Varieties of unbelief: A taxonomy of atheistic positions

Olli-Pekka Vainio & Aku Visala

Faculty of Theology
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Olli-pekka.vainio@helsinki.fi
Aku.visala@helsinki.fi

Abstract: In this article, we offer an overview of different version of contemporary

atheism from the viewpoint of positive beliefs that are joined together with atheistic
worldview. Our four main classes of atheism are scientistic atheism, philosophical
atheism, tragic atheism and humanistic atheism, which can then be divided to various
subclasses. With this classification, we aim to challenge the view according to which
atheism is not a belief system but merely a lack of belief in some transcendent being.
Moreover, there seems to be no atheism per se, but it always appears with some positive
beliefs.

A number of contemporary atheists claim that since atheism is not a worldview and does
not involve positive belief, the atheist need not give any arguments for her atheism. On
this view, atheists are people who lack religious belief and are not associated with any
religious or ideological tradition. This is supposed to make atheism different from
religious worldviews that, invariably, require belief in something. The fact that atheists
lack belief rather than hold it is supposed to give atheism a moral advantage.
Most theologians take such claims with a grain of salt. According to David Bentley Hart,
for instance, this is one of the most strangest claims that atheists make. He continues:

This is not something the atheists of earlier ages would have been very likely to
say, if only because they still lived in a culture whose every dimension (artistic,
philosophical, ethical, social, cosmological) was shaped by a religious vision of
the world. More to the point, it is an utterly nonsensical claim - so nonsensical, in
fact, that it is doubtful that those who make it can truly be considered atheists in
any coherent sense.1

1
David Bentley HART, God, Gods, and Fairies, First Things, June 2013. Kindle
edition.

1
2
For Hart, the main issue is the ultimate nature of the monotheistic God. If such a God
exists, there will most likely be objective moral and aesthetic facts. The world will
exhibit inherent teleology and contingency. Thus, for Hart, God is not simply an entity or
a species in the world, but the ultimate ground of existence and the foundation for a
complete worldview. Such a God cannot be removed or eliminated without massive
consequences, without building a complete alternative worldview. Perhaps atheism as
lack of belief is not a worldview but only a property of some worldviews, but those
worldviews themselves require arguments to be justified. 2 Hart argues:

it is absurd to think that one can profess atheism in any meaningful way
without thereby assenting to an entire philosophy of being, however inchoate
ones sense of it may be. The philosophical naturalists view of reality is not one
that merely fails to find some particular object within the world that the theist
imagines can be described there; it is a very particular representation of the nature
of things, entailing a vast range of purely metaphysical commitments.3

2
Thus also Keith WARD, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins
(Oxford: Lion Hudson Plc., 2008), 19: Believing in God is not like believing in fairies or
in invisible tea-pots. Those are physical things of a peculiar sort. But God, by definition,
is not a physical thing at all, not even a very thin and ghostly physical thing. The question
of God is the question of whether conscious mind could account for the origin and nature
of our universe.
3
HART (see above n. 1).

3
4
In what follows, we will assess Harts claim in more detail by analysing various
metaphysical and epistemological assumptions that contemporary atheists make. Our
main claim is that there are at least four basic types of atheism that entail mutually
exclusive attitudes towards, for example, religions, morality, science and philosophy. If
this is true, as we think it is, the aforementioned view of atheism as a mere instance of
absence of certain beliefs does not hold water and the reality of unbelief is much more
complicated.4
I. On Defining Atheism

On closer inspection, the everyday definition of atheism as a lack of belief in God, gods
or other religious entities leaves a lot to be desired. We will point out three different
problems. The first problem is that it does not distinguish lack of belief from unbelief.
Let us think of the following case: Jack does not believe that Riihimki was once the
capital of Finland, while Jill does not have the belief that Riihimki was once the
capital of Finland. Jack knows that Riihimki has never been the capital of Finland,
while Jill does not have clue about Finnish history; she does not even know that there is a
country called Finland.
It is possible for a person to have several different kinds of propositional attitudes; she
may, for example, know, hope, doubt, hold untrue or hold more or less probable the claim
that p. To simplify the matters, let us think that there are three basic epistemic attitudes
towards p.

1. I believe that p is true.

2. I do not know what to believe about p.
3. I disbelieve that p, that is, I believe that p is false.

4
A parallel and complementary account of atheism is provided by Ara NORENZAYAN and
Will GERVAIS (The Multiple Origins of Religious Disbelief, Trends in Cognitive
Science, forthcoming), who have investigated salient psychological factors behind
different kinds of atheisms. They argue that atheism may result from (1) mental and
cognitive disfunctions (such as autism) that weaken those cognitive biases, which are
seen as helping people to adopt religious convictions, (2) general feeling of safety, which
they call apatheism, (3) the lack of religious impulses in the surrounding culture, and
(4) analytic thinking that after assessing the arguments and evidence chooses to adopt
disbelief.

