Is atheism just a fancy name for bigotry?

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Atheists commonly claim to be “rationalist” – and so they tend to be. But, says Colin Tudge, they have misunderstood the nature and the limits of rationalism

A good friend of mine in an exchange of emails referred to himself self-deprecatingly as a “cranky old irreconcilable atheist”. For my part, I’m not a fully paid-up Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu but I’m not an atheist either, cranky or otherwise. I reckon a great many other people would say much the same including some who go to church or to the temple, or Mosque, and many who do not. In fact there are formal studies which show that this is the case.

But I don’t know what to call myself, or all the others who feel much the same. I’m just a non-atheist, which doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory term at all. There doesn’t seem to be a single word in English that’s the antonym of atheist. It ought to be “theist”, but theist has a special meaning which doesn’t cover the ground. Non-atheists generally claim to have “spiritual” leanings but so do many self-proclaimed atheists, including Richard Dawkins, and indeed my emailing chum. But atheists who claim some measure of “spirituality” tend to mean simply that they are moved by the music of Schubert or the Supremes, or by mountains and a fine sunset. That is, they equate spirituality with an emotional uplift that is evoked by something other than the promise of money or sex or a big feed. The heightened emotion is real enough, but, they claim, it can be explained perfectly well in endocrinological terms. All very rationalist. Many feel though, as discussed later, that there’s more to it than that.

As I understand atheism it’s akin to positivism, which the OED conveniently defines as “a philosophical system recognising only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism”. The philosophy of Logical Positivism, which arose in Vienna in the early 20^th century, is an ultra-hard-nosed derivative of this. Logical Positivism, says Oxford Languages, “believes [only] in statements that are analytical and conclusive in nature”. Logical Positivism was a potent force in science and philosophy through much of the 20^th century and although it seemed to die a death in the 1970s the residue is still with us, like the background radiation left over from the Big Bang.

I suggest that the broad but now much neglected discipline of metaphysics is key — the discipline that atheists specifically reject. Thus, the Oxford philosopher R G Collingwood (1889-1943) defined metaphysics as “the sum of all absolute presuppositions”; and an “absolute presupposition” as he saw it is an idea that we feel in our bones is true (my words not his), and that we take for granted, but which cannot be proven. A key example is the idea of cause and effect, which in science is crucial, but can never be proven beyond all possible doubt. As David Hume pointed out in the 18^th century, we infer cause and effect from correlation; but we all know, don’t we, that correlation is not cause. (And the whole discussion re cause and effect is enriched by Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity, which has launched a thousand learned treatises, not least from Arthur Koestler and David Bohm).

So it emerges that all science is rooted in an idea that belongs in the realm of metaphysics. So too of course is the entire discipline of moral philosophy. Indeed this is true of all very big ideas, including those of politics, economics, and law. All rest in the end on “absolute presuppositions”. And so too of course does all religion – although religious texts are always a mixture of metaphysical precepts, history, morality, and mythology, largely expressed in metaphorical or poetic language. The Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould felt that science and religion must be forever separate – two “non-overlapping magisteria”. In fact as many historians of science have argued, not least the Oxford and Lancaster philosopher of science John Hedley Brooke in Science and Religion (1991), the histories of the two “magisteria” are deeply intertwined, and have been since their multifarious and largely obscure origins many thousands of years ago. The dialogue between them has continued through most of the last few centuries and into the present. My only point here is that science and religion are both rooted in ideas that cannot be proven or indeed definitively disproved but in truth are “absolute presuppositions” – ideas of a metaphysical nature. It seems to me therefore that whoever dismisses metaphysics out of hand, as has tended to happen more and more in recent centuries, takes the rug from under the feet of all serious thinking (including serious thinking in science).

