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The Presumption of Atheism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Antony Flew
Antony Flew*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

At the beginning of Book X of his last work The Laws Plato turns his attention from violent and outrageous actions in general to the particular case of undisciplined and presumptuous behaviour in matters of religion: “We have already stated summarily what the punishment should be for temple-robbing, whether by open force or secretly. But the punishments for the various sorts of insolence in speech or action with regard to the gods, which a man can show in word or deed, have to be proclaimed after we have provided an exordium. Let this be it: ‘No one believing, as the laws prescribe, in the existence of the gods has ever yet performed an impious action willingly, or uttered a lawless word. Anyone acting in such a way is in one of three conditions: either, first, he does not believe the proposition aforesaid; or, second, he believes that though the gods exist they have no concern about men; or, third, he believes that they can easily be won over by the bribery of prayer and sacrifice” (§ 885B).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , September 1972 , pp. 29 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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Footnotes

*

A first version of this article was given as a lecture under the auspices of the Howard W. Hintz Memorial Foundation in the University of Arizona in January, 1971. I wish to thank the Foundation for its sponsorship; and to say that the intention is, when in a few years the series is completed, to publish all these lectures together in one volume from the University of Arizona Press.

References

1 This and all later translations from the Greek and Latin are by me.

2 See Chapter VI of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“But glory doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful lone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

3 See the essay ‘Agnosticism’, and also that on ‘Agnosticism and Christianity’, in Volume V of his Collected Essays (MacMillan: London, 1894). I may perhaps also refer to my own article on ‘Agnosticism’ for the 1972 revision of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

4 H. Denzinger (Ed.) Enchiridion Symbolorum (Twenty-ninth Revised Edition. Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau, 1953), section 1806.

5 By Professor P. T. Geach of Leeds.

6 This was brought home to me most forcibly by studying some of the reviews of my God and Philosophy (Hutchinson and Harcourt Brace: London and New York, 1966). It can be both interesting and instructive to notice the same confusion occurring in an equally controversial socio-political case. Young, A. F. and Ashton, E. T. in their British Social Work in the Nineteenth Century (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1956)Google Scholar quote Lord Attlee as reproaching the “general assumption that all applicants are frauds unless they prove themselves otherwise” (p. 111). It should by now be clear that to put the onus of proof of entitlement upon the applicant for welfare payments is emphatically not to assume that all or most of those who apply are in fact cheats.

This last example is the more salutary since the mistake is made by a former Leader of the Labour Party who was above suspicion of any dishonourable intention to twist or to misrepresent. Would it were ever thus!

7 “The torte of the negative insume is greater.” For, whereas a single positive, supporting instance can do only a very little to confirm an universal generalization, one negative, contrary example would be sutfu lent det isivelv to Ulsitv that generalization.

8 See the paper Presumptions’ by my former colleague Patrick Day in the Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Philosophy (Vienna, 1968), Vol. V, at p. 140. I am pleased that it was I who first suggested to him an exploration of this unfrequented philosophical territory.

9 In ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’ at pp. 156-157 of Volume V of the Collected Papers (Harvard University Press: Cambridge (Mass.), 1934).

10 In his review of God and Philosophy in Theology Today 1967. pp. 86-87. He makes his point not against the general presumption but against one particular application.

11 Discourse on the Method, Part II. It occurs almost immediately after his observation: “I took into account also the very different character which a person brought up from infancy in France or Germany exhibits. from that which ... he would have possessed had he lived among the Chinese or with savages.”

12 Paradise Lost. Bk. XII, line 646.

13 Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, Ch. VI. The whole passage, in which Aquinas gives his reasons for believing that the Christian candidale does, and that of Mohammed does not, constitute an authentic revelation of God, should be compared with some defence of the now widely popular assumption that the contents of a religious faith must be without evidential warrant.

Professor A. C. MacIntyre, for instance, while he was still himself a Christian argued with great vigour for the Barthian thesis that “Belief cannot argue with unbelief: it can only preach to it”. Thus, in his paper on ‘The Logical Status of Religious Belief in Metaphysical Beliefs (Student Christian Movement Press: London, 1957), MacIntyre urged: “. . . suppose religion could be provided with a method of proof . . . since the Christian faith sees true religion only in a free decision made in faith and love, the religion would by this vindication be destroyed. For all possibility of free choice would have been done away. Any objective justification of belief would have the same effect . . . faith too would have been eliminated” (p. 209).

Now, first, in so far as this account is correct any commitment to a system of religious belief has to be made altogether without evidencing reasons. MacIntyre himself concludes with a quotation from John Donne to illustrate the “confessional voice” of faith, commenting: “The man who speaks like this is beyond argument” (p. 211). But this, we must insist, would be nothing to be proud of. It is certainly no compliment, even if it were a faithful representation, to partray the true believer as necessarily irrational and a bigot. Furthermore, second, it is not the case that where sufficient evidence is available there can be no room for choice. Men can, and constantly do, choose to deceive themselves about the most well-evidenced, inconvenient truths. Also no recognition of any facts, however clear, is by itself sufficient to guarantee one allegiance and to preclude its opposite. MacIntyre needs to extend his reading of the Christian poets to the greatest of them all. For the hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost had the most enviably full and direct knowledge of God. Yet Lucifer, if any creature could, chose freely to rebel.

14 Pensées, section 233 in the Brunschvicg arrangement. For a discussion of Pascal’s argument see Chapter VI, section 7 of my An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Thames & Hudson, and Bobbs-Merrill: London and New York, 1971).

15 It is worth stressing this point, since nowadays it is frequently denied. Thus L. C. Velecky in an article in Philosophy 1968 asserts: “He did not prove here the existence of God, nor indeed, did he prove it anywhere else, for a very good reason. According to Thomas, God’s existence is unknowable and, hence, cannot be proved” (p. 226). The quotations from Aquinas given in my text ought to be decisive. Yet there seems to be quite a school of devout interpretation which waives aside what the Saint straightforwardly said as almost irrelevant to the question of what he really meant.

16 I, Q2 A3.

17 In this perspective it becomes easier to see why Aquinas makes so much use of Aristotelian scientific ideas in his arguments. That they are in fact much more dependent on these now largely obsolete ideas is usefully emphasized in Anthony Kenny’s The Five Ways (Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Schocken Books: London and New York, 1969). But Kenny does not bring out that they were deployed against a presumption of atheist naturalism.

18 Velerky loc. cit., pp. 225-226.