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SCHTEO 129v2
SCHTEO 129v2
J. L. SCHELLENBERG
Mount Saint Vincent University
Abstract. Distinguishing between the old atheism, the new atheism, and modest
atheism, and also between belief and acceptance, and belief and acceptance
tokens and types, I defend the disjunctive view that either modest atheistic
belief or modest atheistic acceptance, construed as type, is today epistemically
justified in the context of philosophical inquiry. Central to my defence is
a deductive version of the hiddenness argument and an emphasis on the early
stage of philosophical inquiry that we presently occupy.
I begin with distinctions between what I shall call the old atheism, the
new atheism, and modest atheism. The old atheism, exemplified by J. L.
Mackie in his book The Miracle of Theism (1982) and by hundreds of others,
especially from the Enlightenment on, has the following three features.
It is narrowly personalist (that is, concerned only with a conception of
God as person, or something like a person); it is commonly supported
by philosophical arguments; and it is purely negative (that is to say,
restricted to denying the existence of a personal God).
The new atheism, exemplified by Richard Dawkins in his book The
God Delusion (2006) and by at least three others (though many more are
cheering the ‘four horsemen’ on), lacks each of these features. For it is quite
generally opposed to the idea of transcendent or supernatural realities
and thus has a broader than personalist focus; it tends, moreover, to
depend on appeals, implicit or explicit, to a certain positive metaphysics,
namely, scientific naturalism (hereafter: naturalism); and because of the
previous point, it cannot be said to restrict itself to a purely negative
claim.
In my view, there are a number of things wrong with the new atheism,
and its epistemological approach – to the extent that it has one – is flawed.
Ideology-infused bellicosity too often takes the place of careful reasoning
EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 7/1 (SPRING 2015), PP. 51-69
52 J. L. SCHELLENBERG
of things where religion and its discussion are concerned and nowhere
near the end.
But what matters here is whether the hiddenness argument is a good
argument, capable of justifying atheistic belief or acceptance. So let’s
have a look. There are various ways of formulating the argument. The
way I have chosen to use is the following:
(1) If no perfectly loving God exists, then God does not exist.
(2) If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is
always open to personal relationship with any finite person.
(3) If there exists a God who is always open to personal relationship
with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly
in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God
exists.
(4) If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever
nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition
that God exists (from 2 & 3).
(5) Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of
nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
(6) No perfectly loving God exists (from 4 & 5).
(7) God does not exist (from 1 & 6).
The phraseology here is a bit loose in places, but if one wants to convey
a clear first impression it helps not to weigh the argument down with
numerous explanatory clauses, and we can tighten things up as we go
along.
The first thing to notice about the argument is that the inferences at
steps (4), (6), and (7) are clearly deductively valid. So we can focus on
whether the premises should win our belief or acceptance.
Shall we go along with premise (1): if no perfectly loving God exists,
then God does not exist? Well, the idea of a person-like God – which as
I’ve noted is the idea of God that the modest atheist, like the old atheist,
is concerned with – represents one way in which the religious idea of
an ultimate reality has been interpreted by human beings. Notice also
that it is only or mainly as a candidate for metaphysical and axiological
ultimacy that God comes to have a place in the discussions of western
philosophy. Now, as one might expect, given that word ‘ultimate’, God is
commonly regarded as having all knowledge and all power – or at least
as much as it makes sense to suppose a person like God could have. For
58 J. L. SCHELLENBERG
the same reason of ultimacy, God is said to be the source of our existence
and perfectly good. But God is also commonly said to be perfectly loving
toward created beings. And this attribute is at least as obviously essential
as the others. For the best love, love of the sort we rightly admire, is one
of the most impressive features any person, man or woman, can display.
Perhaps it is one of the results of recent cultural evolution that we can
now see this more clearly than humans once did. How could a candidate
for ‘greatest possible person’ be anything but a fraud if it weren’t always
possessed of the greatest possible love? Whatever stunning attributes it
displayed, we would then be able to imagine an even greater person, who
was perfectly loving. It seems incumbent, therefore, on everyone who
today reflects on the existence of God to acknowledge that if God exists,
God is perfectly loving. Christians of course have specially emphasized
this attribute but for all theists and atheists in philosophy there is good
reason to do so.
