Edexcel A2 Philosophy and Ethics - Atheism Unit

2. Key Terms:
• Atheism: rejection of a belied in a theo/God (with ‘theo’ = Greek for God and ‘ism’ = belief system.
• Agnosticism: rejection of the traditional view of the theists God.
• Materialism: everything in existence is made of hard matter and there are therefore no
souls/heaven/ext.
• Naturalism: belief that the natural order of the world answers every question.
• Scepticism: belief that it is religion that is at fault, not about God’s existence/non-existence.
• Unbelief: no belief in God.
Atheism:
• Atheism is a rejection of scholars such as Anselm’s
claim that God is a ‘being to which nothing greater can
be conceived’.
• Such claims infer that God is benevolent, all knowing
and all powerful (as such characteristics are needed to
be the ‘greatest being’).
• Therefore, the following atheistic claims are all based
on the scholars disagreeance with a belief in God.

3. 1) Problem of Evil:
• Hume created the Problem of Evil, in which he states that, as his triangle ( ) infers, that if evil exists and God exists, then God either
doesn’t have the power to stop evil, doesn’t know that evil exists or doesn’t want to stop evil. If any of these are true, it highly rises the
likelihood that God doesn’t exist (at least in the traditional sense of him) as if he looses any of his theist-given attributes (morally perfect,
omnipotent and omniscient) then any a prior arguments claiming he does exist using these characteristics also fail. Therefore, God
doesn’t exist.
Omnipotent
God
Exists?
Use Hume’s a
priori argument,
not his AS a
posteriori.
2) Empirical Evidence:
• Hume stated that any philosophical claim uses
either posteriori/synthetic or analytical/priori
propositions in his ‘Fork Analogy’ ( ).
• If you use synthetic arguments (like W. James
and R. Swinburne) they would fail
philosophically because, according to Hume,
God cannot be sensed and it is therefore
impossible to prove him using your senses.
• If you use analytical arguments (like Anselm
and Descartes) they would fail as no
philosopher is capable of actually proving that
existence is a predicate of God (shown in
rebuttals from Gaskin and Gaunilo to Anselm).
• Hume states that predicates work for priori
evidence (using something's definition to gain
knowledge) of God’s existence until you make
a ‘leap of logic’ to conclude that God caused
the preceding premises.( )
• ∴ we have to put everything about God down
to ‘nothing but sophistry and illusion’.
Priori
Posteriori
Your parent
created you.
Your grandparents
created them.
…
Therefore, God is
the 1st cause?
3) Summary:
• Hume rejects the definition of God for two reasons:
• 1st – The definition itself: The definition of God can’t be
correct because it says God is all-powerful and all-loving, but
evil exists.
• 2nd – The lack of cognitive evidence: Hume claims that in
philosophy, you either prove anything a priori or a posteriori.
Posteriori is sense- based and fails as you cannot sense or
hear God. Priori uses definitions which must be undisputed as
you can only have one definition for something – which isn’t
the case for a definition in God.
• Conclusion: the evidence philosophers use is illogical and
therefore doesn’t prove anything 100% as it fails using both
types of evidence, and a belief in God is therefore non-
cognitive.
4) Write-up:
• A key feature of atheism is philosophical rejections of theism,
one of which is the Problem of Evil by D. Hume...
• Hume also philosophically rejected theism because of its lack
of empirical evidence…

4. 1) Lack of evidence for statements:
• Verification – checking a statement to see if it is true and there is proof of this.
• Verification in Principle states: ‘a statement which cannot be conclusively verified…is simply devoid of meaning’ – only need to think of a
way to verify a statement to give it meaning, not actually prove it but it is possible if need be.
• Statements can only be meaningful if they can be demonstrated and these can be divided into:
1) Verification (using a priori analytic evidence). Such statements are true because it is required by the definition or mathematical logic.
2) Verification in Principle (uses a posteriori synthetic evidence). Such statements are true because of sense-based evidence.
• Ayer states that religious claims are non-cognitive and impossible to verify, and are therefore meaningless as they are not just unprovable,
but also not adding any information.
2) No God:
• A belief in God is meaningless as it is
unverifiable.
• Theists claim that he is transcendent, meaning
he is outside of time and space.
• He therefore must of transcended into this
world to create it, and therefore remains a
metaphysical concept and is only ever an
assertion because any being outside of time
and space must be metaphysical.
• Any truth claim against God are also
meaningless as they still use his definition as
‘transcendent’, but just deny this definition,
meaning their arguments are also unprovable.
• ‘for to say ‘God exists’ is a metaphysical
utterance which cannot be wither true or
false’.
3) Two definitions of transcendent:
• Theists also say transcendent means ‘outside of human understanding’ – making
the evidence even more ‘intelligible’ and meaningless as worlds cannot have
more than one definition.

