It is a common complaint that the trouble with atheists is that they are pathologically obsessed by something they don't even believe exists. It's a jibe The Cambridge Companion to Atheism will do little to deflect, since half of the eighteen chapters deal with the case against theism.
In this context, Gavin Hyman seems to have a point when, in a chapter on atheism in modern history, he claims that atheism ‘defines itself in terms of that which it is denying’ (28) and that therefore ‘[there] will be as many varieties of atheism as there are varieties of theism’ (29). This is a widely repeated claim, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Suppose that, over time, belief in God declined to virtually zero. In such a world, atheism would have triumphed. But on Hyman's thesis this is not possible: without any theism to define itself against, atheism could not exist. So, paradoxically, the triumph of atheism would lead to its own demise, since it would destroy that which gives it its identity.
The critical mistake which leads one to this absurdity is to confuse the contingent, historical story of the naming and emergence of an intellectual position with its essence. For sure, in a culture where religion is the norm, those who reject the majority line are likely to be identified, and even self-identify, in contrast to the dominant belief system. But it simply does not follow that the content of their beliefs can have no independent existence. An atheist in Italy may start by rejecting a different God to an atheist in Iraq, but having done so, they may well embrace essentially the same godless worldview. Different paths can still lead to the same destination.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the volume simply confirms the impression, if not the fact, that atheism needs theism to give it life. The bulk of the volume is concerned with arguments for or against the existence of God, in which theism sets the agenda and atheism follows it. If Hyman is philosophically wrong, then it seems he may yet be psychologically correct: too many atheist thinkers would have much less to do if they didn't have a theistic opposition to tear into. However, one should not confuse the history of ideas with history, nor the study of ideas with their existential import. While is true that the triumph of atheism might put atheist thinkers out of their jobs, that would not mean atheism itself would vanish: once an argument is won, the debate may end, but the conclusion stands.
Hyman repeats the mistake of overstating the importance of intellectual debates in his analysis of how modern religion, and atheism, have gone wrong. Hyman argues the case, rapidly becoming the orthodoxy of the sophisticated cognoscenti, that seeing religious beliefs as factual propositions with truth-values is a weird aberration of modernity. It is only because we have become enamoured with the literal, scientistic mode of thought of the Enlightenment, so the argument goes, that we come to view claims about gods and divinity as manifestly false. Before then, people just wouldn't have understood you if you asked questions like ‘Does God literally exist?’, or ‘Is the Bible history?’.
Hyman's evidence for this is pretty thin, and his prime exhibit is Aquinas, who argued that religious language is analogical. That is to say, human concepts can never fully capture the divine essence, so when we say things like ‘God is good’, all we are doing is saying that God has some ineffable characteristic that corresponds most closely in our language to the concept of ‘good’. The true meaning of divine goodness, however, is beyond us.
This is true, but Hyman reads Aquinas in a highly anachronistic way, as though he were echoing the thoughts of modern thinkers like Wittgenstein. (He also suggests it was Wittgenstein who developed the concept of a category mistake, when it was in fact Gilbert Ryle (44).) It seems implausible to me that Aquinas's analogical theory is anything like the more modern claim that the religious language game is completely different to the naturalistic one. It is one thing to say that God's goodness is something we can only understand by analogy to a lesser, human goodness; it is quite another to say that we should not assume that a statement like ‘God is good’ assumes the existence of an entity called ‘God’.
Even if Aquinas was some kind of pre-modern postmodernist, the idea that thinking about God was generally metaphorical before science came in and literalized everything is historically preposterous. What kind of inquisition would have been led by people who thought it vital that believers ascribed to creeds which weren't literally true? How can we explain the various schisms in the Christian church's history unless they took the creeds of their churches very seriously indeed? Would the Church of Rome have ever broken from the Orthodox churches if people had thought that all this talk of the Holy Spirit shouldn't be taken too literally?
The irony is that scholars like Hyman accuse the contemporary world of distorting religion by seeing it through modern eyes, when their own renderings of the history of religion are even more dependent on recent ideas about the essentially indefinable nature of language. The contemporary embrace of the uncertainty of language goes hand in hand with a critique of truth, certainty, and the privileging of certain epistemological claims over others. Aquinas's analogical theories, in contrast, are part of a defence of the immutable truth of the Christian faith. The fact that both views embrace vagueness of some kind does not mean that they embrace vagueness of the same kind. That some might think otherwise merely reflects the danger of being misunderstood if you make lack of precision too much of a virtue.
However, part of me wants to side with Hyman, because if he is right, the majority of what follows his contribution is pointless, since it involves theological discussions which only makes sense if we take concepts such as evil, omniscience, and existence to be determinate and literal, when related to God. Hyman pulls the rug from under the contributors which follow, only for them to keep going on the bare floor regardless.
