1. Believers and unbelievers
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) once famously said: : "Those who beleieve in God do not need proofs of his existence; those who do not believe in him do not accept arguments in favour of his existence." At first sight these two statements are their exact opposites. But they are not! Those who believe in God do this on existential grounds; they know that he exists, because they experience his presence in their lives. For the moment we must leave it undecided whether their experience is real or an illusion, but for our argument this is not important. Those who do not believe in God present reasons for their opinion; their position is not existential, but theoretical. Such a reason is for instance that, with so much evil in the world, it is inconceivable that there would be a God. Or they say that evolution, as a self-propelled dynamic force, explains everything. If the experience of believers, as being personal, is open to scrutiny, the opinions of the non-believers may also be tested, because they are theoretical.
Both the believers and the unbelievers have a problem. If it is accepted as a fact that there is an all-wise, all-powerful, all-good supreme being, how then is it possible that there is evil in the world? If we start from the premiss that there is no God, how then came everything to be, the cosmos, nature, the world, mankind? Once again, these problems are of a different order. That of the non-believers is primary. Once they have eliminated God, they are confronted with the problem of creation. This is their initial problem. Those who believe in God are confronted with the problem of evil, but this is a secondary problem. First the theology is established - God exists -, and then comes the theodicee - the doctrine of God's justice and the problem of evil.
The non-believers have an additional problem, one of a logical order. It is not possible to prove that something or someone does not exist. One can only state that it has never been observed, never seen or heard of, but it is always possible that it suddenly pops up. The coelecanth, a deep-sea fish, was long supposed to have become extinct ages ago. But then a fisherman pulled up off the coast of South Africa in February 1938; since then more specimens have been caught. Is there organic life somewhere in the universe? Thus far space research did not even discover the basic conditions for it, water, for instance. Yet, who can confidently state that it will never be found?
2. The Bible on God's existence
The Bible does not present proofs that God exists. It opens with this lapidary sentence: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" (Gen.1:1), thus simply assuming that there is a God, a Creator. Yet a pious Jew would say that there doubtless is a proof, one of an historical nature, namely, all that God did with and for his people of Israel, with as the climactic event that he conducted it out
of Egypt, the slave house.
3. God in the ancient world
This position is by no means exceptional in the ancient world. Wherever we go in that world we meet gods and goddesses. Their existence is taken for granted. There has been indifference and irreverence, but no atheism. The same applies to the Islamic world. The Koran also does not present arguments for God's existence. The very first sura says: "In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate. Praise to Allah, the Lord of the beings of the world, while sura 2 categorically states: "Your God is the only God; there is no other God than he,
the merciful, the compassionate."
4. Theologians and philosophers
Theologians would not be theo-logians, if they did not believe that God exists; being scholars, they present proofs of his existence. Philosophers, on the contrary, feel not obliged to believe in God. Some do, others do not. Some present proofs; others think this is impossible. There is no commonly shared opinion among philosophers, either that he exists or that he does not exist.
5. The personal experience
Before we proceed, I feel that it would be helpful to discuss something that is not popular with philosophers nor even with theologians, who think it is rather a subject for the psychologist of religion. What I mean is that many people claim to have had one or more experiences of God's direct presence. We find these people among Christians of all denominations, among Jews, and among Muslims, to restrict ourselves to the monotheistic religions. We need not think here of saints or mystics. Many saints went through life without having experiences of this kind. Mystics are people with a special talent for religion many of whom claimed to have experienced God in this way. But not all saints were mystics. Saint Teresa of Avila was one, but that other Theresia, Theresia of Lisieux, was not. Paul and John were doubtless mystically talented, but Peter was not. Most of those who had a direct experience are ordinary people of the average kind.
People claiming to have this kind of experience mostly do not say that they actually saw God. Paul, for instance, does not. "There is a man I know [he himself] who was carried out of himself, fourteen years since. Was his spirit in his body? I cannot tell. Was it apart from his body? I cannot tell; God knows. This man, at least, was carried up into the third heaven. I can only tell you that this man, with his spirit in his body, or with his spirit apart from his body, God knows which, not I, was carried up into Paradise and heard mysteries which man is not allowed to utter" (2Cor.12:2-4).
The prophet Isaiah describes in the famous `throne vision' that he actually saw God. "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne," but he also intimated that he did not see God's face. "With two wings [the seraphim] veiled God's face" (Is.6:1-2).
The famous American psychologist William James (1842-1910) was neither a religious person nor was he a great friend of the Roman Catholic Church. However, in Chapter III, The Reality of the Unseen, of his worldfamous book The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature, he presents several instances of direct experiences. Here are three instances, as literally given by James. "God surrounds me like the physical atmosphere. He is closer to me than my breath - There are times when I seem to stand in his very presence - I have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time soothing, which hovers over me."