5
Now, if p stands for monotheistic God exists, then 2 and 3 are forms of atheism based
on the everyday definition of atheism. However, it is customary to make further
distinctions between these two attitudes. One option is to call 3 atheism and 2
agnosticism. This would already make the use of everyday definition complicated.
Another, more popular, option is to call 3 strong atheism and 2 weak atheism. 5 In this
case, strong atheism would require arguments. Merely showing that there is something
wrong in the arguments for the existence of God does not yet grant epistemic rights to
hold that not-p, even if it does allow weak atheism. But this is not enough for many
contemporary atheist who wish not only to remain agnostic but wish to hold that not-p.
To take option 3 requires more work than showing that there is no reason to hold theism
and some have pursued this route.
The second problem with the everyday definition of atheism is that it confuses
sociological categories with epistemic ones. The term atheism can be used to refer to
those people that are not committed to any religious tradition or practice. Atheism in this
sense can entail numerous epistemic attitudes: a non-religious person can be a weak or
strong atheist, she might have non-theistic spiritual beliefs or practices or be a pantheist
of some sorts.

5
Herman PHILIPSE, God in an Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 343. Weak atheism can harbour a great number of
different attitudes. For example, a weak atheist can hope that God exist or that God does
not exist. She may totally lack the concept of God, or she may be indifferent towards the
subject. For a detailed account of these attitudes and their relation to faith, see Audi

6
The third problem with the everyday definition is that it is not at all clear what atheism is
supposed to reject. As Hart and several others have pointed out, atheism is a product of
the Western philosophical and religious tradition. Atheists like Baron dHolbach, Ludwig
Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche defined themselves as opposed to
prevailing theistic philosophies. They did not seek to give grounds to weak atheism but to
develop non-Christian and non-theistic alternative worldviews. Baron dHolbach, for
instance, defended strong mechanistic atheism and determinism, whereas someone like
David Hume was a weak atheist, an empiricist and skeptic. These few examples
demonstrate how early modern atheists held various comprehensive worldviews and
metaphysical presuppositions, and also varied in the strength of their atheism.6
One further distinction can be made between local and global atheism. Let us think of
John, who holds traditional Christian beliefs. Being a theist, John does not believe in the
(actual) existence of, say Thor, Zeus and Cthultu. This makes John a local atheist
regarding non-theistic deities, whereas his friend Jim is global atheist who denies the
existence all deities.
In order to say something interesting about atheism, we need to be able to say what is
being denied and on what grounds, and here the everyday definition does not help us. In
the following, we will look at four different types atheism and make some remarks about
them as worldviews. Our four main types are as follows: philosophical or analytic
atheism, scientistic atheism, tragic atheism and humanistic atheism. We have
distinguished these four main types based on their attitudes towards philosophical
arguments for atheism, grounding of moral beliefs and attitudes towards religiosity. We
are not arguing that these types are mutually exclusive in all respects even if they are
clearly different worldviews. In the following graph, we present the four types and some
possible subcategories. The details will be provided later.

Atheism

philosoph Humanist
scientistic tragic
ical ic
atheismi atheism
atheism atheism

anti- anti- Agonistic

Platonism
evidential Christiani humanis absolute and
mysterian agnostisis semantic "friendly and Existentia
ultimism istic sm m misotheis political
ism m atheism atheism" secular lism
atheism (Nietzsch (Schopen m misotheis
atheism
e) hauer) m

II. Philosophical or Analytic Atheism

6
On the varieties of historical atheism, see Michael BUCKLEY, At The Origins of Modern
Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Michael MARTIN, Atheism: A
Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Michael
MARTIN (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 1146.

7
By philosophical or analytic atheism, we refer to numerous contemporary philosophers
that have defended atheism in philosophy. The fact that these atheists are professional
philosophers does not mean that they do not use scientific premises as parts of their
arguments. The main difference between scientistic atheists and philosophical atheists is
that the latter add philosophical or in some other way non-scientific premises into their
arguments. In other words, philosophical atheists do not think that, for example, findings
in physics or biology automatically solve the debate between theistic and non-theistic
worldviews.

