RELIGION WITHOUT GOD

Rev. David Leonard

From the point of view of what's religiously acceptable in America, probably the only thing more difficult to explain than what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist is to explain what it means to be an atheist. And those of us UU's who are also atheists are in an almost impossible position, assuming that we even want to bother explaining ourselves.

I don't know how much conversation about religion occurs in most people's day-to-day lives, but the workplace or school are places where we are most likely to feel that we are different and alone in being who we are religiously. People in general do not understand our UU religion, let alone atheism-or maybe I should say they tend to misunderstand them-so in talking specifically about atheism this morning, I am also talking about what it means to be different in a religious sense-different our co-workers, classmates and others who are part of our daily lives.

Humanity in general, and religious humanity in particular, has for so long been habituated to thinking mainly in terms of an external, personal, supernatural, spiritual being, that it will indubitably be extremely difficult to abandon this view and see God, under one aspect as a number of vital but separate facts, some material and some spiritual, but, regarded as a unity, as a creation of the human soul.

This expresses what many persons understand as the essence of atheism: that God or the gods or divine beings of any sort are only products of human imagination. Yet atheism is more than the denial of theism, as Huxley makes abundantly clear. Atheism can be religious, as we shall see, the assumption being that religion is a far broader phenomenon than the affirmation or denial of a belief in God. Atheism is a positive philosophy on its own merits.
We may have some doubts about the religious nature of atheism. Certainly society in general does. Many people identify religion with belief in God, and thus they see atheism and religion as irreconcilable opposites. Etienne Borne, a Roman Catholic writer, says, for example, "atheism and religious consciousness are opposed one to the other as the limits of negation and affirmation, so that war between them is inevitable, all possibility of compromise, toleration or reconciliation being completely removed." This is a strong statement and one that expresses a common misperception of atheism, and I believe it shows a distorted understanding not only of atheism but also of religion, both in itself and as a context for the thoughtful denial of God.   
We are well aware that our own church includes theists, atheists, and agnostics. Do we deny that ours is a religious movement? We argue about definitions, but most of us accept the usefulness of defining ourselves as "religious." Our religion may differ in important respects from the religions of others in our society, but it is a religion nonetheless, and theistic belief is not essential to the way we define ourselves as a group. While some of us may feel uncomfortable with this state of affairs, it is a fact. If we define religion on the basis of what in fact is accepted as religious rather than what we think should be included, the legitimacy of religion without God becomes even clearer. 

For example, we have the claim that Buddhism in its original and pure form is atheistic. The Buddha said nothing about gods and dismissed speculation about them as useless and distracting. Enlightenment, and the living of the life we know to be real were his main concerns. But few people would deny that Buddhism is a religion.

Even among mainline Christian groups we find religious atheism. Sometimes it goes under a dramatic and provocative banner such as the God-is-Dead movement of the sixties, the three major leaders of which were Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian. Sometimes it exists in secret. (A Newsweek poll once reported that only 93 per-cent of Christians even believe Jesus was a real person, so it's not too great a stretch to suppose that there are more Christian atheists than there are total UU's!) When I was a Methodist minister I once took a confidential theological opinion poll: a few church-going persons in fact did describe themselves as non-believers in God. How is this possible, you ask? How could an atheist participate in an established Christian church? Perhaps because our deepest religious feelings-and even the meaning of religion itself-may have little to do a belief in God.

The word "religion" is derived from the Latin religare, meaning, "to bind together." A religion is thus an idea or belief or experience that joins a group of people, and provides a framework for the living of their lives. Religion is communal and not dependent on the content of a specific belief for its viability. To be religious is to join with others in a search for truth and its application to life. It is on our shared quest for meaning and truth that religious atheism (like religious theism) flourishes.

Atheism denies the reality of God. Of course, God may be defined in such a vague and abstract way that it's difficult to deny. Paul Tillich, for instance, defined God as ultimate concern (or the highest value one serves) and as the unconditioned ground of being (the basis of reality). Obviously everyone has some highest value and reality has some basis, so God, thus defined, must exist. This is not what atheism questions, nor is it what many, if not most, believers in God mean to affirm. The view of God that is at issue here is that of a personal God-God defined as a sentient being, sharing some human attributes, perhaps even intervening in human affairs.

There are valid reasons for the rejection of such a God. The naive and inconsistent manner in which God is usually pictured is enough to turn off any intelligent person. When God is portrayed as a tyrant or as cosmic trickster or as some kind of supernatural super-human being, there is little doubt (for enlightened persons) that such a view is inadequate. This sort of belief in God is limiting and dehumanizing, as the history of those who literally have fought it amply demonstrates. Atheism (and reasonable theism, I should add) rightly reject this limited idea (as a literal belief, I mean.)

The primary source of religious atheism is, in my opinion, a positive one, namely, the whole process of intellectual enlightenment and growth that springs from a scientific, philosophical world-view. Science can explain our universe, the world, and ourselves more simply and adequately than can be done by explaining them as God's work. The problem is that the concept of God has traditionally been used as an explanation for the universe, and everything that could not be understood in any other way was attributed to God's creative activity or almighty wrath. But over the past few centuries we have come to realize that the scientific method and world-view do a better job than the old theology in broadening our understanding of the universe. 

