The Unenlightened Atheist By Joe Carter
"For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with 'they say' or 'don't you know that?' or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say."
- G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, 1920
I was reminded of that quote by Chesterton while reading comments and articles about the connection between atheism and the Enlightenment. Although my memory fails me, I recall seeing a prominent professor mention that in a newspaper recently, though for the life of me I can't remember his name. Anyway atheists often say something along those lines. (Don't you know that?)
Then again, maybe my boorish imagination is weaving a strawman. After all, I can't imagine why any intelligent atheist would claim such a connection. Indeed, the "New Atheists" probably consider the Age of Enlightenment a most unenlightened age, considering the low regard that thinkers of that period had for atheism.
Still, there are probably at least a few of the acolytes of Dawkins/Dennett/Harris/Hitchens who aren't aware that most Enlightenment thinkers viewed their intellectual forebears (the New Atheists, circa 1770) with scorn. And it is easy to see why they might be confused. "The Enlightenment" is the term used to describe the 18th century intellectual movement which advocated reason as the primary basis of authority. The New Atheists also believe reason to be the primary basis of authority. Ergo, there must be some Darwinian line of descent connecting these rationalists. Q.E.D.?
Many atheists who make this mistake are simply unaware of Western intellectual history. For the rationalists of the Enlightenment era were able to trust in reason precisely because they were theists or deists and believed in a transcendent, rational God. To think otherwise was considered, as the philosophers often noted, the height of absurdity.
Take, for instance, the French. Oxford scholar Alister McGrath notes that, "Most radical French philosophers of the eighteenth century are actually to be categorized not as atheists, but as Deists…Denis Diderot (1713-84), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), and Voltaire (1694-1778)--all of who are regularly stereotyped as atheists--are clearly best regarded as Deists."
These three figures are key representatives of their age. Indeed, as the Columbia Encyclopedia states, "The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot epitomized the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment…" How then did the Encyclopédie cover atheism? In his famous reference work Diderot was not only critical of atheism but pondered the question of whether atheists could even be virtuous:
[I]t may be that there are some whose belief in God is highly suspect, and who however are not without virtue; I even agree that their hearts might be sensible to humanity, to doing good, that they love the public good, and would like to see men happy; what are we to conclude from that? That their hearts are more worthy than their minds; for natural principles, stronger than their lying principles, dominate them without their knowledge; conscience, the feeling that presses them, makes them act in spite of themselves, and stops them from going where their dark system leads them.
And on the atheist's virtue of "doubting", Diderot says:
We doubt for numerous reasons: anger and brutality, blindness and malice, and, finally, fantasy, and because we want to doubt; but we doubt also because of prudence and distrust, because of wisdom, and because of intellectual shrewdness. Academics and Atheists doubt in the first way described; true Philosophers doubt in the second way. The first doubt is one of darkness, which does not lead to light, but which moves rather always in the opposite direction. The second kind of doubt is born of light, and it helps, in turn, to produce light. This is the doubt, one can say, that is the first step toward the truth.
At least Diderot was more generous toward atheists than was his friend Voltaire. In the entry on "atheism" in his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire argues that the reason people hold a belief in God is because of the evidence of intelligent design:
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence. When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the worse for that.
Voltaire continues to argue for intelligent design and answers objections of "modern atheist" before concluding:
One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! What are they? Rogues.
As McGrath notes, "Voltaire regarded atheism with about as much enthusiasm as he did the teachings of the church."
(There were, of course a handful of "freethinkers" among the philosophes (e.g., La Mettrie, d'Holbach, and Helvetius) but only one name is still well known even today: the Marquis de Sade.)
What about the English? Well, there was Joseph Addison, Francis Bacon, Edmund Burke, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Adam Smith, and Jonathan Swift -- but all of them, of course, were Christian theists.
Desperate to add a big name to their wall, some atheists claim historian Edmund Gibbon. But as Keith Windschuttle points out, in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon "talks unambiguously about Jesus as 'the Son of God' and of 'the pure and proper divinity of Christ.'" That's heretical talk for an atheist.
Perhaps the only major figure remaining is Scottish philosopher David Hume. But even in his own day no one knew if Hume was an atheist, a Deist, or just a philosophical trickster.
What about in America? Arguably, the only persons that could unquestionably be included in the pantheon of "enlightenment thinkers" would be Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Unfortunately for the atheists, each of these men were also Deists.
Since almost every Enlightenment thinker believed in some form of Deity, where do the New Atheists get this silly notion that they are heirs of the Enlightenment? On what authority do they accept this ridiculous dogma? Perhaps they heard it mentioned by a professor in a newspaper. Or maybe they just dreamed in up. Surely, though, these self-proclaimed rationalists must have a reason for believing this incredulous nonsense.
Then again, maybe it is to be expected. To quote Chesterton once again, "It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense."
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