What is Atheism for Lent?
The Content
Atheism for Lent by Peter Rollins tries to take a more unconventional approach to a lenten devotional. The term "Atheism" is usually seen as a questioning or deconstruction of traditional religious beliefs, but for Peter, its a dance between belief and disbelief. Rollins is known for his work in theology and philosophy, and this approach involves engaging with doubt, skepticism, and a reevaluation of one's beliefs. It could be seen as an invitation to explore a more existential perspective during the season traditionally associated with spiritual reflection and preparation.
The Class
We will meet online once a week on Wednesdays from 11 am - 12 pm starting Feb 14, 2024. The class uses the Harvard pedagogical method of “Connect, Extend, Challenge.” Please read, hear, or watch the content as much as you can before our class, and write down connections, extensions, and challenges. We will then go into a group discussion to share our findings.
Meet the Instructor
Part 1: Classical Arguments
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Atheism for Lent begins today! Thank you so much for joining me for this Decentering Practice. Perhaps this is your first time, or maybe you’re a seasoned traveler, either way I believe that you'll find something important and even emancipatory in the content. This course aims to offer three things,
1. Intellectual enrichment
2. Paradigm shifting
3. Personal transformation
The first is the easiest one. You'll be hearing directly from some of the greatest thinkers the world has ever produced. All too often we engage indirectly with great minds, and often in simplistic, distorted, even caricatured, ways. During Lent, you will not only directly touch the live wire of these minds, but you'll get access to lots of secondary material that you can explore in your own time. The second aim is closely connected with the first, as you will likely come across ideas that challenge you in productive ways, widening your understanding and inviting you into a deeper and more expansive vision of the world. What this looks like will be personal. I will attempt to present everything in the strongest and clearest way possible. Which thinkers challenge, disturb and enrich you will depend largely on where you're coming from. Finally, there is personal transformation. This is a practice - not merely an intellectual exploration - and, as such, it is crafted in such a way as to invite you into an enriching conversation that has emancipatory power. At its core, it is about inviting people into a mystery that is a well of infinite possibility, creativity and healing.
So buckle up!
For today's reflection I want to offer a video that welcomes you and introduces the first few days.
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THE WATCHMAKER
William Paley (1743 - 1805), was an Anglican priest, Utilitarian philosopher, and theologian most famous for his teleological argument for the existence of God. In his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity he famously argued that the order of the world implies an intelligent designer, in much the same way as the existence of a watch implies a watchmaker. The argument had deeply impressed Charles Darwin, who remarked to a friend that the book Natural Theology was one of his most admired works and that he could ‘almost formerly have said it by heart.’
While there are innumerable arguments used to try to show the probability, possibility or certainty of a supreme being, the classical arguments can be described as the Cosmological, Teleological and Ontological. Today we begin Atheism for Lent with one of the best known expressions of the teleological argument. In this reflection I read from Paley's Natural Theology.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION (Extra Reading if you would like)
The Teleological argument is often considered to be the weakest argument for the existence of God in terms of its philosophical force, but the strongest in terms of its intuitive persuasiveness.
While it continues to be of some interest among some religious thinkers, one of Paley’s greatest admirers, Charles Darwin, is generally seen to have offered a decisive refutation of it, at least in its classical form. While other writers had offered strong critiques before Darwin, the theory of evolution provided a more rigorous and scientific explanation for the seeming design of the world. One that didn’t require an intelligent designer.
As Darwin wrote in his autobiography, ‘The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.’
There are still some who hold to a version of Paley’s argument, most notably in those who hold to the theory of Irreducible Complexity. This theory states that some biological systems could not have evolved by successive small modifications through natural selection, because no less complex system precursor would have been able to function. The theory is generally rejected by Biologists for failing to offer up a viable example of Irreducible Complexity, despite various attempts. Among the most famous attempts to show Irreducible Complexity are the Blood Clotting Cascade, the eye and the flagella.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve included a longer excerpt from the book Natural Theology, along with a reading from Darwin’s autobiography.
Reading from Natural Theology -
THE FIVE WAYS
Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher and theologian of the medieval period. His influence on the Western tradition is vast and his work continues to be studied carefully, particularly in the Catholic Church, where Thomism remains a living and dynamic tradition.
One of Aquinas’ most well-known contributions to philosophy concerns his 'five ways' (the Quinque viæ). These are five arguments that have often been used to try and prove the existence of God. It should be noted however that Aquinas may never have considered his five ways in quite this way. Some scholars argue that he was more interested in offering a rigorous definition of the word 'God' than an argument for God. But the five ways do suggest that he thinks that the existence and nature of the universe requires the belief in some fundamental, grounding reality... that we call God.
The five ways are summarized in his Summa Theologiae. and receive a more detailed treatment in the Summa Contra Gentiles.
