system of nature is beyond our sensory purview, and our concept of causality is only applicable with a view towards knowledge within possible sense-experience.
Kant wishes to leave the determination of that ‘ground which escapes all our concepts’ as ‘entirely undecided’. Naturalism – the supposition that the ground of nature is itself natural – is independent of Kant's anthropomorphic critique. This critique depends entirely on the fact that any attribute of a deity escapes all our concepts. It is an epistemological limitation. One could, therefore, assent to Kant's critique and yet be uncommitted to naturalism.
Kant therefore shows us that the anthropomorphic critique of God – the conceptual emptiness of theism – rests securely on epistemological grounds, without any motivation from science and/or naturalism; indeed, these latter may even motivate theism. We believe this is evidence for the view that theism does not entail either anti-naturalism or naturalism atheism. For, according to Kant, and contra Carroll, whether one is a theist or an atheist is always independent of whether one believes reason or generation to be at the root of the system of nature.
Feuerbach
In the previous two sections we revealed a chain of reasoning that began with Hume and was further developed by Kant. Unfortunately, it is not the case that Feuerbach further refined this historical trend. However, he did participate in it, and as such, we want to air his views as evidence that there was a historical moment where the merits of atheism, as shown in the anthropomorphic critique, were gaining ascendance (specifically in the philosophical circle of Left Hegelians, of which Marx and Engels were a part); an ascendance which is now entirely lost in mainstream theism versus atheism debates. Although Feuerbach's views are not a substantial improvement upon Kant's or Hume's, they are still salient and compelling, and thus remain a real challenge for the rationality of theism.
In the Essence of Christianity,Footnote 5 Feuerbach sought to collapse all of Christianity's theological problematics (e.g. transubstantiation, revelation, sacraments, the trinity) into the nature of humanity. Feuerbach argued that ‘religion has its basis in the essential difference between man and the brute’, noting that no other animals have religion (1). Why is this the case? Feuerbach argues that only humans have a specific form of consciousness. Unlike other animals, only humans can reflect on their own species, not just themselves as individuals. As such, they can reason about human nature in general, not just their own characteristics and inclinations. Other animals may look out for their own self-interest, and possibly the interest of immediate kin, but they are not capable of reflecting upon the nature of the species as a whole. This generalized species reflection is a necessary condition for science as an enterprise.
If one is capable of reflecting upon the nature of an entire species, one is also presumably capable of reflecting upon the nature of other species, be they objects, animals, or immaterial ideas. Feuerbach believes this reflection first entails placing oneself in the role of other members of the species, starting with humans. For instance, the reason I know another human desires food, clothing, and shelter is because I can reflect on the reasons why I desire these things. Once I establish the reasons why I desire food, clothing, and shelter, I can extrapolate to larger claims about members of the species as a plurality, followed by claims concerning the species as a whole. This same formal consciousness which is used to analyse the nature of humanity is also the same form of consciousness used to analyse other species, other objects, and religious and divine concepts. This cross-application of the form of human consciousness is, according to Feuerbach, problematic.
Feuerbach, like Kant, believes that we impose structures on the objects of our experience. Thus, any reflection we make about a species of objects is simultaneously a reflection of ourselves. That's because we always see an object through the lens of human consciousness, which is peculiarly structured and shapes objects in terms of its own structure. Consequently, we do not have access to the thing-in-itself; we only have access to how we structure the object of our contemplation. Hence, Feuerbach says: ‘In the object which he contemplates … man becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the self-consciousness of man … in it his nature becomes evident; this object is his manifested nature … this is true not merely of spiritual, but also of sensuous objects’ (4).
Scientifically this is problematic, since Feuerbach's views entail that our study of other animals and objects is in fact a study of how our nature and consciousness shape these objects of thought and perception. Hence, when scientists like Carroll, or theists like Plantinga, make ontological or metaphysical claims about the nature of the world, they are in fact making claims about how the human subject necessarily structures the world, not how the world is in itself. ‘Whatever is a subjective expression of a nature is simultaneously also its objective expression. Man cannot get beyond his true nature … the positive final predicates which he gives to these other individuals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from his own nature’ (9–10).
What is problematic for scientific objects is even more problematic for divine concepts. It is at least plausible that certain objects we analyse, such as trees, actually exist outside our heads, and are external from us. Although a tree may exist outside us, our consciousness and sense organs shape how the tree is perceived in consciousness. But the subject-object nexus is shattered when we reflect upon divine objects. There is no deity, external to me, which I first perceive in my consciousness, and then further reflect on. Rather, I have a concept of the deity – as Kant avers – but it is not due to anything external and is consequently completely undetermined. ‘The object of the senses is out of man, the religious object is within him.’ Since ‘the object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively’, it follows that ‘consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two are identical’ (10). Small wonder, then, that the various Gods people believe in so often resemble their personalities! Feuerbach's theory is capable of explaining why the Heartless Christian God of the American Republican Party is so divergent from the Compassionate God of Pope Francis.
To speak of God's nature is therefore strictly to speak of human nature, and the form of consciousness humans have. To try to discuss the nature of God outside our own consciousness, that is, outside our very ability to reflect on nature(s) at all, is an impossible task. While Feuerbach's theory hardly improves upon Kant's, he deserves credit for accepting the atheistic conclusions that follow from a philosophy in which objects of perception are in fact objects shaped by the very form of consciousness innately given to the perceiver. From here Marx developed and applied Feuerbach's anthropomorphic critique to Hegel's notion of Geist, the state, and our shared globalized God: Capital. The fetishizing of commodities and the commodities market, and the perennial desire to accumulate ever more capital, is another instantiation of allowing the products of our mind to have dominion over their creators. We believe atheists ought to consolidate and build upon the anthropomorphic critique in their challenges against theism, but also, like Marx, explore what other bogeymen of the human mind deserve exorcising.
Conclusion
Each philosopher argues, in their own way, that theism is problematic because God is essentially an abstraction from human attributes, and thus is himself essentially human. If we try to discuss a non-human deity, there is nothing to discuss, so theism has nothing to say, or, if we do try to discuss a deity, we necessarily just talk about humans, and so theism is at best shoddy anthropology. Many atheists, and secularists, have tried to appease religious thinking by invoking Stephen Jay Gould's view of non-overlapping magisteria. Non-overlapping magisteria is the view that religion and science occupy alternative domains of research and subsequently entail different sorts of facts. We accept this view with a qualification. Although religion has a domain of inquiry, it is nevertheless not accessible to us, as the anthropomorphic critique reveals. All attempts made by humans to inquire into this domain necessarily lead to mysticism, since it is beyond our cognitive reach. As Marx remarked in his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’: ‘All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’Footnote 6
However, it may also follow from the anthropomorphic critique that science as an enterprise, which believes it is making claims about the nature of the universe, is equally confused. If science attempts to say what is at the root of nature (such as a principle of generation), it has actually gone beyond its proper domain. We oppose the metaphysical pretensions of science, just as much as we oppose the claims of intelligibility of theism. This causes us to oppose inferences from atheism to naturalism, as well as inferences from anti-naturalism to theism. The disjunction between naturalistic atheism and anti-naturalistic theism is false. We believe the anthropomorphic critique demonstrates this. It is therefore open to anyone to be a naturalistic theist. We, however, are anti-naturalistic atheists.
We are grateful to Grace Kiersznowski, at the University of Georgia, for helpful comments and suggestions.
