Greetings and a request for feedback

[Aaron Closson]

Hello all. Some of you may remember me. I was quite active on the old list several years ago, and I enjoyed debating matters of religion and philosophy. I've since completed graduate school at Yale Divinity and now work in advertising as a copywriter. 

I've not abandoned my interests in philosophy, however. I've begun a writing project that attempts to demonstrate atheism's deleterious impact upon life by drawing on the work of atheists who offer a more sobering assessment of atheism than the New Atheists. I've attached an incomplete draft of the preface and introduction, the latter of which gives a cursory summary of the history of western philosophy in order to explain the rise of Secular Humanism and set the stage for a detailed treatment of atheism's effect on seven categories of human experience. 

As it stands in its incomplete state, the draft takes the reader up through Descartes. I hope to add Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Ayer and Rorty before transitioning into a series of thematic chapters dealing with a particular arena of experience: ethics, beauty, consciousness, etc. 

I welcome pushback at this stage. No doubt most of you will reject my general premise, but I'd appreciate hearing your objections at this juncture of the project. The working title is "The Heaviest Weight: Atheism and the Roots of Despair," which some of you will recognize from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, aphorism 341. 

Any feedback is much appreciated. The intended audience for this work is the general educated public, so bear that in mind. Please to not disseminate. 

I hope everyone is well, and I look forward to participating in the group again. 

Best, 

Aaron

[Lawrence Crowell]

It may be a while before I can get to this in detail. I see in one sense the theme; without a supernatural being the universe is meaningless and indifferent and the burden of finding purpose is in us. This is the burden. In general the issue is one of certitude, and this relief of burden is much the same as the apparent relief from uncertainty. I think the quote from Feynman comes to mind:

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.” - Richard Feynman 

I think the lack of certainty leads to asking questions, which leads to thinking far more interesting than having answers.

LC

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[Aaron Closson]

Lawrence, 

Thanks for the reply. It's good to hear from you again. And of course, take your time. Any suggestions or pushback is very appreciated. 

That's a great quote. I agree that certainty shouldn't be our goal. I'm not certain of anything, but I do feel entitled to judge the plausibility of contending explanations for why things are the way they are. Based on what we know about ourselves and the world, does it follow that our experiences truly provide the value we assume they do? That's the thread I'm following. It's a line or argument that relies on emotional responses as much as facts, and certainly doesn't appear likely to yield absolute certainty. 

aaron

[Brent Meeker]

Here's some comments.  I hope they survived the transfer from OpenOffice to Microsloth Word.

A general comment is that you need to be clear about what you mean by atheism and theism.  Vic was always clear when he was presenting evidence against theism as embodied in the three popular monotheisms and when he was discussing weaker theories like deism or Platonism.  There's a tendency in these books and arguments to look at a spectrum of ideas:

Radical Materialism......................................................................................................................................Abrahamic Theism

And the theist assumes that if he can show there's something immaterial, like arithmetic, or love, or baseball, then radical materialism is false and leave it as implicit the theism is true (or at least ought to be).  And of course on the other side, atheist often show how preposterous some Chritian doctrine is and then take that to show atheism is true.  This overlooks other positions on the spectrum: Deism, Neutral Monism, Neo-Platonism, Everythingism,...

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

Looks like my comments got truncated by M$.  I'll go through and cut them into a plain text version.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

Here's my comments cut into plain text by < >

Brent

The Heaviest Weight
Atheism and the Roots of Despair

Table of Contents


Preface [~500 words]
I.Introduction [~10k]
II.Ethics [~10k]
III.Beauty [~9k]
IV.Wonder [~9k]
V.Knowledge [~10k)
VI.Justice [~10k]
VII.Consciousness [~9k]
VIII.Meaning [~10k]
IX.Conclusion [~9k]

Total = ~ 87k words

















Epigraphs


“A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are
called the games and amusements of mankind.”

- Thoreau



“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of
everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark
passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an
unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what
would life be but despair?”