They arguments are:
The argument from "first mover"
The argument from universal causation
The argument from contingency
The argument from degree
The argument from final cause or ends
These are generally considered to be forms of the Cosmological Argument. Although the third has some resemblance to the Ontological Argument and the fifth has a certain resemblance to the Teleological Argument. Importantly for Aquinas, they are all also a posteri arguments, meaning that they move from some observation about the world (in contrast to a priori arguments, which build an argument using pure reason).
In today's reflection, I have given you the first three, which are often considered to be the strongest.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION (Extra Reading If you would like)
Arguments for and against the existence of God can be grouped into the categories of a priori and a posteriori. The former being arguments that arise purely from concepts, the latter being arguments that begin from an observation about the world.
Aquinas rejected a priori arguments, believing that such an approach would require a prior knowledge of the nature of God (as that which must exist by necessity - which we'll be looking at in a couple of days). Instead he believed that we could only come to understand the fundamental nature of God through an observation of nature. Therefore Aquinas looked at the most basic elements of nature and attempted to use them to build his case.
As I mentioned yesterday, Cosmological arguments sit alongside Teleological and Ontological arguments as the most famous types of proof for the existence of God.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve included a more detailed description of all five ways from Summa contra gentiles, as well as a famous debate between Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell, where Copleston makes use of the Cosmological Argument. Finally, I’ve included a series of short video essays by Daniel Bonevac on each of the arguments.
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René Descartes (1596–1650) stands as one of the most significant philosophers, mathematicians and scientific thinkers the world has known. While he made significant contributions in a number of fields, he is best known for his attempt to found philosophy on sure foundations, most famously expressed in his dictum cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). He argued that, while it might be possible for us to be deceived about all the things we believe about the world, there is one thing that we could never be deceived about. If we were to doubt that we were thinking, then we would be thinking about doubt. This means that we could never really doubt we were thinking without simultaneously proving that we were thinking. From this seemingly inconsequential insight, he sought to build a foundation upon which knowledge of the world could be justified.
From this starting point, Descartes believed that we could prove the existence of God. Without knowing anything about the external world, we could, through pure thought, know that God must exist. To show this he outlined the third most famous type of argument for the existence of God: the Ontological. The Ontological argument is arguably the most important of all the arguments, and the one that all the others implicitly rely on (something that Kant argued).
The Ontological Argument was first developed by St Anselm in the 12th century and remains as one of the most strange and fascinating logical puzzles in philosophy to this day.
After today you will know the three main arguments used to try and prove the existence of God: the Cosmological, Teleological and Ontological.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
While Anselm is the most famous author of what has been called the Ontological Argument, I'm using Descartes’ argument from his Fifth Meditation because it clearly lays out the position. A position which attempts to prove the existence of God from the definition of God.
Ontological Arguments attempt to show that the concept ‘God’ contains the idea of necessary existence, just like the concept ‘triangle’ contains the idea of a shape with three sides. To say ‘a triangle has four sides’ is equivalent to saying, ‘a triangle, which has three sides, has four sides’. This is then a type of performative contradiction in that the person contradicts themselves in the very claim. In the same way, it is argued that saying, ‘God does not exist’, is the equivalent of saying ‘God, who must exist, does not exist’. The argument can be structured like this,
The definition of God is ‘a being with every perfection.
Necessary existence is a perfection
Therefore, God must exist
While most people have an intuitive suspicion when hearing this argument, it has been quite difficult to critique and many philosophers and mathematicians have continued to advocate some version of it.
There have however been various critiques, with the most famous coming from Immanuel Kant who argued that existence is not a predicate. In other words, existence is not something that an object possesses in the same way as we might own a coat, or have brown hair. At most the argument tells us that, if God exists, then God must exist.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
You’ll find here a short article that outlines the logical problem with Descartes argument (although there are other versions of the argument that attempt to avoid the issues with this one).
Part 2: The Atheistic Arguments
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Today I’ll be setting up the various reflections for this week, by looking at various arguments against the existence of God. Numerous thinkers since antiquity have attempted to show that this notion is either improbable, nonsensical or impossible.
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THE SECRET ATHEIST
Jean Meslier (1664 – 1729), was a French Catholic priest who secretly penned the first systematic text wholly devoted to atheism. While his work is still largely unknown, he is increasingly seen as the father of modern atheism. This secret work of unwavering critique was only discovered after his death.
He was a quiet, hard working parish priest. He lived in complete simplicity and gave any money he made to the poor and oppressed. He also got into trouble when he preached a sermon that involved critiquing the noble man of the town - Antoine de Toull - and refusing him holy water. The noble man reported him to the Bishop and Meslier was disciplined. Yet the priest did not relent, inviting his congregation to pray for the noble man, that he might repent from mistreating the poor and robbing orphans.
