David Hume and the Atheists

Last year marked the tercentenary of the birth of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and controversial atheist David Hume. And in April this year, thousands of card-carrying (or at least mildly-amusing-T-shirt-wearing) atheists will descend upon the Melbourne Convention Centre for the Global Atheist Convention. The relative coincidence of these two occurrences, I feel, invites a brief consideration of what progress has been made in the atheism–theism debate since Hume’s posthumously and (even then) anonymously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 

Hume devotes the majority of his Dialogues to discrediting various incarnations of the Teleological Argument for the Existence of God—that is, whether the apparent order and purpose we find occurring in the natural world warrant an analogical inference to the existence of an intelligent designer. Hume (along with the vast majority of other philosophers since) is certain that no such warrant is forthcoming. He argues that, although we are normally justified in inferring the existence of an intelligent designer whenever we come across a pocket watch, an iPhone, or even a Metro timetable, the universe as a whole is an entirely different kettle of fish. When it comes to the former kind of artefact, we have seen (or can readily go and see) such objects being made in factories, workshops or backyards, as the case may be. But no one has ever seen a universe being made. And so, even though we are normally warranted in our inferring the existence of an intelligent designer whenever we come across an object that suggests a purposeful or complex mechanism (even if we ourselves have never seen the particular object in question being designed and built, let alone understand how it works), the analogy critically breaks down when we come to consider how the universe uniquely came into being.

Unfortunately for Hume’s legacy, the principles of reason are not universally taught, and there are some (motivated by faith, money or power) who continue to prey on those less critically minded than are able to spot an argumentative fallacy 100 yards off. Representatives will happily visit your local school or community group to present a highly crafted PowerPoint presentation debunking the so-called science of evolutionary theory, and all-too-consciously skipping neatly over the faults in their own intelligent-design arguments.

In this light, Hume’s investigation of the theism–atheism debate might be said (in his own words) to have “fallen still-born from the press”. But perhaps this is too hasty. Hume’s work is not directly at fault here. Indeed anyone who has studied Hume, or has been educated in the tradition to which he so significantly contributed, will undoubtedly recognise the force of his arguments, and the weaknesses in his opponents’ position. Rather, the blame and shame for the perpetuation of fallacious “faiths” even three hundred years on from Hume’s clear and perceptive refutation must fall to our educators, the government, and culture at large.

A likely, positive outcome of the Global Atheist Convention, then, will be to give this state of affairs the further airing it deserves.

But if we were to assume from this evaluation that the question of God were so one-sided, we should stop and think again. Admittedly, if Hume were alive today, he would likely be one of the convention’s keynote presenters, along with what would now be his contemporary peers, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer. But Hume also acknowledged that the failings of the Teleological Argument—while certainly inadequate in establishing the existence of an intelligent designer, god or God—equally did not block the possibility either.

It is true that contemporary atheists are now in a much stronger position than Hume had been, primarily by virtue of the recent triumphs of evolutionary theory. The explanatory power that has been discovered in the theory of evolution readily strips away any felt need to posit the existence of a designer when it comes to the adaptive complexity we see occurring in the natural world. Yet, while these explanatory successes certainly refute intelligent-design arguments, one would be mistaken to think that they in any way settle the matter as to whether or not God exists. While no trace of God may be found in the order and sophistication of the natural world, this does not rule out the possibility that He (or She) might be found elsewhere. Indeed, there’s an increasingly popular, yet unlikely contender that opens the way to the possibility (remote, yet not impossible) for a variety of theism: namely, Physicalism. 

Normally, when theists and atheists have it out, the default position of the atheist is to claim that nothing exists other than the material, physical universe. This position—known as naturalistic monism (that is, that there’s only one metaphysical substance, matter)—is, they argue, vindicated by the best working theories of modern science, which is after all, our best method for distinguishing truth from fancy (or “faith”). And, they presume, it is inherently at odds with any form of supernaturalistic dualism that might give room for a divine being to somehow exist outside of space and time. Now, no one’s going to argue against the latter point. But in the schools of contemporary philosophy (which now prides itself on being congruent with the tenets of our best science), there’s an increasing amount of chatter about the viability of a possibility that will certainly rub diehard atheists the wrong way. And yet, the phenomenon in question seems to arise directly from the traditional stronghold of atheists—that there is only a physical universe. As Dawkins puts it: “An atheist is someone who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world.”

Physicalists commit a profound error or self-deception, argues the British philosopher Galen Strawson, if they first suppose that they know anything more about non-experiential matter than they do about experiential properties; and worse, if they proceed from this confusion to conclude that any hardline Materialism must therefore “drain our conception of the experiential of any element that produces special puzzlement, leaving our existing conception of the non-experiential in place”. As Strawson points out, Dennett himself appears to be complicit in the perpetuation of this “deepest woo woo of the human mind” when he claims, “There is no such thing as phenomenology.” Rather, Strawson claims that the exact opposite tack ought to direct the mindset of the true Materialist: 

If one hasn’t felt a kind of vertigo of astonishment when facing the thought that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon in every respect, then one hasn’t begun to be a thoughtful Materialist. One hasn’t even got to the starting line. 

