Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

8 J.J.C. Smart
2 Theism, Spirituality and Science
Notice that I have said ‘broadly theistic’. A distinction between theism
and deism is commonly made. In this essay I shall regard deism as a form
of theism. Theism is normally taken to be the view that there is one and
only one God who is eternal, is creator of the universe, is omnipotent,
omniscient, benevolent and loving, and who is personal and interacts with
the universe, as in the religious experience and prayerful activities of humans.
I shall treat the concept of theism as what Wittgenstein called a family resemblance
concept: 8 theism does not have to have all of these characteristics,
so that provided that a doctrine refers to a fair number of these properties
I shall tend to count it as theism. Deism is the view that there is a God who
created the universe but who avoids interacting with it. Allowing the slack
associated with a family resemblance concept deism can count as a form of
theism. Such slack is usual in science: for example when the atom was shown
not to be an indivisible particle, physicists still continued using the word
‘atom’ much as before. Historically ‘deism’ has been used especially
in connection with certain British writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, such as Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St John). Latterly I think that
the difference between deism and theism has become blurred, especially since
so many theologians have tended to play down the miraculous elements in
Christianity.
Atheism I take to be the denial of theism and of deism. It also of course
includes the denial of the existence of the ancient Roman and Greek gods
and the like, but anyway I do not count such polytheisms as coming under
the concept of theism as I understand it. To a large extent I shall be concerned
with the theism of Christianity, though some of what I say will be
applicable to the theologies of the other great monotheistic religions.
Spirituality
The orthodox conception of God is that of a spiritual being. Though the
concept of the spiritual pre-dates Descartes, the usual notion of the spirit is
close to that of a Cartesian soul: something immaterial, not even physical.
There is, however, an emasculated notion of spirituality that can cloud the
issue. One might talk of the spirituality of some of Haydn’s music, meaning
no more than that it was uplifting or that Haydn was influenced in his writing
of it by adventitious connections with his religious beliefs. A materialist
about the mind could consistently use the word ‘spiritual’ in this emasculated
way. Again even a materialist and an atheist could agree in describing
Mary who is happy in an enclosed convent as a ‘spiritual’ person, meaning