While the style of his book is repetitive and often bombastic, Meslier also offers some careful philosophical objections against the existence of God, exegetical arguments against the reliability of the bible and moral arguments against the teachings of scripture. While he applauded how the early Christians shared their goods, he believed that Christianity quickly degenerated into a religion that encouraged submission to tyranny and acceptance of suffering.
The following is a reading from Volume 9 of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. This reading gives you a glimpse into his life and introduces his thinking through direct quotes. This audio clip is less about offering some strong argument against God, and more about introducing the idea that critique often grows out of that which it negates.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION (Extra Reading If you would like)
I’m particularity taken by the life and work of Jean Meslier because of the way that he shows how the best atheistic critiques can arise out of the very ground they reject. The greatest ‘enemies’ of the faith often know that life intimately, have dedicated their lives to it and have first hand knowledge of the inconsistencies, antagonisms, deadlocks and contradictions. For some philosophers, it is only the truly religious figure who can actually transcend religion. The reason for this lies in the idea that religious sentiment is almost impossible to get rid of - persisting in secular ways through the pursuit of wholeness in money, fame, fitness etc. Nietzsche once wrote that, ‘after the Buddha had died it is said that his shadow remained on a cave wall for thousands of years,’ he then claimed that, ‘the shadow of God remains after the death of God, and must also be removed’. Here he was referring to the religious sentiment in secular life.
It is hard to find a better expression of this idea of transcending religion than in the work of Meslier, who lived a simple life devoid of any desire to find salvation in money, religion or reputation. He not only rejected the religious God, but seemed to live a life freed from the very shadow of that God.
His intimate knowledge of the religious life gives his critique a profound authority, and includes elements that act as a foreshadowing of what we will encounter in week four - where we shall encounter the materialist critiques of people like Feuerbach, Marx and Goldman.
But his savage critique also opens up the door to a profound understanding of faith that we will see being taken up in the fifth week. Indeed, at one point in his Testament, he even writes that, if people take his attack seriously; casting off the inequalities of religion and working towards a this-worldly kingdom of equality, then Christianity would finally become real. An interesting comment that foreshadows the work thinkers like Bonhoeffer, who saw the rejection of religion in favor of human justice to signal the next Reformation of religion.
I hope that this reflection provides a powerful example of how the most passionate critique of religion is intimately connected with what it rejects. Hinting at the type of dialectic relationship theism and atheism have.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve also enclosed a document with some excerpts from Testament, as well as a link to his book.
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THE INVISIBLE GARDENER
Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) was an analytic philosopher, most notable for his work related to the philosophy of religion. The following excerpt is from an essay called ‘Theology and Falsification’. An essay that is widely regarded to be the most widely read philosophical publication of the twentieth century. It has undergone at least forty reprints and been translated into multiple languages.
The paper was a development of a paper first read to the Socratic Club (founded by C.S. Lewis). In this paper we encounter the famous parable of the invisible gardener. I've included this paper because it offers one of the clearest and most concise expressions of the analytic argument against God as a being.
Part of this excerpt gets a little complicated if you're not used to philosophy, but the parable itself - and the concluding paragraphs - make his point quite clearly. I've recorded myself reading the excerpt, as well as providing a written version.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION (Extra Reading if you would like)
In this week’s seminar I talked about how the critiques of theism have been a driving engine in the development of theological and philosophical thought.
When a position is critiqued, the critique itself opens up new avenues to be explored, avenues that themselves become open to critique. In this dialectic journey of thesis and antithesis, a richness and depth evolves. Until eventually we discover that the movement itself, rather than the always illusive endpoint, is where the life is.
Yet I also mentioned how this movement can be stifled in various ways. One of them being cleverly captured in today’s reflection. In a nutshell, Flew employs a parable to warn against what I would term a ‘false dialectic’, which - to mix a metaphor - keeps moving the goalposts to avoid moving forward.
Today’s reflection gives us a chance to think about whether we have ever fallen foul of this stagnation. Something we might have done through fear of entering into unknown territory.
In truth, this is a temptation for all of us. It is in no way limited to the religious world, as we witness everyday on social media. Many of us, for instance, defend our political positions in a way that is similar to how the apologist defends the invisible gardener.
While Flew focuses here on religion, he reveals a pervasive strategy that is alive and way today. A strategy threatens to extinguish genuine, productive conversation in various arenas, whether that be the religious, political or cultural.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve included the Theology and Falsification essay in its entirety below, as well as a link to a book of essays that it comes from. In addition to this, I’ve included a short recording that covers the argument, it’s context and some of the original responses to Flew’s argument. In addition to this, I’ve included an article by John Wisdom. This article contains the original parable of the Invisible Gardener.
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David Hume (1711 - 1776) is widely considered to be one of the most influential and important modern philosophers, with his work acting as a direct inspiration to many prominent thinkers who followed in his wake, including Adam Smith, Kant and Darwin.
