Atheism

ATHEISM. A theory that denies the existence of a personal God.

OUTLINE:

I. Notion, division, and possibility

II. History and philosophical systems

III. Doctrine of the Church

IV. The “atheistic” morality

V. Atheism among primitive peoples.

I. CONCEPT, DIVISIONS AND POSSIBILITY

The term was in vogue during the Renaissance to denote the attitude of those who do not admit the existence of Divinity, but the definition is already found in Clement of Alexandria: ἄθεος μὲν γὰρ ὁ μὴ νομίζωσεν εἶναι θεῶν (Strom., VII, 1, 4, 3). It is practical atheism when one lives without acknowledging God, “as if” God did not exist, or without troubling oneself about His existence and organising one’s private and public life while disregarding the existence of any absolute principle that transcends the values of the individual and of the human species. It is theoretical atheism when one directly or indirectly passes judgment on the non-existence of Divinity. Those who deny God “indirectly” (negative atheism) are those who ignore Him completely, who are unable to form a judgment about Him, or who affirm that the problem does not interest them (indifferentism). They deny Him “directly” (positive atheism) first and foremost those who apply themselves to demolishing the foundations of the proofs of the existence of God, of the necessity of religion and of worship and of whatever is necessarily connected with them (Providence, the immortality of the soul, moral sanction...). It is called skeptical atheism when insistence is placed on the invincibility of doubt, and it becomes agnostic atheism when the undemonstrability is said or recognised as absolute either on the part of the object or of the subject. It is positive theoretical atheism when one proclaims oneself certain and convinced of the non-existence of God, when one demolishes and undermines as erroneous and unfounded the proofs adduced for His existence and when one claims that a true demonstration of the same has hitherto not been given nor ever can be given.

From the theological and metaphysical point of view, however, all those philosophies and religions that form of God a concept contrasting with the exigency of His Nature also fall under atheism: Flint (p. 2, 441, note) preferred to speak here of “antitheism” rather than atheism. But these conceptions, with the illusion of an acceptance of divinity, in a certain sense distance one even more than atheism from the knowledge of the true God. This traditional scheme of classification of atheism cannot, however, be applied concretely, especially in modern philosophy and culture, except with appropriate caution, having regard above all to whether there is an affirmation of the Absolute, whatever it may be and however the human mind may attain II.
The possibility of practical atheism, at least temporarily, seems beyond doubt: the pressure of the concrete problems of life, the heat of passions, an indifferent family environment and a secular education can for a certain period of life divert man’s interest from the problem of God. Not, however, forever: at least for those who live in contact with society where the posing of the problem, by reason of the very exigencies of competition and of religious and political struggle, seems inevitable. Moreover, what the history of religions attests for peoples can also be said for individuals: first and foremost the great phenomena of nature with the spectacle of wonder at their magnificence and of terror at their overwhelming destructive threat; then the decisive facts of human existence such as birth and death and the most anguishing problem of human life, namely that of the suffering of the just on this earth and of the frequent good fortune of the wicked; all this, sooner or later, must pose to human consciousness the problem of a cause and of a justification, which is the problem of God.

[Theoretical atheism] consequently cannot be an original situation but must be explained as a point of arrival, as the “conclusion” of a determined rational process that stems from certain premises: it therefore belongs to the reflective consciousness proper to philosophy. It is a fact that in every mature civilisation there have been staunch supporters (who claimed and are therefore supposed to have been “convinced”) of theoretical atheism, both negative and positive; it also results that the number of atheists seems to increase in what may be called the “phase of saturation” of a certain form of civilisation, such as Stoic and Epicurean philosophy in Graeco-Roman civilisation, Enlightenment and Idealism in modern civilisation, and the predominance of technology and economics in contemporary life. The possibility of theoretical atheism therefore becomes more or less real and plausible according to whether or not certain environmental and cultural conditions obtain, which the theologian must consider case by case: these often, in the concrete fabric of existence, seem insurmountable except through a special intervention of divine Grace, which, according to Catholic doctrine, cannot fail those who sincerely seek the truth.

The spiritual complications to which modern culture can today lead are such that Catholic authors have not yet succeeded in formulating a judgment on atheism with full agreement (cf. P. Descoqs, Schema Theodicaeae, I, Paris 1941, pp. 139 ff.): some deny the very possibility of theoretical atheism (Blondel, de Lubac), which is then a fact; others admit that atheism may be invincible in individual cases (Billot), and there are even those who say that one can lose the Faith without theological guilt (K. Adam). Cardinal Billot distinguishes among adult atheists between “adulti aetatis” and “adulti rationis”: that is, those who lack the minimum light required to form a concept of the true God and those who in their environment have at their disposal the arguments and elements for a definitive judgment. Only the atheism of the latter is conscious and culpable, not that of the former, which Billot includes among the ancient and modern idolatrous civilisations and religions and the secular and atheistic conceptions of contemporary life.

Despite all these cautions that the problem of atheism imposes today, it must nonetheless be recognised that it has represented in the history of humanity, and still represents today, more an individual attitude than a social conduct, which can also signify protest or liberation of the individual. The claim of materialist and evolutionist ethnology to place at the beginning of history a man without religion or a polytheist and fetishist (D. F. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, ch. 11, § 35), devoid of a true notion and cult of divinity, has been refuted by the facts; indeed, as is well known, the situation has today been substantially reversed, in the sense that the most primitive forms of religion have turned out to be strictly monotheistic, that polytheism is a phenomenon of degeneration of monotheism so that individual positions of atheism appear genetically only as forms of reaction to the absurdities and improprieties of polytheistic conceptions and practices. In this sense an ancient doxographer could affirm: “All men, without distinction of civilisation and language, θεὸς σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν. For there is no nation of men that is godless” (Artemidorus, Oneirokr., 9). And even before Aristotle: “For all men have some conception of the gods” (De coelo et mundo, I, 3, 270 b, 5; ed. W. K. C. Guthrie, London 1945). Affirmations that have been taken up in our own day, on the basis of the inductions of modern ethnology, by G. van der Leeuw: “There are no peoples without religion. At the beginning of history there is no form of atheism. Religion is always and everywhere present” (Phänomenologie der Religion, Leipzig 1935, p. 570): because, according to the same author, atheism represents in the development of consciousness the “negative moment” that can arise and live only inasmuch as it presupposes the preceding moment of the affirmation, that is, of religion as the cult of the divinity that dominates man and his destiny (cf. L'Homme primitif et la religion, Paris 1940, pp. 194 ff.). In this sense Van der Leeuw calls atheism “the religion of flight” from God, or, in Kierkegaardian terminology, of “the anxiety of God”, when faith is refused in order to fall into the demonic (cf. S. Kierkegaard, Il concetto dell'angoscia, Florence 1946, ch. 4, § 2).