But to return to religion: I reckon the crucial characteristic of people who take religion seriously but don’t claim to “belong” to any of the formally circumscribed religions is not “belief in God (or ‘the gods’)” as is commonly supposed. After all, some bona fide religions dispense with the idea of God, as Buddhism does, at least in its mainstream form (although the Dalai Lama constantly refers to God). The crucial idea (I suggest) is the idea of transcendence: the idea stated very simplistically that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. Or, to be pedantic (since most of the universe is dark matter, which emphatically does not “meet the eye”) that there is more to the universe than science (or positivist thinking in general) can get to grips with. Indeed the idea of transcendence can only be grasped, insofar as it can be grasped at all, intuitively. Specifically the idea is that the physical, material world that we can see (in part), hear (up to a point), touch (here and there), and measure (however partially and imperfectly) is only the surface of things; that there is a great deal more going on beneath the surface; an agenda even; possibly even a purpose. Plato was among many philosophers – and, I imagine, all theologians — who felt this to be so. So, I suggest, do most of humanity, and always have. “God” might be seen as a form of shorthand for whatever the forces are at work behind the scenes which all but the immensely privileged can only glimpse, as St Paul put the matter, “through a glass darkly”.

Yet science too partakes of a version of this idea, not least in the cogitations of particle physicists of which Niels Bohr no less remarked that “anyone who thinks they understand particle physics doesn’t understand the problems”. Highly pertinent is the idea of “universal intelligence” – the idea that intelligence (which I am happy to take to be synonymous with “mind”) does not emanate from within our heads as we feel is the case. It is a quality of the universe of which we (and other cognisant creatures) partake to a greater or lesser degree, roughly as we partake of light. The idea of transcendence thus conceived gives insight into the nature of mysticism, which runs through all the recognised religions and is the essence of shamanism. The mystic is one who by-passes normal thought processes, including those that are construed to be “rational”, and tunes in directly to the universal intelligence. There is a huge and growing literature on this, not least from various branches of science, especially quantum physics, psychology, and anthropology. But I reckon that Coleridge encapsulated the whole idea most cogently in 1795 in The Eolian Harp:

“And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the soul of each, and God of all?”

“In the beginning was the Word”, said St John. But “the Word” is the King James translation of the Greek logos, which seems closer to the English “idea”. The logos in truth as St John surely meant it is the all-encompassing idea that lies behind the entire cosmos; the tune to which we all dance, which scientists, philosophers, theologians and poets seek to get to grips with. Yet in the end, whichever way we turn, we just have to acknowledge that the workings of the universe, and indeed the fact that it exists at all, is and always will be a mystery. We human beings can understand only what we are evolved to understand and the wonder is that we understand anything at all beyond what’s essential to stay alive. And what does it really mean to “understand”? In the end what we call understanding is just a story that we tell ourselves, and find satisfying. No doubt our stories capture elements of the truth (however “truth” is construed) but we can never aspire to the heights somewhat absurdly demanded in courts of law — “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Omniscience is not in our gift. In the end, life and the universe are beyond our ken. Innately mysterious. To suppose otherwise is to fall into the trap of hubris, which the Old Greeks saw as the greatest sin and folly of all.

But many scientists in positivist vein hate the idea of mystery. They think of themselves as “rationalists” and take it to be the case that by rational musing they can unravel all mysteries. Yet this is crude in the extreme; not a rational thought at all. Scientists like to quote authorities in the form of references to refereed journals just as Catholics like to quote the pope. So let me for my part refer to one of the greatest of all scientific referees, Albert Einstein, who wrote in Living Philosophies in 1931:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”

All in all, then, the idea of transcendence deserves to be taken very seriously. It qualifies on all counts: it is plausible (as in the idea of universal mind); if it is true it is of huge intellectual and practical significance; and there are no solid reasons to reject it out of hand, as the positivist-atheists seek to do. Plausible and potentially of enormously importance, and with no convincing refutation – what more do we want? To dismiss the idea of transcendence (and hence of all religion) out of hand as the dyed-in-the-wool atheists-cum-positivists claim to do seems to be nothing less than bigotry, perhaps even more pernicious than the bigotry that all too conspicuously bedevils religion.

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4 responses to “Is atheism just a fancy name for bigotry?”

Ziauddin Sardar, (founder and editor of Critical Muslim)

12 March 2025

Colin – a fascinating blog which raises a host of important questions. I would like to make a couple of comments.

Metaphysics is often dismissed and marginalised to the periphery because it is intrinsically associated with religion; and confused with theology. But once scientists realise that many of their assumptions – not just about cause and effect but also about ‘reality’, nature, time, and the cosmos – are indeed metaphysical, it would take centre stage. So, I am with you on this: we need to emphasise the importance of metaphysics not just to science but also the humanities and the arts. And bring it back to where it belongs: at the centre of our discourses.