The following is an excerpt from his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The work was seen as so incendiary that he was persuaded to hold off publishing it until after his death.
The book is written as the record of a conversation between three people: Cleanthes, Demea and Philo. Cleanthes and Demea can be seen to broadly represent the two dominant religious positions of the 18th century. Cleanthes stands in for those who think that we can gain knowledge of God's existence and essence through an examination of the world while Demea represents those who believe that, although we can know that God exists, God's nature is beyond our ability to understand.
While Philo also claims to believe that God exists, he offers up a series of critiques that fundamentally undermine and upset both Cleanthes and Demea. For Philo offers a persuasive argument that the God they affirm is less than competent and good.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
In the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion it isn’t always easy to see what position Hume is holding. This is partly because he is more interested in drawing the reader into a discussion than presenting a single argument. However it is Philo who is considered to best reflect Hume's own views.
So why was it too dangerous to publish this book during Hume's lifetime? While writing a text that directly advocated atheism would have been a risky venture, the fact is that each character actually believes in God. Many people have postulated that Hume did this because it would have been too dangerous to directly make Philo an atheist. However, if that is the case, then why did he hold off on the publication. I would argue that Hume had created an even more dangerous book precisely because Philo did believe in God. More disconcerting than a standard atheist would be a theist who undermined the morality and power of that God.
What we find here is not the common atheistic position of pointing out the problems with the arguments for God, but rather a position in which Philo accepts at least one of them (the teleological argument), but argues that it presents a weak, immoral God.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I've enclosed a link to the book from which today's excerpt was taken from.
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John Leslie Mackie (1917 – 1981) was an analytic philosopher who wrote in the areas of religion, metaphysics and language. While Mackie is not well known today, his work reflects a rigorous rejection of the religious notion of God.
In today’s reflection we will encounter the primary argument used against the existence of God. The argument itself goes right back to the beginnings of philosophy, but Mackie offers up one of the clearest modern renderings of it. This reflection is an abridged version of the essay, ‘Evil and Omnipotence’.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
We can trace the argument from Evil back to the work of Epicurus (341–270 BC) who founded the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments of his 300 works remain. For Epicurus, philosophy involves helping people lead a happy life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life with friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are measures of what is good and evil; death is the end and should not be feared; the gods neither reward nor punish; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events are based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. In one of his fragments we read, ‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?’.
To this day, many people who believe in the classical notion of God cite this argument as the one that causes them most concern, while many credit it as having been the primary intellectual factor in giving up the belief in a God.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve included the full article by Mackie, a document with some of the earliest critiques of religion, from Protagoras, Epicurus and Seneca and a book by Mackie called The Miracle of Theism.
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Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) stands as one of the most important philosophers who ever lived. Kant's relationship to religion and the question of God is a complicated one. Early in his career he supported an argument for the existence of God that is called the Transcendental Argument. However, this was before he developed his critical method, and so fits within the period that he called his 'dogmatic slumber'. While he remained interested in religion for all of his life he did not think that the existence of God could be argued for through reason.
He is famous for his critiques of the Ontological, Cosmological and Teleological arguments for God's existence, which he took to be the three rational attempts to prove the existence of God. In his critique, he argued that the Teleological argument ultimately supports itself via the Cosmological argument, which itself rests on the Ontological argument. So, if the Ontological Argument is not valid, then the others crumble.
In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that pure reason cannot give us answers to questions regarding such metaphysical questions as the existence of God, because pure reason can be used to justify various opposing positions. It's not that we can't make claims about ultimate reality using pure reason, but the opposite problem: we are lead to different, mutually exclusive claims. The name he gave to the mutually contradictory results of applying pure reason were 'antinomies'. In today’s reflection, I outline what these antinomies were for Kant.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
As I mentioned in the above introduction, Kant's relationship to religion and God is subtle. Kant himself felt that an individual could justifiably claim that God existing through faith. With faith itself resting on hope. In a nutshell, Kant argued that we experience both a desire to be moral and happy, and that we want these can be unified. Because they are not unified in this life, we hope that they will be in the future. God is the being who could ensure their ultimate relationship. So, when one believes in God, one hopes that there exists a being who will bring these together, and one lives in fidelity to this hope.
Some have lamented/celebrated this position as effectively making space for God in the midst of the achievements of the Enlightenment, while others have lamented/celebrated this position as effectively removing God from the achievements of the Enlightenment. So Kant has supporters and critics among traditional theists and atheists.
With the antinomies Kant offers up an important version of the argument that reason cannot penetrate to ultimate reality. For Kant, the evidence of this is seen in the ways that pure reason can lead us in very different directions.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Below I’ve included a link to a long article that goes into detail regarding Kant's relationship to religion. It is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is a great resource that is much more authoritative and reliable than wikipedia.
