Atheism in the Enlightenment

7 Key excerpts on "Atheism in the Enlightenment"

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  Radical Thinkers

  • Max Horkheimer, Matthew O'Connell, Matthew O'Connell(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Verso

    (Publisher)

  Besides, what is called “theism” here has very little in common with the philosophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which went by that name. That movement was mostly an attempt to reconcile the concept of God with the new science of nature in a plausible manner. The longing for something other than this world, the standing-apart from existing conditions played only a subordinate part in it and mostly no part at all. The meanings of the two concepts do not remain unaffected by history, and their changes are infinitely varied. At a time when both the national socialists and the nationalistic communists despised the Christian faith, a man like Robespierre, the disciple of Rousseau, but not a man like Voltaire, would also have become an atheist and declared nationalism as a religion. Nowadays atheism is in fact the attitude of those who follow whatever power happens to be dominant, no matter whether they pay lip-service to a religion or whether they can afford to disavow it openly. On the other hand, those who resist the prevailing wind are trying to hold on to what was once the spiritual basis of the civilization to which they still belong. This is hardly what the philosophical “theists” had in mind: the conception of a divine guarantor of the laws of nature. It is on the contrary the thought of something other than the world, something over which the fixed rules of nature, the perennial source of doom, have no dominion.

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  Faith in the Age of Science

  Atheism, Religion, and the Big Yellow Crane

  • Mark Silversides(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Sacristy Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 1

  Atheism in Crisis

  There have been atheists throughout western history, starting from the pre-socratic philosophers of the sixth century BCE, but generally as a very small minority. Until the eighteenth century the almost infallible rule was that people would follow the religious belief into which they were born, or convert to a different faith, voluntarily or under duress.

  The atheist viewpoint had greater freedom to develop with the onset of the Enlightenment during the seventeenth century, so that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atheism became more of an option. This modern phase is generally held to start with Baron d’Holbach (1723–89) and a handful of others in the second half of the eighteenth century. D’Holbach was one of the materialists (we shall consider this philosophy in more detail later) who provided the intellectual groundwork for the French Revolution. Julian Baggini in his book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction gives greater detail of what he calls “the birth of avowed atheism” at this time and connects it across the centuries with the pre-socratics as part of an ongoing story, although, as he himself admits, not all authorities would agree with him on this point.

  Baggini’s book is an excellent introduction to atheism, both concise and constructive, and he may be correct in making a theoretical link with the ancient Greeks. There was also some medieval discussion concerning atheistic views, for example in the works of Peter Abelard (1079–1142). However, for modern readers, atheism in our western culture originated in eighteenth-century Europe.

  Atheism Today

  I suspect that Baggini would not support the belligerence of the extreme Dawkinsians as he seems to be more interested in promoting useful philosophical discussion. In a similar vein, Lewis Wolpert is a card-carrying atheist, but is more conciliatory than aggressive in tone. Martin Rowson, a piercing humorist and author of The Dog Allusion: Gods, Pets and How to Be Human thinks it would be better just to pat religion on the head and leave it alone in its basket to gnaw on its leg. Hopefully, this might keep it out of politics, a wish also expressed (at least most of the time) by commentators such as the late Christopher Hitchens. Like The God Delusion

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  Critical Realism and Spirituality

  • Mervyn Hartwig, Jamie Morgan, Mervyn Hartwig, Jamie Morgan(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  40

  It is therefore intensely problematic to argue for a ‘ “New” Enlightenment’, a concept which assumes almost totemic significance for writers such as Christopher Hitchens. While conceding that the New Atheism is more concerned to criticize others than to construct positive proposals, it is important to note its intellectual and moral utopianism in relation to the Enlightenment. There is no recognition of the Standortsgebundenheit – that is to say the historically and culturally situated character – of the Enlightenment project, leading to the curious and almost chimerical belief that the ideas and values of the Enlightenment can somehow be transplanted into the twenty-first century, as if they were detachable from their originating context.