Let’s move on, then, to premise (2): if a perfectly loving God exists,
then there exists a God who is always open to personal relationship with
any finite person. That phrase ‘personal relationship’ should at this point
be tightened up a bit: what I have in mind is a conscious and (positively)
meaningful relationship. I should also acknowledge a point that, once
acknowledged, will remain tacit: namely, that the scope of premise
(2) is restricted to finite persons who are relevantly capable, where the
relevant capacities are cognitive and affective capacities sufficient to be
able at the time in question to be in a meaningful conscious relationship
with God – such things as a capacity then to feel the presence of God,
recognizing it as such; a capacity to exhibit attitudes of trust, gratitude,
and obedience to God, and so on.
Now, some theists might be inclined to resist this premise because
of a prior commitment to a religious scripture or creed incompatible
with it or in tension with it. Isn’t the God of the Bible, for example, often
portrayed as somewhat distant relationally? But none of this can be
relevant here where we are considering what the modest atheist must do
to rise above epistemological suspicion. The modest atheist, who like the
old atheist is working within a philosophical frame of reference, cannot be
limited by theological assumptions which have been formed because of
the need to find room for God in our world. It shouldn’t need to be said,
but in the present circumstances of inquiry in philosophy of religion,
which is filled with believing philosophers, it has to be emphasized
that philosophers cannot assume because of some consensus in their
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MODEST ATHEISM 59
communities that God exists and so has only those qualities compatible
with creating a world like ours, but must seek to be guided by reason
when considering what a God would be like.
So what does careful reasoning, which seeks to be attentive to all that
we humans have learned, tell us? Well, it makes it clear that people who
admirably love you (and thus any who perfectly love you) are invariably
open to a kind of personal relationship with you in which the two of
you can interact meaningfully and consciously with each other. Indeed,
since they love you in this way, they want to be close to you, and close in
a way you can appreciate, so you can turn to them for advice or draw on
their support or just feel them present with you when that’s needed. (Of
course if they admirably love you, they’ll value being with you for its own
sake, too.) Now, it’s true that they won’t force any of this on you, which
is one reason why I only used the word ‘open’ when stating this premise.
There is even room here for a sort of withdrawal within relationship. But
if they aren’t at least open to such relationship, it would be a mistake to
say they admirably love you.
To see this with full clarity, imagine that you’re listening to a friend,
who’s describing his parents: ‘Wow, are they ever great – I wish everyone
could have parents like mine, who are so wonderfully loving! Granted,
they don’t want anything to do with me. They’re never around. Sometimes
I find myself looking for them – once, I have to admit, I even called
out for them when I was sick – but to no avail. Apparently they’re just
not open to a relationship with me right now. But it’s so good that they
love me as much and as beautifully as they do!’ If you heard your friend
talking like this, you’d think he was seriously confused. And you’d be
right. His parents, if your friend’s description of them is correct, could
certainly be lots of other things – even impressive things, like the best
corporate lawyer in the country and the President – but their attitude
toward their son, whatever it is, does not include an admirable love.
I expect you’ll see how all of this can be applied to God. A careful look
at the concept of love should lead us to affirm that God is always open to
personal relationship with each of us (or with each of the beings a God
would or might create, whoever they are), if God exists and is perfectly
loving – which is to say that premise (2) is true.
Now, so far I’ve been treating the concept of ‘openness’ to relationship
as one we all understand, and at an intuitive level I’m sure this is the
case. But as we move on to premise (3) – if there exists a God who is
always open to personal relationship with any finite person, then no
60 J. L. SCHELLENBERG
an investigator help noticing that some people who don’t believe in God
still have an admirable track record of investigation, and emotionally
are, if anything, biased in favour of God? Some people who find that
the evidence of argument and experience has taken belief in God away
in midstream, as it were, in the midst of a strenuous religious life, would
love to believe in God. What reason could someone have to say that they
are resisting a relationship with God? It strains – and indeed breaks –
credulity. The evidence of nonresistance here can pile up in such a way
that an honest inquirer judges it to be stronger than any counterevidence.
Even if in such circumstances one thinks belief is unjustified because
of new and unsuspected evidence that only future inquiry may reveal,
clearly acceptance of a premise like (5) is justified given that the available
evidence strongly supports it.
But even this is a weaker stance than is justified when we consider that
we needn’t stay focused on people who have thought about the existence
of God and so have come within the range of motives for resisting it.
Behind them, as it were, stretching into places far distant from any
affected by Western culture, and also into times long ago, before humans
had so much as conceived of an all knowing, all good and loving creator
of the universe, we find evidence of individuals and communities who,
though capable of possessing it, lacked belief in God, and obviously
without ever having blinded themselves by resisting God in any way.
How could there be resistance in such a case? The critic of (5) needs you
to look away from all this evidence for nonresistant nonbelief. But to do
so would be to fall prey to blindness of another kind.
