Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

14 J.J.C. Smart
that have arisen ‘purely fortuitously’. I do not of course deny the fortuitous
element in all evolution.
Let us therefore put aside the ‘as if ’ teleology in modern biology, together
with the earlier theistic teleology of Paley, and return to what I have called
‘the new teleology’. To some extent, of course, this is a misnomer, since it is
no new thing to echo the sentiment ‘The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament sheweth his handiwork’. 20 Nevertheless the wonders and
beauties of physics and cosmology are now so great and even more striking
than was evident in earlier times that many contemporary theoretical physicists
are prone at least to theistic emotions of admiration, awe and wonder.
Theistic emotions are indeed in place. But the question remains as to whether
theism itself is intellectually justifiable.
4 Pantheism
In trying to answer this question I think that we can set aside a minimal form
of pantheism that simply identifies God with the universe. Such a pantheist
does not differ from the atheist in his or her belief about the universe, and
differs only in his or her attitudes and emotions towards it. Not for nothing
was Spinoza described at some times as ‘a God-intoxicated man’ and at
others as ‘a hideous atheist’. (However, Spinoza was possibly something more
than the minimal pantheist that I have in mind. For example, John Leslie has
seen him as a precursor of his own ‘extreme axiarchism’ which I shall discuss
later in this essay. 21 Moreover Spinoza thought that extension and thought
were co-equal and correlative attributes of the world.) A stronger sort of
pantheist may hold that the world has a spiritual aspect. One sort of pantheist
may think of the universe as a giant brain – stars, galaxies and clusters of
galaxies perhaps playing the part of the microphysical particles that make
up our own nervous systems. I shall take it that such a form of pantheism
is implausible and far-fetched. There is absolutely no evidence that the
universe, however large it may be, could be a giant brain.
Closely related to pantheism is the esoteric Hindu philosophy, the
bdvaita Vedanta, of the mediaeval Indian philosopher Sankara, and foreshadowed
in some passages in the Upanishads, such as the Brihad-branyaka
Upanishad, dating from perhaps about 600 BC. ‘bdvaita’ means ‘nondualism’:
all multiplicity (and hence the world as both science and common
sense understand it) is illusion. The metaphysics has a striking resemblance
to that in F.H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality and even more to the
extreme Bradleian view of C.A. Campbell. 22 ´
One advantage of such
metaphysics is that the noumenal (Brahman, also identified by the bdvaita
with the Self or btman) or Bradley’s Absolute is quite inconceivable, and