  The new cultural interest in the transcendent is easily dismissed as a deplorable lapse into irrational beliefs, reflecting an indefensible resurgence of superstition in Western culture. Yet this rhetorical façade ultimately represents a somewhat uncritical repetition of certain core Enlightenment values, re-appropriated by the New Atheism, which aims simply to stigmatize, rather than engage with, this significant cultural development. As any informed account of the Enlightenment discloses, the movement was never totally without an awareness of the importance of either the notion of the transcendent or its implications for religion.41 The new interest in the transcendent can be interpreted in a number of manners, and one of them is a reaction against the spiritual aridity of modernity.42 If the new insights of the cognitive science of religion are valid,43 a human alertness to and concern for the transcendent is likely to remain deeply embedded within human culture unless it is opposed by cultural means. As has often been noted, the history of ideas suggests that the assertion of the hegemony of materialist approaches to reality invariably creates a backlash, generating a new interest in the domain of the transcendent.44

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  A Short History of Atheism

  • Gavin Hyman(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  The ‘Appearance’ of Atheism in Modern History

  In any discussion of the ‘appearance’ of atheism in the West, it is important to distinguish between two distinct spheres in which this occurred. On the one hand, it is possible to trace the emergence and development of atheism in modern thought as an intellectual phenomenon among writers, philosophers, artists and other elites. On the other hand, one may trace a parallel development of atheism in history as a cultural phenomenon, whereby atheism becomes a possible option, a viable world-view, whether for society as a whole or for groups or individuals within societies. To trace the contours of both these developments is to tell two quite distinct stories, each with their own beginnings and histories. There may be parallels and points of contact between them, but the time and manner of their respective developments are quite distinct.

  It is also worth noting at this point that the story of the appearance of atheism is part of a wider story of the appearance of ‘unbelief’ in relation to Christianity. For, as we shall see, atheism is but one species of unbelief that emerged alongside, or in reaction against, other forms such as scepticism, ‘free thinking’ and, later, agnosticism. All these varieties of unbelief have their own distinct characteristics, but they are all part of a wider story of the gradual weakening of the hold of Christian orthodoxy on Western thought and Western society in general. As Charles Taylor has recently emphasised, there has been a remarkable shift in Western society, the revolutionary character of which is not always fully appreciated.1

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  The Secular Outlook

  In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism

  • Paul Cliteur(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  5 Several atheistic passages were removed from the first edition, but they were restored in the second. The poem’s publisher, Edward Moxon (1801–1858), was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel. In the 1820s the British intellectual and bookseller Richard Carlile (1790–1843) issued a new edition of the poem.

  That the development of atheism is still at the same stage as Shelley left it at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as Paul Johnson contended in 1996, is not very convincing given the vast quantity of literature that has appeared on atheism recently. But maybe this has to do with the fact that it is far from clear what Johnson means when he uses the term “atheism.”

  More attention is given to this matter in monographs explicitly devoted to the subject. According to Julian Baggini (1968– ) atheism is “extremely simple to define,” because “it is the belief that there is no God or gods.”6

  In other definitions atheism is contrasted with theism. Robin Le Poidevin (1962– ) writes: “An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being. A theist is one who asserts the existence of such a creator. Any discussion of atheism, then, is necessarily a discussion of theism.”7 So, in contrast to Baggini, Le Poidevin asserts that atheism is related to a specific concept of god: god as a personal and transcendent creator of the universe. According to Le Poidevin, atheism also implies a conscious and explicit position in the sense that simply living a life without God is not sufficient to call someone an “atheist.”