The intimate reason for atheism, as a spiritual and individual attitude, lies in human freedom itself. On the one hand, the difficulties in attaining complete clarity on the problems of the afterlife, evil, and Providence—thus on the ultimate essence of the world and consciousness, as well as on the transcendental capacity of knowledge—can drive a person away from religion. On the other hand, the contradictions among religions, the improprieties of many beliefs and religious practices, and the demand that every religion embrace and influence the entirety of human life may in fact alienate a person from religion and lead them to reject, along with religion, the very question of God. Moreover, it is precisely such a situation—namely, the genesis of atheism "by scandal"—that must operate and allow the individual to select, from among the various conflicting religions, the one that is true because it does not cause scandal. Yet under the actual conditions of human civilization, the true religion—and thus the only conception worthy of God and of man—appears to be guaranteed only by Revelation, which by its very nature transcends rational evidence and demands faith. For this reason, the definitive victory over the doubts that lead to atheism is ultimately a matter of grace and freedom.

Hence, at least a simplistic interpretation of atheism is that given by the Protestant theologian K. Barth, who sees atheism as a phenomenon of reaction to mysticism: against the mystic who claims to have a direct relationship with God, the ineffable and the unobjectifiable, the atheist proclaims the return of man to himself, to the world of creatures and history. Atheism would thus be negative or "of nothing" mysticism, arising from opposition to positive or "of all" mysticism (Kirchliche Dogmatik, I, II, 3rd ed., Zurich 1945, pp. 344 ff.). Barth, however, does not first clarify the concept of "mysticism," and then he must explain why atheism takes greater hold in countries with a predominantly Protestant majority. It is true that mysticism is the antithesis of atheism, but in a sense opposite to that intended by Barth (a theologian of "strict observance" and anti-pietist inspiration), inasmuch as mystical union represents in Christian life the most intimate and suitable form (and always "gratuitous") of the soul’s union with God.

II. HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS

1. Philosophies and religions with a naturalistic background in ancient India, such as the Samkhya system, Jainism, and Buddhism in its original form before the deification of the Buddha himself, may be termed forms of atheism (S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, I, London 1929, p. 329). In the pre-biblical religions, especially those of the Middle East, divinity embraces all things and relates to man chiefly as an omnipotent terror and threat that keeps him in constant anxiety, driving him even to human sacrifices to appease divine wrath. Hence the monstrous representations of countless gods in the religions of the East, which we still see today in the pagan temples of India and China. In more evolved religions, divine representations tend to assume a beneficent and aesthetic aspect, while the origin of evil is attributed to nemesis and the necessity (ἀνάγκη) of fate (εἰμαρμένη) to which even the gods themselves are subject, beginning with Zeus. Yet even in Greco-Roman religion, the fragmentation of the divine permeates all activities of nature and man down to the most radical details (cf. St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, VII). It is within this degeneration of religions that we must see the stimulus that provoked philosophical reflection and, with it, atheism and the need for a single absolute principle of being.

Among the Jewish people, who were conscious of possessing in prophetic teaching and sacred books the truth of the one true God, atheism is the supreme act of “folly” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1 ff.), and idolatry the gravest sin. This conception was taken up by St Paul, who sees in the abominable vices of paganism the punishment of God for the sin of idolatry (Rom. 1:18) and reminds new converts that previously they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12) and that the Gentiles do not know God (τὰ ἔθνη τὰ μὴ εἰδότα τὸν θεόν; 1 Thess. 4:5). Yet men, even in paganism, could have risen to God from the creatures in which he had manifested himself, and thus the sin of idolatry was inexcusable (Rom. 1:19–20). At the Areopagus (Acts 17:22–28; cf. 14:16), the Apostle discerns a deep aspiration toward the one true God even in the cult of the “Unknown God.” From the perspective of Sacred Scripture and strict theology — a view confirmed also by metaphysical reflection — there is no distinction between atheism and idolatrous polytheism: at most, there is a psychological distinction, which, however, must disappear in the development of consciousness.

Even in the Greco-Roman world, the greatest crime was impiety (ἀσέβεια), which was the subject of severe legislation, especially in Greece, and could even incur the death penalty. To determine the precise sense of this crime, one may refer to Varro’s tripartite division of the gods, recalled by St Augustine (De Civitate Dei, VI, 5): the fabulous or mythical, the natural or philosophical, and the civil or political. The first, the product of the imagination of poet-theologians, was the heritage of the uneducated masses; the third, however, represented the religion of the state, so that recognition of its gods and their official cult was the foundation of civil life and the primary duty of the citizen. “Atheist,” therefore, was anyone who contradicted this belief or refused to acknowledge its cult, which in ancient society was the only obligatory one. Those who indulged in belief and cult of mythical gods, populating the world with beneficent and maleficent deities, were called “superstitious” (δεσίδαμων), a term implying excess rather than contempt. The natural religion of the philosophers, founded on the demand for a single principle and its transcendence, served as a critical resolution of both extremes, especially among those thinkers who refused to compromise with popular beliefs or the interests of politics. These philosophers, with their vigorous affirmation of the transcendence and unity of the deity, represented the pinnacle of human wisdom outside Revelation, so much so that St Augustine could write of them: “Quidam eorum quaedam magna, quantum divinitus adiuti sunt, invenerunt...” and even go so far as to ask: “If the philosophers have discovered something that is sufficient for living a good and blessed life, how much more justly should such men receive divine honors?” (De Civitate Dei, II, 7; CSEL, 40, 1, p. 67). Yet to the superstitious multitude and the politicians they were “atheists”; not infrequently, to save their lives, they had to flee (Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Aristotle). It is well known that Socrates, refusing to flee, faced death, trusting in his God, as recounted by Plato (Apology) and Xenophon.

Plato himself, in the Laws (X, 885b ff.), presents an entire legal code that punishes those who deny the existence of the gods, divine providence, and the retribution that the gods exact from transgressors of the state’s laws. Whether political concerns were at stake or religion was functioning as a tool of politics, it is clear from the fact that the ἄθεοι were prosecuted for ἀσέβεια not for personal opinions or doctrines, but only when they propagated such views or publicly insulted the gods of the official religion (Leg., I, 887c–f). The impiety of the “universal philosophers” lay in their tearing from religion the foundation of local traditions on which the “city” depended for its history and prosperity, for these doctrines undermined the foundations of civil justice (Leg., I, 890a–e). Thus, as Derenne (following Drachmann) rightly observes, even beneath the political backdrop, it was religion and the conception of religion itself that was called into question in the prosecution for ἀσέβεια (Le procès d'impiété..., Liège-Paris 1930, p. 261). Yet it must also be added that it was above all the reaction of philosophy in the classical age that freed man from the narrow confines of national and racial interests and gave him the entire οἰκουμένη as his homeland, in some way preparing men for the Christian concept of the transcendence of God and universal brotherhood.