The four premises of the hiddenness argument therefore seem clearly
true. Since, as we have already seen, its three inferences are clearly valid,
it follows that the argument seems clearly sound. Shall we therefore
pronounce in favour of a belief or acceptance type of response to modest
atheism?
Many philosophers will think that there could still be good reasons
not to do so. For example, it may be said that there are powerful defeating
objections showing one or another of the hiddenness argument’s
premises to be false or undercutting the justification for believing or
accepting some such premise, or that there are equally strong arguments
for theism to be weighed on the other side. Of course there isn’t time here
to examine closely all the reasoning I’ve just alluded to, but I think some
illuminating general comments may still be made.
62 J. L. SCHELLENBERG
Let’s start with the last idea mentioned, that of equally strong
arguments for theism. Even the most respected and spirited defenders
of theism – take Richard Swinburne, for example – would shrink from
a claim of the sort I have made on behalf of atheism: they would deny
that there is a sound deductive proof of the truth of theism. And it is
not hard to see why things should be harder here for theism than for
atheism. If the existence of God requires that there be a person who is all
powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good and loving, as well as the creator
of the universe, then arguments for theism have the task of showing that
all those conditions are present. But an argument for atheism need only
show that one such condition is absent. (It may, for example, endeavour
to show, as does the hiddenness argument, that perfect love is absent.)
And the latter task might be expected to be the easier one. Indeed, it
is notorious that the so-called theistic proofs are quite incapable of
proving the existence of a being with the whole collection of properties
possessed by the theistic God. (Even the ontological argument suffers
from this incapacity, for although it purports to prove the existence of
a greatest possible being, there is nothing in it to imply that a greatest
possible being would be a greatest possible person, with such properties
as knowledge and love.) Atheism does not have an analogous problem,
and so we have the argumentative asymmetry.
What about the alleged defeating objections to premises of the
hiddenness argument (or to our belief or acceptance of them)? I myself
have done a thorough investigation of these objections and have found
them all wanting. Indeed, I have created many new objections, in order
to test the argument – with the same result. Now, it is of course true
that others, especially philosophers who are theists, may disagree with
me about one or another objection. But there is an important point
to be noted here: namely, that such disagreement is frequently not
philosophically grounded. Oftentimes I appear to be met by philosophers
who are operating as theologians rather than as philosophers when they
question the hiddenness argument.
Perhaps the clearest example of what I am talking about here appears
near the end of a paper by the American philosophers Ted Poston and
Trent Dougherty (2007: 196):
In the final analysis Schellenberg’s argument fails because it envisions
God as requiring too much: explicit, highly confident belief at all times.
Fortunately, God is more generous. The Christian tradition attests that
God will accept far less, he will ‘meet us where we are’.
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MODEST ATHEISM 63
Now, at first this may seem a relevant criticism. But listen to it carefully.
When I first did so, I was truly startled: How could it be thought that the
hiddenness argument depicts God as requiring belief of anyone and thus
as ungenerous – with the implication that if the hiddenness argument
were right about God, God would be leaving some – namely nonresistant
nonbelievers – out in the cold, since they are unable to come up with
what is required? After all, what the hiddenness argument clearly says
is that God would generously offer belief – and the explicit relationship
made possible thereby – to all, and so there would be no nonresistant
nonbelievers in a world created by God. But then I saw that there is in
Poston and Dougherty a tendency to assume that God exists and that
whatever is being said about God must apply to the actual world – even
when that comes in the context of an atheistic argument! Why else would
it be supposed, when someone like me claims that God would favour
explicit relationship, that those in the actual world who don’t have what
it takes to participate in such relationship are going to be left out? How
could what God wants be too much unless creatures are unable to deliver
it, and how could they be thought unable to deliver it unless we are
thinking about our world instead of the world the hiddenness argument
says would exist if God existed, in which all who are nonresistant believe?
Sadly, many allegedly philosophical objections to the hiddenness
argument display a tendency similar to the one I claim to have found in
Poston and Dougherty, even if not so brazenly. Within a philosophical
context they can have no weight at all. In a philosophical context, where
we have to let the voice of authority grow dim and think for ourselves
about what a perfect personal being would be like, we may notice points
that undermine the allegedly undermining objections to the hiddenness
argument.
