The Aesthetic Atheist

Hardheaded atheism of this kind has become quite a publishing phenomenon over the last few years. Many, including myself, have enthusiastically jumped on this bandwagon, believing the time was ripe for a concerted effort attacking the excesses of organised religion. Rhetorically, these books are marvellous, whether it be the passionate and literate vitriol of Christopher Hitchens or the measured and witty analyses of Daniel Dennett. Strangely, I find myself retreating more and more from the postitions these authors espouse.

Make no mistake, my disbelief hasn't taken any body blows. I have yet to be assailed by visions of eternal damnation or blessed with divine revelations. But the more I think about the standard arguments against the existence of god, the more obvious it becomes that ultimately, atheism itself isn't a bastion of undisputed rationality.

Take the standard 'prime mover' argument. This holds that every effect must have a cause, but since this would imply an infinite regression of causes with no coherent beginning. But something must have set this chain of events in motion, and this first cause is god. The usual response is "But what caused God, silly?", normally given with various degrees of exasperation. Positing god as a first cause without explaining what gave rise to god himself is taken to be an act of desperate intellectual dishonesty. People who believe it are tarred as irrational fools.

I'd like to suggest that this is a mistake. I too, have little time for this argument, but if I was pushed on the ultimate metaphysical caustation of the cosmos, I would be thoroughly stumped. In fact, I don't think I am uniquely stupid on this point - the majority of well-educated atheists would be equally unable to 'rationally' trace their argument back to its philosophical foundations. Why then, do we atheists have such a strong conviction that we are right?

The answer for me, lies in an aesthetic preference. I find it remarkable that order arises out of the chaos of quantum theory. I marvel at the power of natural selection to blindly design mechanisms of incredible complexity. My exposure to these scientific disciplines gives me faith (!) that a similar process will be found to solve the causation problem, largely because I think it would be more elegant that way. But this of course, opens the door to believers. If some conception of beauty motivates my position, I can't scoff at those who would find this explanation ugly and the idea of a cosmic designer more attractive.

We can discuss why people might vary so dramatically in their preferences, but this requires abandoning the idea that atheism is simply more rational than religiosity. The more salient issue to address, is how the virulent aspects of religion can be shorn away, regardless of whether the faith at its core persists. An aesthetic perspective on belief can go some way to defuse the anger which tends to stymie this sort of discussion.