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Douglas Gasking (1911 – 1994) was a philosopher who taught at the University of Melbourne. He is the least famous of the thinkers you’re encountering this week. Indeed the argument that is contained here was not even written down by Gasking, but was rather presented informally to a friend and then passed around orally for many years. I’ve included it here as a clever and amusing atheistic version of the Ontological Argument.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
Gasking’s Ontological Proof for the Non-Existence of God is a parody that was never meant to be taken seriously as a logical proof. At best, Gasking was pointing out how these purely logical constructions can lead to bizarre claims. In this way, he was arguing something similar to Kant, who you will encounter tomorrow. However, there is something interesting in this argument that hints at a different understanding of God that we will explore more in the final weeks of this course.
Richard Dawkin’s commented on Gasking’s argument, by saying, ‘Gasking didn’t really prove that God does not exist. By the same token, Anselm didn’t prove that he does. The only difference is, Gasking was was being funny on purpose’. However, to add another twist, perhaps Gasking, in making a joke, is actually touching on something very profound, namely that the word ‘God’ might better be thought of as a type of lack. This is something we shall explore in more depth when we get to people like Simone Weil and Richard Boothby.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
There isn’t much literature on Gasking’s Ontological Argument, so I have linked to a book that offers a description of all the major ontological arguments presented in the history of Western philosophy. I am tempted to write something more substantial about this argument in my next book.
Part 3: Mystical A/Theism
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In this talk I introduce the reflections that all revolve around the theme of negative theology in Christianity. Here we touch on the traditional approach to negative theology as developed by the early Christianity mystics. By delving into the central claim of mysticism and its relationship to atheism we explore mysticisms dialectical nature, its embrace of epistemic humility, its notion of paradox, its understanding of theo-poetics and its understanding of Otherness.
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Maimonides (1138 – 1204) stands as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period and is an important thinker in the tradition of Apophatic Theology. His most important work was the Guide of the Perplexed, a letter written to a student considering where to follow the way of religion or philosophy. The text itself seeks to show how religious knowledge and secular thought can be brought together. The work deals with subjects such as demythologization, the scope and limits of knowledge and the vitality of negative theology.
The work itself was originally considered controversial and banned. Today’s reflection is chapter 60, which offers up his famous critique of positive theology (making claims about the attributes and nature of God). The chapter is a subtle, but important example, of the theological notion that atheism is a type of religious purification practice, and that the more we negate God, the closer to God we get.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
Maimonides can be seen as an important early expression of a type of theological atheism that has continued to develop into the modern period. In brief, he argues that, when we say God is ‘one’, we are, in effect, saying that God is utterly different from everything that we experience in the world. While I can count a person as ‘one’, that individual is really made of many parts (their height, weight, personality, language, hair color, molecular structure etc.). The same goes if I pick out an object in the world like a table. If something were really one, argues Maimonides, then we couldn’t think of it as composed of different parts - such as all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful - without fundamentally missing what you are trying to name.
Also, the person or object that I encounter in the world can be subsumed under larger categories - such as animal or object - again, this makes no sense of God, because it would mean that there is something more expansive than God. Also, if someone has two qualities, such as kindness and wisdom, there must be some prior reason why these qualities have been combined, and why they remain. Again, this makes no sense in terms of God. For these, and other reasons, Maimonides charts a path of radical negation. Yet even this is something he ultimately rejects as itself not radical enough, arguing that we must come to know the inadequacy of all expressions and the importance of learned silence.
Maimonides offers us a fascinating analogy for understanding how God might appear in various different ways in the world. He writes of how a fire has a different effect on different objects - softening wax, hardening clay, blackening sugar etc. Depending on the nature of the object, the same fire draws out different effects. In the same way, we might say that the inscrutable oneness of God draws out different effects in the people and objects it touches.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I’ve included a link to some reflections by Dionysius and the early mystics. Dionysius can be credited as the first individuals to develop a theory and practice that explicitly incorporates atheism as a central motif within theology. The extracts are from The Mystical Theology, and offer two classical examples of Negative Theology. Negative theology - also called Apophatic theology - exists in a type of dialectical relationship with Positive - or Kataphatic - theology. It offers a type of atheistic de-naming of God (Denomination) that always undermines and delimits the theistic naming of God (Nomination). I've also included some sayings by the early mystics have an interesting and undervalued place in the history of atheism, with a theological approach that constantly deferred, delayed, destabilized and disarmed our understanding of God via a rigorous set of negations. Today’s reflection begins with some classical quotes from some notable mystics. I've also included a link to Dionysius’ The Mystical Theology, two other books that offer a substantial deep dive into the mystical tradition and a link to Maimonides Guide.