Without admitting that the God whom these people experience really exists, he states that these experiences "are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experience can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are." It would be cheap to consider such believers as neurotics or even as psychiatric cases or as victims of hallucinations or as being under the influence of psychodelic drugs; James does not do so either. On the whole they are quite normal people. James has "to confess that the part [of our mental life] of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial." But if the people of whom we are speaking are perfectly normal, then these experiences are also not spurious; they too are normal. We must admit that they constitute circumstantial evidence for God's existence, because it is quite possible that they point to it.
6. The near-death experience
In this context also the `near-death experience' must be mentioned. There are people who, feeling that they are on the brink of dying, for instance, when they feel life streaming out of them after a very risky operation - but they survive, or else they could not relate it -, see, for instance, a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it or an ethereal being beckoning to them or even Jesus himself. A curious instance is related by Alfred Ayer (1910-1989). This British philosopher was a pur sang atheist; he once said that his best days were those on which he succeeded in convincing a believer that there is no God. Once, however, Ayer underwent a major operation. Lying in his hospital bed, he felt his end being near. And then he saw a long tunnel with an extremely bright light at the end. Later Ayer said that this had not made him a believer, but he longer attempted to impress his atheistic convicions on believers.
7. Greek and Latin philosophers on God's existence
It was only in the fourth century B.C. that Greek philosophy seriously attemted to construct proofs for God's existence. The first to do this was Aristotle (384-322); his proof is a so-called `physico-theological' one. It runs like this. We observe that there is constant movement and change in the world and in the cosmos. Take for instance a billiard game. The balls are constantly rolling. Why? Because the player pushes them with his cue. He does so by making his arm move, and so on. Everything that moves is set going by something else, that in its turn is set going by something else that in its turn ... And so on ad infinitum. Ad infinitum? No, says Aristotle, this is logically inconceivable: the general movement cannot set itself going; someone or something that does not move itself must do this. This is what Aristotle calls the `Unmoved Mover'.
A highly important aspect of this argument is that it places the Unmoved Mover outside the cosmos; he or it is not a part of creation. Speculating on the nature of his Unmoved Mover, he calls it (or him) theos, godhead. Ascribing praedicates to it, he argues that it is not material, but, instead, purely spiritual. Would it be material, this would mean that it was moving. It can have no origin; it is eternal and perfect. It has none of the shortcomings of material things. Since Aristotle was a philosopher, he stated that his godhead was primarily thought. The prime object of his thought is the godhead himself: he is thinking himself. We are still at a fair distance from the God of the monotheistic religions. Jews, Muslims, and Christians would not say that God is primarily thought.
Cicero (106-43), followed in this by Seneca (3 B.C.-65 A.D), brought forward another argument. All peoples, all nations, however primitive and barbarian they may be, believe in gods, godheads, divinities. This means, they argue, that this notion is innate, or in other words, that it forms part of the conditio humana. We find this argument, that of the consensus gentium, also in other philosophers. Modern atheists are inclined to dismiss it on the ground that the progress of science has made the notion of the divine obsolete. They should realize, however, that the number of convinced atheists is infinitesimally small. Almost all people, all over the world, want to believe in something. Others, confronted with the notion of the divine, feel at a loss, not knowing what to think of it, but do not opt for atheism.
8. Anselm's ontological proof
The question of the possibility to convincingly prove God's existence really became a serious point of discussion between 1100 and 1500, the period of Scholasticism. During this period there was an intense intellectual discussion going in which the scholars, the theologians and the philosophers. of all European universities took part. All these scholars believed in God; no one doubted his existence, but, being thinkers, they wanted to base it on rational grounds. The modern atheist will say that they were biased, because they believed in God, but he forgets that, if this is correct, he is biased himself, because he starts from the premiss that there is no God.
The debate was opened by Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), an Italian from Aosta, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1090. He came to grips with the problem under consideration in two of his books, the Monologium and the Proslogion. The argument brought forward by him is called `ontological'. It runs like this.
Anselm's premiss is: "You [God] are something greater than which nothing can be thought." Anselm starts from the Bible text: "The fool says in his heart: `there is no God'" (Ps.53:1). This means that this `fool' has a notion of God, but only in intellectu eius, in his intellect; in his opinion it does not refer to a reality. Even the unbeliever assumes, but only in theory, as an intellectual fiction, that there may exist something greater than anything that can be thought. It will perhaps help the reader, if he or she replaces the words `greater than anything that can be thought' with `absolute being': God is an absolute being, in contrast to all other existents which are relative.
