Does God Exist?A Humanist Thesis

by

Andrew McCallum

I

The term 'humanism' is sometimes used in philosophy to denote a response to the sceptical conclusion that our belief in the existence of an external reality quite separate from and independent of ourselves (e.g. 'God', 'nature', etc.) has no rational warrant.

The argument in support of this conclusion is basically: that a belief is rationally warranted if and only if it can be adequately supported by some deductive or inductive argument; while our belief in the existence of an independent external reality cannot be supported by any such argument.

Our belief cannot be justified deductively, the argument continues, because there is an unbridgeable logical gap between the conclusion we wish to arrive at and the only sound premises from which we can set out. If we are to remain strictly within the empiricist scheme of things, we must set out from propositions that refer exclusively to the content of our experience. And, since the conclusion of any valid deduction can contain no reference to any terms which do not already appear in its premises, there is no valid logical path from propositions which refer to our experiential states to propositions which refer to anything that may be imagined to transcend those experiential states.

Our belief cannot be supported inductively because, even granting the somewhat dubious legitimacy of inductive argument, induction can only ever carry us forward in our reasoning from like to like; that is, from propositions about the occurrence of present experiential states to propositions about the (likely) occurrence of future experiential states. Again, it cannot carry us across the logical divide between propositions which refer exclusively to the content of our experience and propositions which include reference to any entities supposedly transcending that experience.

Realists respond to the sceptical argument by denying that there is any logical gap to be bridged. The propositions that comprise the premises from which we infer the existence of an independent external reality, they insist, refer not to our experiential states but to the actual physical objects that 'give rise' to those states. The difficulties involved in finding a rational warrant for this assertion, however, have been rehearsed at length by its empiricist critics. The superstition that our experiential states are in some sense 'caused' by physical objects, for example, was unmasked as long ago as the 18th century by such thinkers as Berkeley and Hume.

The humanist response to the sceptical argument, on the other hand, is far more compelling. Instead of seeking to either bridge or deny the logical gap, it simply presses empiricism to its most radical conclusion and accepts that, in the last analysis, we simply cannot step out of our experience of the world to see what the world might 'really' look like. Indeed, the very notion that we might be capable of such a superhuman feat is viewed as inherently absurd.

According to the humanist, therefore: the propositions that constitute the premises from which we would infer the existence of an external reality independent of our experience of it are indeed propositions about our experiential states; however, the propositions that constitute the conclusion of this inference can, themselves, only ever be propositions which refer exclusively to our experiential states; consequently, the reality we take to be independent of us is not really independent at all but is essentially human, in the sense of being logically bound to our apprehension of it.

So, can we never be justified in representing reality to ourselves as anything other than a human representation? Of course we can:

Humanism has no quarrel with the assumption of common-sense realism; it does not deny what is popularly described as the 'external' world. It has far too much respect for the pragmatic value of conceptions which de facto work far better than those of the metaphysics which despise and try to supersede them. It insists only that the 'external world' of realism is still dependent on human experience, and perhaps ventures to add also that the data of human experience are not completely used up in the construction of a real external world.

F.C.S. Schiller: 'The Definition of Pragmatism and Humanism', in Studies in Humanism (London, 1912)

II

So far, I have outlined the following sceptical argument: Our belief in the existence of an independent external reality has no rational warrant, because: a belief is rationally warranted if and only if it can be adequately supported by some deductive or inductive argument; and our belief in the existence of an independent external reality can be supported by no such argument. I then went on to represent realism as responding to this argument by denying the second of its premises, which I introduced humanism as accepting.

The humanist response to the sceptical argument is not one of complete capitulation, however. Humanism responds by taking issue, rather, with the first of the argument's premises. This premise may be taken as an expression of the fundamental principle of intellectualism, which has been the dominant tradition in Western philosophy since its inception.

Humanists takes issue with intellectualism by contending that its ruling on what is to count as 'rationally warranted' cannot be realised, and that scepticism depends for its success on the unattainability of the standards that intellectualism sets. As such, the intellectualist criteria are practically useless as a means of enabling us to make the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' beliefs that we need to be able to make if we are to prosecute our lives successfully. And they fail for the simple reason that their adoption necessarily commits us to the sceptical conclusion that no belief is ever rationally warranted, not even our belief in the existence of an independent reality external to ourselves.

