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.

China’s Religious Experience

I’ve always considered the religious forms native to China the most sophisticated—at least in comparison with religious forms in India and in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim world. The last three, of course, are closely related. The specifically Chinese forms are a belief in spirits, especially those of the ancestors, and Taoism, a much later mystical form, in which the ultimate is pictured as a transcendental All. The chief similarity of Chinese and all other religions is that it is based on a conviction that a spirit world exists beyond this one. The chief difference lies in the absence of a personified God, a God whose characteristics are based on the human model. The great benefit of the religious view for the Chinese people has been that a sophisticated view of the All High is almost impossible to exploit for political purposes. Hence China has been spared the vicious religious wars that have plagued other parts of the globe.

Of course, as many, many people have observed over time, The Chinese temperament is practical and down to earth. Indeed, calling it a “temperament” is probably wrong. It is a cultural blessing, in a way—and in China the culture has been pretty continuous for at least 4000 years. No lesser person than D.T. Suzuki has elaborated this very point. Suzuki, a Japanese, is the chief introducer of Zen Buddhism to the West, and in his Essay in Zen Buddhism, he too stresses the point. Zen, as he points out, is as much a Chinese creation as an Indian, and Zen Buddhism is practical and down to earth.

This works out well. Ancestor worship enlarges the sense of living in this dimension by extending it into the invisible. The ancestors are seen as able to influence one’s banal fortunes in this dimension—and we can please ancestors by upholding the ethical norms. So at the bottom of society. At its highest levels, the concept of Heaven, impersonal but not unaware, has been developed as the sanction of rule. Those whom Heaven favors, have the Mandate of Heaven. Those whom Heaven would depose are deprived of the mandate and, no matter what they do, they will swept away. It is the only culture on the planet in which the personal virtue of the ruler is conceived of as directly related to success in governing a realm—and in which the ruler’s chief activity is to let ordinary people live while keeping the lesser lords from exploiting them. That works for me.

And then, at the very highest levels, the mystical and philosophical, the conception of divinity is appropriately high, always reverent, never inclined to suggest that you can bribe, fool, or otherwise influence the highest. It shall prevail, through any and all contingencies at precisely the distance from us which we also feel when contemplating our own puny selves.