8
Representatives of philosophical atheism make a number of different ontological and
metaphysical assumptions. Nevertheless, it is true to say that many philosophical atheists
are naturalists, like Michael Martin, Herman Philipse and Graham Oppy.7 By naturalism
we mean the conjunction of the following two claims. First, the preferred ontological
view of the naturalist is physicalism according to which everything that exists consists of
the basic physical particles and forces. The physicalist need not deny the existence of
complex structures like biological organisms or social groups, but she has to maintain
that the same physical bits also ultimately constitute them and are governed by the same
physical laws as everything else.
Second, naturalists are usually committed to the claim that science is our best way of
knowing truths. This epistemological naturalism comes in various strengths: on the weak
version, science does not rule out other forms of knowledge, whereas on the strong
version only science produces justified beliefs about reality. Nevertheless,
epistemological naturalism seems to entail that all truths are in principle knowable in
some ideal science.
Naturalism, understood in this particular sense, entails strong global atheism. One
example of this stance is Dutch philosopher Herman Phillipse. In his God in an Age of
Science, he deals extensively with arguments for theism especially those of Richard
Swinburne, and to some extent Alvin Plantingas Reformed Epistemology as well.
Phillipses view of theism is bleak: he argues that theism is incoherent, because the notion
of a disembodied person does not make sense; this would entail semantical atheism. And
even if we assumed otherwise, the explanatory power of theism dwindles in the face of
ever-progressing science, and there is not enough public evidence for the existence of
God. Phillipses conclusion, based on both the progress of natural sciences and
philosophical arguments, is that, given the evidence we now have, we should all be strong
global atheists.
Contrary to Phillipse, some philosophical atheists even despite their naturalism
acknowledge the rationality of theism. Graham Oppy, for instance, thinks that theism is
false but most people are still rational in holding to it. Oppys extensive look into theistic
arguments, Arguing about Gods, concludes that the non-theist can always deny some of
the premises in the theistic arguments. Thus, theistic arguments are not conclusive. But he
also thinks that arguments for strong atheism are inconclusive as well. Since the evidence

7
See, e.g., MARTIN, Atheism. In addition, Paul Draper, William Rowe, Nicholas Everitt,
J. L. Mackie and Howard Sobel. See Nicholas EVERITT, The Non-Existence of God
(London: Routledge, 2004); J. L. MACKIE, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and
Against of the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Howard SOBEL, Logic
and Theism: Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004). Rowe, Mackie and Everitt are quite likely strong atheists, while
Draper is an agnostic and Mackie appears to be a hardline empirist or semantical atheist.
Also several philosophers who were influential in the early phase of analytical
philosophy, like Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer and Anthony Flew, were known as strong
atheists. Russell was apparently a strong global atheist, Ayer a semantical atheist and
Flew, in the end of his life, became a deist. A short introduction to philosophical atheism
is Robin LE POIDEVIN, Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Religion (London: Routledge, 1996).

9
does not clearly force one to choose either side, one is free to defend the view that
appears most plausible (which for Oppy is naturalism).

10
Oppy is a good example of what William Rowe calls friendly atheism. 8 On friendly
atheism, at least some theists in some circumstances can be rational, whereas on
unfriendly or hostile atheism, no theist can be rational after she has access to all
available, relevant evidence.

8
William ROWE, The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism, American
Philosophical Quarterly 16 (4), 340. Let it be noted that friendliness and unfriendliness
are here used as technical terms, not as referring to the characters of the people involved
in these debates.

11
Anthony Kenny has defended weak atheism against both theism and strong atheism. He
thinks that there is not enough evidence to support either of these options. Therefore, the
most epistemically responsible option is to suspend judgment and be open towards
ongoing enquiry.9 Similarly, such attitudes have been held by Wittgensteinian
philosophers, most notably D. Z. Phillips (19342006). However, describing Phillips
view is rather difficult, because he was known for approaching the issue of atheism and
theism in a rather non-traditional way. He thought that belief in God is a form of life
rather than a epistemic question about the existence of some being that could be answered
outside the religious form of life. If we ask, as people often do, whether God exist outside
a particular form of religious life, we have made a category mistake.10
We already referred to semantical atheism. The most famous of atheist of this sort is Kai
Nielsen, who argues that although the claim God exists resembles a factual claim, it is
actually a non-factual, meaningless claim. This claim entails that the concept God
cannot really be given any sensible content at all. Claiming that there is a person that has
no body is utter nonsense (namely, it has no truth value). Both theism and strong atheism
require that claims like these are meaningful. Semantical atheists deny this so it would be
misleading to categorize them as believing that God does not exist.
All philosophical atheists are not naturalists. John Schellenberg, for instance, is much
closer to David Humes sceptical weak atheism and William Jamess pragmatism than
naturalism. Schellenberg thinks that all the arguments for the existence of God fail, which
makes him a proponent weak atheism. Interestingly, he rejects naturalism as well based
on his conviction that we do not have good enough reasons to believe in the possibility of
ideal science and overarching theory of physical reality. He calls his view evolutionary
scepticism: we have no idea what our religious and scientific views will be in 500 or even
1000 years. We have just begun our scientific evolution and our religious evolution is
only a couple of thousand years old. However, Schellenberg develops a non-believing
religious attitude he calls ultimism. An ultimist is a person that behaves as if an ultimate,
perfectly good reality existed and actively imagines and hopes that reality was like that
without believing in God.

