Domhnall

This book explores suggestions for diverse ways to live in the absence of God. It is far better than my review and I recommend it.

The book starts with Nietzsche's Death of God, and that identifies from the outset that the atheism of this book does have its origin in the rejection of a monotheistic faith. The book’s final conclusion, also, makes some pointed competitive remarks about the relative superiority of atheism to religion as a way of living. So we cannot get away from the principle that atheism is not simply a value system without God, but also one in which the rejection of God is a central value. I don’t know if this concept of atheism is only really applicable to those of us having the appropriate God shaped hole, or if a continuing rebellion against monotheism is in itself evidence that we have not yet broken free of its embrace. Those systems that function without reference to God may not fit the definition of atheism, they may even be accepted by religious people but they may exist in
competition with or as a substitute for religion; an example is psychotherapy. For that reason, the book is able to take a pretty generous and sweeping view of its subject.

An important aspect of Watson’s account is to appreciate two things about atheism. One is its diversity – there are many atheisms. Another is the way it has evolved over time, with good reason to hope that the really terrible ideas are among those that have vanished into history.

A significant thread in the history is the realization of GK Chesterton’s prediction, that when people stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything. From Spiritualism at the start of the 20th Century to New Age fringe beliefs at the end, with special attention to the huge role of the “counter culture” in and around the Sixties, this history incorporates a whole variety of “alternative” belief systems which had an impact in their day and left at least some traces.

In reality, direct opposition to God or to religion does not dominate this history and does not even play a starring role. It certainly does give proper weight to the evidence that atheists did indeed attack religion throughout the 20th Century, sometimes with extreme violence. The scientific atheism of Soviet Russia, and the Nazi project to contain and stifle Christianity as a platform opposed to Nazi ideology, both fairly described here, attained levels of stupidity that ensured they would not survive their temporary political functions. However, in each case the driving force was not atheism per se but the fear of religion as a potential platform for political opposition, something that did not seriously materialise. Out of its 26 chapters, in addition to a conclusion and an introduction, it seems to me that only one (Chapter 24) addresses the so called "New Atheism" and the currently still fashionable wars of science and religion, and this chapter does not make any contribution to the key arguments of the book’s conclusion. So very little of the book is particularly interested in attacking either God or religion. That is simply not the tone of the book.

The book does describe some major historical events that induced widespread dismay with traditional religion, in order to discuss the way people responded. The barbarity of the First World War shook the confidence of many in the concept of a just God; the outrageous abomination of the Holocaust was even more radically shocking; the prospect of nuclear war was again too stark for trite answers to suffice. Scientific developments also provoked discomfort, since the monotheistic religions make assertions about the material world that are incompatible with Science. For many thinkers, the search for a new value system was motivated by the need to properly engage with these problems, when traditional religion was simply no longer equal to the task.

In practice, the most satisfactory answers arrived at have not, in Watson’s opinion, taken the form of new, all embracing or unifying grand theories. Whether in Science, the arts or in philosophy, the trend has been towards more intimate and more fragmentary solutions. On the one hand, Watson does see Science offering a much more satisfactory way to comprehend our world than religion. On the other, he does not suggest that this results in a reduction of experience to a few deterministic laws – rather, it has enabled us to put names and reasons to a growing multiplicity of things which simply had no place in any religious account of “Creation.” In other words, we are able to see and to appreciate and wonder at more of our world in more complex ways than were ever possible in the past.

In a similar way, he credits artists, poets and also therapists with enabling to us give new names to our inner feelings and our subjective experiences, again not reducing our private nor our social lives to mechanistic formulae, but opening up an expanded field of possibilities both to appreciate and to accommodate. An example that struck me was Dr Benjamin Spock, whose 1946 book Baby and Childcare advocated treating children as basically good at heart, flatly contradicting the conventional Christian (Calvinist?) attitude that saw Children as intrinsically sinful and in need of correction. The point is that such transformations were not superficial but very profound, very tangible in their effects and often unquestionably desirable.

This history has space not only for cognitive models, but also for the non verbal procedures of dance, music and the visual arts. It also discusses the expanding awareness and acceptance of human desires, and the prospects of greater freedom for women, for homosexuals and for others, while noting areas of failure such as the continuing prevalence of genital mutilation.

It is rather futile, however, to try and convey the contents, the arguments or even the conclusions of this book to anyone who has not taken the time to explore its detail. The book is as much an experience as an argument. The accumulation of evidence and examples is its point. The book accumulates one example after another of proposals, observations and points of view to produce a convincing and detailed mosaic of the way ideas about life without God have evolved over the past 150 years.

It is not an encyclopaedia. It rarely gives enough information about any source to enable anyone unfamiliar with it to get by without Google, Wikipedia or something similar but frankly there is nothing difficult today in reading with a smart phone or tablet in hand. I made liberal use of those facilities in my reading, as well as adding a number of new titles to my wish list for future reading.

It is encyclopaedic. Much of the pleasure in the book is to spend time with the many illuminating and thought provoking voices within. Watson presents each source's point of view in its own terms, usually in a fair way, and only occasionally enters into a direct debate with the source by citing objections and criticisms. This cannot possibly mean he agrees with everyone mentioned - the sources do not agree with each other. Many of them self destruct anyway without Watson’s intervention. In some cases I certainly wanted to dispute Watson’s commentary, but that is part of the experience of active reading.

In short, the material in this history supports an optimistic, upbeat understanding of new possibilities opening up for human well being as a result of the Death of God. A question he attributes to the poet, Czeslaw Milosz, is one that I suspect fits with Watson’s own conclusions: ”Is the disappearance of religion in our lives any different from the disappearance of some of those other nineteenth-century myths, embodied in imperialism, racial superiority and colonialism? .. No one mourns their passing and no one foresees their return.” [p452] The point is excellent, though unfortunately I do not agree that any of those myths ever did disappear, which is a great pity.