- Kierkegaard
<Kierkegaard, despite being religious, seemed to suffer from depression.>




















Preface

This is a book about despair. Unlike other books on the subject, the
arguments here are meant to induce despair, not abate it. Why read such
a book? Our time is precious, and you may think it better spent in the
service of more pleasing pursuits. In my defense I appeal to your
intellectual conscience, your preference for the truth over comforting
illusions. Failing that, I appeal to your sense of justice. We have been
sold an intellectual bill of goods and the time for reckoning is long
overdue.

<“Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business. No customer ever asks
for their money back after the goods are not delivered.”
--— Victor Stenger>

The idea for this book grew out of a series of conversations with
atheists over the course of a decade, both in and out of university
settings. The conversations varied in degree of complexity and
philosophical sophistication, and involved professional academics
working in the sciences and humanities as well as lay people in other
walks of life. Though my dialogue partners represented a diverse range
of backgrounds, interests and specializations, they largely agreed about
one aspect of their atheistic world picture. Atheism, they thought,
demanded very little in terms of personal sacrifice when measured
against theistic alternatives. The trend toward secularism in the
Western world was a welcome one, they maintained, and any concerns over
what we have lost as a culture in a post-Christian era reflects the
lingering influence of our theistic heritage, nothing more.
When comparing themselves to theists, my interlocutors considered their
lives fortunate. No longer was there a need in their minds to shackle
themselves to puritanical notions of personal propriety or to esteem an
imaginary deity; they were free to pursue an enlightened ethic purified
of superstition and informed by scientific discovery. More importantly
for my purposes, they believed that atheism afforded them access to the
kinds of experiences promoting fulfilling, meaningful lives. They viewed
atheism as a life-affirming alternative to theism that granted as much,
or more, enjoyment of life as religion.
This outlook troubled me, not merely because I wanted these
atheists to reconsider religion, but because they were unwilling to
acknowledge that so radical a shift in cultural norms – the move from
widespread religious belief to increased skepticism and secularism –
would have enormous consequences for the way we live our lives.

<This suggests that religious belief is a well defined unity; yet it
is notoriously diverse and even contentious. One is prompted to ask
“Which religion?”>

The suggestion that atheism rids us of unwanted baggage but leaves
intact everything desirable seemed to defy atheism’s internal logic, so
I set out to learn whether all atheists maintained so optimistic an
outlook and to measure atheism’s full impact.
This book is the fruit of that inquiry. What I discovered were
atheistic philosophers, arguably of superior intellect and achievement
than anyone I had personally encountered, who accepted atheism as true
but as entailing consequences most of us would consider devastating.
Unlike the majority of atheists with whom I had corresponded, these
thinkers promoted atheism without concealing its affect upon all we
cherish most as humans. I came to view despair, not relief, as the
proper response to atheism and this book is an effort to catalogue
unbelief’s most troubling implications.
That atheism is costly does not mean it is untrue. But we cannot
reject the religious option while pretending that the experiences once
pursued by a religious people remain open to us in a secular age. The
ground beneath our feet has shifted, and the articles of faith once
thought to enable those experiences are no longer deemed credible by
growing percentages of the world’s population. Intellectual integrity
demands that atheists put aside their disdain for religion long enough
to recognize that their worldview imposes limitations upon our scope of
activity, many of which are undesirable.
I would like to thank one group of atheists in particular for their
willingness to entertain my frequent questions and challenges. The late
physicist and author Victor Stenger and his readers gave me much to
think about during our several years of debate on the Atoms and the Void
email list. I am indebted to their patience and input, as well as many
others who kindled in me an eagerness to explore these issues in greater
detail.






























Introduction


“Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm
foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth
be safely built.”