The reason I almost want Hyman to succeed is that, for very different reasons to him, I fear the endless debate about the rational case for or against God's existence has run down a blind alley where, to mix metaphors, theists and atheists engage in a dialogue of the deaf in which no-one else is interested. The blunt fact is that hardly anyone has ever changed her mind about God on the basis of recent technical developments in our understanding of the ontological argument. It is true that the cosmological argument has great intuitive force and is being used to great effect by proponents of intelligent design. But by the time the debate gets down to the level of detail in which professional philosophers and theologians discuss it, most minds have been made up long ago.
Despite my reservations about the amount of space devoted to what is essentially theology, it is sadly necessary that a volume aspiring to be a must-have book on atheism covers what is now standard grounds of debate, and the contributions to this volume do about as good a job as could be done to make these issues clear and interesting.
Rather gamely, editor Michael Martin even invites a believer, William Lane Craig, into the fold to present a theistic case against atheism. If Martin is keen to proselytize for atheism, then this proves to be a masterstroke, for to see such an eminent theologian offer such obviously lame arguments does the cause no harm at all. Consider this remarkable pairing of statements: ‘On the Christian view it is actually a matter of relative indifference to God whether people believe that he exists or not. For what God is interested in is building a love relationship with us’ (71). In other words, God thinks it doesn't matter if we believe in Him as long as we love Him. Personally, I find it quite hard to truly love something unless I believe it exists, but maybe this is just another example of the misguided rigour of modern thought.
Craig is also rather fond of asserting rather than arguing. For instance, we are asked simply to accept that ‘As a result of the work of Christian philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga it is today widely recognised that the internal problem of evil is a failure as an argument for atheism’ (73). Not only is this a dubious claim, we are not even told in outline what such a conclusive argument looks like. And having argued at length that the universe must have a cause, we are again simply told to accept that ‘conceptual analysis of which properties must be possessed be such an ultra-mundane cause enables us to recover a striking number of the traditional divine attributes’ (79). Obviously, short essays like this cannot fully substantiate all claims made, but Lane Craig's essay has a much higher assertion-to-argument ratio that others.
The most interesting contributions to the volume stray away from theology, although one of the most intriguing is let down by an inexcusable indifference to the quality of the reading experience. Phil Zuckerman reveals some fascinating facts and figures about atheism today, such as the fact that atheism is positively correlated with ‘nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security’ (61), and that non-belief ranks fourth in the global belief-system popularity charts, behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism (55). But instead of presenting the key findings as a table, he opts almost entirely for continuous prose, with the result that over seven pages, 110 sentences begin ‘According to’. (I may have missed some, and I didn't include the one which started, ‘That said, according to’.) It seems extraordinary to me that the Cambridge University Press editor didn't pick up on this, nor on the mind-numbingly redundant first sentence of the chapter entitled ‘Some contemporary theistic arguments’, which informs us: ‘In this chapter, I examine some contemporary theistic arguments’ (102).
It is true that academic articles are required to be clear and precise more than to be a pleasure to read, but the apparent lack of interest in writing in an attractive, engaging style is too widespread and is one reason why more people outside the academy don't read what should be of interest to many. I don't so much blame the contributors (who after all, have been trained all their lives to wrote as prosaically as possible) as the presses, whose editors are in theory there to improve the text. Too many just don't have the time to do this anymore, as publishing houses crank out ever more books for ever smaller readerships. But a volume which promises to be a regular in essential reading lists for years to come deserves a little more tender loving care than was bestowed on this one.
The final section on the implications of atheism was for me the most interesting. Michael Martin concludes that ‘atheism and religion do not necessarily stand in opposition to each one another. Atheists can even support aspects of theistic religions on, for instance, aesthetic and moral grounds’ (230). This is true, but it only makes it more disappointing that this chapter is preceded by nine in which atheism and religion fight it out once again.
Christine Overall's essay on feminism and atheism is also intriguing, although I'm afraid those sceptical of the merits of feminist philosophy will see their prejudices confirmed when they find the explicitly nebulous views of a priestess called Starhawk being treated with some seriousness. Overall herself writes clearly and thoughtfully (she was quoting Carol Christ on Starhawk) but it seems she feels obliged to grant too much respect to some flaky views. It is understandable that those who write from the perspective of the half of humanity historically dismissed as fluffy airheads should be keen not to be as dismissive of others as others have been of them, but excessive charity plays into the hands of those who wrongly believe feminist philosophy is not of the same calibre as other branches of the discipline.
John D. Caputo's essay on ‘Atheism, a/theology and the postmodern condition’ is especially valuable, since it is as about as clear a discussion of these topics as the subject matter allows. Postmodernists are often accused of hiding behind obfuscation, but Caputo proves that obscurantism is not an essential feature of their writings. The final chapters on the anthropology of religion and the psychology of atheism bring the volume to a strong conclusion, and give the reader further examples of how the study of atheism can and should stretch far beyond the now tired debates about the existence of God.
This is undoubtedly a book all serious students and scholars of atheism will want to have on their shelves. What it sometimes lacks in elegance and style it more than makes up for in scholarship and clarity. Its failings merely reflect the failings of academic atheism, which has not sufficiently heeded the key lesson it preaches to others: you don't need God to find meaning and purpose in life, and that includes atheist, academic life.
