[This is the eighth article in a series on New Atheism. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.]
Last post I argued that Davies, Pratchett, Whedon, and Adams handle death far more empathically and sensitively than is New Atheism’s tendency. It is similar when it comes to meaning in life. These writers do not agree with each other about the answer to the meaning of life, but they all share far more in common than they do with New Atheism. Pratchett and Davies, as confirmed members of England’s ‘chattering classes’, seem to just assume that meaning is found in being an Englishman—Pratchett’s heroes (particularly figures like Vimes, Weatherwax, the Patrician, and Tiffany) and Davies’ Doctor take for granted that there is a good life to be lived, and it involves the values of liberal British society—being an ideal reader of The Times or listener of Radio Four. For these two writers, there seems to be, at least in their writing, an unexplored confidence that life is inherently meaningful, and one doesn’t need to construct a meaning for oneself. The meaning of life is to be English.
Adams has quite a different take on things. What makes the humour of his Hitchhikers series work is his constant playing up of ridiculous coincidences that are utterly meaningless. Pervading his novels is the sense that stuff happens—good, bad, indifferent—and there’s nothing meaningful about any of it. Stuff happens. The end. However, he doesn’t share the average New Atheist’s irritation with (or slightly patronizing air towards) people thinking that life should be inherently meaningful. His novels portray, not just constant ridiculous coincidences, but the way the protagonists try to respond and find meaning out of them or forgo meaning in an effort to maximize their chances of survival. And it’s the latter dimension, I’d argue, that makes the characters sympathetic—Adams has a bitter pill for people: there is no meaning. But he gets that it is and always will be a bitter pill, and shows sympathy for the indigestion people get from taking it.
Whedon is different again. His shows have multiple expressions of his commitment to absurdism. Here the view is that, as with New Atheism, there is no ground within nature for meaning or morality having objective existence. But, unlike New Atheism, it is recognized that human beings experience themselves as entities that have meaning and need to be moral, and that this does have objective existence as far as our experience of it goes. Meaning and morality have no objective existence on the one hand, but it is fundamental to being human to experience them as having objective existence. Hence the name ‘absurdism’, as it means there is something absurd about being human—we experience something that does not exist as though it does exist.
This view is expressed at key points in Whedon’s works—when Buffy is stripped of everything except herself, when Mal experiences the death of everything he believed in at the loss of the battle at Serenity, when Angel signs away all hope for any kind of purpose or future and still is able to fight the good fight. In my view, it is most clearly articulated when Angel goes bad because he realizes that “In the greater scheme or the big picture, nothing we do matters. There’s no grand plan, no big win.” A realization of the meaninglessness of our lives and actions leads him to moral nihilism. But then the character turns a corner when he realizes, “If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. ‘Cause that’s all there is. What we do, now, today.”
Despite the appeal this has to individualistic westerners, this sentiment is ultimately absurd—because nothing we do has meaning, only what we do has meaning. Because there is no such thing as objective morality then, as Angel goes on to say, “I wanna help because I don’t think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.” Why is kindness the greatest thing in a world where there is no objective reality to kindness, no greater meaning? It just is; that’s part of what it means to be human. That’s a view that’s hard to live with, but it nonetheless articulates an inherent, not self-consciously self-created, sense of meaning and morality to human existence in a world where there is no such thing as morality and meaning. It’s absurd, truly absurd. But its absurdity is arguably much better than the idea that we are nothing more than biological computers with a fear of the dark, or that moral questions aren’t ‘real questions’.
The point is not that they are impressive attempts to ground meaning and morality in a world without God. They’re all fairly easily attacked on that ground, in my view. The point rather is that New Atheism’s “Meaning? Who needs meaning?” approach is not inherent to all forms of atheism. Atheism can reinvent itself, and examples of it exist now in popular culture that do more than just tell people “Throw away your desire for a meaningful life”. And again, this approach to meaning is, I’d suggest, one of New Atheism’s weakest points in having widespread popular appeal, and if it is changed, and people have a sense that they can have inherent meaning as an atheist (or at least that it really matters that they can’t and is something to be mourned) then atheism might become the unbelief of choice for more people than at present.
It’s something similar with the issue of community. As various studies are showing, people in modern capitalist societies are less grounded in relationships than before. Loneliness (a lack of involvement in any kind of group other than a small collection of friends) and a weakening of kinship relationships (with their greater stability and permanence) have led to more people experiencing isolation and disconnection than before. New Atheism has little to offer by way of solution. As David E Campbell and Robert D Putnam’s book American Grace seems to demonstrate reasonably well, the person less actively involved in a religious tradition is also less involved in community groups and gives less—at least in the US (as always with these kind of studies, you’d need to expand the field to other countries to be sure it holds generally). Atheists are part of the demographic that have this trait of poor community involvement and giving more than anyone else, so they are unlikely to be the means to dealing with it, even if they agree the issue is there and is a problem (and they usually don’t even do that, most of them seem to like their disconnection from other people).