But is an idea of God even religiously necessary? "The difference as to whether a God exists," writes John Wisdom, "involves our feelings more than most scientific disputes and in this respect is more like a difference as to whether there is beauty in a thing," In more than one sense are these words of wisdom, and they point to the essence of religion as feeling, attitude, and poetic vision-not knowledge or belief. Religion comes from experience, and religious atheism is not simply the lack of a particular kind of experience or feeling, but the result of a different experience or feeling-or maybe a different interpretation of a similar experience. The atheist is not an agnostic: the atheist believes that the natural world is all there is-and that discovering this truth is a positive and liberating experience.

Borne says that "an atheist thought, an atheist life, ideally worked out and lived within, are their own refutation." I think the opposite is the case. The atheist viewpoint, when lived honestly and with conviction, is its own testimony. That is exactly what religion is all about: living it courageously (because one senses its truth) but humbly (because one cannot absolutely know that truth). "It is a way of life," says Huxley, "an art like other kinds of living, and an art that must be practiced like other arts if we are to achieve anything good in."

When we get beyond matters of the content of religious belief--and the question of God has been a rather dramatic distraction in this respect--we discover that atheism, as a religion, has a good deal to teach us. It teaches that religion is not properly used as a crutch. The various doctrines of the great religions have long been used as a means of understanding the mysteries of the world. Indeed, they have been used to explain far more than needs explaining. Such beliefs and teachings may be consistent with scientific explanations or they may contradict them, but they are not ways of knowing anything much that is not better known through rational and scientific thought and observation. Not that science is always correct or complete-for we know that its truth continually evolves-but that religion is incorrectly used as a basis or authority for scientific knowledge.

Religious atheism teaches us that religion has to do with meaning and with coming together in search of that meaning. The facts of the world are what they are. What we do with them, what attitude we take toward them, are matters of religious and moral decision. The clarification of religious values and the reaching of ethical decisions are usually best accomplished among a group of people committed to these tasks. The movement and art of liturgy, the give and take of discussion, and the silence of reverence and awe in the presence of mystery, all call us to live deliberately and with a sense of self-fulfillment. Where everyone agrees, where everyone says and believes the same thing, where behavior and experience are prescribed, little of religion in this deeper sense is possible.

Religious atheism teaches us that religion can be the partner of enlightenment, rather than its enemy. Religious establishments are notoriously resistant to change. Time worn values are secured in the supposed realities of the supernatural or the will of God, immune from question. The truths of orthodox religions are thought to be eternal. And the reality that we most certainly know-namely, life in this world-suffers for its being forced into inflexible molds. Religious atheism, because it accepts progress and civilized change and is not entrenched like orthodoxy, constantly reminds us that our place is here and our time is now.

Religious atheism teaches us that as human beings we need, and are capable of, self-reliance. We need not postpone our dreams of a better world to some heaven that awaits us when we die. We need not condemn ourselves to an essential sinfulness or corruption of our natures. But, if we make a mess of things, neither dare we count on miraculous divine intervention. It is up to us to make of this life what we will. Atheism is this worldly and non-escapist. It is human centered. These are truths we need to hear.

Among us Unitarian Universalists, religious atheism is one of the perspectives we embrace. Whether we ourselves, as individuals, are atheists, a misunderstanding of, or attack on, religious atheism is in some sense a misunderstanding of, or attack on, us. When co-workers, fellow students or friends challenge us about our religion, we sometimes need to be able to say that, no, we do not believe in their God, but also that if they really cannot understand where we're coming from, they should visit here on a Sunday morning! Ours is a positive faith of our own, not just not someone else's.

Religion does not involve, in its essence, belief in supernatural beings or in any sort of God, but is an intuition and feeling about life. Atheists share those feelings and intuitions. "Religious emotion will always exist, will always demand expression," says the atheist Julian Huxley:

The ways in which it finds expression may be good or may be bad: or, what hardly seems to have been realized, they may be on the whole good for the individual worshipper but bad for the community. Desires and values, spiritual capacities, dictate the direction of religion, the goal towards which it aspires; the facts of nature and life dictate the limits within which it may move, the trellis on whose framework those desires and emotions must grow if they are to receive the beams of truth's sun....It is our duty to know those outer facts truly and completely, to be willing to face all truth and not try to reject what does not tally with our desires: and it is our duty to realize our own capacities, to place our whole tumultuous life of feeling and will under the joint guidance of reverence and reason.

In a religion like ours, where we have some choice over even our religious beliefs and affirmations, all of us-atheists, theists, agnostics or none of the above-have a responsibility to insure that the spirit of discovery continues to grow in us, just as we contribute to its growth. And even if all our speculation and discussion about gods (or anything else) turn out to be just so much fertilizer, that's still a good thing!

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