Many lists of “atheists” have come down to us. In the one compiled by Sextus Empiricus, who distinguishes them from both theistic philosophers and sceptics, we find Evemerus, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Theodorus of Cyrene (nicknamed ἄθεος par excellence; cf. Cicero, De nat. Deorum, I, 42), Critias, Protagoras, Epicurus... (Adv. Phys., IX, 50 ff.); to these Fabricius adds (from Lysippus of Epirus) many others such as Arcagoras, Anaximander, Apollophanes, Aristagoras of Melos, Bion of Borysthenes, Callimachus, Carneades, Gorgias, Hippias of Elis, Leucippus, etc.; we must certainly also mention Diogenes of Apollonia, Critias, Hippo of Reggio, Xenophanes. But as Drachmann has shown (op. cit., p. 19), most of these figures did not so much deny God as the multiplicity of gods and the superstitions of cult. Yet it seems that strict “atheists” were not lacking among them (Democritus, Theodorus of Cyrene, Protagoras...). Nestle (op. cit., p. 80) recalls Cinesias of Miletus (cf. Plato, Gorgias, 501 e), through whose efforts a group of impious men (κακοδαιμονισταί) had formed in Athens who gathered at the new moon to “take delight in reviling the gods and our customs.” Even in Sextus’s list there appear to be radical “atheists.” As for Epicurus, his outward respect for the gods—nowadays treated by philologists with a certain favour (J. Festugière, C. Diano)—is seen by Sextus as a practical expedient to conceal atheism, because “according to the nature of things the gods do not exist” (πρὸς τὴν φύσιν τῶν πραγμάτων οὐδαμῶς [εἶναι τοὺς θεοὺς]; cf. also Cicero: “...Epicurum, ne in offensionem Atheniensium caderet, verbis reliquisse deos, re sustulisse” [De nat. Deorum, I, 30]).

Throughout this matter, Sparta and Rome proved more tolerant than Athens, contenting themselves with the external act of worship to the official state deities without concerning themselves with individual opinions or philosophical disputes on the subject. It was with the Christians that Rome raised the problem of atheism, which acquired juridical reality in the decrees ordering persecutions.

2. Already in the Hellenistic period, with the fall of local republics, the Greek soul had lost belief in indigenous deities that had shown themselves incapable of defending the fatherland of which they were the palladium. Hellenism, however, had left intact the Greco-Roman principle that religion remained a matter of state and a national characteristic: it had merely lost the influence over life that ancient religion had once wielded, so that, as we see from writers from the Augustan age onward, atheism was no longer confined to the “elite” of philosophers but had spread among the masses immersed in materialism. With Christianity every ambiguity became impossible: inasmuch as it revived Jewish monotheism, every form of idolatry was rejected; inasmuch as it taught redemption in Christ from sin, it demanded asceticism and the renewal of all life, which could not be satisfied by the turbid—when not impious and infamous—practices of the various “mysteries” brought to Rome from Greece and the East. When, therefore, Tacitus indicates the motive for the first persecution under Nero—“haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio generis humani” (Ann., XV, 44, 3)—he expresses the impression that the new religion made even on the best minds: namely, the abandonment of an entire civilization that had brought Rome to empire. Under a similar impression, but with reference to the other sense (that of “catharsis” in the mysteries), is Apuleius, who, in defending the mysteries of Isis, speaks of a woman who, besides the vices that stain her, “spreta ac calcatis divinis numinibus in vicem certae religionis mentita sacrilega superstitionem dei quem praedicant unicum confictis observationibus vacuis” (Metamorph., 9, 4), thus deceiving all men. The last clause seems to show the clear distinction between Christianity and Judaism, which Tacitus still conflated. For Apuleius, therefore, the new religion stripped man of the enchantment of regenerative forces and the beauties of nature that pagan religions and cults sanctioned and celebrated. To the convinced pagan, Christians must therefore have appeared the worst “atheists.”

Yet Christians, beginning with the Apostolic Fathers and the apologists, turned the accusation of atheism back upon their adversaries, explicitly hurling the epithet ἄθεοι at them (St Ignatius, Trall., 3, 2; St Polycarp, Martyr., ch. 9; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept., II, 23–24). Pagan polytheism is atheism in the eyes of Origen (πολύθεοι ὄντες καὶ ἄθεοι; In Ps., 65, 12) and is placed on the same level as “superstition” (δεισιδαιμονία) as the work of the devil (Clement of Alexandria, Protrept., I, 18, 22; II, 13, 5; Gregory Nazianzen, Or., 25; PG 35, 1220 A), and is branded as ἀθέστης. Meanwhile, Christians, since they worship the one true God, are not atheists: so declare the apologists (St Justin, Ap., I, 5: who boasts of being ἄθεος with respect to the pagan gods; cf. Lactantius, De ira Dei, IX, 2; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., VII, 9, 54, 3: οὐκ ἄρα ἄθεος ὁ χριστιανός).

The Jews themselves are called ἄθεοι by St Gregory Nazianzen (Or., 2, 37; PG 35, 444) and grouped together with polytheism. The Chaldeans are called atheists by the Fathers (Hippolytus, In Dan., II, 31, 3), as are the Persians; and among philosophers Epicurus holds first place, being called by Clement of Alexandria ἀθέστητος κατάργων (Protrept., II, 3, 10). The same writer, with respect to pagans, speaks of a twofold ἀθέστης: one of those who do not know the true God (τὸν ὄντος ὄντα), the other of those who call gods what are not (ibid., II, 23, 1). Proclus also speaks of a twofold ἀθέστης: one of those who deny the existence of gods, the other of those who deny their providence (ὅσοι τὴν πρόνοιαν ἄρβην ἀνατρέπουσι θεοὺς εἶναι διδόντες; In Plat. Timaeum, ed. E. Diehl, I, 207, 26 ff.).

The accusation of atheism in the early centuries of the Christian era therefore did not refer so much to the absolute denial of divinity—which has always been rare—as to the perversion (supposed by each side against its opponent) of the concept of God, which in controversy amounted to a denial. This is so evident that the Fathers treat heretics outright as ἄθεοι: the Arians are so called by St Maximus the Confessor (Acta: PG 90, 144), as are the Manichees (St Athanasius, Or. I contra Arianos: PG 26, 124; St Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. can.: PG 45, 225 C; Cod. Iustin., I, 5, 12, 3). Marcion is called τὸ τῆς ἀθεώτητος στόμα by St Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech., 6, 16) and ἀθεώτατος par excellence (ibid., 16, 3, 7). Likewise Eunomius is said to be the author of τῆς ἀθεώτητος αἱρέσεως (Synesius, Epist., V), and those who deny the Holy Spirit are called “atheists” (οἱ μὴ δεξάμενοι τὸν Παράκλητον). Already by St Ignatius of Antioch they are called ἄθεοι καὶ ἄπιστοι (Trall., 10), and by Clement of Alexandria pagan mythology is wholesale branded μύθων ἀθέων (Protrept., II, 11, 1).