As I see it, religion becomes problematic for ‘those who take religion seriously’ because of rituals. Rituals are supposed to bring people together and create a sense of community. But often they become instruments of power, manipulation and oppression. Moreover, rituals also become a substitute for truth. And theology focusses on dogma and correct performance of rituals rather than transcendence. Within the Muslim world, this is clearly indicated by sharia (law) and fiqhi (jurisprudence) minded groups, such as the Saudi Wahabis. Wahabis are not interested in transcendence because their theology has more or less excluded it. Their prime goal is salvation in the Hereafter, which is achieved through right observance of rituals, personified as truth. Much the same can be said of American evangelical Christianity, where salvation through Jesus is all that matters. Or about Hindu nationalists in India. So religion is deprived of wonder, which for me, is one of the main functions of religion. Religion thus becomes an ideology. Hence the absence of transcendence, the ultimate feeling and experience of wonder, from much of contemporary religious practices.

But we must not also think that logical positivism is the only approach to reason. I suppose the New Atheists are the contemporary counterparts of the Vienna Circle. Both have turned reason into instrumental rationality and thus into an ideology; and, as such, deprived it of its power to provoke wonder. Rationalism comes in many varieties; and is not limited to Aristotelian logic. Hindu logic is four-fold. Jain logic is seven-fold. Imagine a notion of reason based on these logics.

Here, I would like to bring to your attention The Life of Hayy by the twelfth century Muslim philosopher ibn Tufyl. He was a close friend of ibn Rushd, the bright light of the rationalist tradition in Islam, known as the Mu’tazila, of which I consider myself to be a follower. Ibn Rushd ends his monumental Incoherence of Incoherence, perhaps the best ever defence of reason and rationality, with the words: I know not; God knows best. Reason, he argued, leads you to humility. For it has limitations beyond which you cannot go and there is only mystery and transcendence.

But back to Hayy, who is spontaneously generated from slime on a remote island. He is adopted by an antelope who he considers to be his mother. He builds a shelter for himself, learns to speak the language of the animals around him. And when the antelope dies, he dissects the animal and learns about its biology. He observes the stars…you get the point. He discovers the world purely through reason and empiricism; and even realises that there is a Creator. But all this is not enough till he meets his first human being at the age of 30. And he recognises that reason has limitations. Now he needs something else to know beyond what he knows. So he realises the importance of intuition, becomes a mystics – or in Muslim parlance a Sufi – and comes to the conclusion that without metaphysics he can never have a deep understanding of reality.

Both ibn Rushd and ibn Tufyl were rationalists in the true sense of the word; they believed that good and evil can be distinguished by rational discourse. But for them rationalism was not just about reduction, which is what much of modern science is devoted to. And rationalist thought. Everything has to be isolated; and separated from everything else, including human being. For the Mu’tazila, rationalism was simultaneously about synthesis. Things had to be combined, brought together, taken as whole, reason and religion were not antagonistic – empiricism and transcendence, physics and metaphysics, were two sides of the same coin.

So, I believe we need both: reason and transcendence. Both provoke wonder, which to some extent is based on mystery and the feeling that we can never know everything. It is the faculty of wonder which generates the inquisitive, creative, imaginative, constructive character of humanity. But we need reason and transcendence in balanced quantities; otherwise they can be turned into ideologies and instruments of suppression.

But above all, we must appreciate that there are other ways to reason than the practice of the dominant paradigm. Other ways to engage with mystery and transcendence then arid rituals of reductive religion. One of the great wonders of our existence is that there are so many other ways to be human.

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Jon Thornes

12 March 2025

Hi Colin,

I read your latest piece with great interest, and I can’t help but feel that much of what you describe is already happening at South Ormsby. We’re not waiting for a global renaissance, we’re actively building a model where food, nature, and community thrive together.

We’re proving that regenerative farming and rewilding aren’t opposing forces but essential partners. That rural economies don’t have to be extractive but can regenerate both land and livelihoods. That AI and technology, when used wisely, can enhance our connection to nature rather than replace it.