9
See, e.g., Anthony KENNY, The Unknown God: Agnostic Essays (London: Continuum,
2005).
10
See, e.g., D. Z. PHILLIPS, Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

12
Schellenbergs ultimism supports the aforementioned remark of David B. Hart.
Schellenberg thinks that it would be good if theism were true, because under theism (and
other views that entail the existence of perfectly good ultimate reality) we would be
justified in believing in objective moral facts, that our virtues and sacrifices would be
eventually rewarded, that there is meaning in the world and that we are able to gain
knowledge about the ultimate reality, ourselves and the world. However, we do not have
enough reasons to believe in the truth of theism but since our lives would better if we
held those beliefs, we should act according to them and actively imagine and hope they
are true. 11

11
John SCHELLENBERG, The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Sceptical Religion
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); IDEM, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of
Religious Scepticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press , 2007; IDEM, Evolutionary
Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

13
Finally, Thomas Nagel is an example of a philosophical atheist who rejects naturalism. In
his latest book, Mind and Cosmos, Nagel argues that standard naturalism combined with
the theory of evolution cannot explain certain features of our world. These features
include our values, consciousness and freedom. Moreover, both naturalism and theory of
evolution (as comprehensive worldviews) undermine our trust in the reliability of our
cognitive abilities. However, since Nagel denies theism and other related worldviews, he
admits he has no comprehensive alternative to standard naturalism. Nevertheless, he
suggests or intimates a form of panpsychism or Aristotelianism according to which, there
is non-naturalistic teleology and mentality in all levels of reality.12
Philosophical atheists direct their critique towards the epistemic aspects of religion. In
other words, they agree that in order to assess religions and religious ways of life, we
must primarily try to find out whether the claims involved are true and justified. For
them, the moral and political critique of religion is secondary.
III. Scientistic Atheism

What we call scientistic atheism is sometimes close to philosophical atheism: both types
of atheists often accept naturalism in some form or another. There are major differences,
however. It is typical for scientistic atheism to be critical or even condescending towards
philosophy and other non-scientific disciplines. Science, they believe, will solve our
problems, not philosophy. They typically believe that the existence of God is ultimately a
scientific issue: if the God-hypothesis is not scientific, it is nonsense.

12
Thomas NAGEL, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception
of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

14
A prototype of scientistic atheism is Richard Dawkins. 13 Dawkins and some of his fellow
new atheists seek to make atheism a household name, not just an academic or
philosophical exercise.14 This political goal differentiates them from most philosophical
atheists, who have no such political mission. What is driving Dawkins and others is a
moral concern: religion as a phenomenon is regarded to be detrimental to our society, or
even evil. In many ways, the main motivations for scientistic atheism have been the 9/11
attacks and to some extent the increased influence of anti-evolution groups within US.
What worries Dawkins and his kin is not just false beliefs but false belief policies that
uphold these fundamentally irrational beliefs. In their view, religion threatens our basic
Western values of liberty, equality, and democracy not to mention our scientific
achievements.15

13
See also Victor STENGER, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand on Science and Reason
(Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2007); God: IDEM, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science
Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2009). Karl GIBERSON &
Mariano ARTIGAS, Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Alex ROSENBERG, The Atheists Guide to
Reality. Enjoying Life without Illusions (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012).
14
Richard DAWKINS, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 1. See also Sam
HARRIS, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (London: Simon &
Schuster, 2004), 223-227.
15
See, e.g., Harris (see above n. 14), 44-49. See also Daniel DENNETT, Breaking the
Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 2006),
265-270.

15
Dawkins epistemic critique is ultimately based on natural science, not on discussion of
philosophical anti-theistic arguments.16 Philosophical arguments are unnecessary, because
natural sciences, especially evolutionary biology, makes belief in God obsolete. Theism is
redundant because it cannot adequately explain natural phenomena. God is an
implausible scientific hypothesis, because it does not fulfil the requirements of a proper
scientific hypothesis. God does not explain anything but requires explanation itself. For
Dawkins, intelligence is a product of a long and arduous evolutionary process, not the
other way around. It is very unlikely that evolution could produce a being that can design
and create a complex universe, because this being would have to be extremely complex
and thus extremely improbable. Evolution has used millions of years to produce human
beings and consequently the process of creating a complex creator would take
significantly longer. Therefore, the existence of such a creator is extremely improbable. 17

16
In his God Delusion (ch. 3), Dawkins mentions some theistic arguments but the
treatment is very superficial.
17
DAWKINS (see above n. 14), 120122, 147.