- Bertrand Russell

So writes one of the most respected and influential atheist philosophers
of the twentieth century. It’s an arresting proposition given its
pessimism. That so prominent an intellectual should promote “unyielding
despair” should give us pause. What are the truths to which Russell
refers, and why does he think that despair constitutes the only firm
foundation on which to build the “soul’s habitation?” Is not despair too
immoderate, too dour a response to life by so eminent a thinker?
In the following chapters I defend Russell’s assertion that despair
alone affords us the proper point of departure for any serious
investigation into humankind’s status in the universe. I maintain that
Russell’s scaffolding of truths - his comprehensive philosophical
picture of the world – is nothing other than the foundational truths of
atheism properly understood, truths that when soberly considered should
lead us to despair over our unenviable plight on this planet. Rather
than avoid despair at all costs, I argue with Russell that embracing
despair is among the prerequisites for an intellectually honest response
to the human condition. Without it we cannot begin the work of
formulating a philosophically credible assessment of our existence, nor,
in Russell’s figurative words, of constructing the soul’s dwelling place
in the hostile environment that is life.
Despair is our distinctive inheritance as rational animals, but we have
too often denied our proper birthright in an attempt to ennoble and
enlarge our meager estate. The New Atheist movement, led by Richard
Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, adopts an all too sanguine
attitude towards atheism despite affirming many of the facts that prompt
Russell to designate despair a necessary response to our predicament. As
polemicists cataloging the offenses of religion, the New Atheists work
tirelessly to promote atheism while dismissing its many unsavory
consequences. In their disdain for religion, they obscure the bitter
truths that would engender despair.
One need not venture far afield to discover more daring atheists of the
highest achievement who, like Russell, identify despair as a necessary
outcome of any honest appraisal of our collective fate. In fact, the
history of western philosophy is replete with examples of atheist
thinkers who argue that the absence of god entails catastrophic
consequences for humankind.

<You are cherry picking a single quote from Russell. In his exposition
he says that anyone despairing of the ultimate fate of humankind is not
to be credited – they're probably suffering from indigestion. His
general response is, “Let us make the world better.” And he was
generally cheerful in his personal life.>

My aim in this book is to canvas their works with an eye towards, not
bolstering arguments for god’s existence – that would require a
sustained inquiry into the specific claims of theism – but towards
encouraging a more intellectually honest adoption of atheism. Atheists
in the twenty-first century are, on the whole, bad atheists in that they
have accepted the premises of atheism without fully absorbing their
implications.

<“Accept” as true – because you like the implications? Is that your
standard of belief? Sounds like Trumpism.>

This failure to acknowledge atheism’s detrimental impact

<It doesn't seem to have a detrimental impact on winning Nobel prizes,
success in literature or medicince. The happiest, most prosperous
nations in Europe are the least religious. The poorest most war torn
nations are very religious. Perhaps it's disadvantageous in war. Where
are your facts?>

stems from two types of negligence. The first type is characteristic of
the group of trained academics and intellectuals I mentioned above. The
New Atheists and their supporters recklessly suppress the truth about
atheism to promote their anti-religious agenda, and in doing so project
a misleadingly favorable picture of atheistic life. Take for instance
the British Humanist Association that, with the support of its patron
Richard Dawkins, placed advertisements on London buses with the message:
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

<Exactly the same kind of advice Russell gave.>

In defiance of Russell’s sobering admonition, the Association portrays
atheism to be a carefree and liberating philosophy of contentment, not
despair.
The second type of negligence follows from genuine ignorance of
atheism’s logical corollaries. Naive of their philosophical heritage,
non-academic atheists are unaware of the cost one must pay for rejecting
theism. This book supplies arguments from atheist philosophers
demonstrating atheism’s affect upon the human activities, traits and
institutions we commonly believe lend our lives significance. Once we
demonstrate atheism’s impact upon these prized arenas of human experience,

<I find these oblique references to be innuendo. What is atheism's
impact on the joy of sex, children, adventure, knowledge, love,...? All
positive; if any.>


the reason behind Russell’s insistence on despair becomes clear.
What do I mean by despair, exactly? In his novel Nausea, Jean-Paul
Sartre portrays a man anguished by a meaningless universe and tormented
by despair. Sartre’s protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, suffers from
crippling uneasiness and nausea in the presence of an impenetrable,
absurd reality. In a moment of clarity, Roquentin pinpoints the nature
of his loathing:

“The essential point is contingency. I mean that by definition existence
is not necessary. To exist is simply to be there; existences appear, let
themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce them.