However, adds Anselm, of all that can be thought, even of that which is `greater than all I can think', we may assume that it also exists in reality. Even if this `greater than' would be in the understanding alone, nevertheless our mind is positing something that is beyond all other things. It is impossible to imagine something that is greater than this greatest. If it would be possible to posit something (this something Anselm now calls God) that is greater than the greatest, the creature would rise above the Creator and set himself up as his judge, as though he would say: "You are still not great enough; I know something greater". Since this greatest cannot be thought not to exist, it followss that it must exist also in reality.
Whatever we may think of this argument, it is a fine specimen of Anselm's power of reasoning. The starting-point is a notion thought by the mind. A certain idea of God, negative or positive, exists in the mind, intra-mental; there we have the given fact from which we proceed. His conclusion is that, since this notion really exists in the mind, it logically demands that God also exists in reality, extra-mentally. We can also put the other way round (which Anselm does not do): what does not exist cannot be thought. Perhaps the reader will find this reasoning fairly complicated, but we can simplify it somewhat by making a syllogism of it: 1. the term `God' is defined as the greatest possible being; 2. real existence (= extra-mental existence) is greater than mere existence in the mind; 3. therefore, God must exist in reality, not just in the mind. For, may we add, how could we think the supremely greatest, if it did not exist?
8. Acceptance and rejection
Anselm's ontological proof has always been hotly debated by philosophers. Thomas Aquinas rejected it, but Saint Bonaventura and Duns Scotus, both significant thinkers, accepted it. We encounter it in Descartes' Discours de la méthode, where he argues: God is an infinite being; how can I, a finite being, know of an infinite being, if there would be no reality to correspond to it? But then comes Locke who, just as Kant, rejected it, to be followed by Hegel who thought favourably of it. Among modern philosophers we can quote N. Hartmann and J.N. Finlay, who rejected it, and Ch. Hartshorn, who defended it. Thus Anselm of Canterbury succeeded in keeping philosophical minds occupied for nine hundred years, which is in itself no mean feat.
9. An important objection
Is it really true that all we can think mentally must necessarily exist in reality? Take for instance the case of a psychiatric patient, a paranoiac, who thinks that he is being stalked by his murderer. He is convinced that this person really exists, but nobody threatens him. On this point Anselm was mercilessly attacked by his contemporary Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who objected that something existing in the mind need not necessarily exist in reality; existence in the mind is not a true existence, but only a mental concept. In this way, said Gaunilo, one can prove anything.
Gaunilo brought forward the example of the insula perdita, the lost island, that, according to some ancient authors, was the most perfect possible. But who believes that such an island really exists? It is nothing but a romantic fiction. Therefore, to say that God is the most perfect being is, philosophically speaking, a fiction. Gaunilo's argument is, however, somewhat defective. Whereas the term `perfect' may be properly applied to God, because perfection is an essential part of his being, it cannot be applied to an island. What does it mean that an island is perfect? Perfection does not belong to the essence of an island.
Let us pursue this line of argument somewhat further. Take the case of the unicorn. The Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance were firmly convinced that such an animal really existed. Yet it has never been observed anywhere nor was there ever a skeleton of it discovered. We may safely assume that the unicorn did not exist. Nevertheless, people of the centuries around 1500 knew exactly what ik looked like; we find it portrayed many times on their fascinating tapestries. This means that the unicorn had some sort of extra-mental existence, namely, an imagined existence. This is not the same as real existence, but it is also not non-existence. It demonstrates that mental existence need not necessarily remain restricted to the mind.
If cinema's had existed in the twelfth century, Anselm could have invited Gaunilo to come and see Stanley Kubricks's A Space Odyssee 2000, or Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, two science-fiction movies, which show, if not the impossible, then at least the improbable. He could have exclaimed: "Now you see for yourself! Improbable, even impossible things exist extra-mentally." We can go somewhat further yet. In the nineteenth century Jules Verne (1828-1905) wrote, among many others, two books, The voyage to the moon, and Twenty thousand miles under the sea. In the first he described a space craft travelling to the moon, in the latter a submarine. Yet space craft and submarines did not exist then. But now there are space craft and there are submarines. Imagined existence became virtual existence.
10. Another important objection
A second objection against Anselm's proof is that it is in fact a petitio principii, a circular argument that starts from that which it seeks to prove. Wanting to prove God's existence, he begins his argument with `God is ...'. Way back in 1946, my professor of history, who had studied theology for a very short time, wanting to tell us what a petitio principii is, referred to Anselm's ontological proof as the classical instance. Kant said that it was a proof a priori and not a posteriori, as good logic requires.