Nonetheless, the four writers I’ve picked show how atheism can get around that, for they show an interest in community and/or family life. Davies’ version of the Doctor is far more driven by a need for companionship than former incarnations, and was often involved in the family life of his companions. He was also arguably far more attached emotionally to humanity than previous versions. Pratchett’s characters (once stories about Rincewind ceased) are typically placed in communities, families, and networks of relationships that really matter to them. Adams arguably has little along these lines by comparison, and so is a counter-example for my argument. But this area is arguably one of Whedon’s strongest features—people’s need to connect, and to create a family for themselves. Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, all involve groups of friends that become a kind of family, all of which are (and this is interesting for a feminist like Whedon) headed up by a strong patriarchal figure (although Buffy does take over from Giles in the final season of that show). They aren’t a biological family, and yet their relationships have a greater permanence and stability than friendship—even when the characters turn on each other, they’re still connected and part of the group. And in each of those three shows there is an important scene involving the cast sharing a meal together—that most domestic of activities—to portray Whedon’s concept of ‘the good life’. Life’s true savour is found in eating with one’s ‘family’.
In our relationship-starved context, the capacity to put relationships and family and community bang at the centre of one’s view of the world and life is highly effective—just look how much Christians have increasingly emphasized the relational aspects of the Christian message over the last couple of decades. It is a part of life to which, again on the whole I’d argue, New Atheism is tone deaf. But, again, these writers show that it doesn’t have to be that way for atheism. Atheists can hold up relationships, especially those relationships that we don’t just choose for ourselves, as being really important to human life, as something genuinely good in and of itself. I don’t think that will change the dynamics that American Grace highlights all that much—atheists will still be less relational as a group in practice. But it will do wonders for persuading people that atheism is compatible with their desire for community and relationships, and that in turn will make atheism more persuasive for more people.
Finally, these writers show that atheism doesn’t have to involve empiricism. As I flagged originally, I think most people don’t agree that only the questions that science can answer are real questions. People think there is real, objective value and insight to be gained from other fields—social sciences, history, philosophy, even literature. And these writers, just by virtue of being writers of fiction who use their fiction to shed light on life in the world, demonstrate that they too don’t hold to New Atheism’s kind of empiricism. Again, they’re not alone; I could have easily added Stephen Fry to this list of four neo-New Atheists. All of these figures respect science (as they should) but none of them hold that it is the only way we learn truths worth knowing. And again, I think that’s fairly important. I suspect Stephen Fry has made atheism far more popular through his literary approach that values more than just the natural sciences than most of the New Atheists have by their aggressive ‘natural sciences have all the answers’ approach.
None of this is to say that atheism, ultimately, is right or is a genuine threat to the gospel. Atheists come to faith in Christ Jesus just like people from other walks of life do. It is to say that the most dominant form of atheism today in the public square is not the only kind possible—as though if you deny the existence of God you have to hold to all the distinctives of New Atheism.
And as we sharpen our response to atheism’s strengths, and highlight its weak points in capturing reality, we would do well not to set ourselves up too much for a slam dunk by whatever form of atheism might come after New Atheism. One of the ways to do that is to acknowledge that atheism is capable of giving answers to some of the questions that New Atheism sneers at, but then to show that those answers aren’t very good either. There are other methods as well, but the point is that we shouldn’t focus on New Atheism as if it’s the only kind of atheism around, or we’ll have to play catch-up when atheism morphs once again. New Atheism will pass, unbelief will not.
People in our secular societies will be interested in a form of atheism that lacks some of New Atheism’s weaknesses, even if that form of atheism has to sacrifice some of the mystique of science giving it credibility in order to do it. We need to make our responses in the present with an awareness that atheism will reinvent itself in the future, and so without presenting the question as a choice between New Atheism or Christianity, as if they are the only two games in town. Depending on how you look at it, there is either only one game in town (faith in the living God) or an almost unlimited number of games, a vast number of which have at least as much going for them as New Atheism. New Atheism is just one part of the multitude of wrong alternatives to the gospel, and we need to speak about it and address it in a way that sends that signal. To paraphrase another atheist-but-not-New-Atheist work, The Life of Brian: “New Atheism isn’t the (anti-)Messiah, it’s just another naughty boy”. Don’t try and bluff your way past its challenge, but don’t treat it as though it is something special either.