  We find the same contrast between theism and atheism in Daniel Harbour who writes: “Atheism is the plausible and probably correct belief that God does not exist. Opposed to atheism, there is theism, the implausible and probably incorrect view that God does exist.”8

  Atheism is generally considered to be an integral part of the tradition of the secular outlook. In what follows I will delineate what seems to me a defensible approach to atheism. Nevertheless, as I will try to show, few people approach atheism the way I do. Atheism has negative overtones. That does not make it necessarily untrue, of course, but the forces united against atheism as a creed, voiced by McGrath, Johnson, and many other detractors, are so formidable, and the misunderstandings about atheism so widespread, that it seems advisable to be somewhat cautious in using the term. In any case one should not identify the secular outlook entirely with atheism.9 It would surely be wrong to say that if atheism goes, the secular outlook goes. That, at least, will be my conclusion. Secularism is not atheism. Most atheists are secularists.10

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  Atheism Revisited

  Rethinking Modernity and Inventing New Modes of Life

  • Szymon Wróbel, Krzysztof Skonieczny, Szymon Wróbel, Krzysztof Skonieczny(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  fundamentalism , which can be found both in religious and atheist milieus.

  In particular, we would like to rethink three significant issues. First of all, we ask: what is atheism and, in a more philosophical sense, if philosophy is understood (via Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ) as creating concepts, what is the “atheism of the concept”? We believe it is worth returning to the relationship between the three following concepts: atheism, pantheism and deism . Spinoza —an avowed atheist—wrote and thought about God far more than about anything else. Should we follow him, and scrutinize the implications of theism, pantheism and deism in the context of contemporary post-Spinozan theory? What is “positive atheism ” today? Gilles Deleuze , when wondering if there is a Christian philosophy , responds: theological thinking only creates concepts on the grounds of its own atheism. It is atheism, rather than religion, that creates concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 2015 ). Thus, Spinoza himself had to become an atheist to create concepts—including the concept of religion. For philosophers, the very “concept of atheism” is also problematic. It is surprising that some of the contemporary discussions concerning the philosophy of Jacques Derrida concentrate on the “alleged atheism” or “uncertain messianism”, or finally the “radical atheism ” (Hägglund 2008 ), of the author of Of Grammatology . The issue of atheism is also crucial in theorizing democratic political power . How is democracy atheist? Does absolutism need religion? These questions, which are important in the context of the theoretical projects of Carl Schmitt , Jürgen Habermas , Jacques Derrida and Giorgio

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  Systematic Atheology

  Atheism's Reasoning with Theology

  • John R. Shook(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Pragmatism (1907) supported skepticism towards dogmatic religion and supernaturalism, while supporting the validity of energizing religious faith on moral grounds.

  Empiricists were not alone assigning the question of god’s existence to that agnostic status. Some post-Kantians on the Continent omitted a deity from their philosophical systems while taking close interest in the significance of human religiosity. Prominent examples are Charles Renouvier’s four-volume Essais de critique générale (1854–64), Henri Bergson’s L’Évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution, 1907), Benedetto Croce’s four-volume Filosofia come scienza dello spirit (Philosophy of the Spirit, 1902–17), Ernst Cassirer’s three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29), and Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927). Another agnosticism during this era was heard in the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose 1945 essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” urged the abandonment of god and religiosity.

  Loyal empiricists continued to be the mainstay of English-language skepticism. Bertrand Russell’s thoughts on atheism and agnosticism are well expressed in a brief address titled “Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic? A Plea for Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas” (1949). Russell acknowledges the philosophical way that ‘atheism’ has been defined as certain knowledge that no god exists, so his own scientific empiricism has no way to endorse such knowledge. Although he cannot be a philosophical atheist in that sense, he goes on to declare how any ordinary sense to atheism only involves reasonable disbelief in gods, not certain knowledge. On reasonable grounds anyone should be a disbeliever in all gods, Russell stated. He says of any gods: “I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration” and he says of his fellow rationalists, “speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we are Atheists.”57 By allowing that atheism covers skeptical unbelief as well as affirming disbelief, Russell pointed the way for later empiricist approaches to religion by A. J. Ayer in “Logical Positivism, A Debate” (1957), Antony Flew in The Presumption of Atheism

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