The Philosophy of Atheism
by Emma Goldman
First published in February 1916 in the Mother Earth journal.
To give an adequate exposition of the Philosophy of
Atheism, it would be necessary to go into the historical
changes of the belief in a Deity, from its earliest beginning
to the present day. But that is not within the scope of the
present paper. However, it is not out of place to mention, in
passing, that the concept God, Supernatural Power, Spirit,
Deity, or in whatever other term the essence of Theism may
have found expression, has become more indefinite and
obscure in the course of time and progress. In other words,
the God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in-
proportion as the human mind is learning to understand
natural phenomena and in the degree that science pro-
gressively correlates human and social events.
God, today, no longer represents the same forces as in
the beginning of His existence; neither does He direct
human destiny with the same Iron hand as of yore. Rather
does the God idea express a sort of spiritualistic stimalus to
satisfy the fads and fancies of every shade of human weak-
ness. In the course of human development the God idea has
been forced to adapt itself to every phase of human affairs,
which is perfectly consistent with the origin of the idea
itself.
The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity.
Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of
nature and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying
manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against
him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all super-
stition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God
idea.
Very aptly, the world-renowned atheist and anarchist,
Michael Bakunin, says in his great work God and the State:
"All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their
prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by
the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full
development and full possession of their faculties. Conse-
quently, the religious heaven is nothing but the mirage in
which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovered his
own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is divinised.
The history of religions, of the birth, grandeur, and the
decline of the gods who had succeeded one another in
human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of
the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As
fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically-
progressive advance, either in themselves or in external
nature, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they
attributed it to their gods, after having exaggerated and
enlarged it beyond measure, after the manner of chil-
dren, by an act of their religious fancy. . . . With all due
respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists,
philosophers, politicians or poets: the idea of God implies
the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most
decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in
the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice."
Thus the God idea, revived, readjusted, and enlarged or
narrowed, according to the necessity of the time, has domi-
nated humanity and will continue to do so until man will
raise his head to the sunlit day, unafraid and with an
awakened will to himself. In proportion as man learns to
realize himself and mold his own destiny theism becomes
superfluous. How far man will be able to find his relation to
his fellows will depend entirely upon how much he can
outgrow his dependence upon God.
Already there are indications that theism, which is the
theory of speculation, is being replaced by Atheism, the
science of demonstration; the one hangs in the metaphysical
clouds of the Beyond, while the other has its roots firmly in
the soil. It is the earth, not heaven, which man must rescue
if he is truly to be saved.
The decline of theism is a most interesting spectacle,
especially as manifested in the anxiety of the theists, what-
ever their particular brand. They realize, much to their
distress, that the masses are growing daily more atheistic,
more anti-religious; that they are quite willing to leave the
Great Beyond and its heavenly domain to the angels and
sparrows; because more and more the masses are becoming
engrossed in the problems of their immediate existence.
How to bring the masses back to the God idea, the spirit,
the First Cause, etc. - that is the most pressing question to
all theists. Metaphysical as all these questions seem to be,
they yet have a very marked physical background. Inas-
much as religion, "Divine Truth," rewards and punishments
are the trade-marks of the largest, the most corrupt and
pernicious, the most powerful and lucrative industry in the
world, not excepting the industry of manufacturing guns
and munitions. It is the industry of befogging the human
mind and stifling the human heart. Necessity knows no law;
hence the majority of theists are compelled to take up every
subject, even if it has no bearing upon a deity or revelation
or the Great Beyond. Perhaps they sense the fact that
humanity is growing weary of the hundred and one brands
of God.
How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a
matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore
their tolerance; but it is a tolerance not of understanding;
but of weakness. Perhaps that explains the efforts fostered
in all religious publications to combine variegated religious
philosophies and conflicting theistic theories into one de-
nominational trust. More and more, the various concepts
"of the only tree God, the only pure spirit, -the only true
religion" are tolerantly glossed over in the frantic effort to
establish a common ground to rescue the modern mass
from the "pernicious" influence of atheistic ideas.
It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one
really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe
or pretend to believe. To accomplish this end, the crudest
and vulgarest methods are being used. Religious endeavor
meetings and revivals with Billy Sunday as their champion
-methods which must outrage every refined sense, and
which in their effect upon the ignorant and curious often
tend to create a mild state of insanity not infrequently
coupled with eroto-mania. All these frantic efforts find
approval and support from the earthly powers; from the
Russian despot to the American President; from Rocke-
feller and Wanamaker down to the pettiest business man.