• Land Use: Every acre is first restored to support biodiversity, and then food is produced in ways that nurture rather than deplete life.

• Local Food Systems: We’re integrating farming, food production, and local sales to rebuild the rural economy from the soil up.

• Education & Innovation: We’re developing AI-assisted nature tracking, regenerative farming techniques, and training local people in future-facing skills that align with the land, not against it.

• Rewilding with Purpose: Not just setting land aside but actively shaping a landscape where people, livestock, and wildlife coexist in a balanced system.
The question isn’t whether this can work, it already does. Now it’s about scaling it, sharing it, and proving that a different future is not just possible, but necessary.
Would love to discuss this with you further. Perhaps South Ormsby can serve as a case study for the Great Re-Think in action?

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Tim Gorringe, Emeritus Professor of Theological Studies at the University of Exeter.

13 March 2025

“Christians”, said the 2nd century Christian sage Justin Martyr (the name by which he is known gives away his fate) “are atheists with respect to the gods of the State”. Would that were the case! Most churches have prostrated themselves abjectly before these idols.

Martin Luther in the early 16th century already raised the question of what the word “God” signifies in his Large Catechism. Commenting on the first commandment he noted that “the faith of the heart makes both God and idol”. He went on: “A God is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need… Many a person thinks he has God and everything he needs when he has money and property; in them he trusts and of them he boasts so stubbornly and securely that he cares for no one. Surely such a man also has a god – Mammon by name, that is, money and possessions – on which he fixes his whole trust”.

The Dutch scholar Ton Veerkamp, who died just a few years ago, suggested that what we mean by the word “God” is whatever it is that provides the fundamental justification for rights of ownership, but we can extend this to include the fundamental narrative of order, of sense making, in any given society. To speak of “God” is to speak of the foundational order of any society – and this includes the neo-liberal global order. The question is not whether or not there is a God, for there is always a God in this sense. The question, rather, is how we understand “God”. Is “God” the one who represents the politically and economically strong, (as, for example “God” clearly is in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) or YHWH, who frees people from the house of slavery and protects the weak? The name YHWH stood for a social order which contradicted the order of all the societies around, which were all based on exploitation and slavery. Today the estimable, but unfortunately tiny, Jewish group “Jewish Voice for Labour” (I commend their website) continues this understanding. In Israel the government has adopted the former understanding, and the current President of the United States and his acolytes worship it fawningly.

So I am all for atheism – it just depends which god/God we are talking about.

Personally, I find atheism of the Dawkins variety monumentally boring. When you look at the sun, said Blake writing to Dr Trusler, you can say that you see “a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea”. “O no, no”, he cries. “I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, ‘Holy,Holy,Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’it and not with it.”

Blake would say that there are people (he named them as Bacon, Newton and Locke) who have an imagination bypass. By “imagination” he did not mean the capacity to call up “airy nothings” but vision into the true nature of the world. It seems to me that what Colin is getting at is what the Cambridge literary critic George Steiner (another person not signed up to a particular creed) articulated in Real Presences, that there are aspects of our experience, particularly associated with the arts, which invoke transcendence, which gesture towards – not the idols we worship, but the living God who Blake experienced day by day and hour by hour.

When people remarked to George Macleod (who founded the Iona Community in 1938) that something or other was a remarkable coincidence he replied, “You must lead a very dull life”. I agree. To reduce to neurology the experience of The Bacchae, King Lear, the Bach Double Violin Concerto, the Four Quartets, is to speak of some kind of psychic lobotomy. Being engaged by the mystery which meets us there is to experience what John the Evangelist called “drinking living water” or “experiencing eternal life”.

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Andy Dibben

14 March 2025

Dear Colin

Your most recent post on atheism touched me deeply. The quote from Einstein sums up my approach to life. During the day I move through my crops and around the farm with my commercial head on always noting what is doing well and not so well, constantly re-ordering my priority jobs list. In the evening I go to the same fields and walk my dog – and purposefully approach the fields with a completely different mindset. I approach with eyes of wonder and explore the mysterious. Crawl after beetles and watch what they do, chase butterflies like a four-year-old, spend hours observing the behaviour of aphids. The best biology classroom in the world!! It is the mysterious that makes me feel alive.

Warm spring wishes.

Andy

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