DIONYSIUS AND THE EARLY MYSTICS
BIG BOOK OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
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Jean-Luc Marion (1946 - present) is a French philosopher and theologian who is known for bringing mystical and medieval philosophy into conversation with modern philosophy. He is perhaps best known for his critical engagement with Jacques Derrida (who was his former teacher). In this engagement he offered up the theological idea of ‘denomination’ as an alternative approach to the philosophy of deconstruction.
Today’s reflection is short but dense. It is an excerpt from an essay of his called ‘In the Name’, where he directly engages with Derrida and defends the idea of a theological system that maintains the absolute Otherness, or ‘absence’ of God, while affirming the possibility of revelation.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION
In this excerpt, Marion describes how it is possible for something to exist in reality that cannot be conceived by the mind. More than this, he argues that we can, hypothetically, encounter such a reality, which he calls a confrontation with a saturating phenomenon. He argues that various religious thinkers have described their encounter with God in this way.
The philosophy of Deconstruction is concerned with showing how there is always something absent in all our conceptions of the world. For instance, when we speak about Justice or Beauty, we can never pin them down. Language itself never fully grasps what it articulates, yet this failure is not some limit, but rather itself expresses a deep truth. Marion claims that mystical theology also offers a similar critique as that found in Deconstruction (which is often called the 'critique of the metaphysics of presence'), yet, unlike Deconstruction, it affirms, not some absence at the heart of everything, but a hyperpresence. This 'hyperpresence' can never be named, not because it lacks substance, but because its reality is too bedazzeling to grasp. Marion calls this approach 'Denomination' and argues that it can help us correctly understand theology as a type of praise and prayer that aims at what it can never put into words. In this way, Marion is part of a theological tradition that affirms the spiritual power of atheism as a weapon against idolatry.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
I've linked to a copy of the book that this excerpt is from, as well as including an essay Marion wrote on Anselm.
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Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, making important intellectual contributions from the age of 16, including the invention of a calculator as a teenager (to help his dad). However, Pascal is most famous for his philosophical reflections. Reflections which possess a richness, style and insight that make them feel as fresh and vital today as when they were first written.
His masterpiece was an unfinished work that came to be called the Pensées. Through his endeavor to describe and defend Christianity in a compelling way, Pascal ended up giving the world some of the most profound descriptions of the human condition. Predating both Psychoanalysis and Existentialism, his work describes many of the themes that would become so central to these movements, such as the power of self-deception, the anxiety of freedom and the dizzying experience of feeling both the splendor and insignificance of existence. Basically, it’s a intellectual rollercoaster.
I've included Pascal in this week's reflections because he argued very powerfully that rational reflection could not bring us to some knowledge of the existence or essence of God. Pascal developed a very careful and fascinating series of arguments that put forward the idea that the misery of the human condition would make it reasonable for us to hope that there was a God. From there, he argued that reason would bring us to the idea that we should seek God. With this seeking being evidenced in a life where one becomes receptive to an encounter with God through practices such as prayer.
For Pascal, the human condition and reason could only bring us to the point of openness to the possibility that God might exist and may appear to us. But the existence and essence of God could only be known through an encounter that occurred in what he called the 'realm of the heart'.
Pascal himself believed that he experienced this encounter on the 23 of November, 1654. At around 10:30pm, he underwent a profound religious experience. In its immediate aftermath he sketched out a response to the event and sowed into into the inner lining of his jacket, so that it was always close to him. This reflection, known as the Memorial was discovered by accident, after his death. Today's reflection is this famous Memorial.
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Rudolf Otto (1869 – 1937) was a brilliant theologian, philosopher and scholar of religion who deeply impacted the direction of religious thinking in the 20th century. His most famous work, The Idea of the Holy, offered the reader a way of defending the idea that humans can have a direct encounter with the ‘numinous’, i.e. with that which grounds and sustains all being. While agreeing with Kant that we cannot infer the truth of the numinous through some rational reflection on our experience of the external world, he argued that there is a unique type of religious experience which overwhelms us with a truth we cannot conceptualize.
For today’s reflection, I’d like to recommend you read Chapter 2 of the enclosed book (and Chapter 3, if you have time).
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Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) was a writer, composer and mystic who became known for her visions, theological reflections, songs and plays, as well as botanical and medicinal works. Today she is most well known for her music, where sixty-nine compositions exist, alongside her morality play, Ordo Virtutum. Making it one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
In 1998 David Lynch joined forces with Jocelyn Montgomery to create Lux Vivens (Living Light), an album dedicated to bringing the music of Hildegard of Bingen to life. The album itself is a dark and haunting work that combines sparse soundscapes, melancholy vocals and sounds taken from nature, to create an incredible modern rendition of her work. With hints of Sinéad O’Connor and the Cocteau Twins, this surreal and mesmerizing album gives a taste of the mystical expanse of her work.
I’ve only included one song for today’s reflection, but you can hear the whole album by going to Supplemental Material.
You’ll enjoy this best if you’re able to listen alone, in a darkened room.
