ATHEISM

the critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or spiritual beings. As such, it is the opposite of theism, which affirms the reality of the divine and seeks to demonstrate its existence. Atheism is to be distinguished from agnosticism, which leaves open the question whether there is a god or not, professing to find the question unanswered or unanswerable; for the atheist, the nonexistence of God is a certainty. Atheism has emerged recurrently in Western thought. Plato argued against it in the Laws, while Democritus and Epicurus argued for it in the context of their materialism. In the 19th century, atheism was couched in the materialism of Karl Marx and others and pitted against the metaphysical position of spiritualism. Modern atheism takes many different forms other than that of materialism. The 18th century witnessed the emergence of atheism among the French Encyclopaedists, who combined British empiricism with Ren Descartes's mechanistic conception of the universe. Niccol Machiavelli in the 16th century contributed to atheism in the political sphere by affirming the independence of politics from morals and religion. David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), argued against the traditional proofs for the existence of God, as did Immanuel Kant. Neither Hume nor Kant were atheists, but their restriction of human reason to sense experience undercut natural theology and left the existence of God a matter of pure faith. In short, atheism has been rooted in a vast array of philosophical systems. One of the most important 19th-century atheists was Ludwig Feuerbach (180472), who put forward the argument that God is a projection of man's ideals. Feuerbach associated his denial of God with the affirmation of man's freedom. The disclosure that God is mere projection liberates man for self-realization. Marx drew on Feuerbach's thesis that the religious can be resolved into the human, though he also held that religion reflects socio-economic order and alienates man from his labour product and, hence, from his true self. Marx sought the abolition of religion, defining it as the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. While Marx was professing atheism couched in socio-economic theory, Charles Darwin (180982), himself an agnostic, developed a scientific theory of natural history that challenged the Judeo-Christian concept of the Creator-God. Sigmund Freud (18561939) drew on Darwinian themes when he discussed religion in terms of the primal horde. According to Freud, belief in God constitutes a regression to a childlike state in which helpless man projects upon nature the image of a comforting father-figure. A third strain in modern atheism is the existentialist. Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900) proclaimed the death of God and the consequent loss of all traditional values. The only tenable human response, he argued, is that of nihilismwithout God, there is no answer to the question of purpose and meaning in life. In Nietzsche's view, the death of God freed humanity to fulfill itself and find its own essence. In the 20th century Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others continued the theme that man is alone in the universe and free to determine his own values. Human freedom, according to Sartre, entails the denial of God, for God's existence would threaten man's freedom to create his own values through free ethical choice. The philosophical movement known as logical positivism is also a major proponent of modern atheism. It holds that propositions concerning the existence or nonexistence of God are nonsensical or meaningless. This form of empiricist epistemology has its roots in the thought of Hume, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart Mill, and others who held that meaningful knowledge can be derived only from experience and observation. Positivists such as A.J. Ayer, in his book Language, Truth and Logic (1936), argued that atheism, along with theism and agnosticism, is simply an ungenuine position because all talk of the unverifiable God is nonsense. Positivists are not atheists in the sense that they think God can be disproven; they are atheists in the sense that they consider the very notion God impossible to discuss. In the mid-20th century some Christian theologians, such as Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann, responded to the challenge of atheism by asserting that the destruction of the metaphysical God permits man to encounter the living God through absolute faith. in general, the critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or spiritual beings. As such, it is usually distinguished from theism, which affirms the reality of the divine and often seeks to demonstrate its existence. Atheism is also distinguished from agnosticism, which leaves open the question whether there is a god or not, professing to find the questions unanswered or unanswerable. The dialectic of the argument between forms of belief and unbelief raises questions concerning the most perspicuous delineation, or characterization, of atheism, agnosticism, and theism. It is necessary not only to probe the warrant for atheism but also carefully to consider what is the most adequate definition of atheism. This article will start with what have been some widely accepted, but still in various ways mistaken or misleading, definitions of atheism and move to more adequate formulations that better capture the full range of atheist thought and more clearly separate unbelief from belief and atheism from agnosticism. In the course of this delineation the section also will consider key arguments for and against atheism. Additional reading The article Atheism in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 174189 (1967, reissued 1972), and the article Agnosticism in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 1, pp. 1727 (1968), give sophisticated conceptual elucidations of the concept of atheism. See also Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 2, pp. 173190 (1922); Reallexikon fr Antike und Christentum, vol. 1, cols. 866870 (1950); Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed., vol. 1, cols. 670678 (1957); George Klaus and Manfred Buhr (eds.), Philosophisches Wrterbuch, 6th rev. and enl. ed., vol. 1, pp. 125129 (1969); Enciclopedia filosofica, 2nd ed., vol. 1, col. 557562 (1968); and Kai Nielsen, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1982). A classic extended history of atheism is Fritz Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendland, 4 vol. (192023, reissued 1963). See also Jacob Presser, Das Buch De tribus impostoribus (1926); John Mackinnon Robertson, A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern (1957, reissued 1972); Henri Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littrature franaise de la Renaissance (15331601), new ed., rev. and augmented (1971); and Cornelio Fabro, God in Exile: Modern Atheism (1968; originally published in Italian, 1961). Modern atheism is treated in Charles Bradlaugh, Champion of Liberty: Charles Bradlaugh (1933); Baron d'Holbach, The System of Nature (175696, reissued 1970; originally published in French, 1770), and Common Sense (1795, reissued 1972; originally published in French, 1772); Arthur Schopenhauer, Complete Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. by T. Bailey Saunders (1896); Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1854, reissued 1972, trans. of 2nd German ed.; originally published in German, 1841); Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1896; originally issued in German, 188392); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (1955); Thomas H. Huxley, Collected Essays, vol. 5 (1894); and Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays (1893), and History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1902, reissued 1963). Powerful contemporary defenses of atheism, together with some religious responses, are given in Norbert O. Schedler (ed.), Philosophy of Religion (1974).Contemporary analytical discussions of atheism include Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (1966); Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values (1964, reissued 1975); Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (1957); Kai Nielsen, Skepticism (1973), and Reason and Practice (1971); Sidney Hook, The Quest for Being, and Other Studies in Naturalism and Humanism (1961, reprinted 1971); and Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (1958, reissued 1968). Two anthologies that give the core debate between belief and unbelief are Malcolm L. Diamond and Thomas V. Litzenburg, Jr. (eds.), The Logic of God (1975); and Alasdair MacIntyre and Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism (1969).