<Actually neo-Platonists, like Bruno Marchal, think that mathematics
exists necessarily and that all existence is explained by arithmetic and
Turing computation. Non-theism isn't just radical materialism.>

Some people, I think, have understood this. Only they tried to
overcome this contingency by inventing a being that was necessary and
self-caused. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency
is not a delusion, an appearance which can be dissipated; it is the
absolute and, therefore, perfectly gratuitous. Everything is gratuitous,
this park, this city, and myself. When you realize this, your heart
turns over and everything begins to float . . .”

To secure a place for themselves in the face of such radical
contingency, humans impose a hierarchy of values upon a recalcitrant
universe. In his newly awakened state, Roquentin discerns the impotence
of these arbitrary human designations: “Of these relations (which I
insisted on maintaining in order to delay the crumbling of the human
world, measures, quantities, and directions) – I felt myself to be the
arbitrator; they no longer had their teeth into things.” The realization
drives him to contemplate suicide. “I dreamed vaguely of killing myself
to wipe out at least one of these superfluous existences. But even my
death would have been superfluous” . . . “I was superfluous for eternity.”

<Poor boy. Religion is for people who want purpose without having to
provide it for themselves.>

In accepting his contingency and the arbitrariness of human value
relations, Roquentin’s purpose escapes him. This is despair: the horror
of discovering that values – including all propositions related to
ethics, aesthetics and meaning – amount to nothing but subjective
preferences without any necessary connection to our place in the universe.

<Bad logic. The correct inference is that your preferences do depend on
your place in the universe.>

Roquentin reaches this conclusion while pondering the nature of a tree
root, but the rest of us are less likely to be so dramatically affected
by encounters with familiar objects. To shake ourselves free from an
unwarranted reliance upon human values we must methodically undermine
their validity. We must demythologize them.
I have chosen seven categories as representative of the types of things
we typically value most about being human and that appear to make our
lives worth enduring: ethics, beauty, wonder, knowledge, justice,
consciousness and meaning.

<Typical equivocation on “meaning”. If it denotes value, then it's
redundant in this sentence. If it denotes symbolic representation of
something else then it doesn't belong.>

This is by no means an exhaustive typology of things that contribute
to life’s enjoyment,

<Russell's last words were, “I wish I'd had more sex.” And he had A LOT
of sex.>

but without these necessary conditions we would struggle in vain to
locate purpose in our daily routines. If our moral convictions, sense of
self and scientific achievements were shown to be fraudulent delusions,
it would shatter our confidence in an orderly and knowable reality and
threaten our place within it. Likewise, were we to discover facts about
human nature that made it impossible to defend basic principles of
political order we would abandon efforts to promote international
agreement about what constitutes a just and equitable society.

<This is word salad. We don't “defend principles of political order”,
we invent them – and we invent them in light of what we know about human
nature and history. Government is an empirical art.>

In short, discrediting these categories should provoke despair over
our inability to live fulfilling, peaceful lives. I say should because
not everyone will immediately appreciate the magnitude of loss attending
the devaluation of these experiences, and we must allow people of
different intellectual temperaments to react differently. That said,
whether or not one keenly feels the loss has no bearing on the actual
scale of the damage done. To invalidate the first six of these
categories would vitiate human joy, dignity and purpose and deprive us
of my seventh category, meaning. Without meaning humankind cannot with
integrity long evade the clutches of despair.
To build my case for despair I will draw directly on the work of
atheists who, unlike the New Atheists, confront head on the problems
posed by a godless universe. Chief among these thinkers are David Hume,
Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus and the
aforementioned Jean-Paul Sartre, but I will also refer to many
philosophers still living or recently deceased. By adhering scrupulously
to the parameters of the atheistic world picture, these atheists deny
that the experiences and aspirations falling within my seven categories
afford us the consolation we routinely grant them. In the absence of
these ameliorating activities, we have no choice but to re-valuate the
nature of our existence.
In each chapter I follow a similar method to illustrate how atheism
affects the category in question. Guided by the work of respected
atheists, I subject the philosophical constraints of atheism to the
topic to determine its ability to confer value upon life. Strict atheism
leaves no facet of existence untouched and ultimately robs our most
treasured activities of their significance. The absence of value in
these categories – which I consider to be the best candidates for
meaning-laden experiences – suggests a total absence of value, and
though not every philosopher I cite judges despair to be the only
intellectually honest response to a valueless universe,

<Values are something people and other living things have. They are part
of the universe.>

the cumulative force of their arguments speak to the futility of ever
deriving hope from life’s goals and activities.
One may doubt whether the procedure I describe is feasible. After all,
atheists disagree about many things and no one group – not even the New
Atheists – speaks for the whole of unbelievers.

