To consider the emergence of atheism in South Africa; together with factors which impede or advance its pace, this study cannot be undertaken in isolation from the current key international debates on atheism. Whilst it is noted that these debates cannot form the main focus of this study, the key categories within which these debates have emerged and have been framed, have shaped the understandings, nature and growth of atheism internationally. As such, these issues and debates, as listed below, and the related literature will have a bearing on the course of this study simply because they will continue to impact on the emergence of atheism in South Africa, as they already have.
Science Vs. Religion and Creationism
This debate is carried very strongly by prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss and Neil deGrass Tyson in their efforts to counter the claim by theists, particularly of the Christian faith, of a ‘creator-God’. The mainstreaming of literature such as that of, Victor Stenger’s (2012), God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion, Richard Dawkins’ (2006), The God Delusion, and David Mills’ (2006), Atheist Universe: A thinking person’s answer to Christian fundamentalism, and Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith (2014), have over the past 10 years, brought the debate on Science versus Creationism into sharp focus.
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More importantly for this study is the need to extract from this discourse the elements which define the atheist worldview, their usefulness and the manner in which these elements and definitions shape the engagement of atheists with religious interest groups, on the one hand, and the Constitution, on the other, as the regulator of public’s interests, rights and obligations. The issue of religious instruction in schools does serve to illustrate this point. South African classrooms may be no different from experiences in many other parts of the world on the subject, in that at the core of the atheist proposition is the stance that rationality and evidence-based inquiry are the best ways for a child to understand the world around her/him rather than one derived from religious instruction and sacred Scripture. Understanding this debate, therefore, has a direct bearing on how one interprets the emergence of atheism in South Africa.
The Moral Regeneration Debate
The issues of ethics and morals have long been central to the tension between the worlds of theism and atheism; at the heart of which is the question as to what should inform the construction of a moral code. Strident atheists such as Sam Harris, through his books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004), Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values (2010), have sought to challenge the idea that one ‘cannot be good without God’. Martin Prozesky (2009), in his paper, Is the Secular State the Root of our Moral Problems in South Africa? questioned the position on moral regeneration as expressed by leading South African church figure, Ray McCauley. The following extract quotes MacCauley’s responses which appeared in the Sunday Times-RSA 14th May 2006. To the question, ‘Why are we Living in Such a Godless Society’, McCauley’s responses were,
“It’s all relative, you know. It seems like there’s a lot of chaos going on in the world. Places like France, Holland, they’ve been shocked by the moral fibre of their nation themselves. … A godless society … that’s why Holland and France, being secular states, have declined dramatically in their morality. Once you become a secular state, once you get into a place that is godless, the country
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Whilst there may be no need to establish why and how McCauley reaches his conclusion that France and Holland ‘have declined dramatically in their morality’, it is sufficient to note the direct positive correlation being drawn between the acceptance of, and allegiance to, a God-figure and the moral wellbeing of a society. This position is challenged within the atheist school and the debates on the subject internationally have also offered a strong rallying ground for atheists. This debate raised by Martin Prozesky is of further significance for this study as it engages the question as to whether South Africa post-1994 is a secular state and what this may hold for the emergence of atheism in South Africa.
The works of Anthony C. Grayling will be of particular significance to this study; The God argument: The case against religion and for humanism (2013), The Good Book: A Secular Bible (2011), and Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness (2012). These works not only represent a push-back to the assumption of religious normativity, but Grayling throughout his works offers alternative approaches to understanding reality and what it will take to make the best possible attempt at the ‘good life’. To a noticeable degree, this latter point found expression during the interviews undertaken with atheists whose lived experiences were in search of a label; lived experiences which resembled the worldview of Secular Humanism which the works of Anthony C. Grayling characterises.
Contestations to Atheism
It is acknowledged that whilst the discourse between theism and atheism is not a 21st Century creation, it could be argued that the resurgence of atheism through the New Atheist Movement after 2001, led largely by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, has heightened public awareness of the subject and the related debates. It is within this context that critical debates have been popularised into the broader public realm, South Africa not being excluded. It was considered important therefore that this study also recognised the need for the interrogation of the atheist proposition as offered by authors such as, Terry Eagleton (2009), through his work, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, David Belinski’s (2009), The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, and Alister McGrath’s, Dawkins’ God : Genes, Memes, and The Meaning of Life (2007) and The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist
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fundamentalism and the denial of the divine (2007). In his publication, The Twilight of
Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, McGrath’s (2004) critique of modern atheism is also preceded by a useful summary of the dawn of atheism from within Greek antiquity, through the period of the Enlightenment, through to the advent of modern atheism. The real grit of McGrath’s publication for the purposes of this study, however, is his assessment (p.269: Institutional Atheism – A Failure of Vision, to p.279: The Permanent Significance of Atheism) of the period directly preceding the arrival of the New Atheist Movement, in which McGrath (2004:277) highlights the risks under which the future significance of atheism is placed by confining itself to an overly strident oppositional stance to religion, which favoured a “secularist agenda, eliminating religion from the public arena.” One does not have to agree with all which McGrath advances in his book, but it will be unwise to treat his critique, as well as those of the other authors mentioned as being of no or little significance to the future of atheism as a social phenomenon.