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Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328), was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic. He is widely held to be one of the greatest mystics in the Christian tradition and has garnered considerable interest in both popular and academic circles.
The following excerpt is from one of his sermons, where we get a glimpse of his understanding of God as a reality beyond being.
Part 4: Functional Critique
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Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 – 1872) was best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided powerful a critique of Christianity which strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
His philosophical writings had a deep understanding and appreciation of theology. Indeed he saw himself as a friend of theology who was merely helping to reveal the materialist truth of its message. His thought was influential in the development of historical materialism. He is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
The following are excerpts from section 2 of the Introduction of The Essence of Christianity. These offer a good overview of his most important and lasting contribution to the critique of religion: the idea of God as a projection of the human essence.
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OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE | 5TH MARCH
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was a philosopher and political theorist who stands as one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in history. Marx's theories about society, economics and politics hold that human societies develop through a dialectic class struggle. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx propounded the theory of base and superstructure, asserting that the cultural and political conditions of society, as well as its notions of human nature, are largely determined by economic foundations. These economic critiques were set out in influential works such as the three volumes, published between 1867 and 1894, that comprise Das Kapital.
In the following excerpt we encounter Marx's famous writing on religion as a painkiller that dulls action rather than promoting it.
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Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was a French existentialist and feminist who is best known for her work The Second Sex, which combined Marxist and existentialist themes to explore the ways that women are defined and subjugated within society. While she did not consider herself a philosopher, she wrote four books that are now widely considered to be important philosophical texts.
In her youth, de Beauvoir was religious, but came to reject it at the age of 14, going on to see religious institutions as structures that supported the subjection of woman. She was deeply influenced by Marx and his analysis of how political, economic, educational and religious structures help to oppress the proletariat, but she focused primarily on how these structures contributed to the oppression of woman.
The following excerpt is taken from her classic text The Second Sex and explores how she believes that contemporary religious institutions perpetuate the real subjugation of woman precisely through offering a message that appears emancipatory.
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Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud remains as one of the giants of 20th century intellectual life, and continues to extend a huge influence in both therapeutic and academic domains.
In The Future of an Illusion, Freud explores religious belief as an illusion (rather than error), transmitted via tradition, upheld because of arguments handed down from antiquity, and protected due to prohibitions against questioning. Religious beliefs are of interest to Freud because of the way that they act as a type of wish fulfillment concerning the, "oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind."
The following is a small excerpt from this book.
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EXISTENTIAL HUMANISM | 8TH MARCH
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was one of the most prominent philosophers in the tradition known as Existentialism. In addition to academic philosophy, he was also known for publishing, highly regarded, best selling literary works. As a result of this, he was one of the few philosophers to have gained a huge popularity in his own lifetime.
Two years after publishing his most famous work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre gave a lecture called ‘Existentialism is a humanism’ to a packed auditorium. This lecture offered a succinct description of his philosophical position and remains the best starting point for understanding his work. In today’s reflection I have offered an abridged version of the lecture (if you have more time, I have included the entire lecture in the Supplemental Material).
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Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues. She was also part of a plan to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick as an act of ‘propaganda of the deed’. Goldman was imprisoned several times for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues. The following is an abridged version of her essay 'The Failure of Christianity' (if you have a little more time, you can read the full version in the Supplemental Material section).
Part 5: Death of God Theology
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his resistance to Nazi dictatorship. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison. Later he was transferred to a Nazi concentration camp. After being associated with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried and executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing.
Shortly before his death, Bonhoeffer started writing on what he called "Religionless Christianity". These writings became influential in the development of a post-theistic theology grounded in the work of liberation. The following are some excerpts.
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Barnett Newman (1905–1970) is one of the most important figures in the artistic movement known as Abstract Expressionism. an American artist. Between 1958 and 1966 he worked on a series of paintings called The Stations of the Cross. These are a series of abstract black and white paintings that are generally considered to be his great works. Importantly, the subtitle to this series is Lama Sabachthani: Why Have You Forsaken Me? In today's reflection I want to share with you the first of Newman's stations along with a reflection from me.
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Karl Barth (1886 - 1968) was arguably the most influential theologian of the 20th century. He offered a devastating critique of Liberal theology, was one of the most outspoken critics of National Socialism, along with the churches involvement with it, and offered a strong defense of the idea that God a wholly other reality that appears in the world as that which destabilizes our political, cultural and religious systems.
I’ve included Karl Barth in this year’s course, because his own theology seeks to embrace and envelope the various critiques from last week. He broadly sees such critiques as death blows to liberal theology and offers a radically different approach to the meaning of the word ‘God’.
The following is an excerpt from his seminal work Epistle to the Romans. In this section we glimpse Barth's critique of Natural Theology, which he steadfastly rejected. Here he writes of how our only knowledge of God is in fact a knowledge of our own ignorance. We also see how he views religion as a wholly human construction that reflects only our own ideas.