<And neither do theists agree on values. Some rejected sex and
children. Some eating pork. Some enjoyed conquest and sacrificing goats.>

Atheism encompasses non-theistic outlooks as diverse as Buddhism and
Unitarian Universalism, and in its most basic formulation entails
nothing more specific than the rejection of a deity. Without a shared
atheist orthodoxy to evaluate it would be difficult to assess atheism’s
impact upon human experience. Fortunately, very few atheists in the
Western world adhere to so amorphous a worldview. Secular Humanists and
naturalists, two influential and growing factions of atheists, hold an
uncompromising commitment to materialism that permits me to
systematically gauge the impact of their beliefs upon life. Both groups
are ontological materialists in that they believe that everything that
exists in the universe consists of physical matter. They are in this
respect highly reductionistic, maintaining that all types of experiences
derive from physical processes susceptible, at least in theory, to
scientific evaluation.

Explanation or description or prediction. NOT evaluation.

In short, ontological materialists insist that everything explainable
about existence can be explained in terms of interactions of matter and
energy.1 This policy allows me to conduct a precise inquiry into whether
ontological materialism

<Although materialists like Vic considered atoms and the void basic; it
doesn't follow that other things, like love, insurance, music,...fail to
exist. Experience themselves, i.e. Consciousness has yet to be explained
in purely materialist terms.>

can account for the putative value of experiences in my seven
categories. If ethical virtue, encounters with beauty and the pursuit of
justice are to offer genuine compensation against the hardships of life
they must, according to the ontological materialist, do so on the basis
of material causes. If we can find no such possible causes, the
materialist cannot lay claim to the experiences as genuine sources of
joy, satisfaction and fulfillment.
It is true that some prominent atheist thinkers reject ontological
materialism in favor of methodological materialism, a more modest claim
about the nature of the universe. Unlike dogmatic materialists,
methodological materialists adopt no absolute prohibition against the
existence of non-material objects, but nonetheless limit themselves to
the scientific methods they claim yield the most reliable knowledge.
For instance, Sam Harris grants that the existence of non-material
entities is logically possible but considers it unlikely and
evidentially unfounded. Science can only elucidate observable
interactions of matter and energy, and speculative theories about divine
providence and miracles, for instance, fall outside the purview of
scientific verification. In the absence of falsifiable empirical data,
the methodological materialist adopts a skeptical posture. My claim
throughout this book is that if the experiences in my categories are to
possess genuine value they must possess it in virtue of some
non-material qualities, qualities that neither the dogmatic materialist
nor the methodological materialist can countenance. The former rejects
them out of hand as philosophical impossibilities while the latter
refutes them on the basis of rigid methodological commitments. The
outcome in both cases is the same: the experiences we rely on to ward
off despair are rendered meaningless illusions.

<?? Despair is the default?? My dog's not a theist and he never
seems to despair.>


The arguments for despair contained in this book are addressed to anyone
who finds the existence of immaterial entities unlikely, regardless of
the type of materialism to which he or she subscribes. Secular Humanists
fall neatly into the ontological materialist fold, but I suspect that
other atheists in the West going by different names also doubt the
existence of non-material entities or causal forces.

<Atheists believe in non-material entities, like laws, numbers,
chess,... You need to be clear what you're talking about.>

