Losing Faith in Atheism

If I was inactive successful hunt of beliefs, galore atheists would object, I hadn’t truly gotten implicit my spiritual upbringing. A bully atheist deals not successful religion but successful facts, not successful content but successful knowledge. Yet I could find nary evident factual, knowledge-based reply to the question that was astir pressing to me: How americium I to live?

I don’t mean to suggest that the New Atheists had nary motivation sense. On the contrary, they were mostly fuelled by motivation outrage astatine the needless suffering religion caused. But the quality of morality was seemingly the lone happening astir which they did not attraction to argue. They thought it simply self‑evident that we tendency pleasance implicit symptom for ourselves, and that immoderate decent idiosyncratic wished the aforesaid for others. One of religion’s top harms, they believed, was that it turned radical distant from this basal intuition. Of the Four Horsemen, lone Harris aspired to a “science of bully and evil” which could taxable motivation claims to the aforesaid rational scrutiny arsenic each different claims, but his section connected the taxable rapidly devolves into an statement astir the indefensibility of pacifism and the motivation necessity of authorities torture. (It was a unusual time.)

Anyway, I wasn’t truly looking for applicable guidance. To inquire “How americium I to live?” is to inquire arsenic to not conscionable what is close but what is good. It is to inquire not conscionable “What should I do?” but “How should I be?” The astir generous mentation of the New Atheist presumption connected this question is that radical ought to person the state to determine for themselves. On that, I agreed completely, but that near maine close wherever I’d started, inactive successful request of an answer.

Setting down the fashionable polemics of the day, I began to work modern philosophy, which I understood to beryllium the superior means by which humans person sought secular answers to life’s questions. I work the philosophers astir often cited arsenic models by modern‑day atheists—John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill—as good arsenic those whom meaning‑hungry young radical habitually clasp arsenic secular gurus: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Camus. But I besides work philosophers who are mostly work conscionable by different philosophers.

Even erstwhile I was struggling with the astir challenging of these works, the speechmaking felt urgent to me. I wasn’t submitting papers oregon getting grades; I wasn’t looking to gain a grade oregon to prosecute a career. I wasn’t adjacent trying to impressment radical astatine literate parties. (For that, I had thousand‑page postmodern novels.) I was conscionable trying to fig things out. Immanuel Kant’s 3 “critiques” are often cited arsenic the works that archetypal made doctrine inaccessible to nonspecialists, but successful Kant’s sentiment helium was addressing precise straightforward questions—What tin I know?, What indispensable I do?, and What whitethorn I hope? I was decidedly a nonspecialist, and these were the questions I wanted answered.

Among different things, this speechmaking taught maine that atheists do clasp beliefs, not conscionable astir morals and morals but astir however the satellite really is and however humans acceptable into it. Of course, not each atheists clasp the aforesaid beliefs—just arsenic not each theists do—but I recovered that modern atheist content tends to clump into 2 wide traditions.

The astir prevalent atheist satellite presumption goes by galore names—empiricism, positivism, physicalism, naturalism—but the word that champion captures the fullness of its present‑day iteration, arsenic I spot it, is technological materialism. Roughly speaking, this presumption holds that the worldly satellite is each that exists, that humans tin cognize this satellite done consciousness perception, that the methods of subject let america to person the earthy information of these perceptions into wide principles, and that these principles tin beryllium some tested and enactment to applicable usage by making predictions astir aboriginal events.

As satellite views go, technological materialism has a batch to accidental for it. It tells america that humans are capable, without immoderate supernatural aid, of coming to understand, and yet to master, each of reality. It tells america that the store of quality cognition is perpetually expanding and continuously improving our worldly conditions. To this end, it points to the astonishing quality advancement that has occurred successful the clip of science’s reign. And it encourages america to bask the fruits of this advancement arsenic overmuch arsenic possible, since our beingness present connected world is the lone 1 we’ll get.