16
While philosophical atheists are often willing to consider religious belief rational at least
in some circumstances, scientistic atheists consider religious belief to be irrational and
harmful. Dawkins argues that we cannot have a meaningful debate about religious
beliefs, because they do not yield to standard methods of justification and rational belief.
Moreover, because beliefs are grounds for action, our beliefs and belief formation
procedures have an ethical dimension: we do not have a right to believe whatever we
want and we have a moral duty to justify our beliefs in a reasonable manner. Sam Harris
maintains that if we are not able to offer grounds for our convictions, that could convince
others, we rule out the possibility of reasonable public conversation. Harris even claims
that religious beliefs are inherently violent because they are non-negotiable.18

18
HARRIS, (see above n. 14), 4449, 7779.

17
Regardless of the fact that Dawkins and others are very critical towards philosophy and
the humanities, they nevertheless almost always accept some form of generic humanism
and a somewhat standard set of liberal values. Furthermore, they seem to share a strong
belief in the moral development of Western culture: as science progresses, it produces
increasing amounts of material wealth, which also brings with it moral and political
progress towards increasing freedom and equality. Steven Pinkers book The Better
Angels of Our Nature is a good example of such thinking.19 Pinker argues that the
progress of science and the Enlightenment project as a whole have produced a dramatic
decrease in war and violence inside states and between them. Pinker also associates this
development with the increasing secularisation of Western societies: moral and political
progress towards liberal values is the result of the increased use of reason and its
application to political, ethical and religious issues.
IV. Tragic atheism

Tragic atheism differs from other types of atheism with respect to morality and secular
humanism. For most tragic atheists, belief in moral progress and liberal values is an
outgrowth of Judeo-Christian metaphysics and cannot be rationally maintained after the
collapse of theism. We have chosen the word tragic to highlight this sense of loss
resulting from the death of God, which is present in the writings of atheists of this
variety. The greatest of tragic atheists is, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a well-
known contemporary proponent is British philosopher John Gray.

19
Steven PINKER, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History
and its Causes (London: Allen Lane, 2011).

18
In 1865, Nietzsche commented David Friedrich Strausss radical exegetical work Das
Leben Jesu (1835) by claiming that if Strauss is right in his conclusions, that can have
serious consequences; if you give up Christ you will have to give up God as well. 20
There were several thinkers who followed in Strausss footsteps but wished to retain
some elements of traditional faith, such as a traditional view of morality. This, in
Nietzsches view, was simply a sign of cowardice and denial.

20
Quoted in Reginald HOLLINGDALE, Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 33.

19
Nietzsche would have had very little patience for contemporary philosophical and
scientistic atheism. His own texts are devoid of clear arguments and he does not really
engage with the arguments of others, like contemporary philosophical and scientistic
atheists do (or at least try to do). This is a conscious choice. That is to say, if we form our
convictions mostly intuitively, it is futile to try to argue for ones beliefs and against
someone elses. Thus, Nietzsche does not rely on reason but on taste.21 Instead of
arguments, he offers stories and aphorisms.
The central element of Nietzsches style is genealogy: an attempt to demonstrate how the
origin of a given belief is contingent thus making the truth of the belief less obvious or
necessary. Nietzschean genealogy seeks to turn the tables on Christianity (or Platonism)
by telling a better, alternative story.

21
Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Gay Science, transl. by Walter Kaufman (New York: Random
House, 1991), 38, 39, 132; See also Martin WARNER, Philosophical Finesse: Studies in
the Art of Rational Persuasion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 284.

20
 THE HISTORICAL REFUTATION AS THE DECISIVE ONE. Formerly it was
sought to prove that there was no God now it is shown how the belief that a God
existed could have originated. And by what means this belief gained authority and
importance: in this way the counterproof that there is no God becomes
unnecessary and superfluous. In former times, when the "evidences of the
existence of God" which had been brought forward were refuted, a doubt still
remained, viz. whether better proofs could not be found than those which had just
been refuted: at that time the atheists did not understand the art of making a tabula
rasa.22

22
NIETZSCHE, Daybreak, transl. by Maudemarie Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 95.

21
Nietzschean genealogy, which swipes the table clean with a single move, means telling a
better story than the one of Platonism or Christianity. A genealogy traces the roots of a
given phenomenon and it can be openly fictitious and historically inaccurate. Offering a
genealogy shifts the debate away from arguments and evidence, while trying to make the
atheistic alternative more aesthetically appealing. If one relies on science, argument and
actual history, one has to hold a fallibilist attitude: when our scientific knowledge
increases and philosophies change, what was once taken as fact might not be so
tomorrow. This would always leave open the possibility for new arguments and reasons
for religious views. Finally for Nietzsche, evidence and argument are boring and stale.
The best argument for the truth of some worldview is its vividness and practical
applicability.23
The proponents of tragic atheism customarily criticize other atheists for not fully
comprehending the radical consequences of the atheists worldview. John Gray forcefully
argues this. In his widely discussed little book Straw Dogs, he launches a full-scale attack
on contemporary pop-atheism: contra Dawkins, the real delusion is not belief in God but
belief in humanism and progress. For Gray, atheism is just one last step in the evolution
of the Christian worldview. In fact, atheism is a Christian sect, which is still interested in
such quintessentially Christian concepts like truth long after the concept of truth has
become absurd. Gray summarizes: Humanism is a secular religion thrown together from
decaying scraps of Christian myth. 24

23
NIETZSCHE, Anti-Christ, transl. by Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 39
24
John GRAY, Straw dogs. Thoughts on humans and other animals (London: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2002), 31.