The ascendency of Secular Humanism and the dominant role it plays in
promoting atheism over religion no doubt accounts in part for atheism’s
materialistic leanings. Atheistic religions such as Buddhism, while
popular among some Western sub-cultures, do not command the influence of
Secular Humanism, and Buddhism’s acceptance of non-material entities
does not appear to have dramatically impacted the secular intellectual
landscape. Secularism is an overwhelmingly materialistic affair, and in
writing to materialists of one sort or another I am confident that I
address the majority of atheists now living in the West.
Why did materialism gain the upper hand in secular intellectual
communities? Before examining how materialistic atheism affects the
experiences in my seven categories, it will be helpful to spend the rest
of this introduction sketching the philosophical transitions that
account for its popularity. Materialism is as old as philosophy itself,
but it has not always maintained the credibility it now enjoys.
Retracing the developments that led to its ascendancy will help us
appreciate the force of materialism’s objection to the existence of
immaterial objects and better understand how it threatens to undermine
the value of our experiences.
Our summary will pay special attention to transitions in epistemology,
the philosophical sub-discipline concerned with theories of knowledge.
As philosophers’ convictions about the scope of possible knowledge
change, their confidence in the existence of particular kinds of objects
changes. The epistemic status of these objects greatly impacts other
areas of philosophy such as ethics and ontology, as the objects
frequently serve as the fundamental building blocks of these theories.
Many philosophers worry that until we define the limits of human
knowledge our pronouncements on ethics and the constitution of reality
remain tentative and susceptible to skeptical assault, and a central
task of philosophy historically has been to overcome doubts over the
trustworthiness of human reason in order to safeguard our ethical
commitments. Ancient and medieval thinkers anchored their ethics and
ontologies by reference to immaterial objects such as the human soul or
perfect forms, but the empirically-minded critics of later centuries
dismissed these entities as unfounded speculations. From the
Enlightenment onward the catalogue of prospective value-bearing objects
diminished as the philosophical community adopted the methods of the
natural sciences, leaving fewer theoretical resources available to
account for the value of our experiences and the reliability of our
ethics. Our summary will track these changes, beginning with Plato’s
metaphysically generous epistemology and concluding with the more
restrictive attitudes of late modernity and the twentieth century.

Value and Knowledge in the Ancient World

While it would be foolish to portray the history of philosophy as a
linear development of ideas, each supplanting the last, the story of
philosophy from the ancient Greeks to our time may be told in terms of
the declining influence of Plato’s epistemology and in particular his
famous theory of Forms. Since its inception in the fourth century
B.C.E., Plato’s account of how humankind acquires knowledge and attains
virtue has played an enormous role in shaping subsequent debate. So
influential was Plato’s framing of perennial philosophical questions
that a prominent twentieth century atheist and colleague of Bertrand
Russell’s labeled the entire European philosophical enterprise a series
of footnotes on Plato.2 “Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,”
wrote Emerson. Plato’s influence cannot be overstated, yet in many
respects materialism is the antithesis of Platonism and its rise in
stature signals Plato’s waning practical relevance. Platonism’s decline
also corresponds, I will argue, with the discrediting of the
metaphysical resources needed to fend off despair.

<Again you just assume that despair in a default...a fact not in evidence.>

Plato established the basic philosophical model from which Christianity
drew inspiration in the early centuries of the Common Era, and similar
to the way that Christianity postulates a spiritual reality beyond the
physical world to account for the true value of life,

<I notice you slipped from “theism” to “Christianity”. You've nowhere
explained how theism fends off despair. You seem to just take it as an
unexamined fact. But under analysis you find it is things like not
dying, ultimate justice, etc that are promised – but don't actually
depend on theism that count. Try reading Craig A James “The Religion
Virus” to see how theism “fends off despair”.>

Plato posits an immaterial reality to account for the value of our most
precious experiences and civic institutions.3 Eliminating this
immaterial dimension eliminates the source of value, leaving us to
contend with the hollowed-out husks of our material surroundings. To
grasp precisely how materialism threatens value requires a better grasp
of how Plato attempted to secure it.
Like so many efforts in philosophy, the specter of skepticism lent
urgency to Plato’s project. While debate persists over the extent to
which particular pre-Socratic philosophers influenced Plato’s thought,
his pupil Aristotle reports that the enigmatic works of Heraclitus made
a lasting impression.4 Heraclitus famously held that the world remains
in a constant state of flux, with the basic constitutive elements of
matter perpetually changing despite the static appearance of things. On
Plato’s interpretation, this precluded the possibility of ever
establishing a reliable theory of knowledge rooted in the physical
composition of reality.5 Throughout his dialogues we find Plato
grappling with the inadequacy of matter to serve as the basis for
genuine understanding, and he deploys various strategies for
transcending the uncertainty of a world in flux to secure reliable
knowledge of permanent truths.
In addition to this Heraclitian debt, the relativism of the fifth
century Sophists influenced Plato’s development. Traveling teachers of
rhetoric and oratory, Socrates and Plato ridiculed the Sophists for
charging a fee for their services, a habit Socrates considered
unbecoming of a true philosopher, and for boasting of their ability to
successfully defend any position. Protagoras, an influential Sophist and
the titular character of Plato’s dialogue, is credited with having held
the view that “man is the measure of all things,” and while various
scholars interpret Protagoras as advocating more or less severe forms of
relativism, Plato understood him to issue a challenge to the fundamental
aims of philosophical inquiry.6 While conceding that the world
perceived by the senses provides no assurance of a stable reality,