This brief sampling of texts shows that, for the writers who use the term ἄθεος, it conveys not merely a theoretical evaluation in the religious sphere but, together with and complementing it, a moral condemnation; and it was a more ethical than dogmatic meaning that the term carried both in classical and patristic times. We have confirmation of this in a dictum of Porphyry, the last exponent of dying paganism, according to whom “every dissolute life is full of servitude and irreligion and is therefore atheist (ἄθεος) and unjust (ἄδικος), because in it the spirit is full of irreligion and therefore also of injustice (ἄδικας)”: Sent., XL, ed. Mommert, 39, 6.

Atheism.

It is on this line that Greek and patristic thought invites us to envisage the true essence of atheism. If atheism first of all means the direct negation of God, it is also—and above all—in the admission of a notion of God that nullifies Him as God and degrades Him before His majesty. This is the judgment passed by the greatest Greek philosophers on the deities of popular and state mythology, and, by the law of contraries, their condemnation of Christianity. In the same way, the Christian doctors—guided by Holy Scripture—have judged paganism by a necessary retorsion, and, strangely enough, they have justly included heretics in the condemnation of atheism. For the concept of God must be carried to its ultimate consequences: to avoid being called atheists, it is not enough to affirm the existence of the “divine” or of the absolute; one must think of Him as a subsistent and transcendent person, and at the same time solicitous of the world and of our miseries. Given moreover the fact that God has spoken directly to man (Revelation), His word must be accepted in its entirety: every “selection” (αἱρέσεις) that man wishes to make is a true sacrilege (ἀθέστης), a true impiety (ἀθεία); it is nothing less than a denial of God who is not given in parts, but always and only in His entirety, especially when His fullness is given to man “unfolded” in the gift of the highest communication, as in Christianity. Today, therefore, whoever does not accept Revelation in its entirety rejects God as such, because it is only as revealing Himself that He is God for man.

3. In the light of this criterion, the greater part of modern philosophy falls under the accusation of atheism, though it assumes forms that are manifold and new compared with previous epochs. In the Middle Ages, the history of atheism merges with that of heresies and has no distinctive face. In the modern age, three principal forces can be reduced as having stimulated and sustained the constitution of atheism: the revival of ancient philosophical forms (especially Stoic, Skeptic, and Epicurean), the Reformation, and especially the pantheism of transcendental philosophies. Christian theism is still solid in Descartes and Malebranche; the true position of Locke is doubtful, while Bacon’s defence is luminous: “... slight tastes in philosophy may perhaps move to atheism, but full draughts bring back to religion” (De augmentis scientiarum, in Works, ed. Ellis-Spediting, I, London 1879, p. 436; cf. Medit. sacrae: De atheismo, VII, p. 239 ff.; Essays, ed. Whately, Boston 1871, pp. 155 ff.).

First of all, there is the open and confessed atheism of the materialist and sceptical philosophies that arose in the Renaissance and reached their greatest proportions in the 16th–18th centuries: to this belong English deism, the atheists and libertines of France (the “esprits forts”) in the 17th century at the time of Descartes, when Fr. Mersenne wrote that in Paris alone there were 50,000 atheists; the Enlightenment of France and Germany (Frederick II of Prussia); the materialism that, with the Encyclopedists, prepared the French Revolution (La Mettrie, d’Holbach, and later Cabanis) and the German materialism of the 19th century (Feuerbach, Haeckel, Moleschott, Büchner, Czolbe…). The atheism of the dialectical materialism of Marx and of the Marxist direction of the “strict observance” (Lenin, Stalin) stands as a profession of faith and foundation of the new society based on the Fourth Estate. Marx, following Feuerbach, applied indiscriminately to Christian religion the critique that Democritus and Epicurus had made of the mythological religion of antiquity: that faith in beings superior to the world is generated partly by excess of imagination and partly—and especially—by an utopian longing to escape the sufferings of earthly life. Marxist atheism, old and new, has found an ally on which it greatly relies in Darwinian biological evolutionism, considered as the definitive explanation of the origin of man.

Another Renaissance source of modern atheism, brought into sharp focus already by Campanella in Atheismus triumphatus (Paris 1636, but composed in 1607 in Rome; cf. especially appendix, pp. 226 ff.), is Machiavelli, whose amoral and atheistic political conception soon inspired much of European politics; indeed, the most insistent accusation levelled today against Bolshevism or political Marxism is precisely that of Machiavellianism.

The most speculative direction of atheism is undoubtedly that which stems from pantheism, which can be divided into two periods: one whose supreme representatives are Bruno and Spinoza, the other which takes up Spinoza within the new concept of truth and reality as subjectivity, inaugurated by Kant and brought to completion precisely in transcendental philosophies. For Fichte, God is reduced to the moral order of the world; for Schelling, on the other hand (under the influence of Bruno), to the absolute of nature; for Hegel, to the absolute spirit (Geist) that realizes itself in universal history (Weltgeschichte). As for Fichte, it suffices to recall the Atheismusstreit (1798) in which he was involved for having published in his journal an article by the Kantian Forberg of decidedly atheistic content, and for not having clarified his own position satisfactorily in this regard. Spinoza’s philosophy as interpreted by Schelling (and not only by the “early” Schelling, the philosopher) was immediately hailed with triumphant joy by Heine in 1834 with the following words: “Spinoza’s doctrine and Schelling’s Naturphilosophie of his best period are substantially one and the same thing” (Deutschland, I). It suffices, moreover, to peruse the series of theorems with which, for example, the Philosophie der Kunst (1801) begins, to realize that the great model of Spinoza’s Ethica inspires both the form and the content.

As for Spinoza’s radical atheism, the affirmative judgment of his contemporaries has been unanimously taken up by modern historians of materialism (Fr. A. Lange) and of atheism (Fr. Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte, II, Stuttgart and Berlin 1922–23, sect. XI, p. 346, note), and by the German translator (and editor) of Spinoza, Karl Gebhardt (pref. to Kurze Abhandlung von Gott, dem Menschen und seinem Glück [Philos. Bibl., 91], Leipzig 1922, pp. XVII ff.). The most famous accusation of atheism against Spinoza’s thought was advanced by Jacobi in the controversy with Mendelssohn, especially in the Beyilage that summarizes in 44 propositions the essence of Spinozism and then advances certain doctrinal assessments of which the first is: “Spinosismus ist Atheismus” (Werke, IV, 1, p. 216). The fundamental argument for a “reduction” of Spinoza’s pantheism to atheism is given by the affirmation of the “unicity of substance” (Ethica, Part I, prop. 5) and of the cause (ibid., prop. 6) that is identified with God (ibid., prop. 14) and by the affirmation of the “immanence” of substance in its modes, cogitatio and extensio (ibid., props. 11, 18; ibid., Part V, prop. 30). Hence Spinoza can say: “Deus sive natura…” and yet maintain the impossibility of atheism: “Nemo potest Deum odio habere” (ibid., Part V, prop. 18). For in the “metaphysics of identity” there can be no contradiction.