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Simone Weil (1909 – 1943) was an intellectually brilliant and deeply troubled philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Taking a path that was unusual among twentieth-century left-leaning intellectuals, she became interested in mysticism as her life progressed.
In this excerpt we witness an example of Weil's complex and subtle work that opens up an understanding the divine that cut against the idea of God as a being. Weil's work has a place in the wider development of a post-theistic approach to theology.
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Toward a Hidden God (1966) was an article in TIME magazine that explored some of the themes being explored by modern theologians who were seriously engaging with issues around secularism. This article brought the discipline of Radical Theology to a popular audience.
The magazine cover remains one of the most iconic images in publishing history and drew heavy criticism. It is also one of the best selling TIME magazines.
This article came after a previous controversial article from October 1965, that had investigated a trend among 1960s theologians to write about the death of God in theology. Today’s reflection is the 1966 article.
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Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965) was an philosopher and theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.
Among the general public, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership. Theologically, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63) in which he developed his "method of correlation", an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.
Tillich was famous for his deeply moving and profoundly rich sermons, which were able to capture the essence of his work. Today's reflection is one of his most famous sermons, entitled 'You Are Accepted'. Here you will encounter an understanding of the terms 'sin' and 'grace' that do not require a person affirm theism in any narrow sense.
Part 6: Faith and the Impossible
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Richard Boothby (1954 - present) is a professor of philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. Boothby published a number of books that established his reputation as an important interpreter of Lacan. More recently he published a deeply moving memoir about losing his son to suicide alongside a deeply important text exploring religion from a Lacanian perspective.
Below you'll find Richard Boothby's talk from Wake 2022 about his book Embracing the Void. Because of its length, this reflection will cover both 27th and 28th March. However I have also included his other talk, about the tragic loss of his son, in the supplemental material, if you want something for tomorrow.
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John Caputo (1940) is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. Caputo is a major figure associated with Postmodern Christianity, Continental Philosophy of Religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction and radical theology.
In the following excerpt from On Religion, Caputo offers an approach to Christianity that transcends belief.
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Slavoj Žižek (1949) is a Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher and cultural critic. His work is located at the intersection of a range of subjects, including continental philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and theology.
His writing spans dense theoretical polemics, academic tomes, and accessible introductory books; in addition, he has taken part in various film projects. His idiosyncratic style, popular academic works, frequent magazine op-eds, and critical assimilation of high and low culture have gained him international influence and a substantial audience outside of academia. In 2012, Foreign Policy listed his on its list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, while elsewhere he has been dubbed the "the most dangerous philosopher in the West".
The following talk is one where he plays on the theme touched on by Sartre in the reflection from week four, namely the idea that 'if God does not exist, everything is permissible'. Because of its length I'm also splitting this into two days. But check the supplemental material if you want extra.
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Todd McGowan is a film and cultural theorist who employs a (Lacanian) psychoanalytic frame to analyze cinema and political life. He is the author of numerous books, including Capitalism and Desire and Enjoying What We Don't Have. McGowan has become one of my favorite contempoary theorists. He is able to write in an accessible way that provides deep insight into contemporary life. Both McGowan and I operate from the within the same theoretical network.
The following is an episode from the podcast Philosophy in the Real. In this interview he talks about his book Emancipation After Hegel, a work that can help to clarify some of the moves central to pyrotheology.
Part 7: Embracing the Lack
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Pádraig Ó Tuama is a world renowned poet, musician and public theologian who works in the area of conflict mediation and group dialogue. While known for being team leader of Corrymeela Community, for his work in advocacy across the world, as the founder of Tenx9 and for his regular appearances on Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” he was also one of the key contributors to ikon and key people in the development of pyrotheology.
His latest book is In the Shelter, and he has an album of music and poetry called Hymns to Swear by.
I’ve included this song (from Hymns to Swear by), because it represents a powerful musical example of the dialectic process I spoke of on the first day. Pádraig has written a piece of music that goes into the heart of questioning, struggle and anger, but in a way that sublimates them in the expression of a wider, deeper and richer expression of faith.
Another interesting thing about the song is the way that all the words are derived diretly from the book of Jeremiah. It is a beautiful reflection on the struggle of faith and how that struggle lies at the very heart of faith.
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A Guide to Making Love is an experimental documentary that blends together three short films with a series of reflections to describe the central message of pyrotheology. This section of the documentary introduces the topic and includes the short film Allone, which is based on an ancient Buddhist parable. In the documentary we explore the relationship between desire and faith, which should become clearer over the next three reflections.
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In this segment from the documentary I offer some reflections on the short film Allone, exploring the idea that we are joined together in our lack.
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To conclude Atheism for Lent, I have taken two clips from A Guide to Making Love, that explore the idea of a self-divided God.
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