22
Gray notes that our contemporary thinking confuses scientific progress and moral
progress. Even while technology progresses, there are no teloi, given naturalism, toward
which humans could develop. Humanism and naturalism cannot exist in the same
universe. Gray considers both humanistic atheism and theism as fictions, illusions, which
soothe those people who are too weak to face the reality as it is: brute, evil and pointless.

23
If other atheists typically praise Enlightenment thinkers, Gray considers Kant as a
dreamer who tries to resuscitate the dead corpse of Christianity. Kant only repeated the
empty mainstream formulas of his time and was too cowardly to take his thinking into its
logical end. The true hero in Grays story is Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860).
Nietzsche, yes, takes many steps into right direction but even he dares not to stare into
abyss and truly let go of the Christian worldview; he still remains in the orbit of the
Christian-Platonic system. While Nietzsche holds onto his unwarranted messianic
optimism or bermensch, who somehow would make things right, Schopenhauer, leaves
this realm and does not look back. After the death of God, optimism needs to die as well:
history and humanity can have no meaning whatsoever.25 For things to be otherwise, we
would need to have a strong foundation for the idea of personhood. Gray grants that this
is possible for Christians who infer the inherent worth and dignity of the human person
from the divine person, But once we have relinquished Christianity the very idea of the
person becomes suspect.26

25
GRAY (see above n. 24), 46-48.
26
GRAY (see above n. 24), 58.

24
Also the thought that morality is something universal and categorical is a superstition.
For Gray, morality is a convenience for times when everything is normal. 27 But when
things get difficult, our morality wears off quickly and our true nature is revealed. For
example, the mass murders perpetrated by Nazis and communists flowed directly from
Enlightenment philosophy, Gray maintains. Genocide is as human as art or prayer, and
death camps are as modern as laser surgery.28 Grays attitude towards the momentary
Rawlsian period of human intellectual history is cynical to say at least. He takes the
philosophy of Rawls and his followers as a commentary to conventional bourgeois
beliefs, which have resulted from the lack of self-knowledge and historical perspective.
Rawlsians have been unable to perceive the elusive and short-lived nature of our moral
convictions. Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats.29

27
GRAY (see above n. 24), 90.
28
GRAY (see above n. 24), 91, 173. See also Terry EAGLETON, Reason, Faith and
Revolution. Reflections on the God debate (New Haven: Yale, 2009), 69-70.
29
GRAY (see above n. 24), 103.

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Grays atheism is driven by scientific, biological naturalism and the posthumanistic
problem of evil. Gray differs from other atheists in that he takes the belief in humanism
and progress as irrational as belief in God. Gray refers to the results of neuroscience,
which, in his view, seem support reductive materialism. Consciousness is an
epiphenomenon and humans are not true agents of their actions.30 If this is true,
humanistic morality is merely an illusion, which needs to faced head on. Consequently,
the visions of salvation, which motivates many forms of contemporary atheisms and
secular political systems, are likewise irrational. Gray takes polytheism to be the most
natural and optimal of human conditions. The polytheist takes it for granted that people
worship different gods, whereas the dreams of consensus and monotheism always lead to
unnecessary wars. If the world had remained polytheist, it could not have produced
communism or global democratic capitalism. Polytheism is too delicate a way of
thinking for modern minds.31 And finally,

30
GRAY (see above n. 24), 67.
31
GRAY (see above n. 24), 126.

26
 Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth
preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone the Earth will
recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of
the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have
not yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.32

For Gray, the only reasonable vision of life resonates with these facts, and Straw Dogs
contains several references to Buddhist philosophy.33

32
GRAY (see above n. 24), 151.
33
GRAY (see above n. 24), 43, 70-71, 78-80, 129.

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V. Humanist Atheism

The proponents of humanist atheism typically direct their criticisms against tragic and
scientific atheism. Aggressively emancipating natural science is perceived as an anti-
human activity, which threatens the core areas of human existence. Typical thinkers
holding both atheist and humanist beliefs are Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), Martin
Heidegger (18891976), Jacques Derrida (19302004), Slavoj Zizek and Terry Eagleton.