Hegel deliberately took upon himself the task of defending Spinoza against Jacobi’s accusation. For Hegel, Spinoza succeeded in reclaiming the Eleatic ἐν and giving it his own metaphysical content, namely “that unity (of opposites) which is spirit within itself,” so that in philosophy “Spinozist being is the essential beginning of philosophizing” (Gesch. d. Philos., III, 2; Italian trans., Florence 1943, pp. 109–110). Atheism, Hegel observes, asserts that God “is not”; Spinoza, on the contrary, affirms precisely that only God truly is, while what is finite, the world, is not. Hence one should speak not of atheism but rather of acosmism: Spinoza does not deny God; if anything, in him “there is too much of God” (cf. op. cit., pp. 135–136; V. Enciclopedia, § 50 and the important § 573). Spinoza’s merit, rather, was to show that the finite is inessential and merely apparent, something to be removed; thus his substance, like Schelling’s Absolute, became the transitional stages toward the conception of “the True as the Whole,” which is necessarily “Result” (Philos. der Religion, ed. Lasson, XII; Phil. Bibl., LIX, 168 ff.).

Hegel’s main argument in Spinoza’s defense is that Spinoza overcame and negated the finite world in the uniqueness of substance, so that his system can rightly—and indeed must—be called monotheism (op. cit., cited ed., 197 n.: Hegel’s italics). Spinoza’s defect, however, was to have stopped at a concept of the Absolute as a “single, rigid, immobile” substance; in leaving attributes and modes, motion and will, and the distinction of the intellect apart from one another; in failing to reach the Absolute as an “autodeveloping process” (op. cit., XIV, 64, 134).

Once the Absolute is attained—as Hegel himself achieved—not only does the charge of atheism against pure philosophy fall away, but the more common charge of pantheism as well. For in this conception empirical individualities, whether material or of immediate consciousness, do not enter into the Absolute at all; they belong to the phenomena of immediacy and therefore remain outside the being of truth. Hegel, in the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia, consoled himself that the charge of atheism had become rare because, in his day, the content and existence of religion had been reduced to a minimum (Encyclopedia, § 71, note). This may have been true in Protestant Germany of the nineteenth century, preoccupied with politics and commerce and almost ignorant of the Gospel, as Kierkegaard often observes in his critique of Protestantism. Hegel’s atheism, however, was exposed and denounced in practical and convincing form by Feuerbach (Das Wesen des Christenthums, Einleitung). To Feuerbach, an avowed atheist, belongs the explicit accusation: “Protestantism denied God in Himself, that is, God as God” (Prinzipien d. Philos. d. Zukunft, § 3; Italian trans., Turin 1946, p. 71).

Just as transcendental philosophers developed the implicit atheism in Kant’s agnosticism of the Critique of Pure Reason, so Schopenhauer drew an atheistic position from Kant’s attribution of primacy to practical reason for the affirmation of the transcendent. Up to Kant the dilemma remained: either materialism (the rule of blind chance) or theism (an ordering intelligence). After Kant’s critique of the proofs for God’s existence, the entire putative reality of the world is reduced to phenomenon, where “order” is therefore mere appearance and depends on the a priori forms of the intellect (Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie, ed. Griesbach, I, 649 n.). God can never be an “object” of human knowledge, and for Schopenhauer Kantianism constituted “the most serious attack” on theism (Satz vom Grunde, cited ed., III, 145). Moreover, Schopenhauer adds, there is no identity between religion and theism: Buddhism, like Taoism and Confucianism, is atheistic, yet cannot be denied the status of religion. Religion is a generic term of which theism, like atheism, is a subspecies. Attacking Hegel’s hypocrisy (without naming him), Schopenhauer argues that pantheism is a self-contradictory concept because it presupposes (as its starting point) the idea of a God distinct from the world and as its essential correlate. If, on the contrary, it is the world that assumes this role, then “pantheism is nothing but an euphemism for covering atheism,” in which atheism can claim the ius primi occupantis (Erläut. z. Kant. Philosophie, cited ed., IV, 138). Schopenhauer’s atheism, by contrast, is expressed without illusions or hypocrisy: once the ultimate ground of being and the term toward which it tends is constituted by negativity.

From Schopenhauer, through a direct line, comes the atheism of Eduard von Hartmann’s unconscious and, especially, Nietzsche’s “will to power.” The cry of Zarathustra—“God is dead” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 2; cf. The Gay Science, III, 125)—is echoed by Nietzsche, an epigone who merely notes how modern philosophy, by giving primacy and precedence to subjectivity, had to empty itself of God, treating Him as non-being, in the words of G. Rensi (Apologia dell’a., Rome 1925, p. 13 and passim).

Atheism also emerges in contemporary left-wing Existentialism: explicit and confessed in the relativistic phenomenism of N. Abbagnano and the French writers J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus. “The atheistic existentialism that I represent is more consistent; it declares that if God does not exist, there is at least a being in which existence precedes essence, and that this being is man. There is therefore no human nature because there is no God to conceive it…: man is nothing else than what he makes himself” (J.-P. Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris 1946, pp. 21–22). Implicit atheism is found in the two German masters, Jaspers, for whom God is a limiting-concept, and Heidegger, who, by placing “ground” in “nothing,” could not encounter the positive and subsistent Absolute that is the principle of theism. The Absolute to which Heidegger’s later writings allude does not yet satisfy any of the attributes of transcendence and personality.

Of expressly atheistic orientation is the philosophy of Hans Vaihinger’s “as if” (Als-ob), which explicitly connects with the interpretation of Kant given by the atheist Forberg: according to Vaihinger, for Kant the idea of God is a “Fiktion” of reason (Die Philosophie des «Als ob», 6th ed., Berlin 1922, p. 750 n.). Atheistic, despite certain appearances of a return to traditional ontology, is the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann (cf. especially Ethik): the judgment of existence remains within the sphere of “modality” and affects only entities of experience.