It should, however, be pointed out that Anselm in the relevant chapters II-IV of the Proslogion nowhere refers to Scripture or to ecclesiastical doctrine; he does not make use of biblical or theological arguments. He could have retorted that he, in the first part of his argument, does not speak of God as an existence, but as a concept. He might have begun in this way: Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a being called God. He would have said that he was fully justified in beginning with `God', for of whom else are we speaking? He starts from the premiss `God existing simply in thought', as a purely mental concept, and from this argues on to God existing both in reality and in thought. Anselm wanted to present a rational proof of God's existence, starting from the concept of God.
11. Thomas's fivefold proof
As a good philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought that we can take God's existence for granted, if only because the opposite notion `there is no God' is inconceivable. However, since there was no philosophical atheism in his time, he had to combat another notion, namely, that the idea of God is innate in man, which would be the consequence of Anselm's ontological proof. God's existence, argues Thomas, cannot be proved a priori, as he thought Anselm had done, but only a posteriori, by looking at the ways in which God effects himself in the world. Arguing as a philosopher, and not yet as a theologian, he posits that God's existence can be proved intellectually. To do his, he presents his quinque viae, his five ways. They all start from empirical knowledge of the created world.
- 1. Everything is constantly changing; there is constant movement. There must be a general cause of movement, a Prime Mover. One sees that Thomas takes up Aristotle's argument.
- 2. There is in nature a constant production of new things, of new beings; therefore, there must be an efficient cause of production.
- 3. All things in this world are contingent, that is, they are not necessary; they need not exist. There would be total chaos, if there were not a supreme non-contingent necessity.
- 4. The next argument refers specifically to human beings, in whom there are different gradations of virtue, of truth, of nobility, of honesty, of love and altruism. Such gradations are only possible, if one supreme gradation exists, a being that is supremely good, etc.
- 5. There is order in nature, finality, processes that are directed to an end. This universal order presupposes a Supreme Final Cause, a supreme orderer. All this, concludes Thomas, is what `all men call God'.
At the background of this argument stands that the connection between the created world and God is the human intellect, with its power of observing and arguing. The five arguments can be very shortly summarized as follows: 1. from movement; 2. from action; 3. from contingency; 4. from eminence; 5. from finality. Thomas argues from effect to cause, finally arriving at the first cause of all that is. Yet his First Cause - the causa prima - differs from the secondary causes - the causae secundae. All the secondary causes were effects, which became causes of the next stages. God, however, is not an effect of whatsoever. If he were one, he would be a part of the phenomenal world.
Most commentators, although not all of them, believe that Thomas really wanted to present conclusive proofs, of a cosmological nature, of God's existence. There are, however, others who doubt this. They feel that Thomas was not so much concerned with proving God's existence, at least not in the first place, but rather to demonstrate that the cosmos is not self-sufficient and does not contain its explanation in itself. These commentators say that he primarily wanted to point to the fundamental contingency of the phenomenal world. Yet, also if this viewpoint is correct, Thomas finally arrives at the omnium ultimum finem qui Deus est, the ultimate end of all who is God.
12. Descartes' stable basis
René Descartes' (1596-1650) primary aim was to found knowledge on absolutely stable basis. If there would be no indubitable knowledge, where are we then? His starting-point is - it is well-known -: "Je pense, donc je suis", I think, therefore, I exist. We may have doubts about everything, but not about the fact that it is me who is doubting. Descartes' ontological proof of God's existence closely resembles Anselm's. He makes a mathematical comparison. If I imagine that in a certain, as yet undefined geometrical figure its three angles are equal to two rectangulars, then I know for certain that this figure is a triangle. The figure I imagine must necessarily exist. Just so, if I conceive of a being that is the most perfect of all, then the notion of a necessary and eternal existence is contained in this concept, from which it follows that this most perfect being exists.
Of course, the objection that this is a petitio principii is also made against Descartes. Yet, according to the philosopher himself this is not so. Everything that my mind sees clare et distincte is true. If I conclude, trusting to my brainpower, that there really exists a most perfect being, I do not err.
Descartes approaches the problem also from another side. I have many ideas which I find in myself, for instance, that there are trees or seas or jungles. These are not superior to me, for they are, like myself, part of nature. However, if I think of God as a most perfect and infinite being, I cannot have this notion out of myself, since I am neither perfect nor infinite. How does one acquire this notion of God? Descartes answers that it is innate, just as the notion that I am an individual person is innate. Since God is the Creator of man, it is not surprising that he put his mark on us. It is impossible, says Descartes, that I exist as I am, that is, with this innate concept of God, if this God did not actually exist. If he would not exist, this would mean that my innate notion of there being a highest possible good, a highest posisble perfection, an eternal infinity, who planted this notion in me, would be an illusion.
