Notes on Atheism

There are different ways in which people can couch their disbelief in the religious doctrines of the Hebraic family of religions. People can hold, as I do, that all humans are able to perceive a higher dimension; I usually call this the transcendental order; therefore I view claims of special divine revelation, channeled through individuals or larger aggregates (a chosen people), as an interpretation of personal experiences. Inevitably those who claim the revelation also claim to be pronouncing God’s will—not merely for themselves but others. This I view as “the problem of revelation.” You can find a series of posts on this subject here by clicking the term revelation under Categories. I view it as a problem because, inevitably, this sort of doctrine becomes oppressive when it gains sufficient power. To doubt the claims of those who would speak in the name of God is disbelief, but only from the viewpoint of the believer in the doctrine; disbelief of this kind isn’t necessarily atheism.

Another form of disbelief arises from sincere inability to perceive a transcendental order behind nature, world, and cosmos. This group divides into agnostics and atheists. Agnostics claim they just don’t know, one way or the other; but they leave either possibility open. Agnostics don’t actively push their views. Atheists are convinced that their inability to see the transcendental arises from the fact of its absence; they divide into ordinary atheists and into the militant kind. The latter act as missionaries of their system of faith; in this they are indistinguishable from others who proselytize for other systems that also lack all positive proof, thus proof that can be publicly demonstrated without need for subjective “faith.”

Early in my wanderings I’ve noted that atheism is a peculiarly western phenomenon. It is the Hebraic tradition that introduced the concept of revelation; its acceptance requires “faith”—thus assent in the absence of proof. It is in the philosophical schools of this tradition that proofs for the existence of God have flourished—and have also spawned their atheistic opponents. I’m unaware of any similar clustering of thought in the East. Why isn’t there an analogous movement in China, for instance, centered on showing that the Tao or Heaven do not exist? Here it might be worth mentioning that “Heaven,” in the Chinese conceptualization, is an unanalyzed but well-understood reference to an overweening transcendent sovereignty. We see this in the context, for instance, of a phrase like “the mandate of Heaven.” That such a saying is not merely a cynical equivalent to saying that “what happens happens” is shown by the fact that in Chinese classical literature Heaven’s mandate is withdrawn when the virtue of the ruler flags. Heaven is thus conceived of having a moral aspect. Similarly I note the conspicuous absence of analytical approaches in the writings about the Tao (“the Way”); the Tao Te Ching might be called a classical text on negative theology, thus the idea that anything you say about the Ultimate is wrong-headed even before you utter the words.

The only way I can explain this difference between the East and the West is by noting that, in the West, we have separated from the unanalyzable Ultimate a willful ruling spirit, a spirit that specifically directs humans, as such, to behave in certain ways. I could put this another way and say that we have projected into the unanalyzable Ultimate our own dogmatic dicta; we’ve divinized our own sense of the right; next we proceed to derive our own views, once more, but this time from on High, now as the all-powerful voice of God. And because it is from such a source, we claim for it much more than merely our conviction that right is right. No. It is more than that. The East has avoided this innovation and thus still holds a more reverential view of the divine. Atheism, therefore, at least certain sincere and serious forms of it, might therefore be viewed as a corrective.