This holds also for a strategy quite popular today, known as ‘sceptical
theism,’ which questions how we could justifiedly rule out the existence
of unknown goods for the sake of which God is hidden. Accepting this
move in the absence of some special theological bias or preconception
seems to require forgetting what theism has got us talking about in the
first place – an ultimate person. Consider by way of analogy a single man
who marries and has children: Does this behaviour not rightly constrain
the goods he is willing to pursue, at least insofar as he is a loving husband
and father? Though when he was on his own he spent time with many
female friends and was otherwise preoccupied with his own wide-
ranging pursuits, travelling to far-flung regions of the earth for months
64 J. L. SCHELLENBERG
at a time, shifting from place to place and from one activity to another,
now things are different – and quite naturally and rightly so. Now he has
a family to help provide for, to support in emotional and financial ways.
He can’t just take off for Greece or France for long periods at a time to
indulge his own interests. Better, he has new interests which lead him
happily to say no when invitations to do such things arise. Similarly with
God, if God is to be regarded as a loving person – an ultimately loving
person – who has created vulnerable finite persons to be the object of
Divine love. The ‘God’ described by sceptical theists who may, for all we
know, have purposes quite unrelated to us that require hiddenness from
us is not an ultimately loving being at all. If construed personally, such
a God is comparable to a limited or delinquent father or mother who
simply can’t or won’t live up to the demands taken on board when the
commitments of marriage and family are entered into.
I suggest, therefore, that on the basis of such considerations as
I have briefly aired a great deal can be done to warrant, in the context
of philosophical inquiry, setting aside our two counter-suggestions –
concerning equally strong arguments for theism and crippling objections
to the hiddenness argument – without entering into many details of the
associated reasoning.
But here’s another counter-suggestion. Perhaps it will be suggested
that there is also non-propositional experiential evidence to be considered
here. Might not people who find themselves in the grip of suitably
powerful experiences apparently of God have grounds for resisting the
hiddenness argument – perhaps for saying that something is wrong with
it, even if they know not what and though they lack any reasoning to offer
against it? Recently philosophers of religion have been much concerned
with questions of this sort, often defending an affirmative answer
(Swinburne 2004, Alston 1991, Plantinga 2000). But the most that could
conceivably be shown by this means is that theistic religious experience
brings a non-atheistic response to the question of God’s existence up
to a level of worthiness for those inquirers who find themselves in the
relevant experiential circumstances. It could not be shown that it brings
an atheistic response down to a level of unworthiness for those who lack
such non-propositional evidence.
Obviously there is no space here for a proper discussion of the
epistemology of religious experience. But again some general comments
suggest themselves which show that what I’ve found conceivable here is
not actually to be expected, given the facts on the ground. For example,
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MODEST ATHEISM 65
and also the fact that (3) many of them are deeply motivated by loyalty
to their religious communities, and so should perhaps be regarded as
doing theology – even if philosophical theology – rather than philosophy
(Draper & Nichols 2013, Schellenberg 2009). Finally, we need to note –
as, in part, a consequence of points already made – that (4) acceptance
of atheism does not in any way imply (as those suppose who erroneously
think one must accept either theism or naturalism) that we are closing
the door to the truth of religious claims. Indeed, we are opening it more
widely than has ever been done before!
What should a philosopher say who seeks to be sensitive to all these
facts – while sensitive also to our temporal position and unwilling to
endorse atheistic belief – and who notices that the latest arguments for
atheism are as apparently forceful as the hiddenness argument? I think
she should favour the acceptance of atheism.
Now it can be difficult to achieve a proper balance: When do you
accept a conclusion and when do you say we should wait for more
evidence? Many philosophers today would say that we are rushing things
if we accept that theism is false. I would suggest that we know enough to
do so. The details theistic ideas contain allow inferences about what most
fundamentally has value and how it is realized if this filling for the idea of
an ultimate divine reality is realized – and also the inference to atheism –
to be made. And I say we should get on with exploring other fillings for
the idea of a divine reality, leaving open the possibility that the latter is
true and so neither believing nor accepting that it is false. I have named
the more general proposition here, the proposition more general than
theism, ‘ultimism’. The idea is that even at this early stage of religious
investigation we should draw conclusions where we can, to help keep
inquiry moving, while being very careful not to foreclose inquiry where
we shouldn’t. The distinction I have suggested between the epistemic
status of ultimism, which says only that there is a metaphysically,
axiologically, and soteriologically ultimate reality of some kind, and that
of its personalist elaboration seems to me to get this balance about right
and to respond appropriately to the needs of inquiry concerning religion
in philosophy. But if so, then even if modest atheistic belief is thought to
be unjustified in the precincts of philosophy, atheistic acceptance can still
be justified.
A concluding summary, then, might run as follows. Epistemological
considerations can be seen to favour an atheistic response in philosophy
to questions about God’s existence when we consider our subject
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MODEST ATHEISM 69
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