28
Humanist atheism shares several sensibilities with religious worldviews. Brian
Mountford describes it as a middle state between traditional religiosity and materialism.
It is a form of Platonism, where justice, goodness and beauty, for example, exist in
perfect paradigms and universals in some other world, and when we speak of these
things, or try to apply them in our daily lives, we experience an imperfect version or
shadow of that ultimate reality.34
Oxonian author and philosopher Iris Murdoch is a typical representative of humanist
atheism: ideas of justice and goodness exist in this world as impure instantiations, but
they do exist, somewhere beyond this realm of existence, in pure and universal form. For
Murdoch, mystical experiences point towards a deeper mode of existence, but yet she
found it impossible to believe in a personal God. A number of characters of her novels
have religious experiences and develop a form of secular mysticism, which Murdoch also
observed in her own life. The experiences of transcendence are physical in the sense
that there is nothing supernatural beyond them, at least in the traditional sense. They are,
however, supernatural in the sense that they reach beyond the surface of immediate
reality. This is for her an aesthetic experience of beauty, which invokes the desire to
behave morally.

34
Brian MOUNTFORD, Christian Atheist: Belonging without believing (Hants: O-Books,
2011), 22.

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Murdoch was intrigued by the God of Martin Buber (18781965), Sren Kierkegaard
(18131855), Meister Eckhardt (n. 12601327) and Juliana of Norwich (1342 ca. 1416)
but she never believed in the actual existence of this God. 35 Instead, she was drawn
towards the religious method of these thinkers and the experience it produced. However,
she felt alienated by the personal elements of these experiences. Even Bubers thou is
in danger of being revealed as wishful thinking and the dialogue may be just a delusion.
Therefore, it is safer to choose impersonal Platonism, instead of personal theism.

35
Iris MURDOCH, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Vintage, 2003), 464: I do
not, as I shall explain, believe in Bubers I-Thou God, or in his fundamental key idea of
dialogue. But I like very much what he says about religion being a matter of a conscious
consciousness, a preservation of the moment, an entrance into the whole of reality.

30
Murdoch claims that for Plato, the Good is always higher than individual gods or goods.
But you cannot have a dialogue with this kind of principle. The Good is, and it must be,
an idea. This idea may have contingent incarnations, like mystic Christ and mystic
Buddha, which are exemplars of perfect spiritual ideal. 36 We can lose God, but not
Good.37 Why does Murdoch thinks so? Her argument seems to be pragmatic. Even if
God (and even being in the sense classical existentialism) are dead, we carry on our
lives and believe in moral absolutes.

36
MURDOCH (see above n. 35), 478. See also Iris MURDOCH, The Sovereingty of Good
(London: Routledge, 2006), 70.
37
MURDOCH (see above n. 35), 473.

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Murdoch does not try save traditional theism like some existentialist theologians, who
according to Murdoch just replaced the word God by word being. But after the
Entmythologisierung things are different. Murdoch admits that impersonal Good cannot
be a source of consolation like the personal God can. Without theism we do not have the
problem of evil, but we also lack the means to see evil as truly evil. Additionally, she
fears that modern philosophy is not ambitious enough to undertake the tasks that once
belonged to religion. While she recognizes the absence of God in her own life and
culture, this can be replaced with presence of the Good. 38 Nevertheless, she remains
discombobulated by the possible results of religious demythologisation. On the one hand,
she thinks it is necessary, but on the other hand she fears that it robs religion of its
imaginary power.39

38
MURDOCH (see above n. 35), 470-471.
39
MURDOCH (see above n. 35), 484; IDEM, Sovereignty (see above n. 36), 70-71. She
also disliked the endeavours to produce more approachable versions old sacred texts,
hymns and the Bible. This, in her view, banalizes the imaginative core of spiritual
inspiration. See MURDOCH (see above n. 35), 460, 466.

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In comparison to scientistic atheists, humanist atheists appear to have a relatively good
knowledge of philosophy and theology. Like tragic and philosophical atheists, they seem
to know well what they are rejecting and what the consequences of this choice are.
However, humanist atheists do not think that the relationship between morality and
theistic metaphysics is so integral as tragic atheists think it is; an ethical way of life can
be salvaged without God.

33
Literary theorist and Marxist atheist Terry Eagleton quotes creatively Carl von
Clausewitz: [humanism] will be a continuation of God by other means. For this reason,
humanism is always secretly theological.40 For Eagleton, humanism is a version of
Christianity that has been stripped of superstition and Marxism is a natural extension for
Christian theology; without Christianity there would be no Marxism. Likewise, many
things cherished by the New Atheists are fruits of Christianity, and due honour should be
given to it.41 Eagleton does not consider traditional religions as reliable sources of
metaphysical knowledge, and yet he thinks that scientism is equally ill suited for the task.
In Eagletons view, scientistic atheism is too reductionistic, and worst of all, anti-human.
42