They blow that capital invested in Billy Sunday, the
Y.M.C.A., Christian Science, and various other religious
institutions will return enormous profits from the subdued,
tamed, and dull masses.
Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods
and devils, heaven and hell; reward and punishnient, a whip
to lash the people into obedience, meekness and content-
ment. The truth is that theism would have lost its foeting
long before this but for the combined support of Mammon
and power. How thoroughly banlrupt it really is, is being
demonstrated in the trenches and battlefields of Europe
today.
Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love
and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preach-
ments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race.
Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of
people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical
indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos;
Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus
refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are
butchering each other.
The burden of all song and praise "unto the Highest"
has been that God stands for justice and mercy. Yet injus-
tice among men is ever on the increase; the outrages com-
mitted against the masses in this country alone would seem
enough to overflow the very heavens. But where are the
gods to make an end to all these horrors, these wrongs, this
inhumanity to man? No, not the gods, but MAN must rise
in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, be-
trayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to
usher in justice upon the earth.
The philosophy of Atheism expresses the expansion and
growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we
can call it philosophy, is static and fixed. Even the mere
attempt to pierce these mysteries represents, from the the-
istic point of view, non-belief in the all-embracing omnipo-
tence, and even a denial of the wisdom of the divine powers
outside of man. Fortunately, however, the human mind
never was, and never can be, bound by fixities. Hence it is
forging ahead in its restless march towards knowledge and
life. The human mind is realizing "that the universe is not
the result of a creative fiat by some divine intelligence, out
of nothing, producing a masterpiece chaotic in perfect
operation," but that it is the product of chaotic forces
operating through aeons of time, of clashes and cataclysms,
of repulsion and attraction crystalizing through the prin-
ciple of selection into what the theists call, "the universe
guided into order and beauty." As Joseph McCabe well
points out in his Existence ot God: "a law of nature is not a
formula drawn up by a legislator, but a mere summary of
the observed facts - a 'bundle of facts.' Things do not act in
a particular way because there is a law, but we state the
'law' because they act in that way."
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life
without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is
the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating,
expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal
world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean content-
ment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
It may seem a wild paradox, and yet it is pathetically
true, that this real, visible world and our life should have
been so long under the influence of metaphysical specula-
tion, rather than of physical demonstrable forces. Under the
lash of the theistic idea, this earth has served no other
purpose than as a temporary station to test man's capacity
for immolation to the will of God. But the moment man
attempted to ascertain the nature of that will, he was told
that it was utterly futile for "finite human intelligence" to
get beyond the all-powerful infinite will. Under the terrific
weight of this omnipotence, man has been bowed into the
dust - a will-less creature, broken and sweating in the
dark. The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free
man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of
the phantoms of the beyond. Again and again the light of
reason has dispelled the theistic nightmare, but poverty,
misery and fear have recreated the phantoms - though
whether old or new, whatever their external form, they
differed little in their essence. Atheism, on the other hand,
in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a
definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the
God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods
in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the
principle of theism which represents the belief in a super-
natural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and
man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious
influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought
and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.
The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in
this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from
all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan,
Buddhistic, Brahministic, or what not. Mankind has been
punished long and heavily for having created its gods;
nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since
gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man
must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates
of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his
reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon
earth.
Only after the triumph of the Atheistic philosophy in the
minds and hearts of man will freedom and beauty be real-
ized. Beauty as a gift from heaven has proved useless. It
will, however, become the essence and impetus of life when
man learns to see in the earth the only heaven fit for man.
Atheism is already helping to free man from his dependence
upon punishment and reward as the heavenly bargain-
counter for the poor in spirit.
Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no
justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine
Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has
always been a vile product, imbued partiy with self-
righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice,
and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and
daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the
Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew
that justice, truth, and fidelity are not, conditioned in
heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the
tremendous changes going on in the social and material life
of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating,
even as life itself. To what heights the philosophy of Athe-
ism may yet attain, no one can prophesy. But this much can
already be predicted: only by its regenerating fire will
human relations be purged from the horrors of the past.
Thoughtful people are beginning to realize that moral
precepts, imposed upon humanity through religious terror,
have become stereotyped and have therefore lost all vitality.
A glance at life today, at its disintegrating character, its
conflicting interests with their hatreds, crimes, and greed,
suffices to prove the sterility of theistic morality.
Man must get back to himself before he can learn his
relation to his fellows. Prometheus chained to the Rock of
Ages is doomed to remain the prey of the vultures of dark-
ness. Unbind Prometheus, and you dispel the night and its
horrors.
Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the
strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal
yea to life, purpose, and beauty.
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