THE ACCURACY OF ATHEISM AND THE TRUTH OF ATHEISM

Robert E. Lauder

St. John's University, New York, U.S.A

With Ludwig Feuerbach a new humanism that demanded atheism was heralded. What Feuerbach viewed as the central insight of his doctrine was that God was merely a projection of man. God-talk was in the last analysis only talk about man. 1 Feuerbach's goal was to do away with God so that man might reach his true fulfillment.

There is, I think, a valid insight within Feuerbach's view though the German ph i losopher d id not deve lop it adequately. He did see that any doctrine of God is tied to a phi losophy of htiman nature and that all God-talk has important implications for talk about human persons. However even if we take him on his own terms and accept his atheistic view Feuerbach did not explain why we project God. 2 That explanation was a t tempted by atheists such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre and Bloch. Marx looked for economic reasons, Nietzsche for moral reasons, Freud for psychological reasons and both Sartre's and Bloch's analyses are tied to their views of human freedom and the future. What each of these atheists claims is that within the prjection of God there is a kernel of truth about human persons, but unfortunately people have distorted that truth by transforming it and attributing it to an existent God.

I would like to do a switch on these thinkers and suggest that though their atheism is an at tempt at enhancing the human person they in fact runcate that which they wish to enhance. My thesis is that though there can be an accuracy in some atheistic philosophies in that they reject gods that would dehumanize human persons there is a truth in theism that atheism can neither articulate nor affirm.

In their study of atheism 3 William Luijpen and Henry Koren explore at least five types of atheism - scientific atheism as t y p i f i e d by C o m t e , p s y c h o l o g i c a l a t h e i s m as

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typified by Freud, social atheism as typified by Marx, moral a theism as typified by Nietzsche and anthropological atheism as typified by Sartre. Luijpen and Koren argue that these atheisms can be interpreted as an accurate attack against a type of theism which asserts more than is proper about God. According to Luijpen and Koren this type of atheism affirms an idol, a pseudo-god and the authors applaud the death of such a pseudo-god because it is not the true God which philosophy can affirm and articulate, however inadequately. 4

The accuracy of atheism that I wish to affirm is its attack on a pseudo-god; the truth of theism that I wish to defend is its affirmation of GOd Who is transcendent mystery. A god who is against humanity is a pseudo-god. To illustrate the accuracy of atheism in attacking such a god I will offer three examples: the atheisms of Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernst Bloch.

The pseudo-god that Freud attacks is the human father projected because of guilt feelings onto a heavenly Father. The relationship between the believer and his god is sick according to Freud. Religion is basically a neurosis, s For Freud the god created by guilt and obsessive-complusive behavior is a god who is anti-human. A detailed discussion of Freud as a metaphysic ian wou ld I am afraid find the Viennese psychoanalyst wanting, but certainly the pseudo-god that Freud attacks should be atacked. Psychology as psychology can never establish that there is or is not a God - it can establish that a person is neurotically guilty or obsessive-compulsive. The GOd I affirm may be largely a projection of my obsessive- compulsive personality and years of psychoanalysis may show that to me. But then the question can be asked "Aside from my psychological problems is there or isn't there a real God?" For some who affirm God, the God affirmed may be very much a projection of their needs, but does that mean that God is nothing but a projection?

Let us turn to the second example illustrating the accuracy of atheism: the atheism of Jean-Paul Sartre. The most direct way to catch the accuracy 6f Sartre's atheism and the pseudo-god Sartre is killing is to analyse Sartre's three arguments against the existence of God. Sartre looks at God as the Superior C r a f t s m a n , 6 as the Divine Stare 7 and as a

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contradiction. 8 Each view of God dehumanizes us. Believers talk about the saints being God's masterpieces. In

his first a rgument against God Sartre views God as the Absolute Cause of all being and argues that if God is the Absolute Cause of all being then we are not really free. The saints may be God's masterpieces but each of us is exactly what God wants us to be: we are the cookies produced by the Divine Cookie Cutter. Sartre insists that we are free and therefore there is no God.

The human consciousness of others threatens me. I must exercise my freedom to avoid succumbing to the threatening stares of other people. I need not succumb. Sartre's second argument for atheism is that a Divine Stare would solidify us. A Divine Stare would take away our freedom. But we are free, therefore there is no God.

The third argument against GOd is that the very idea of God is a contradiction. Not only is there no GOd but there never could be a God. According to Sartre's phenomenology reality is divided into the for-itself and the in-itself. The for-itself and the in-itself are mutually exclusive: the for-itself is not being and the in-itself is neither conscious nor free. God would be conscious free being, that is the for-itself which at the same time is an in-itself. Even the idea of God is a contradiction. What compounds the absurdity of reality according to Sartre's vision is that a human being is a desire to be God. The self project of human beings is to be GOd. Performing what he calls an existential psychoanalysis Sartre analyzes human beings' needs and desires and concludes that the human being as for- itself wants to become the in-itself. To be at the same time the for-itself and the in-itself is to be God.

The pseudo-god whom Sartre attacks should be attacked. A god who destroys human freedom is not worthy of us. Nor is a god who is a contradiction worthy of us.

