The Last Atheist

Once upon a time not so very long ago, almost everyone believed in God. I mean how could you not? Look at the stars, look at the earth, look at the abundance and variety of life around you; it all can’t just happen to be this way, it can’t just happen to be at all. There has to be a God; it wouldn’t be ‘sane’ to think otherwise.

Unfortunately, conviction is such matters often translates into intolerance. Prior to 1500, all serious metaphysical exploration was required to acknowledge God’s (or gods’) role. 

Then we became Enlightened.  Over the last 500 years we have pushed out, way out, the frontiers of knowledge. Now we can account for most phenomena by linking one phenomenon to another. Over these same 500 years, we have built a new cosmic map based on these ‘explanatory’ connections. We’ve sketched out a new mappa mundi; we’ve stitched together a new logos. 

With each new ‘phenomenon explained’, our felt need for divine agency diminished. While we’re not home yet, we feel we can, Moses like, see ahead to the Promised Land: in this case a TOE – a Theory of Everything, a theory of everything that does not include God. We are, after all, ourselves already on the edge of omniscience. 

Unlike Nietzsche, we have not killed God; more like Sartre, we have rendered God superfluous. But per Occam’s Razor, superfluity = nullity; so we are ‘Nietzscheans’ after all, albeit a kinder, gentler version.

If we are not ‘there yet’, we are close to the moment when we will be able to say, “Almost no one believes in God anymore and ‘only a crazy person’ could believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of things. As for me and my tribe (Joshua) we’ll put our faith in science; it’s the only map we need.”

Natural processes have replaced Divine intentions in our cosmic etiology. The phenomenal patterns that had beguiled our ‘unenlightened’ minds into a belief in God are now having precisely the opposite effect: they have convinced us that we no longer need even to entertain the God Hypothesis.  

The number of people identifying their religious preference as ‘atheist, agnostic or none’ has increased exponentially over the past 50 years. Even among those identifying with a particular religion, the ranks of those actively participating in faith based activities (e.g. liturgy) is thinning out, rapidly.

Not too long ago, a book titled The Last Catholic in America was on the best seller list. It seemed reasonable to assume that ‘the superstition of religion’ might finally be a thing of the past for homo sapiens. In the next century, Karl, when people want opiates, they’ll get them at a pharmacy or a ‘head shop’ rather than a church. From this vantage, the Intellectual History of the West writes itself: 

Prior to 1500, folks ‘proved’ the necessary existence of God by appealing to the evidence of design in the World. After 1500, folks began to ‘prove’ that God was non-existent, or at least superfluous, by appealing to the exact same evidence, i.e. design.

It’s all very neat and tidy, isn’t it? If only it made sense! In fact, our so-called TOE is the paradigmatic Rube Goldberg contraption. Like Ptolemy’s cosmology prior to Galileo, our logos depends on a menagerie of outlandish improbabilities. 

By some estimates, we have identified as many as 90 totally unexplained and apparently independent (unrelated) physical properties and mathematical constants where a deviation of less than 1% from inferred or measured values would preclude the existence of a cosmos. Now ‘only a crazy person’ could think that the current model holds. 

The hypnotic effect of science, reinforced by technology and economic growth, is starting to wear off. The patient is waking up! Our heartfelt conviction that an explanation of ‘the World’ can be found in that World alone is wearing thin – we are experiencing yet another crisis of faith, 500 years on! 

This is not a revitalized attempt to prove the existence of God by appealing to the Argument from Design; it is an effort to suggest that evidence that design is immanent in the world does not preclude a transcendent explanation. 

The twin mysteries of Being and Consciousness, which seemed on the verge of solution a half century ago, now seem intractable. We need a new approach, a new intellectual paradigm, a new Galileo. It’s time to take our all-terrain vehicle off-road. 

There is some evidence that the birth pangs of this new paradigm may be underway. A belief in God no longer automatically spells the immediate end of an academic career. Plus, a recently released study by the highly respected Pew Research suggests that the decline in religious affiliation may have leveled off:

• In 2000, 28% of respondents identified as ‘none’; that number rose to 31% in 2020. Now it has reverted to 28%.

• Over the same period, 64% identified as ‘Christian’, declining to 60%, reverting to 63%.

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This is not a recommendation to buy Vatican City municipal bonds. A renewed tolerance for the Transcendent does not necessarily translate into a resurgence of previously popular faiths.  In fact, that will only happen, in my view, if those faiths find a way to connect their pre-Renaissance creeds with post-Enlightenment paradigms. 

Just as likely, new forms of spirituality will rise up and infiltrate, co-opt, or replace existing institutional religions. There are early signs that this may be happening as well. Since 2007, the number of respondents professing a non-Christian religious affiliation has almost doubled; on the other hand, less than 1% now identify as Episcopalian, the traditional religious affiliation of America’s ruling class.   

I make no predictions. Right now, it’s a ‘jump ball’. However, I do believe that we’ve entered an era characterized by an increasing tolerance for metaphysical speculation…and that alone is a good thing!

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