13. Locke's tabula rasa
John Locke (1632-1704) did not accept that the notion of God is innate. According to him, the human mind is initially a tabula rasa, to be imprinted, empirically, with sensations, images and experiences, which generate our ideas. Yet God gave us our faculties of reasoning; therefore, it is possible to conclude with our natural powers of the mind that there is a God. Locke, the empiricist, starts from the `actually existing'. The first existens is man himself. Man also knows that there cannot be `nothing', no total void, because nothing cannot produce something. All that exists must have been produced by something else. There must also be a last cause of all that is. It must be all-powerful and eternal, not giving way to another cause. This being Locke calls God.
14. Natural theology
The eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, was the heyday of natural theology. Man does not need Revelation or the Bible or the Church to prove God's existence. For this his rational faculties are sufficient. Reasonings of this kind abounded. The Enlightenment had a predilection for proofs for God's existence that are founded on morality. This is not without reason. Everyone has moral norms and values, how different they may be from those of others, or how often people may transgress them. Morality is an ever present force.
Voltaire (1694-1778) believed in God, although he was not a deeply religious person. He was a Deist, which means that his God finds himself at a very great distance from the world and mankind. His famous image is that of the watchmaker who makes a watch and winds it up, after which it goes of itself. God made the world, started it, and then no longer occupies himself with it. Nonetheless, Voltaire needs God, as the guarantee of the moral order. If there were no God, people would not abide by moral rulings. It is for this reason that he famously said: "If God did not exist, he should be invented." Without God there would be no morality.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was of the opinion that, strict rationally, God's existence cannot be proved. According to him, all knowledge is empirically acquired; since we do not experience God - that is, he did not -, there can be no knowledge of him. Yet (Kant believed in God), there is another way to find him, the way of the praktischer Vernunft, of practical reason. According to Kant, the origin of religion, the foundation on which it is built, is morality, the moral law. Pure morality means that one does what is good, because it is good. Man has a moral duty to do what is good, without minding the consequences. This is what he called the kategorische Imperativ. There would be no moral law, no moral order, if there were no God. Being purely moral is so often disadvantageous that is not conceivable than man would be moral, if it did not have its origin and fundament in God. It can be objected, as it has been objected, that God's function is reduced to standing guard over the moral order, to his being its guarantee. The consequence of this is that the moral order is primary and God secondary.
15. The argument from conscience
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) gave this form of proof a new twist. He did not start from the moral order or from moral law, but from conscience. Conscience may be finely tuned, too finely even, so that it may lead to scrupulosity, or it may be blunted to the point of making one unscrupulous. Yet, when all is said and done, nobody is without some, perhaps rudimentary, form of conscience; not even the worst criminal allows himself everything.
In conscience, says Newman, God speaks to us, directly. Do not say, with Freud, that it is society or the voice of our parents that is speaking to us. It also reproaches us for things that society does not deem reprehensible or punishable. It also reproaches us for things that nobody knows of, for bad thoughts, for sentiments of hatred. "We may", writes Newman, "by means of that induction from particular experiences of conscience, have a good warrant for concluding the Ubiquitous Presence of One Supreme Master, as we have, from parallel experience of sense, for asserting to the fact of a physical and vast world, material and mental."
16. Hegel and ontology
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) made an attempt to do honour to Anselm's ontological proof. He had his problems with all other proofs. According to him, God is an idea, the idea, the concept, the absolute spirit, the absolute reason. Being and thinking are identical in him. The essence of God is thought. Man's essence is also thought; because he thinks, he participates in God's thinking. God thinks in and through man. Because there is an identity of God and man, in and through thinking, man must, reasoning correctly, necessarily conclude to the existence of God.
A few things should be noted. The great medieval Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas for instance, never spoke of an identity between God and man, but only of analogy. Another point is whether Hegel's God is more than an outhouse of the human mind, whether, just as Kant's God is the guarantee of morality, Hegel's is the guardian of human reasoning. Finally, is Hegel not a `deist' - God is an abstraction -, rather than a `theist' - God is a person?
17. A case for atheism
What I present in these pages is only a selection from the countless philosophers and theologians who occupied themselves with the proofs of God's existence. The question now is whether a case can be made for atheism. In the beginning of this essay I argued that it is impossible to prove that something or someone does not exist. All the same there have been and there are professed atheists. In the western world their number is small, in Europe larger than in the US. In Africa and Asia atheism is virtually non-existent. In the western world there are, apart from atheists, theists and deists, and a large grey zone of undecided people who do neither really believe in God nor expressly deny his existence; they content themselves with stating that there must be something, leaving unexplained what this something is.
