The difference between atheism and theism is fundamentally a difference between mythic and scientific thinking. That is to say, it is a difference between those who insist that reality is what is revealed by rational procedures, and those who retreat from the demands of critical thinking to the cover provided by imaginative storytelling. Which camp accepts fanciful stories? Which school demands intelligent methodology?
Atheism is grounded in mythology, theism in an ultimate commitment to rationality. Perhaps this sounds surprising, given that some associate belief in God with “blind faith”, or regard atheism as an expression of the scientific ethos. In this article, I will be very precise in explaining what I mean both by “grounding” beliefs, and by the term “mythology.” By the end of the article, my claim will hardly seem paradoxical.
We begin with J.L. Mackie’s classic of philosophical atheism, The Miracle of Theism. Mackie remarks:
The principle of sufficient reason expresses a demand that things should be intelligible through and through. The simple reply to the argument which relies on it is there is nothing that justifies this demand, and nothing that supports the belief that it is satisfiable even in principle. (The Miracle of Theism, p. 85)
Here, Mackie is considering one of Leibniz’s arguments that invokes the principle of sufficient reason:
we hold that there can be no fact real or existing, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason, why it should be so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known by us. (Monadology § 32).
Both the nature and the consequences of the principle of sufficient reason have been controverted through the centuries. Does it commit one to determinism, such that the world is, in every detail, necessarily so and not otherwise? Leibniz thought so, despite his attempts to salvage human freedom. Recent philosophers like Peter van Inwagen have put forward a detailed argument that the principle of sufficient reason entails a modal collapse, in which everything would be necessary; Alexander Pruss tries to find a way out. (Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 202–204; Alexander Pruss, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment. Cambridge University Press, 2006.)
Fortunately, we need not venture into the maze of modal logic here. Mackie does not merely reject a particular formulation of the principle of sufficient reason. Mackie rejects the claim that reality is intrinsically intelligible. This is a far broader claim, and it cuts right to the root of our problem. We might dispute about abstract principles; but we each have within us the concrete principle of intelligibility: the demand to understand correctly.
The meaning of intelligibility is not determined by appealing to historical philosophical texts. For you to grasp the meaning of intelligibility requires you to grasp your own concrete mental operations in action. These mental operations are the very same that Mackie expects you to use in reading his work: questions that demand explanation; the large and small realizations in which you grasp the point; the articulation and elaboration of understanding; and the further critical question in which you ask: “is Mackie right?”.
Each mental operation you perform arises from and is governed by your spirit of critical inquiry, the demand to understand correctly. This desire fixes the meaning of intelligibility, and that desire is active (I hope) in you right at this moment. This desire is just as concrete as the desire for food, for appreciation, and so on. It is not an abstract principle but a concrete, felt reality.
For Mackie, reality is not intrinsically intelligible; it is also populated by brute facts:
The sort of intelligibility that is achieved by successful causal inquiry and scientific explanation is not undermined by its inability to make things intelligible through and through. Any particular explanation starts with premises which state ‘brute facts’, and although the brutally factual starting points of one explanation may themselves be further explained by another, the latter in turn will have to start with something that it does not explain, and so on however far we go. But there is no need to see this as unsatisfactory. (The Miracle of Theism, p. 85-86)
If reality is not restricted to what survives the scrutiny of critical inquiry, then there exist brute facts. What are brute facts? They are not intelligible, which is to say they cannot be understood in principle. In addition to the intelligible, there is also the sensible: what we may see, hear, taste, and so on. Insofar as we can represent the sensible without actually sensing, we have the imaginable. And the imagination ranges far beyond the limited confines of immediate experience.
Mythology is the imaginable standing in for the intelligible. Why does the sun travel across the sky? For the ancient Egyptians, because of Ra’s journey in his sky boat. More precisely, mythology occurs when a) there is a line of questioning that seeks an explanation, and b) the “answer” is grounded in an act of imagination.
There are many subtleties in the distinction between the imaginable and the intelligible. Strictly speaking, the intelligible is not representational. The point and the line in geometry have no breadth at all, and are visually indistinguishable from nothingness. There is no imaginative difference between a point and the absence of a point. Standard models of two-dimensional hyperbolic space may only be depicted by misrepresenting either angles (the Klein model) or lines (the Poincaré model). The atom is too small to see (even with magnification) or touch. And so on.
The imagination plays a role in stimulating one towards insight, not in depicting things as they really are.
Again, the intelligible is modal or causal in character. It has to do essentially with the necessary and the possible. Geometry has to do with the possibilities of spatial relations, yet we cannot imagine non-Euclidean geometries. How is it possible that things don’t fall on the space station, but they do on earth? One can just as easily imagine dropping objects on the space station and mysteriously suspended objects on earth. Explanation deals in intelligibility, in causes, in genuine answers to why questions. Imagination plays an important role insofar as it stimulates and inspires realizations (both grand and mundane). But the ease of imagination and the difficulty of genuine understanding make it easy to substitute the former for the latter.
Theists are committed to reality as intrinsically intelligible. That is not to say that we understand reality as a whole. Wherever we draw the line, reality is divided into what we already understand and what remains mysterious. But a mystery is that which we would know by eliminating our own ignorance, whether in a detective story, puzzling astronomical observations, or the origin and destiny of the universe. The mysterious is unknown only relative to a lack in our understanding, and must be distinguished from the absurd and the senseless, which cannot be understood.
This may not sound particularly theistic; indeed, some may think it more akin to scientism. But we can rephrase the point to make the connection clear. Reality is what one understands once all intelligent questions are answered. That is to say, reality is defined in terms of an omniscient act of understanding. If an omniscient act of understanding is impossible, then reality is, in whole if not in part, absurd. Feuerbach charged that Christianity projects distinctly human paternal love into the heavens, reified as the divine “Father.” A thoroughgoing theist views atheism as nothing but the projection of personal ignorance onto the cosmos.
The difference between theism, skepticism, and atheism can be stated simply. For the theist, omniscience is actual. For the skeptic, omniscience is possible, at least in the sense it cannot be ruled out. And for the atheist, omniscience is impossible.
A full commitment to rational process, to the demands for correct understanding, means that there must be a first cause. Not a first cause in terms of time, of course; a first cause in terms of ultimate answers. For there is the question: what is reality? How does it hang together? Newton unified apparently disparate events (falling fruit, the movement of the heavens) in a flash of understanding. The atheist is committed to the ultimate persistence of disparities, to a schism between what really is and what is reasonable to believe.
And so, rather than admitting the possibility of ultimate explanation, atheism requires falling back into “just so” stories. Why might there have been initial conditions that gave rise to the universe? It is just so. Or perhaps there are multiverses. But still, why multiverses? Again, it is just so. Early mankind explained flooding by stories, such as the Egyptian story of Isis’ tears. Atheists dislodge the elements of cosmology from the rational process of scientific inquiry, and incorporate them into a narrative (in principle) has nothing intelligible to contribute.
The identification of atheism with mythology is not an ad hominem attack, as though atheists lack intelligence. To the contrary, the argument supposes that atheists are intelligent, and calls for them to recognize the significance of their intelligence.
Today we struggle to grasp how an ancient people might have genuinely believed the sun to be pulled across the sky by a chariot. It takes a great deal of effort to get inside the mind of ancient humans in a way that makes polytheistic mythology plausible. It is similar in some ways to the attempt to recall our own infancy. Might we now, as a species, be in an awkward adolescent stage? In a few hundred years, might we mature to such a point where atheistic storytelling is as implausible as Ra and his sky-boat? Cultural maturity is a collective development of intelligence and the growth in the appreciation of its significance. And so we have reason for hope.