40
EAGLETON (see above n. 28), 16.
41
EAGLETON (see above n. 28), 16-19. Eagleton criticises New Atheism for being narrow
minded and tied to bourgeous values. It sees only one problem in the world (that is,
religion) being blind to greater and far dangerous evils, like capitalistic greed. In a similar
fashion, Slavoj Zizek fashions Christianity as an incarnation of perpetual revolution and
change. Even if he is a materialist and an atheist, he argues that Christianity is needed
because it has so far been the only thing that has given actual form to Leftist revolution.
See David CRESTON, The Monstrosity of Christ. Paradox or Dialectic. Slavoj Zizek &
John Milbank (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). Gregor MCLENNAN, Spaces of
postsecularism, in Exploring the Postsecular. The Religious, The Political and the
Urban, ed. by Arie MOLENDIJK et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010)) presents various post-secular
political philosophies that attempt to be naturalistic but also find a place for religion in
the pluralistic society.
42
EAGLETON (see above n. 28), 37. Thomas NAGEL (Secular Philosophy and the
Religious Temperament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 25) argues that the
fear of religion pushes atheists to adopt extreme reductionistic and eliminative, and in his
own view, absurd, positions in philosophy.

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Lastly, let us mention a form of atheism, misotheism, that mostly appears in the realm of
novels.43 Misotheism, or the hate of God, lingers on the border of atheism and Christian
despair. A misotheist is a person who expresses his or her anger in the face cruelty of the
world and it appears in three different forms. Agonistic misotheism (Rebecca West, Elie
Wiesel) hopes that God is good but cannot find enough grounds for thinking so. In a way,
this attitude is related to Biblical Job, who expresses his faith in the form of accusation
towards God. Absolute misotheism (Nietzsche, Philip Pullman) abandons the attempts to
get in contact with God or reconcile the discrepancy between the evils of this world and
the goodness of God. Instead, justice demands that God must be removed from the
world. 44 Political misotheism (Mikhail Bakunin) directs his anger towards religious and
socioeconomic oppressive institutions. All forms of misotheism are motivated by
humanistic motive: the belief in the possibility of a better and more just world. It is also
mixed with religious and quasireligious elements. Thus, misotheism can be seen as a
subcategory of humanistic atheism, while absolute misotheism does resemble most the
forms of tragic atheism.
VI. Conclusions

Before we proceed to summarizing what we had hoped to achieve with this article, we
would like to draw the readers attention to what we have not claimed. We have not
claimed that atheism in general or any of its particular forms is true or false, or that it is
or is not well argued. Instead, we have pointed out that atheism is not a uniform
worldview and it can be argued for by using several, to some extent mutually
contradicting, arguments. Moreover, it is always coupled with some positive beliefs that
reflect the way the given form of atheism is argued for.
A typical way of presenting atheism as a lack of particular belief is deficient and mostly
trivial. Of course, it is possible to use a very thin definition for some particular purpose,
but in general the everyday definition is not very useful and it does help us to understand
what atheism as a phenomenon is. So, there is no single atheistic worldview or belief
system because a number of very different worldviews are de facto be compatible with
atheism. Atheists argue for their atheism in many different ways, and embrace mutually
incompatible metaphysical views and worldviews.
Moreover, there are many atheistic forms of religiosity. Some forms of Buddhism seem to
be compatible with weak atheism and several popular pieties and spiritualities may be
practices under weak and strong atheism. Even parts of Christian mysticism share some
atheistic sensibilities.45

43
Bernard SCHWEITZER, Hating God. The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
44
In Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy this removing takes place in very concrete
form. An interesting form of misotheism is H. P. Lovecrafts mysticism: gods do exist but
they are all evil.
45
See, e.g., Merold WESTPHAL, Nietzsche as a theological resource, in Merold
WESTPHAL, Overcoming onto-theology (New York: Fordham, 2001), 285-301.

35
What we have said may sound trivial, but we believe these points need to be made for at
least two reasons. First, some forms of atheism are campaigning for secular ordering of
society.46 However, if secularism means the absence of religion from the public sphere,
we need to ask what positive beliefs go with this form of secularity. To make this point
even simpler: French, Danish, Russian and North Korean secularities are very different
from each other. Even within Western societies, we perceive how, for example, Marxist
atheists do not get along well with scientistic atheists, and how tragic atheists have a very
low opinion of the popular New Atheists. When different forms of atheism define the
nature of the human good in contradictory ways, we should not be surprised to see more
clashes between atheistic convictions. As a sidenote, we cannot resist making a reference
to South Park episode Go God Go, which depicts the future as a post-apocalyptic
battlefield where different atheistic and secular groups wage war against each other on
the correct interpretation of the words of their prophet, Richard Dawkins. It is an
exaggeration, of course, but we think there is something to it.
Second, our analysis points towards future challenges in multidisciplinary research
concerning atheism. One of the main challenges is to find ways to analyse how negative
beliefs about God are joined together with positive beliefs in human sociality, most
notably moral, political, philosophical, metaphysical and methodological convictions.

46
See, e.g., Steven GEY, Atheism and the Freedom of Religion, in Cambridge
Companion to Atheism, ed. By Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 250267.

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