18. Pantheism
There is a curious intermediate form between theism and atheism, namely, pantheism. It cannot be said that it is atheism, because it posits that nature, the cosmos, is divine, that the created world is God. It stresses God's immanence - his involvement in the world - to the point that there is no room left for his transcendence - there being a God without and outside nature. Therefore, pantheists do not acknowledge the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all ages there have been pantheists, nowadays more than in earlier periods. Perhaps the origin of pantheism is to be found in the Greek philosopher Thales (6th cent. B.C.), who famously said: "Everything is full of gods."
Alluring as pantheism seems to some, as the middle road between theism and atheism, is logically untenable. Either God, the concept of God, entirely coincides with nature, in which case there is actually no God, or he does not entirely coincide with nature, in which case there is no pantheism.
19. Were there Greek atheists?
We may safely state that there was no atheism in Antiquity and during the Middle Ages, at least not in the sense that there was a virtual denial of God's existence. Nonetheless, there were philosophers and philosophies, which practically excluded the concept of God. Anaximander (ca. 610-547) posited that there is only a natural cause of all that is; he called it the apeiron, the indefinite, the indeterminate. From and out of this apeiron everything, gods and world, comes forth an returns to it. Naturally, this is materialism, but he sees the possibility of there being gods.
According to Parmenides (ca. 500 B.C.), there is Being. Being does not originate; it is. It is imperishable and indestructible. What, or who, is this Being? He does not tell us. Is it God, is it the world? There cannot be two sorts of Being, one of God and another of the world. So we must assume that Being is the material world; if this is correct, Parmenides is a materialist.
It is not necessary to follow the reasonings of the early Greek philosophers; none of them posits expressly God's existence, just as nobody denies it. They may be called materialists, with this proviso that some of them, for instance Anaxagoras (500/496-ca.428), describe matter as animated and endowed with intelligence.
Leucippus and Democritus were contemporaries who lived in the second half of the fifth century B.C. Both started from Parmenides' premiss that there is Being, and that Being is matter. Yet, whereas to Parmenides Being is one and undivided, to these two philosophers it is multiple and multifarious. They posited that everything consists of atoms, for which reason they are called `Atomists'. We should not think of them as the progenitors of modern atomic theory; their atoms partake of Being; they are eternal, indivisible, inalterable, indissoluble. They are in constant movement, but their movements are fortuitous. Moving about, they attach themselves to other atoms, thus forming clusters. These clusters become the material, physical things we know. This means that the cosmos, mankind included, is the result of chance. Although neither of them ever said that there are no gods, Atomism comes very close to atheism.
We may conveniently skip the entire period of the Middle Ages - not one philosopher was an atheist then -, and also the Reformation. All the great Reformers were deeply convinced of God's existence.
20. Spinoza's notion of God
Was Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1672) an atheist? It is true that he rejected the Judaeo-Christian idea of a creation by a Creator. His argument was that nothing can come from nothing; to him a creatio ex nihilo was logically impossible. Yet this does not necessarily mean that he was an atheist. All that exists comes from God, but it is not created. It comes into being through emanations; stage by stage all that is flows out of God. This was not really a new idea; we find it in many Gnostic systems, in the Arab philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037), and in the Neoplatonic Greek philosopher Plotinus (204?-270).
According to the Judaeo-Christian creation doctrine, all that is created is created expressly by God and is ontologically different from him. According to Spinoza, there is no distinct creation, but, instead, an originating. God is the only absolute, unique, and necessary Being, the only Substance; there are no substances without him. This Supreme Substance is also called Nature. What we call `world' or 'nature' is totally absorbed in God; multiple things are not autonomous and possess no ontological status of their own. If this is correct, Spinoza was not an atheist, but, instead, a pantheist. Yet, we can also look at it from the side of nature. If this is the absolute Being, there is no room for God.
21. The French materialists
The French materialists of the eighteenth century harked back to Spinoza who, in their opinion, was an atheist. On August 29, 1769, Jean-Baptiste d'Alembert (1717-1783) wrote to Frederick the Great of Prussia: "Either his [Spinoza's} philosophy signifies nothing, or it signifies that matter is the only existing thing, and that it is in this that we must look for or to suppose the reason of everything." This is the fundamental position of modern atheism, namely, materialistic atheism. A year later, on November 30, 1770, he wrote to the king: "Creation is absurd and impossible. Matter can therefore not be created [incréable]; it is uncreated and, in consequence, eternal." Did d'Alembert, who was an intelligent man, realize that his idea of creation being `absurd and impossible' is a petitio principii?
In 1769 Denis Diderot (1713-1784) had a conversation with d'Alembert. "Do you see this egg?", he asked, "it is an inert mass before the germ is introduced into it." And he triumphantly added: "This overthrows all the schools of theology and all the temples of the world." Yet an egg is not an inert mass of matter; it is highly programmed and contains all the possibilities to make an animal out of it. And the germ is not the primitive, `gross', thing Diderot thought it was; it is brimful of information. More than an egg is needed to overthrow all the temples of the world.
