Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

232 J.J. Haldane
Such, then, are my disambiguated arguments for a ‘Prime Thinker’. As I said,
I hope that others might feel there is enough in these lines of thought to
pursue them further.
5 Realism, Idealism, Anti-Realism and Theism
Throughout I have been concerned with the idea that features of reality call
for explanation by reference to the hypothesis of divine creation. In the
original exchange I also argued that the intelligibility of the world is paralleled
by our capacity to comprehend it; that the harmony of cognition
between thought and thing is to be explained in terms of a form of realism in
which concepts are taken to be the natures of things transformed abstractly
into the mind; and that our conceptual ability calls for a transcendent
personal cause. In these several ways I have been reasoning from realist considerations
to the existence of God.
It has sometimes been suggested that there is a general connection between
metaphysical realism and theism. By the former I mean the claim, to which
Smart and I committed ourselves, namely ‘that there is a world independent
of human thought and language which may yet be known through observation,
hypothesis and reflection’ (p. 4). While I remain firmly attached to this
view and will have more to say about it, I now wish to consider the contrasting
position associated in the eighteenth century with Bishop Berkeley, and
in our own time with Michael Dummett, namely that theism is the conclusion
one comes to in pursuing the anti-realist thought that the world is
ultimately not something mind-independent.
At first sight it is hard to believe that the following argument could be
sound, be it that it is certainly valid:
(1) Either realism or anti-realism.
(2) If realism then theism.
(3) If anti-realism then theism.
(4) Therefore, theism.
Superficially (1) may seem unproblematic. Surely realism and anti-realism
are contradictories, so that they cannot both be true and they cannot both be
false? On reflection, however, matters may not be so simple. I characterized
realism as the view that the existence and structure of the world are independent
of our conception of them. That being the case, anti-realism is to be
understood as the denial of this. But exactly what is being denied? When the
mediaevals disputed realism the matter at issue was the status of concepts and
universals. In this context the ‘realist’ is one who maintains that something