ATHEISTS
The origin of the species
By Nick Spencer
Bloomsbury. 298 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978 1 472 902 962
Nick Spencer is research director of Theos, a liberal-leaning theological think tank on religion and society.
This is his well-researched and fascinating history of atheism, basically from the mid-16th century, but obviously with backward references to Lucretius and the ancient world. The author tries to take an evenhanded approach to belief and unbelief and asserts that ‘from the outset, atheism was a constructive and creative phenomenon’. Psalm 14 would see things rather differently.
4 x P
The book divides into four sections, denoted ‘chapters’, with the alliterative titles Possibilities, Pioneers, Promises and Problems. Here the impression is given that there has been some kind of evolution or upward development of atheism over time with the 17th-century philosophers opening up strands of thought which came to fruition in the great 19th-century systems of Marx on the political front, Feuerbach and Nietzsche on the intellectual front and Darwin (never quite comfortable with where his ideas were leading) on the scientific front. But the whole project produced bad fruit in the 20th century with the oppressive regimes of Communism and the absurdity of existence explained by atheists like Sartre. The book repeatedly assesses where thinkers in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States got to at various times – atheism comes across as a fairly ‘Western’ organism. Also, different types of atheism are explored. Are there really different types? These seemed to be more in terms of crypto-atheists – those who were but pretended they were not – and immature atheists – those who had not really thought through their position thoroughly.
Man is dead
Taken to its logical conclusion, atheism inevitably leads to the destruction of all that human beings naturally understand as ‘good.’ This is termed ‘difficult atheism’ by Nick Spencer. The historian Christopher Watkin is quoted as recognising that ‘the same disease that killed God has withered away Truth, Reason, and Humanity’ and ‘far from triumphantly acceding to God’s vacated throne, Man finds himself unable to survive the divine demise’. The contemporary British philosopher John Gray is cited as coming to the same conclusion.
Christians will find some of the book quite bruising. It seems anyone who takes the Bible seriously is an idiotic fundamentalist. Spencer is quick to blame the Reformation for all kinds of ills in the church. But there is no doubt that very often Christians have shot themselves in the foot in reacting to unbelief. Established churches in particular have been less than Christian and instead of engaging with and seeking to refute atheism’s arguments, have simply burnt heretics or banned their books.
I found there was an unhelpful sleight of hand in the deploying of the material. Christian thinkers with a biblical outlook who from the start warned where atheism leads morally and intellectually (as per Romans 1, Ephesians 4.17-19) are given fairly short shrift by the author, but when Nietzsche or John Gray finally reach similar conclusions that is treated with genuflecting respect. So there’s a kind of intellectual snobbery about the book which I found unpleasant.
This is present as Spencer takes on Dawkins. He does a very good job of pointing out the fault-lines in many of Dawkins’ books, but – perhaps Nick Spencer isn’t a scientist – seems quite obsequious in labelling the arch-atheist’s popular scientific books ‘matchless.’ Really?
Darwin
But there is much in the book which is well worth reading. Of Darwin, the author explains ‘ When reflecting on the universe, he wrote in his autobiography, “I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” ’. And yet, then there came a monkey puzzle. ‘Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?’ If, as Darwin had mused, human knowledge, thought and morality were merely accidents of random mutation and meaningless selection, could they be trusted?’
I felt that coming from a liberal-leaning Christian stable brought some glaring omissions to the book. No mention of Solzhenitsyn, Sorokin or indeed C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga and Francis Schaeffer.
Symbiotic?
Nick Spencer’s project seems to be to point to a liberal Christianity because of the problems to which atheism leads. It’s a useful and well-written book. But it lacks robustness and concludes with seeing the two great systems of thought, Theism and atheism, as symbiotic of each other. With the church burgeoning in places like China and Islam bidding to overshadow the liberal West, belief in God is far from finished – as secular intellectuals once believed. ‘It is a pleasing irony with which to end. Atheism is here to stay because God is back.’