D'Holbach - with his full name Paul Thiry d'Holbach, baron of Heese and Leande (1723-1789) -, a German who lived in Paris, published in 1769 an influential work, entitled Système de la nature, ou les lois du monde physique et du monde moral. Already this title demonstrates what was his fundamental idea, namely, that there is only a physical world. This is what he called `sound philosophy'. Belief, faith, was only a product of the imagination. The universe is nothing but matter and movement; nature is the sole being. If we ask, from where comes this movement, d'Holbach answers that it is inherent in matter, which creates its own energy. There is no need of a Creator; nature brings forth everything from itself. D'Holbach did not answer the question neither of how matter can produce intelligence nor from where the information comes from that produces the complicated order in nature. His system finally results in an aporia.
22. Marx's atheism
All the philosophers of all ages have postulated that the world is a complete thing, achieved from eternity. The evolutionary theory of the nineteenth century overthrew this time-honoured notion by postulating that the universe is a process of constant development. Evolution theories are not necessarily atheistic, for many evolutionists, for instance, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), posited that there is a God at the beginning of the evolutionary process. All the same, this theorie was gist to the mill of materialistic thinkers.
The most influential of these materialistic thinkers was Karl Marx (1818-1883). Atheism posed no problem to him; he found that the question had been settled once for all by his predecessors. "Man makes religion; religion does not make man." Religion is purely a man-made thing; it is a product of `false conscience'. The state and society produce religion, and people want it, because they are miserable; it is anodynic. Marx expresses this in a few words that have become famous: "Religion is the opium of the people." Not `for the people', as it is so often wrongly quoted, because this opium is not given to the peple, but, instead, they take it themselves. We know that Marx's system was one of permanent, not biological, but social, political, anthropological evolution, that would result in a world that would really be free, that is, without religion and its institutions.
23. Haeckel the popularizer
The enormously influential German author Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) published in 1899 his last and best-known work Die Welträtsel, The Riddles of the Universe, in which he summarized his ideas. He started from the notion of permanent - he called it `eternal' - evolution. Another of his fundamental ideas was the `law of substance', which said that there is only substance, empowered substance. These two theories taken together say that there is an eternal evolution of substance. Haeckel applied the evolution theory, in contrast to what Darwin had done, not only to biology and zoology, but also and foremost to politics, history, and social life. His is a perfectly monistic system that rejects the Judaeo-Christian concept of God and creation, but also of freedom and immortality. There is no human freedom, because all is being determined by an inexorable causality. Nothing can exist without nature; there is no God, there are no gods.
24. Nietzsche's eternal return
Friedric Nietzsche's (1844-1900) most influential book, Also sprach Zarathustra, is based on the idea of eternal return, the ewige Wiederkehr - not exactly a new concept, for we find it also expressed by, for instance, Empedocles. He saw the world "as a circular course, which endlessly repeats itself and which plays its game in infinitum." In other words, the world is eternal and cyclical. Nietzsche needed this system to explain and justify his atheism. A cyclical and eternal universe can do without God. But Nietzsche was unacquainted with the law of entropy, although this was formulated already in 1824, which says that the total amount of energy is steadily diminishing, with the consequence that the world is not eternal.
25. Freud's illusion
Many atheistic systems, based as they are on the theory of evolution, are cosmological. There is, however, also an atheism that is not cosmological, but psychological. Freud, for instance, stated that "the mythological conception of the world which animates even the most modern religions is nothing but a psychology projected on the world." Apart from the question of what he understood by `the most modern religions', he makes himself guilty of a petitio principii by using the term `mythological'. An objective inquiry of the phenomenon `religion' should not have started from the equation `religion is mythology'. To Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) religion is an illusion (as the title of his book Die Zukunft einer Illusion says), caused by unscientific thinking.
The dogmas of science are verifiable; those of religion are not. No intelligent discussion on religion is possible. Perhaps Freud would have talked differently, if he had been acquainted with medieval theology and philosophy, but these were a closed book to him. What he knew was that the `Fathers of the Church' themselves had said Credo quia absurdum, I believe because it is absurd. It is therefore evident, says Freud, that religious doctrines do not deserve a place in the domain of reason.
Freud should have been put to the test. Let him show - and all others who repeat this after him - which Father of the Church, which scholastic author of whichever school, which medieval theologian, ever said: Credo quia absurdum, and where. There is none. Only the slightest acquaintance with the vast corpus of medieval theology should convince one that a notion like this runs counter to the whole tenor of Scholasticism. Its Leitmotivs are: Credo ut intelligam, I believe in order to understand, and Fides quaerit intellectum, faith needs the intellect. Much of medieval scholarship is devoted to demonstrating that there is an organic link between reason and faith. That the non-existing slogan Credo quia absurdum, is endlessly repeated until this very moment naturally has a very good reason. If the believers themselves say that believing is absurd, then why not take them at their word?
26. Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) became the father of a new, modern sort of atheism, called `existentialism'. This became the new credo of several generations of Europeans and Americans; Paris was for a time the philosophical capital of the world. Sartre was not the first Existenzphilosoph, and apart from him there are others, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). But Sartre is the best-known.
However divergent the ideas of these philosophers are, and even contradictory, they agree on a few basic points. They are enemies of philosophical systems, like that of Hegel, in which all elements are interconnected and follow logically from each other. They say that such systems are at variance with reality, for reality is not systematic. Systems make a concept of man; man, however, is a living reality.
This makes man the real subject of this kind of philosophy. Not `man' as an ontological subject: this philosophy (or these philosophies) are opposed to all sorts of ontology. Man is not, he becomes; man is always `in the world', always in an `existential' situation, primary with his fellow-beings, and acts accordingly. Acting he realizes himself.
Sartre's view of man's existential situation, of his being `in the world' is deeply pessimistic. Reality has no ontological status; it has no sense whatsoever. It is only factuality: things happen, but why?, and helpless man must deal with them, but why? There can be no doubt that at the background of this vision stand the two devastating world wars, the economic crisis of the Thirties, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. With regard to man and his position in the world, there have always been two options: either he is an absolute being and has, as such, an ontologically fixed point in the universe, or he is not, so that he, not being absolute, depends on another absolute Being (as in Judaeo-Christianity). Sartre rejects both options. Man, as a thinking being, is simply superfluous, de trop, just as the world is de trop; it should not be there. "The existence of the world is absurd."
Naturally, Sartre was an atheist. "Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the conclusions from a coherent atheistic position." Coherent? Sartre does not trouble himself with demonstrating that God does not exist; his position in this respect is that of an a priori. "Existentialism is not so much an atheism in the sense that it exhausts itself in proving that God does not exist. It rather states: even if God would exist, this would change nothing; this is our point of view. Not that we believe that God exists, but we believe that the problem is not that of his existence."
27. The problems of the atheists
Modern atheism suffers from serious problems. Since 1800 it no longer takes the trouble to prove that there is no God; this is a foregone conclusion. Do modern atheists realize that they place themselves, philosophically speaking, hors de concours? There is no reasoning against them. If a believer tries to argue in favour of God's existence, he or she is met with astonished or pitying looks : but don't you know that to modern thought and science it is a long established fact that that there is no God? One who is courageous enough to defy these looks and ask: but which are your reasons for not believing in God?, is made to feel that to ask this is `not done'. This refusal to rationally argue the non-existence of God is, probably unconsciously, the aporia that I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, namely, that it is impossible to prove that something or somebody does not exist.
Atheists saddle themselves with some unsolvable problems. If there is no God, what then is the raison d'être of the world, of mankind? Sartre's conclusion was perfectly logical" it has no sense, it is superfluous, it should not be there. Manay people do not believe in God, because there is evil. The existence of an all-powerfull, all-wise, all-good God is, they find, incompatible with the existence of evil. Yet, eliminate God, and you remain confronted with evil.
We have a universe, a phenomenal world. If there is no God, who made it? Is the world self-sufficient? Did it start itself? Does it keep itself moving? Is it ordered towards an end? Is there a pattern in it? And if yes, where does this movement, this pattern come from?
28. A personal conclusion
The reader will already have guessed where I myself stand, but the time has come to make it more explicit. Never in all my life I have doubted that there is a God, not even for a moment. I belong to those of whom I spoke in the beginning, who know that God exists, because he is present in their lives. I am neither a mystic nor a visionary, but I know that God is permanently present. Yet there have been moments that I realized this more strongly than ordinarily. In March 1957 my third child, a little son, died shortly after he was born. During the days and weeks that followed I knew, or rather I sensed clearly, that God's protective hand was over me. I never asked: why? To use a biblical image: he had come to me in a dark cloud, but then he went before me in a shining cloud.
All the same, I believe that God's existence can be proved. These arguments seem to me conclusive: Anselm's ontological proof, Thomas Aquinas' cosmological proof (creation must have a Creator), and Newman's proof from conscience.
Although there will always be atheists, I do not think that atheism has much of a future. The modern Netherlands is one of the most secularized nations in the world. 51 % of the population declare not to belong to any denomination. Yet no more than 8 % want to be noted as atheists. In all the world's history atheism has been a marginal phenomenon; everywhere and always people have wanted to believe in some higher being. And they still do.