5. 1) Argument:
• Claimed that God is not real and tries to explain why people still belief in him.
• Used the ability of the psyche to believe in religious claims without proof to state that belief is ‘wishful thinking’.
• God is a projection of the mind, which is shown to be possible with the Oedipus Complex (men’s ability to project/repress memories
using the psyche), so it is plausible to think we can project God.
• God remains a ‘projective system’ from the psyche/religious upbringing as you can’t except that death is the end.
• Therefore, God remains a projection of a father figure in man’s life to avoid the Oedipus Complex, real parents imperfections and fear of
dying.
• Society is united in ‘universal neurosis’ and any claim by the theist should be ‘disregarded in relation to reality’.
• Therefore, claims from Religious Experience should also be disregarded as, although it is meaningful to the experiencer, it remains a
projection of the psyche and therefore not God.
• ‘An illusion is not the same thing as an error, not is it necessarily an error…Thus we call a belief an illusion when a wish fulfilment is a
prominent factor in its motivation’.
2) Quotes:
• ‘wishful thinking’ – ability of the psyche to believe religious claims
that have no proof.
• ‘projective system’ – believe religious claims (such as belief in
heaven) as a comfort mechanism to overcome grief.
• ‘universal neurosis’ – all theists partake in seemingly meaningless
acts (praying/going to church) in an almost hypnotised manner.
• ‘disregard in relation to reality’ – cannot prove God as ‘evidence’
doesn’t work in this reality. Cannot use religious experiences as
proof as they are not acts of God – just the psyche comforting you.
• ‘An illusion is not the same thing as an error, not is it necessarily an
error…Thus we call a belief an illusion when a wish fulfilment is a
prominent factor in its motivation’ – experiences/religion are not
lies, but just a very successful method of repression/comfort.

6. 1) Argument:
• Distinguished between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.
• The collective unconscious, shared by all humans, consists of a series of pre-dispositions know as archetypes [ideas].
• People develop their own ideas of these archetypes about God, who remains important to all humans (even atheists).
• Whether or not he actually exists in reality is beyond the scope of psychology, but beliefs about him are from archetypes.
2) Continued:
• These archetypes come from the concept of libido (instinctual energy/force), the basic drive
behind everyone to have fulfilment in this life.
• Therefore, religion/relationships with God play an important part in healthy
lifestyles/communities – ‘the development of an individuals potential’, meaning that religion
makes people aim higher.
• He claims that religion is not a neurotic illness caused by sexual trauma, but rather a natural
process stemming from archetypes in the unconscious mind.
• He accepts that there was a spiritual side to human life, and to try to remove this could be
detrimental, since religion performs the ‘function of harmonising the psyche and as such is
beneficial’ - religion calms the mind (not into an oppressive state) into a rational state.
• ‘the contents of the collective unconscious are archetypes. Primordial patterns that reflect basic
patterns that are common to us all, and which have existed universally since the dawn of time’.
Student of Freud,
but more
sympathetic
towards religion.
Collective unconscious
creates
Archetypes
which influence
Personal unconscious
which creates
Person archetypes
3) Careful:
• God ids an archetype; the image of a hero important for all.
• A God figure – not a proven being, but a projected one (not real, but people want it – imagining
being bringing calmness/raising money for charity – what is wrong with that?)

7. 1) God does not exist:
• There is no God.
• ‘God is dead’ – no longer relevant to human existence (alive when we could not answer the ‘big questions’ (‘where is the world from?’
‘where did man come from?’) but now science gives us the answers, meaning God is not needed.
• Man has grown out of a need for God.
• Believed in an ‘autonomous man’, where man is able to answer the ‘big questions’ without God.
• If humans are strong enough, they can create a world which values human life because of what it is and not because they believe in God
(as such beliefs are infantile)
2) Should be no organised religion:
• Religious morality is a ‘safety first’ way of looking at the world – it
destroys human potential (i.e. we have the ability to have opinions on
controversial issues such as IVF but hide behind religion/quote the bible
so as to not express their personal view as it is not developed.
• Because of this religions have a ‘herd mentality’ (especially in Christianity)
as it encourages people to be cowardly and conformist. (i.e. ‘all paths
lead to Rome’/listening to the Pope/ISIS preach for comfort – which is
cowardly as you don’t have to express your opinion, just your religious
view)
• Christianity encourages a ‘slave morality’ in which suffering and
weakness are admired, and followers are encouraged to show
forgiveness rather than revenge (MLK/Pope praised for talking to the
poor when they should of always done this).
• Lack of moral assertiveness partly due to religion encouraging followers
to consider the next life. In the next life, injustice will be dealt and so it
takes away the necessity for restoring injustice on earth (allow injustice
because of reward in the next life – ‘easier for a camel to fit through the
eye of a needle than a rich man through the gates of heaven’.

