Atheism as a fad and a worldview

Atheism provides the first step in a worldview, namely the worldview known as "naturalism". Naturalism of one or another sort has been around since at least the ancient Greeks. And since the ancient Greeks there have been some who have sought to build a comprehensive naturalistic worldview.

Fastforward to the mid-twentieth century and a whole new generation of naturalists had taken up the mantle. People like W.V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars and Bertrand Russell sought to offer a comprehensive naturalistic understanding of all reality extending from logic and causation to morals and aesthetics.

And this brings us to the current resurgence of atheism.While naturalist worldview construction goes on, it would seem that many self-described atheists in this current resurgence appear content to remain in the shallow end of the pool. They are eager to lampoon "all gods" and mock their devotees. But they appear less aware of the enormous burden of constructing a plausible non-supernatural account of reality.

Take consciousness as an example. For several decades naturalists have attempted to offer a theory of consciousness that either ignores consciousness (behaviorism) eliminates it altogether (eliminativism) or reduces it to physical events (type and token identity theory) or processes (functionalism). All these attempts have failed and are now rejected and even ridiculed by many naturalists including John Searle, Colin McGinn and David Chalmers.

But admitting that consciousness is not fundamentally material provides an enormous blow to a naturalist worldview. If consciousness is not material, what about the possiblity of other non-material realities? What about angels, souls, God? The non-physical construal of consciousness constitutes a crack in the dam that naturalists are understandably anxious to fill.

So the next step is a natural account of consciousness which recognizes it as non-material but dependent upon the material (e.g. supervenience theory). Unfortunately this leads to epiphenomenalism, the view that our thoughts or intentions are not causally efficacious but instead ride the wave of causally efficacious brain states.

Frankly epiphenomenalism is ridiculous. I am typing keys on the keyboard right now because of my conscious (read: non-material) intention to do so, and NOT because of the brain states that are associated with this typing.

That is but the tip of the iceberg for one challenge faced by the naturalist. Many, many more remain.

This leads me to my conclusion. I hope that more atheists get beyond the childish fad of "mocking the gods" and on to the much more difficult task of plausible worldview construction.