irritable reaching out

Shortly after hearing that the New Lib Dem leader thought that this world was all we had and that it might be a good idea to make the best of it, I went into town for a bit of shopping. And there on the table at Waterstone’s sat the big fat book of nothing, otherwise known as the Portable Atheist.

It’s kind of funny in a zen Buddhist way. The conscientious god denier goes about happily in his or her human centred world, when suddenly the horrible feeling that there might be something out there descends. But a quick riffle through his atheist companion provides reassurance of the finality of cosmic absence.

Well I’m an atheist, which means that by definition I don’t have a companion. I don’t want one either. As far as meeting spiritual needs goes, the thought that life, the universe and everything is a biochemical accident meets any needs I might conceivably have: it puts a smile on my face too.

The joy of atheism isn’t that it is the way of truth and righteousness. It’s that in itself it has no personal consequences at all. It doesn’t require that you think, do, or feel any particular thing. It doesn’t make you smarter or stupider. It gives you no responsibilities or privileges. It only requires negative capability:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

Nietzsche’s comment about people who stare into the void finding the void staring into them is sometimes taken by the religious as an affirmation that atheists themselves acknowledge that without God humanity lapses into nihilism: unless you matter to God then you don’t matter. I think what Nietzsche was warning against was the irritable reaching after fact and reason. Once you get rid of God, you also have to get rid of the urge towards a big explanation for which God was meant to be the answer. Otherwise you end up producing bibles for atheists, erecting a theology of science, propounding universalism in a way that sounds like theocracy in secular drag. You celebrate Newton Day, an idea which I suppose the grumpy old alchemist would have liked. You ignore the patent bigotry of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali actually says, preferring to erect her to the status of a priestess of the cult of reason. You develop towards being the kind of atheist who blames the Jews for not killing Jesus until it was too late (I’m watching ya, Dawkins.)

I’m not taking the line that atheism is just religion in a new guise. It’s just that you have to lose the habits of mind that require faith along with the faith itself. What never existed does not need replacing.

Comments

[Chris Brooke]

You celebrate Newton Day

We've been here before. The great utopian socialist Saint-Simon at one point in his life (Letter to the Inhabitants of Geneva, if memory serves -- I'm away from my books right now) wanted a "religion of Newton" to replace Christianity, and thought that there should be a Mausoleum of Newton in every large town that would be able to transport people to different planets.

[CKR]

Well said, Jamie.

[ajay]

thought that there should be a Mausoleum of Newton in every large town that would be able to transport people to different planets.

Saint-Simon: made of awesome.

[ejh]

Once you get rid of God, you also have to get rid of the urge towards a big explanation for which God was meant to be the answer.

You mean some sort of moral-ethical explanation, presumably? As opposed to the scientific investigation of our origins - thus "how we come to be here" remains pertinent but "why we come to be here" does not.

I do think we need to have some sort of philosophical explanation of why (and if) we have any duty as human beings to behave well to one another. I partly say so because there's a very me-centred philosophy about that's very atheistic and it's not the sort of atheism I like.

[jamie]

"I do think we need to have some sort of philosophical explanation of why (and if) we have any duty as human beings to behave well to one another"

I don't think this needs to be connected to a grand theory of why we are all here in the first place, whether scientific or religous. It might be harder to generate a theory of mutual obligation in the first place without it, but I think it might tend to stick harder should you succeed: at any rate, a theoiry of "why we should behave morally" is less likely to morph into "why my superior morals give me the right to have power over you."

[ejh]

I don't think this needs to be connected to a grand theory of why we are all here in the first place, whether scientific or religous.

No, but it does probably need to be connected to a theory of what we are. Which is probably easier come to by people who think that we were made in a certain shape than by people who are trying to discover (and debate) what our shape is.

[Backword Dave]

"... a Mausoleum of Newton in every large town that would be able to transport people to different planets."

Proof, if proof were needed, that our national broadcaster is secretly indoctrinating (ho!) our children in socialism and atheism. Happy Newton Day!

[Ken MacLeod]

Without wishing to detract from your main point, The Portable Atheist is a damned good book.