David Eller, as many of you know, is pretty much my favorite scholar/author at this point, next to just a very limited number of others. As a friend he’s allowing me to publish the very best, next to none chapter on what the words atheist and agnosticism mean. It comes from his most recent book, Liberation: On Freedom from God(s) [GCRR, 2024], one that I was honored to write the Forword. Enjoy!
Freeing Ourselves (and Others)
From Misunderstandings of
Atheism
“I
do not believe in God and I am not an
atheist,” Albert Camus wrote in his Notebooks
1951–1959.[1]
What are we to make of that statement? Perhaps Camus was being wry and cryptic,
as French philosophers are often wont to be. Maybe “atheist” meant something
different to him or to 1950s-era France. Alternatively, it might have been too
dangerous to avow atheism in that time and place. Or maybe he was just confused
about the word.
If the latter
is the case, then Camus would not be the first or the last to labor under
misconceptions about atheism. Of course, theists are highly likely—and highly
motivated—to get atheism wrong. Since they are not atheists and possibly have
never spoken to one (at least not intentionally and civilly), they really do
not know what we think; they can only see us through their own theistic eyes
and assume that we are the reverse image, or, more perversely, some odd
variation, of their own theism. Then, as sworn and mortal enemies of atheism,
they are driven to portray us in the most unflattering light, to construct a
ridiculous straw man that they can summarily caricature and assassinate. We
need not take their (mis)characterizations of us seriously, except as a public
relations problem.
What about
atheists themselves? Surely they are accurately portraying their position.
Surprisingly and distressingly, too many professional atheist writers and
speakers commit a regular set of errors in describing the nature of atheism.
This is a tremendously damaging tendency, for two reasons. First, we mislead
current and future atheists, who are misinformed by the incautious
pronouncements of prominent atheists. Second, we empower theists and other
critics of atheism who use our words against us: “See, even atheists say that
atheism is X, so we are justified in our criticism and condemnation of the
idea.”
In this chapter,
we will expose and free ourselves from recurring and systematic mistakes in the
atheist literature. We will not repeat or critique “arguments for atheism,”
which have been sufficiently covered, including by me[2]
and are largely cogent and decisive; all but the most hard-headed theists and
religious apologists (who still exist) concede that “the case for god(s)” is
weak at best and lost at worst. Nor will we linger on the New Atheists, who
have been thoroughly examined many times before, including in the previous
chapter where we noted their unexpected and unfortunate turn toward reactionary
social and political attitudes—ironically simultaneously debunking one of the
pillars of Western civilization (i.e. Christianity) and defending Western
civilizational traditions of sexism, racial thinking, and Islamophobia, among
others. The New Atheists are broadly guilty of the common charge of scientism,
not just of crediting science with the solution to all problems but of
equating, as Richard Dawkins does, religion to science (albeit bad science).
For instance, Dawkins wrote in his lauded The
God Delusion that “‘the God Hypothesis’ is a scientific hypothesis about
the universe,” and Victor Stenger actually put this “god hypothesis” business
in the title of one of his books.[3]
Finally, all of the New Atheists, who are quality scholars on their own turf,
operate with limited (by which I mean Christianity-centric) notions of religion
and god, in which “god” means the Christian or Abrahamic god and “religion”
means Abrahamic monotheism. Any college freshman student of religion knows
better.
Debunking Christianity
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