Objection 1: Not ‘Theism 2 ’ but ‘Theism+’

Perhaps the most obvious objection to my argument comes in the form of a restatement of what I have called the ‘standard view’ of theism. Namely, that theism is just the positive truth-valuing of the purely cognitive proposition ‘It is the case that God exists’, which I have represented as ‘Theism¹’. Surely this, and this alone, is the necessary and sufficient condition for what it means to be a theist? What I have described in ‘Theism²’ is

24 Mark Schroeder, ‘How Expressivists Can and Should Solve Their Problem with Negation’, Noûs, 42 (2008), 573-599. Although, it should be mentioned, Schroeder does not see his solution as being ultimately conducive to the truth of expressivism, since it only opens the door to further problems. Still, his argument provides a short-term solution to the ‘negation problem’ of noncognitive atheism.

not really theism, but ‘theism+’; theism plus commitment,²⁵ theism plus religion, theism plus faith, theism plus emotion, etc. As such, premise 2 is false, since this noncognitive content, even if it does play a role in theistic or religious belief, does not play an essential role, and is thus not a necessary component of theism.

In response, I would ask the objector to consider the counterintuitive conclusions of their own position. To say that one can be a theist solely in virtue of one’s cognitive beliefs, regardless of one’s noncognitive attitudes, emotions, etc., is to ignore the depths of theology that consider ‘belief in’ God, and all the noncognitive stuff that comes along with it, to be of primary importance. There is a sense in which, for the likes of such archetypal theists as Dostoevsky, Pascal, Augustine, et al., these noncognitive components, which are recognisably evident in theological concepts such as ‘faith’, ‘grace’, ‘love’, etc., are there in our understanding of what it means to believe in God from the ground up. They are not, contrary to objection 1, peripheral or additional to a core thesis; the ‘core thesis’ emerges from these noncognitive-laden concepts. The ‘belief that God exists’, as a cognitive proposition, is very much secondary to the religious form of life that gives rise to it.

This is particularly obvious if we recognise that our notion of ‘noncognitive’ includes any product of what have traditionally been termed ‘reasons of the heart’:

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know [...] It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason. [...] We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles.²⁶

This is a frequently recurring theme; consider this from Dostoevsky: ‘To know nature, the soul, God, love [...] These are known by the heart, not the mind.’²⁷ Or this from Schleiermacher: ‘The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.’²⁸ Pascal, Dostoevsky, Schleiermacher, Otto, Barth, not even to mention Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Augustine, Tillich, William James, Rowan Williams, etc., etc.; the list could go on and on. To say that belief in God, ‘theism’, is solely cognitive in nature is to cast all of these theologians and philosophers aside as being misguided about theism. That is a conclusion no less absurd than mine.

25 Thanks to Andrei Buckareff for this comment.

26 Blaise Pascal, Pensées [1669] (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958), §§277, 278, 282.

27 This simple statement of what we might call ‘Metaphysical Romanticism’ is offered in response to an appeal made to Dostoevsky (by his brother) that ‘to know more, one must feel less’. Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky:

A Writer in His Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 56-7.

28 Cited in Victoria Harrison, Religion and Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 2007), p. 16.

But further, I think we can recognise objection 1 as being a symptom of a broader methodological issue in the analytic philosophy of religion; namely, that the analytic philosophy of religion operates with an impoverished conception of religious belief, and it does not want to listen to theology’s corrective insights on the matter. I said earlier that

‘theism is what theists think theism is’, and that we should be aware that what it means to affirm the existence of the God of religion might be different to that of the God of the philosophers; I do not want to let the strength of that assertion go unnoticed. It would be a terrible mistake to think that the analytic philosophy of religion can operate without listening intently to theology. It is philosophy of religion, after all. To choose to adopt and operate with a concept of theism that is only relevant to the analytic philosophy of religion, formed in wilful disregard of theology, is to make the discipline wholly irrelevant to its subject matter.

‘What can be formalised without loss of cognitive content cannot be corrupted by cliché or spiritual deadness.’²⁹ A robust conception of theistic belief can clearly be corrupted by cliché or spiritual deadness, yet the conception of theistic belief often deployed in the analytic philosophy of religion is not so vulnerable. This ought to ring alarm bells for the analytic philosophy of religion.

And besides, there is a more serious logical point to be made, and it offers me an easy escape from objection 1. It is simply this: My conclusion states ‘atheism can be purely noncognitive’. As such, I would point out that I am not claiming that atheism is noncognitive.

Given the explicitly stated limits to my conclusion, it is sufficient for me to claim that there is just one instance of a partially noncognitive theism in order to justify my conclusion that atheism can be purely noncognitive. Now, you might not think that theism as such is necessarily noncognitive, but given the examples I have cited in this article, it would be obtuse to maintain that no form of theism is necessarily noncognitive in part.

Part of me thinks that that is too easy a way out, however. I do intend my conclusion to be more far reaching than merely being a very restricted possibility. I think noncognitive atheisms can be appropriate responses to the vast majority of theisms, but that is largely because I think the vast majority of theisms are partly constituted by noncognitive contents. I allow that there might be some very specific forms of theism that might not require noncognitive content, but contend that there is as little justification to move from ‘some theisms do not require noncognitive content’ to ‘therefore, no theism requires noncognitive

29 Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, 2nd edition, Kindle edition (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 272.

content’, as there is to move from ‘some theisms require noncognitive content’ to ‘therefore, all theisms require noncognitive content’.

In conclusion, to deny premise 2 is to ignore theology. We should not ignore theology. Therefore, we should not deny premise 2. But if it will help, I can rephrase premise 2, and make the limited scope of my conclusion more clear, giving:

1. Atheism is the negation of theism.

2*. Some forms of theism necessarily have noncognitive components.

3*. Therefore, atheism can be purely noncognitive.