Italian neo-idealism, guided by B. Croce and G. Gentile along different methodological paths, remained faithful to the atheism of the Hegelian conception (cf. G. Gentile, La mia religione, Florence 1943), fixed on the single subject and therefore on the real identity of subject and object and of ego and God. A typical example may be found in G. Calogero, according to whom God may exist only “provided that He is not the totality and is not omniscient and not omnipotent… and is not infinite… and is not a person” (cf. Etica, giuridica e politica, Turin 1946, pp. 121, 244 ff.). Hegel’s conception still retained a vestige of the eminence of the divine being, of which there is no trace left in his epigones. Almost the sole exception is the sincere theistic intent of B. Varisco (Dall’uomo a Dio, Padua 1939), who directed his mature work toward breaking the chains of subjectivist atheism in order to found the consistency of the individual and the authentic transcendence of God.

III. DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

Atheism, whatever mask it may wear, is condemned by the natural law itself. Wisely, therefore, the Church has not so much directed itself against atheism in the abstract as it has firmly rejected and condemned all philosophical systems that entail the denial of the possibility of knowing God, as well as those that corrupt the true concept of God: Spirit pure, first creating cause, free, personal, provident, and transcendent. The organic and complete stance of the Church with regard to atheism, which underlies the majority of modern systems of thought or to which they necessarily arrive, is found in the Vatican Council. The Constitutio dogmatica de Fide catholica (24 Apr. 1870) devotes chap. 1 (De Deo rerum omnium creatore) to the concept of God and contains five canons condemning the most prominent errors: the 1st anathematizes those who deny the existence of one God “creator and lord of all things, visible and invisible”; the 2nd condemns absolute materialism; the 3rd condemns pantheism in general; the 4th condemns special forms of pantheism (emanatist, evolutionist, idealist); the 5th condemns those who do not admit the genuine concept of creation and, in particular, the followers of Günther and Hermes (Denz-U, nn. 1801–1805). In chap. 2 (De revelatione), those who deny the knowability of God from natural effects are condemned, along with deists and progressivists who reject divine revelation (nn. 1806–1809). The Pascendi explicitly accuses and condemns modernists of atheism (n. 2073) in whose doctrine, the encyclical states, atheism oozes from every pore: “...quam multiplici itinere doctrina modernistarum ad atheismum trahat et ad religionem omnem abolendam” (n. 2109). Yet all of the Church’s condemnations of agnosticism, indifferentism, naturalism, rationalism, liberalism, secret societies, and especially Marxist social-communism by the Pontiffs of the last century must be considered condemnations of atheism (cf. Denz-U, nn. 1613 ff., 1677–1688 ff., 1701 ff. [*Syllabus of Pius IX*], 1857, 1885). In his encyclical against communism, Pius XI declared that “in such doctrine there is no place for the idea of God; there is no difference between spirit and matter, nor between soul and body” (AAS, 29 [1937], p. 70).

In its judgments on atheism, the Church goes to the essence of systems and condemns all those that do not safeguard in its complete entirety the concept of God, because God can only be in one way, and because the man who lives after the completion of Revelation in Jesus Christ and is able to know it has the obligation to know and accept all that God has made known to man about His nature and His relations with the world and with man. Therefore, although the two orders of nature and grace remain distinct, there is for man after the advent of Christianity only one true concept of God, which consists of two moments: that of reason and that of Revelation. Yet even the moment of reason cannot be satisfied with any concept of God or even with any form of monotheism, but must rest upon that which is in harmony with the content of Revelation. For this reason, the mere admission or affirmation of a God may not suffice and may arouse suspicion of atheism when, that is, one holds a concept of God that compromises His nature or any of His attributes. To use Kierkegaard’s terminology, one may say that with regard to the concept of God the “how” coincides with the “what,” and this is always the case when it comes to the ultimate determination of any nature or essence.

Fr. Mauthner, an atheist and modern historian of atheism, asserts that “contemporary literature is for the most part atheistic, and while the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) may hypocritically preserve some link with theology, the natural sciences are very far from the Church, and poetry in general is atheistic even where it seeks to revive the dead symbols of theism” (I, pref., p. vi). If one of the most responsible factors of contemporary atheism has undoubtedly been the subjectivism of modern philosophy, one must look further back (Campanella had written: “Omnes haereses ad Atheismum terminantur”: Atheismus triumphatus, pref.) to the subjectivism of the Protestant Reformation; the Pascendi also alludes to this: “Equidem protestantium error primus hac via gradum iecit” (Denz-U, n. 2109). The religious individualism of the Reformation, as scholars of modern thought of every tendency agree, provided the foundation and was the stimulus of speculative subjectivism; it is therefore no wonder that Hegel felt himself and proclaimed himself a genuine Lutheran and a defender of the “true” concept of Revelation and the Incarnation.

Twentieth-century Europe has seen the resurgence of societies for atheism: in Germany the “Bund der Atheisten” (1920) of Dr. Zepler, and in the United States the “American Association for Advancement of Atheism.” The most complete organization and the most radical active form of atheism has been achieved in Russia through Bolshevik Marxism, in which the “élite” of activist elements, both within and abroad, forms the organization of the “without-God.” Here the tactic is a direct consequence of the fundamental idea deriving from Marx himself, according to which in historical materialism the very controversy between theism and atheism is surpassed: granted that everything that man is, is what he becomes and what he becomes through society, one must arrive at a work of absenteeism, of liquidation of the problem itself (cf. the fragment Philosophy and Political Economy of 1844: Opere, ed. ted., III, 125). For this reason, the direction of the so-called “God-builders” (Gorky) was rigorously crushed by Lenin. He traced for the propaganda of atheism a tactical line of conduct that must know how to adapt itself to the diversity of environments. Although the solidarity between communism and atheism is essential, in practice and during the period of conquest of power, the propaganda of atheism according to Lenin must not be conducted in the abstract by directly combating religious faith, but rather by gradually emptying it (and through the intensification of the “class struggle”) of its foundations, thus bringing to the consciousness of the masses that belief in God is a principal means of exploitation by those who hold command and capital (N. Lenin, L'atteggiamento del partito operaio rispetto alla religione, 1909, in M. Raphaël, Zur Erkenntnistheorie der konkreten Dialektik, Paris 1934; reproduced in appendix to the French trans., N.R.F., Paris n.d., p. 238 ff.).

The characteristic of contemporary atheism (outside of communism) is not so much or chiefly to revert to particular idealist and materialist philosophies or to urge the progress of science and technology, but rather to be a phenomenon of spiritual fatigue and dilettantism that stems from an increasingly fatalistic conception of human events. This mentality is fostered at once by the phase of dissolution in philosophy and by the precariousness of existence that today no longer allows individuals or nations the security of civil and political freedom in the traditional sense. And yet, by the inexhaustible capacity for recovery that the spirit possesses, this tragedy of our earthly situation can become or be the salutary stimulus that impels man to seek, beyond time and every finite instance, the ultimate foundation of his being in the true God, who is not merely the abstract Absolute of philosophers, but the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who at the appointed time manifested Himself in Christ.