Ernst Bloch's phi losophy is a Marxist social a theism? Viewing man as a not-yet, a radical openness to the future, Bloch is so critical of capitalist societies and what they do to blind us that he says that we really do not know what man will be. But we do know his fulfillment will be in the future. What makes Bloch somewhat unique among Marxists and among secular humanists in general is the mystical element in

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his vision of humani ty and his posit ive appreciat ion of religion. Bloch wants to draw out of Christianity what is true and reject what is false. One correct emphasis in Christianity is the emphasis on hope. 1~ What is false in Christianity is its illusory hypostasis, God. 1~ The mistake of religion is that it concretizes the hunger of man and posits it in a being, God. But if there is an hypostasis, God, then the future is just an illusion. There can be no real future for man and man can not be really creative. The pseduo-god that Bloch kills is the god who kills man's future. Bloch's atheism is accurate: such a target should be destroyed.

In the atheism of every great phi losopher there are important truths. In each of the three atheisms that I have sketched there is an insight into human nature: Freud sees that human beings should mature and face the truth about themselves; Sartre sees that human existence should be free and Bloch sees that persons should create their own future. A rich theism, one that does not construct a pseudo-god, sees the truths that atheism sees about human nature but better accounts for their presence and has an even more profound vision of the human than atheism proposes: the maturity and growth that Freud desires, the freedom so important to Sartre, the future of Bloch's dreams can be had in an authentic theism, a theism that in its very affirmation of God also affirms humanity. Before sketching what I think is an exceptionally good example of such a theism, I will register one prefatory note.

The note concerns proofs for God's existence and the meaningfulness of God-talk. As several philosophers have shown, a strict proof for the existence of God is impossible. 12 My own position is that if the principle of sufficient reason is accepted by a philosophical act of faith then the existence of GOd can be proven. Though I believe that God's existence can be proven, in this essay the truth of theism about which I am speaking deals more with the meaning of God's existence. My position is that by probing the depth of human nature we can speak meaningfully and truthfully about God though we should remember thht we are always involved in "the systematic use of vague language. "13

An exceptionally good example of what I take to be the truth of theism is contained in John Haught ' s recently

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published book What Is God? How To Speak About the Divine (New York: Paulist Press, 1986). Underlining the mystery of the divine Haught suggests that five ways of thinking realistically about God can be derived from five ordinary aspects of human experience: the experience of depth, future, freedom, beauty and truth. Haught is after God talk that will be able to speak not just to religious believers but to everyone. He argues

... That 'God' need not be mistaken as referring to anything alien to the deepest aspects of our common human experience ... that the referent of this name is what all of us have already experienced to one degree or another, and what we all long to experience even more intimately at the most fundamental levels of our being. If each of us were capable of excavating the deepes t layers of our desire, 'God' would make sense as an appropriate name for the objective of this desire. 14

Recognizing that the mere desire for something in no way guarantees the reality of that "something", Haught argues that if "we honestly came into touch with the very deepest level of our desiring, then the idea of God may be affirmed not only as satisfying but as truthful as well. ''xs

Using Rudolf Otto's phrase about our ambivalent response to the holy, that the holy is mysterium tremendum et fascinans z6 for us, that it is a mystery that is both terrifying and alluring for us, Haught suggests that we have a similar reaction to the five aspects of our experience. They are incomprehensible and overwhelming and so we are in awe before them, but they are also frightening in their demands on us and so we tend to shrink from them and are afraid to surrender completely to them. However, they also are fascinating and seductive and so we are drawn towards them. Rather than discuss depth and beauty I will focus our attention on the three that speak most directly to the vision of Bloch, Sartre and Freud: the future in relation to Bloch, freedom in relation to Sartre, and truth in relation to Freud.

The future is both elusive and inevitable. We can focus on the transient character of this moment but no sooner do we focus

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on it than it becomes part of the past. In some way or another what was present lives on now in the past as we can see just by the fact that we can recall it in our memories. But where did the present come from? Haught asks what is that edge of freshness that comes and passes so quickly? We cannot define the future nor can we hold up the future and look at it the same way we do with a physical object. We are always being invaded or overwhelmed by the future and though we may try we can not avoid it. Haught points out that we become especially aware of the future when the past or present lets us down. At such moments if we do not give up, the future holds out a promise to us. We need not be locked hopelessly into the disappointing past or the unfulfilling present.

Of course each future when it arrives, no matter how much it brings its promise of fulfillment, never fulfills us totally. We have not yet arrived at our "homeland", to use Bloch's term. No particular utopia will satisfy us. Haught writes:

Notice especially how a margin of unfulfilled longing inserts itself and then continues to grow after you have achieved some goal or been surprised by some special happening in your life. Note the restlessness that sets in, and which you may intially repress, but which then grows more and more annoying until you have to pay attention to it. It is as though you were saying: 'Your future still lies before you. Do not rest yet. You are capable of growing indefinitely into the inexhaustible future that stretches out before ),ou. If you have ever had such an experience of the threatening and the promising future you are in a position to understand the meaning of the word "God". 17

We are drawn by the hope for an absolute future and this is the name that Haught suggests for God.