In the 1990s, the ANU philosopher David Chalmers made a huge splash in philosophical circles by proposing what he called the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Chalmers argued that despite the best efforts of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers, no one has even come close to providing an explanatory model of the mind that wasn’t hopelessly prone to even the simplest of objections. This isn’t of course to blame the still fledgling, yet rapidly developing field of neuroscience for having not yet figured out how even the most rudimentary of cognitive processes are made possible by the physical workings of the brain; everyone acknowledges that the vast complexity of the human central nervous system means that it will be some time before we can start making any substantial claims explaining the more visceral phenomena caused by the brain. No, Chalmers’s point was that as yet we didn’t have a coherent framework for talking collectively about consciousness in even the simplest terms. As he put it, none of the discursive models on offer came close to touching on the Hard Problem: why it feels like anything to have a brain.

Chalmers’s proposed solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness was to suggest that we regard consciousness as a fundamental property of nature. This is not an unheard-of strategy in science, as is attested by the common knowledge that Gravity, Electromagnetism, and the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces (and perhaps even Quintessence?) are all fundamentals insofar as they cannot be explained in terms of other interactive processes. Similarly, then, Chalmers argued that consciousness might also be a fundamental in that, while certain physical conditions must be met (such as sufficient neural complexity) for consciousness to be, well, conscious, nonetheless, the feeling that we have when we are conscious (as opposed to lying unconscious under a general anaesthetic) is somehow dormant in all matter, waiting to emerge. That is to say, there’s nothing uniquely special about the physical stuff (atoms, compounds and so on) that our brains are made up of, such that the same stuff that currently forms a table, a chair, or even the paper on which these words are written, might not equally be rearranged to become conscious in much the same way you are right now.

While Chalmers’s solution promises to resolve many of the oldest, most obstinate problems in philosophy, and so has received much attention and discussion, the strategy comes at the highly counterintuitive price of opening the way for other, more theistically sympathetic forms of panpsychism. 

Of course, the possibility of panpsychism in no way establishes that God exists. Just because matter, when specially arranged in the form of brains, somehow gives rise to consciousness, does not give us any reason to suppose that the formation of stellar systems, galaxies and nebulae has similar effects. We’ve no reason to believe that there exists some form of cosmic consciousness or intelligence, and certainly no justification for worshipping that possibility by building altars, shrines, rituals and the like to it. But it does suggest that a panpsychic pantheism is not incompatible with naturalistic Physicalism; a possibility which is certainly not what diehard atheists like Dawkins and Dennett would normally have those congregating at the Global Atheist Convention believe.

Dawkins opens The God Delusion by stating that pantheism is not the target of his polemic. According to him, “pantheism is sexed up atheism”, and so elaborates: 

Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings.  

To illustrate this point, Dawkins takes the many theistic-sounding quotations made by famous scientists such as Einstein and Hawking, and neatly translates them for the reader into what he deems to be acceptable, pantheistic/atheistic statements: 

There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms are pantheistic. “God does not play dice” should be translated as “Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.” “Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?” means “Could the universe have begun in any other way?” Einstein was using “God” in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. 

But if a commitment to Physicalism—the traditional stronghold of atheists—leaves open the possibility that the physical universe may be “God” in the dualistic sense of also being at the same time (and place) a cosmically conscious, experiential and perhaps even intentional being, then a pantheist’s talk of God’s intentions might well be far from purely metaphorical and poetic. This, again, is not to suggest that Einstein was a pantheist in this panpsychic sense, nor that anyone yet has any reason to be so. Rather it is only to point out that the bedrock of contemporary atheism is by no means as secure as might be supposed from the ironically dogmatic pronouncements of the likes to be met at the forthcoming atheist convention.

Hume himself concludes his Dialogues with a declaration of philosophical scepticism by way of the character, Philo—taken to be Hume’s own mouthpiece. He states: 

A person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with greatest avidity: while the haughty Dogmatist, persuaded he can erect a complete system of Theology by the mere help of philosophy, disdains any further aid, and rejects this adventitious instructor. 

While the sentiment of this quotation certainly sides with the atheist more so than the theist, if one were to conclude from the grossly limited understanding that either camp has about the full nature and workings of the world (physical or otherwise) that the matter is anywhere near being finally settled, then—atheist or theist alike—one has simply given up the search and love of truth, God, wisdom, or whatever else you want to call it. 

Ross Barham is a part-time PhD candidate researching the role played by language in the possession of the concept of objectivity. He is the Head of Philosophy at Melbourne High School.