IV. THE “ATHEIST” MORALITY

The modern philosophy is still responsible for fostering in the contemporary world the “lay” or atheist morality, which excludes any connection between ethics and religion. Here too Kant took the most decisive step with his “categorical imperative,” which is valid in itself and arises a priori within the pure realm of man as the “form” necessary for his action. Human acts are thus removed not only from the stimuli of individual satisfaction and practical interest, but also from any relationship with God and with the future life: only in this way could the categorical imperative secure, in its universality for every rational nature, immunity from every empirical will (W. Windelband, Einleitung in die Philosophie, Tübingen 1920, p. 281). The moral atheism implicit in Kant becomes an explicit demand in Hegel, for whom “moral regard” belongs to empirical individuality and vanishes with it; because the whole of spirit, which finds its realization in the State, has no other law than that of its own realization. Systematic moral atheism is proclaimed by another epigone of idealism, Stirner, with Der Einzige und sein Eigentum; and above all, as is well known, by Nietzsche in the theory of the Übermensch who stands “beyond good and evil” and knows neither law nor regard, having as his sole law his “will to power” (Wille zur Macht), by which he can reduce to pulp the men of the “herd” (cf. Also sprach Zarathustra, Italian trans., Turin 1921, pp. 56, 163 ff.). And although Nietzsche harbored a marked antipathy toward Hegel’s idealism, the fact remains that twentieth-century Europe has hitherto been under the combined influence of both ideologies: Hegel’s totalitarianism of the State (or theory of the “ethical State”) and the Nietzschean Führermythus, which could concentrate in its arbitrary will that totalitarianism and attempt the definitive replacement of every morality and religion (cf. H. Pfeil, Der Mensch im Denken der Zeit, Paderborn 1938, p. 44 ff. on Nietzsche; p. 58 ff. for a bold critique of Nazism).

Yet the connection, affirmed by Christian philosophy, between ethics and religion is already implicit in the very notion of both, because it precedes the nature of man himself, in whose consciousness they converge and set their respective duties. As Troeltsch observes, “atheist ethics—which annuls all Christian values—gives the impression of a certain melancholy prudence,” because “with it the moral world becomes much more difficult and obscure,” a fact that Nietzsche himself seems to have recognized (E. Troeltsch, Atheistische Ethik und Grundproblem der Ethik, in Gesammelte Schriften, II, 1913, pp. 537 ff.). But against an “ethics without God” energetic reaction has come even from within idealism, invoking not an abstract impersonal God but the “Father” of whom man is a creature and bears His image inscribed within him, as H. Cohen expressly declares (Die Ethik des reinen Willens, Berlin 1921, p. 407). The same Marburg master rightly observes that with the entry of the idea of God into ethics, the principle of ethics is not altered in the least. Thus the danger of ethics lapsing into religion is excluded (cf. the introduction with postscript to the 7th ed. of F. A. Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus, n.d., pp. 519 ff.).

Catholic ethics too recognizes that man can have a “certain knowledge” of duties even without knowledge of the true God, and in this it agrees even with the moderate Protestant E. Brunner (Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, Zurich 1939, p. 16). But the “complete” knowledge of one’s duties and, with it, the “adequate” situation of the human act requires knowledge of the ultimate end of these acts and of the first principle of those duties, which is God. In this concrete sense of human existence, moral action appears both as a preamble and as a consequence in relation to the authentic religious moment: for there is no true religiosity that does not entail in man the moral obligation, and on the other hand moral obligation in its full unfolding involves factors and values (good and bad conscience, remorse, the despair of the demonic and the heroism of sanctity…) that absolutely demand a theological foundation (cf. Th. Steinbüchel, Die philosophische Grundlegung der Katholischen Sittenlehre, Düsseldorf 1938, pp. 221 ff.). An atheist morality is therefore a contradictio in adjecto, because it is inevitable, as Dostoevsky well saw (especially in The Possessed) and as the epigones of Nietzsche have shown (D’Annunzio, National Socialism, etc.), that when God is not acknowledged, not even the natural values of man can be preserved, but one necessarily falls into the subhuman and into the systematic practice of private and political violence. Even atheist morality is a victim of the modern prejudice of man’s sufficiency and does not accept the paradox perceived by the finest minds of pre-Christian classical civilization: that man, precisely in order to remain man, must be “more than man,” that is, recognize divinity and accept its laws. This paradox finds its ineffable counterpart in Christianity, where, to save man, God—according to the words of St Paul—became less than God, so that even the “definitive” answer to the demands of morality is found by man in Revelation.

Atheism.

The theory that denies the existence of a personal God.

Abundant but confused bibliography in P. Descœudres, Praelectiones Theologiae naturalis, 2 vols., Paris 1932–35; Schema Theodiceae, ibid. 1941.

On Marxist a.: G. Ledit, Le religioni e il comunismo, Milan 1937; G. Manacorda, Il bolscevismo, Florence 1940; M. Cachin, Science et religion, ibid. 1946.

On existentialist a.: M. Werner, Der religiöse Gehalt der Existenzphilosophie, Bern–Leipzig 1943; C. Fabro, Problemi dell’esistenzialismo, Rome 1945; id., Il significato dell’esistenzialismo, in the volume: L’esistenzialismo, Turin–Rome 1947. Cornelio Fabro
V. ATHEISM AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES — Some scholars have maintained that humanity, before conceiving of spirits and deities, passed through a primordial phase marked by the absence of any form of religion, and that some peoples still living have remained at that stage. The foundations of this hypothesis were laid by the positivist Auguste Comte, who, believing that the development of humanity unfolded in three stages— theological, metaphysical, and positive— supposed that the first moment of the theological stage should be characterized by a kind of cult of all natural things, without these being conceived as pervaded by spirits or animated, nor even personified. Despite the schematic nature of the system and the complete lack of any documentation, its a priori reasoning enjoyed singular success among sociologists and supporters of progressive evolutionism. Lubbock, then, expanded the schema by positing, before the aforementioned phase, an additional period marked by the absolute absence of any religious sentiment, and thus also of the indeterminate one postulated by Comte. As proof, he presented a list of peoples whom he considered completely atheistic, having remained at the alleged primordial stage.