As an alternative to the intellectualist principle, humanism proposes that a belief is rationally warranted if, but not only if, it can be adequately supported by some deductive or inductive argument; it may also be rationally warranted if it can be adequately supported by some pragmatic argument.

The idea behind the humanist alternative is that the function of belief is to help us achieve some human purpose - namely (but not exclusively): to represent the universe to ourselves in such a way as to get ourselves into a satisfactory relation with it; to construct for ourselves a habitable world, or 'cosmos', out of the 'chaos' of immediate sensory experience. Thus, in the humanist scheme of things, a belief may also be rationally warranted if it 'works'; that is, if it functions successfully in helping us to create for ourselves worlds through which we can prosecute our lives in ways that we find acceptable and satisfying.

According to humanism, then: the problems that arise from the intellectualist scheme of things - and, in particular, the problem of scepticism - stem from the fact that intellectualism has 'forgotten' the functional or 'human' dimension to belief and chooses to 'remember' only its formal or purely abstract, logical dimension. By 're-humanising' belief - by simply recollecting its human function - we can not only overcome the age-old philosophical problem of scepticism; we can also liberate our thinking from the only previously available alternative to scepticism - an escape into unreflective, uncritical, dogmatic belief - and place it finally at the service of autonomous human being.

III

Autonomy, as existentialist writers so dramatically declaim, is thrust upon us. We're condemned to be free. Even when we're enthralled to some dogmatic belief, we're freely enthralled: we've chosen to surrender our autonomy a higher authority of our own invention; even when we're deceived, we're self-deceived.

The premise from which this position is argued is a humanist one. In making the judgements on which we subsequently act, there's no authority higher than oneself to which we can appeal. There's no God, other than the gods we invent for ourselves. There's no Nature, other than the natures we conjure (along with our 'selves') from the raw material of experience. There's no right or wrong, good or evil, truth or falsehood, reality or illusion, which is not the fruit of one's own life-activity. Each and every one of us is, inescapably, the measure of all things.

The absolute responsibility that each of us has for his or her own life and beliefs can present a daunting and, for many people, an overwhelming prospect. According to thinkers like Nietzsche, one needs to become somewhat more-than-human to be able to assume it. Often, for those of us who are merely 'all-too-human', the only way we can handle this responsibility is to abdicate the human condition altogether and submerge ourselves in a 'herd' or enthral ourselves to an 'idol'; invent some 'higher' authority, in other words, to which responsibility can then be transferred. The problem is that, as existentialist writers take such perverse pleasure in demonstrating, such stratagems are ultimately futile and self-destructive.

More positively, it shouldn't be forgotten that responsibilities entail rights. If I do have an absolute, inalienable responsibility to become 'that which I am', I must also have a corresponding right to create and assert myself through whatever moral, epistemological, or metaphysical 'fictions' I need to employ in pursuit of my own accomplishment. Only: to avoid 'bad faith' - to avoid surrendering my autonomy and, with it, an essential part of my humanity to those fictions - I must be careful always to employ my fictions authentically, without self-deception, in full consciousness of their fictitious nature.

It's a basic tenet of the humanist thesis that, while we've every right to believe what we need to believe in order to prosecute our lives successfully, we shouldn't take our beliefs too seriously. Whatever value they possess derives ultimately from their effectiveness in enabling us to live our lives in ways we find acceptable and satisfying. Consequently, the degree of authority with which we invest our beliefs should only be such that, as necessary fictions, they remain always in the service of our own autonomy and the particular ends to which we each aspire in pursuit of our flourishing as human beings.


Andrew McCallum lives and works in the Scottish Borders. As a youth and community worker employed by a prominent international humanitarian organisation, he uses (among other things) philosophy to empower groups and individuals who are seeking to overcome disadvantage through self-help initiatives. A staunch libertarian in the Scots tradition, he despises deference in any shape or form, ‘tartanism’, and other anglicisations of his culture. His mentor was the late poet, Hugh MacDiarmid.


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