We also have an ambivalent attitude toward freedom. We want to be free but we also want security. Rather than talk about freedom as something we have or as something we are, Haught talks about fre&iom as something that has us. Freedom as Haught means it is the ground of freedom in the other two senses. Like the future, freedom is the horizon of our experience rather than something we grasp or possess. Borrowing from

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Paul Tillich Haught points out that our finite selves are threatened by non-being in at least three ways: ontically in the form of fate and death, morally in the form of guilt and the sense of being rejected, and spiritually in the form of doubt and meaninglessness, is To meet these threats of non-being requires a courage proportionate to the threat of non-being. What is required is courage which is tied to the experience of freedom in the deepest sense. That people do meet the threat of non- being is the evidence we have for the presence of freedom as the ground of their being. Like the future, freedom in the sense Haught uses it is not an object to be observed directly but only indirectly in the lives of courageous people. Our finite freedom participates in the encompassing freedom that conquers the threat of non-being. Acceptance of that freedom liberates us from putting our trust in finite possessions or idols. The name of that encompassing freedom is God.

Freud is correct in urging us to face the truth about ourselves. In his discussion of truth 19 Haught uses the words '~oeing", the "real" and the "true" interchangeably. We all have the desire to know the truth. If you are now asking whether what I have written is true, your very questioning illustrates then desire. Every act of questioning or of judging presupposes that we can know the truth. We do not just want an interesting idea - we want to know what is really true. Our desire to know the truth is often hindered by our desire for acceptance. Having asked whether our desire for truth and our desire for acceptance can be reconciled, Haught suggests an hypothesis. He suggests that we think of reality in its deepest depths as unconditional love. If reality is unconditional love then our desire to know the truth can be activated and pursued fearlessly. If we think of ourselves as being unconditionally accepted then there is no truth that we need fear. The real and the true would be unconditional love. Both our need to be accepted and our desire for truth would be satisfied simultaneously.

Such a hypothesis may be consoling but is it true? If reality is unconditional love then our desire to know is liberated. Anything short of unconditional love is what encourages us to engage in illusions. Once we affirm that the true and the unconditional love are one then we can perceive t ruth unhindered and unafraid. If reality in its deepest depths

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is anything less than unconditional love then we cannot reconcile our desire to know and our desire to be accepted. If these cannot be reconciled we must accept some form of the absurdist position such as Camus' or Sartre's. If reality is not unconditional love our desire to know will be frustrated by the absurd. The real as unconditional love and the true Haught identifies as God.

Because they ki l led p seudo-gods the great atheist phi losophers are o w e d a debt of gra t i tude by theists. Contemporary philosophical theism has done a switch on Feuerbach. The German atheist claimed that God-talk was really talk about man. Contemporary theism says that the talk about the most profound aspects of human experience is really talk about GOd.

References

1 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tr. by George Eliot (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), p. xxxix: "Hence I do nothing more to religion - and to speculative philosophy and theology also - than to open its eyes, or rather to turn its gaze from the internal towards the external, i.e., I change the object as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality."

2 Marcel Neusch, The Sources of Modern Atheism, tr. by Matthew J. O'Connell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), pp.49-50.

3 William Luijpen and Henry Koren, Religion and Atheism (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1971).

' Ibid., p. 12. "Now, it is not impossible - we should even say, it is very probable - that those who affirm God often do so in a way that cannot stand close scrutiny. Their idea of God is, at least partly, a deification of nature, of man or man - made institutions. In other words, their affirmation of God is the affirmation of an idol, a pseudo-god. In such a case, atheism, as the negation of such a god, is justified."

5 Freud's views on religion can be found in The Future of an Illusion, tr. by James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961), Totem and Taboo, tr. James

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Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1950), and Moses and Monotheism tr. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, 1939). Both Neusch, op. cit., pp.89- 109 and Luijpen and Koren, op. cit., pp.37-49 have clear summaries of Freud's views.

6 "Existentialism Is a Humanism", in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Satre, edited by Walter Kaufman (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p.290.

7 The Words, tr. by Bernard Frechtman (New York: A Fawcett Crest Book, 1964) pp.64-65; Being a n d N o t h i n g n e s s , tr. by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p.290.

8 Being and Nothingness, op. cit., pp.88-90. 9 Neusch, op. c/t., pp.181-212. Neusch's treatment of Bloch's

philosophy is quite good. 10 Neusch, op. cit., pp.198-199. 11 Ibid. ~2 W. Norris Clarke, "Analytic Philosophy About God" in

Christian Philosophy and Religous Renewal. Edited by G. McLean (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1966), pp.307-344. Clarke's discussion of the problem of proofs for the existence of God is especially illuminating.

i~ Ibid., p.334. ~4 Haught, p.4. is Ibid., p.4. ~6 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tr. by John W. Harvey

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1923), pp.12-40. 17 Haught, op. cit., p.31. 18 Ibid., p.55. 19 Ibid., pp.92-114.

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