However, prominent ethnologists and anthropologists soon rose against such claims, subjecting the famous list to rigorous and objective criticism. Thus, for example, the most renowned ethnologist of the time, E. B. Tylor, in a study on the beginnings of culture; G. Roskoff in an investigation into the religion of the most barbarous peoples; the French anthropologist A. de Quatrefages in another on the human species; the world-famous linguist Max Müller, professor at Oxford, in a work that enjoyed great success; and also, among many others, C. P. Tiele, the first holder of the chair in Comparative Religion at Leiden in the Netherlands. And although the results of later investigations did not confirm the theories of these authors regarding the origin of religious thought and attitude (animism, naturalism, etc.), they were unanimously justified in considering unfounded the evidence adduced by Lubbock in support of his alleged atheism among primitive peoples. Indeed, the works from which he drew his insights could not but invite criticism, as they were evidently based on superficial and fleeting contacts with natives, leading to frequent contradictions. The criticisms of the opponents therefore appeared all the more opportune, as they aimed, above all, to advocate deeper and more serious research before issuing such an important judgment.

And rightly so: for when scholars no longer contented themselves with summoning individuals, perhaps forcibly taken from the forest, and questioning them hastily even through interpreters, but instead realized that they had to live for long periods among the peoples they studied in order to observe, with trust and friendship, the normal and spontaneous course of their entire social and spiritual life, ethnologists reached the evident conclusion that even all the peoples listed by Lubbock possessed their own religion. Thus, for example, only a few decades ago it was absolutely believed that the Vedda of Ceylon were atheists. Yet in the first decade of the century, the Englishman C. G. Seligman, together with his wife, could ascertain among them a belief in life after death, ancestor worship, beliefs in greater and lesser spirits, among which Kanda-Yaka holds the first place and is the object of worship consisting of prayers, first-fruit offerings, and sacred dances. Other peoples long vaunted as classic examples of primitive atheism, and upon which Lubbock relied on the reports of no less than the famous circumnavigator Cook and even Darwin, were the Fuegian tribes: but here Father M. Gusinde, in four long exploratory stays recounted in three weighty volumes, unequivocally demonstrated the existence of faith and worship of a Supreme Being, and among two of the tribes many texts of fervent and meaningful prayers addressed to it were recorded.

Only one people remained from Lubbock’s list, the Kubu of Sumatra, anthropologically and culturally classified among the most ancient peoples and considered atheistic—a viewpoint that some still cling to today. But unjustly, for Father Schebesta, explorer of the Pygmies of Central Africa and Southwestern Asia, has become convinced that the Kubu are neither atheists nor of the remotest origin. Anthropologically, they belong to the same group as the Jakudn of the Malay Peninsula and should be considered Proto-Malays with a tendency toward mesocephaly, or respectively dolichocephaly, rather than as Pygmies or Pygmoids with a tendency toward brachycephaly. Their language is an archaic form of Malay, their economic life is not that of initial nomadic hunters and gatherers but the more advanced one of sedentary farmers. They are not atheists at all, since their myths demonstrate beliefs in countless nature spirits, among which a female deity, Nenek-Bondo, stands out, as among the Jakudn; at death, she casts the souls of the wicked (thieves, murderers, and adulterers) into a cauldron of boiling water to examine them until, purified, they may migrate to the afterlife. All the spirits, moreover, are objects of veneration through prayers and generally bloody sacrifices; the Kubu also practice shamanism, in many respects similar to that of the Jakudn.

Thus Lubbock’s list was irreparably dismantled, and ethnology erased from its pages the category of atheistic primitives. Yet between 1920 and 1930, G. Tessmann asserted that the Tschama Indians of the Ucayali in South America, who were not included in Lubbock’s series, had no religion whatsoever. Here too, however, criticism by renowned ethnologists, especially directed at Tessmann’s method, was so vigorous and overwhelming as to demonstrate the lack of any scientific basis for his arguments. In this regard, we may note the observations of the Dutch professor A. W. Nieuwenhuis, who, having been a convinced advocate of Kubu atheism and then recanting, and the renowned ethnologist K. Th. Preuss, both authors of weighty works on the spiritual culture of nature peoples, both eminent and successful explorers accustomed to long stays among primitives—in Dutch India the former, in the same South America the latter. Both note in this regard that Tessmann very likely failed to achieve the aim of his study, and that the religion of his Tschama remained hidden from him, giving as the fundamental reason the fact that Tessmann did not know the natives’ language, with the consequence that he had to rely on an interpreter and limit himself to schematic questions. In this regard, Preuss remarks that it could hardly be surprising that Tessmann received obscure or negative responses, since even to him it had happened to lose his way until he managed to have his Indians dictate their myths in their own language, thus succeeding only then in discovering an entire religious world of which he had previously had no inkling.

Preuss further emphasizes another circumstance that certainly prevented Tessmann from penetrating and understanding the spiritual life of the Tschama, namely his evident inability to enter into intimate spiritual contact with them, that is, to comprehend and evaluate their mentality. Indeed, Preuss notes, the book contains no praise whatsoever for those people, and only

stizzosi risentiments and sprezzanti giudizi, as, for example, that the monkey accompanying him would have been far more psychologically alert than the average Tschama; that they would have barely surpassed the spiritual level of beasts; and that they knew far less about religion than a good dog, etc. Nieuwenhuis rightly adds that Tessmann’s assertions were most likely shaped by the negative suggestions of the small Peruvian planters who served as his interpreters—sources, as everyone knows, to be preferred least of all for in-depth research into the delicate knowledge of spiritual culture.

Preuss then explains the cause of the misunderstanding into which Tessmann fell, noting that previously the latter had dealt only with Negroes—people far more compliant, submissive, and familiar—whereas his new object of study proved far more difficult, since American Indians are generally far more reserved and distrustful toward strangers, usually giving brief and evasive replies. He adds that, in any case, the dignity of these traits places them indubitably at a higher level than the obvious pliability of Negroes. Tessmann, however, could do no more than interpret them as sheer and simple mental obtuseness, as evidenced by the incomprehension evident in his work. Thus the conclusions independently reached by the two scholars converge in recognizing that while Tessmann admirably rendered the details of the material culture of the Tschama, the picture he drew of their spiritual culture cannot be shared; indeed, Preuss places a large question mark over II. Hence sound and superior ethnological criticism has also vindicated the better view against this attempt to claim atheism for primitive peoples.

Yet even if, in the clear light of more serious and exhaustive investigations, it were admitted that the Tschama truly had no religion, this would in no way justify drawing general negative inferences about the religiosity of primitive peoples, nor would it lend any support to Lubbock’s hypothesis. For it has been rightly observed that the Tschama are no longer a homogeneous and original people but a mixture of various remnants, uprooted and decimated tribes whose economic foundations, social structure, and ethical life have long since fallen into complete disarray under the impact of manifold vicissitudes and prolonged slavery. Thus they would present to the observer only faint traces of their original religiosity—abnormal elements of a disintegrating whole that could certainly tell us nothing in comparison with the religious spirit of peoples in a normal state of culture. In short, this would be a case of atheism resulting from an extreme phase of degeneration, not evidence of any form of original atheism.