8. 1) Argument:
• God is a man-made concept.
• No empirical evidence for his existence.
• Therefore, any evidence for God’s existence should be rejected ‘on its own merit’ (they are bias towards his existence – wouldn’t listen to
the testimony of a burglar)
• Religion ‘is the opium of the people’ – there is something stopping the working class from uniting and revolting against the bourgeoisie.
Marx says the working class are in a state of ‘false consciousness’.
• Belief in God ‘dulls the senses’.
• Religion is a symbol of oppression.

9. 1) Rejection of the Cosmological Argument:
• Darwin shows that we have evolved in the Theory of Evolution, meaning that God is not needed as the necessary.
• We have the answers to the ‘big questions’ without God, and Dawkins claims that theists need to accept this.
2) Rejection of the Design Argument:
• Or God is the ‘blind watchmaker’ – Dawkins claims that matter is eternal (therefore, the cosmological argument fails – infinite regression
is possible) and animals adapted to be what they are today(therefore, the Design Argument fails as there is not design, just evolution)
and there are too many natural disasters to claim that an all powerful and all loving God exists (Problem of Evil).
3) Rejection of the Religious Experience Argument:
• Faith claims in God are unsupported – ‘biological materialism’ – everything in existence is material and meta-physical.
• Therefore, God must be metaphysical, and cannot be sensed, meaning that RE are impossible/not God.
4) His explanation for why people still believe:
• Man cant cope with the fact that the world may not have a purpose.
• They don’t like this, so create God to give then purpose.
• Man needs to grow out of religion and of ‘superstitious ideas’ (e.g. Life After Death and ‘uncaused causer’).
5) Why religion is bad:
• Belief in God/organised religion leads to evil – ‘an indulgence of irrationality that is nourishing determinism, divisions and terror’.
• An indulgence of irrationality – theists make claims that have no evidence/unprovable. Irrational = dangerous so to indulge it is wrong.
• Nourishing determinism – if true, God created some people rich, some people smarter which increases the bourgeoisies’ power
(Hindu’s/Buddhist’s ‘karma’) creates divisions between theists/atheists, Protestant’s/Catholic’s.
• Creates terror – with irrational thoughts – ‘I will blow up the twin towers’.

10. 1) Philosophical critiques:
• R. Swinburne:
• God’s existence may not become an empirical fact (cant use
a priori or posteriori) but there is a ‘high probability of his
existence’.
• Why – nature is governed (e.g. gravity). If all these natural
laws are working, then there must be a designer rather than
chance/chaos and so there therefore must be a necessary
being.
• More probable that it is God as the chances of are existence
without him are minute.
• The simplest explanation is to conclude God.
• ‘In the absence of special consideration, the experiences of
the others are probably as they report’.
2) Psychological critiques:
• There are some religious believers who are deluded (e.g.
cult leaders who pray on the weak) but that is the minority.
• People criticise Freud’s research because it is out of date
and makes generalizations.
• There are many positive and encouraging psychological
aspects of beliefs in God which can all be overlooked.
• It can be a great comfort for people in crisis's.
• Does it matter if people give money to charity in a state of
neurosis if they still give it?
• Id it bad if people are comforted by a non-existent being if it
helps them?
• Some religious people are highly intelligent – it is absurd to
claim such people are delusional.
3) Sociological critiques:
• Many aspects of Marx’s argument are idealistic and
impractical.
• They ignore positive impacts of religion (e.g. the Liberation
Theology, Ghandi and MLK)
• The Liberation Theology is run by the bourgeoisies but
works to liberate the proletariat, going against Marx’s
theory.
4) Scientific critiques:
• Criticises Dawkins for only using extreme examples (Root of
all evil documentary) such as ISIS and the Devil Houses, as
these do not show the normal consequences of religion and
are ‘extreme’, meaning abnormal and therefore do not
show the majorities view.
• They accuse him of being as extremist/militant himself as
those he criticises.