<And it has been the discoveries of physics from Galileo and Newton on
that showed there was an underlying stability which undermined theism
which preached miracles and divine agency.>

Plato rejected Protagoras’ relativistic claim that human opinion
constitutes the only source of value and persisted in seeking methods of
obtaining knowledge that could guide human action and shape civil society.
To solve these skeptical dilemmas, Plato adopts a radical
epistemological position. He divides the world into two spheres of
unequal importance: the immaterial realm of permanent and abstract
universals and the mundane realm of particular objects that we daily
inhabit. He gives the former realm priority over the latter, claiming
that the immaterial realm constitutes the repository of perfect models,
or Forms, that account for the value and identity of individual,
imperfect things in the physical realm. For instance, Plato holds that
red objects in the material world derive their redness by participating
in the Form of Red, itself not a thing located among physical objects.
Redness is an ideal paradigm that imbues particular, imperfect
instantiations of redness with its attribute and makes reference to red
things coherent and meaningful. Likewise, particular instantiations of
moral goodness found in persons or actions derive their quality from the
Form of the Good. Individual good things and persons possess their
goodness, Plato thinks, to the extent that they participate in the
source that is Goodness itself. These immaterial ideals, Redness and
Goodness, serve as the basis for comparison that allows one to speak
objectively – that is, without circularity or arbitrariness – of
Goodness and Redness per se. Even though one might not know with
absolute certainty how to define the Good, Plato’s theory allows one to
speak sensibly of standards of moral excellence that transcend
particular situations and interpretations. In any given debate over what
constitutes Redness or Goodness there is, according to the theory of
Forms, a fact of the matter about who is right and wrong. So while we
might misinterpret some particular attribute of the physical world and
arrive at mistaken conclusions about what is good, just or beautiful,
the realm of the Forms is the domain of immutable standards of Goodness,
Justice and Beauty that, if we only learn how to acquire knowledge of
them, will rightly direct our actions.
Our scientifically accomplished age is accustomed to treating the
tangible objects of the physical world as the most reliable sources of
knowledge, but Plato thinks just the opposite. Perceptible objects, he
argues, are inferior and derivative imitations of the Forms and cannot
provide true knowledge about reality.

<Because Plato didn't realize the function of Point of View Invariance.>

It may appear to us on the basis of visual observation that two adjacent
objects are equal in length, but without apprehension of the Forms this
data does not yet say anything about Equality itself that would qualify
the judgment as knowledge. When determining whether one object is equal
in length to another, the best we can do with our senses is to say that,
in this particular case and at this particular time, the objects appear
equal. But measured against other objects under different circumstance
they may appear unequal. Any object that can possess measures of
equality and inequality cannot, says Plato, supply knowledge about
Equality per se, for it would be absurd to suggest that the Form of
Equality possesses any degree of inequality. Plato thinks our judgments
remain unreliable and vulnerable to skeptical attack until we grasp the
unqualified, pure source of predicates such as Equal and Good.

<He didn't appreciate the importance of the operational definition and
the preeminence of example over definition. >

Even if we were to judge correctly about the length of objects using
nothing but our senses, Plato denies that our success would qualify as
genuine understanding. In the Theatetus and Symposium he provides
definitions of knowledge that exclude correct opinions unaccompanied by
a rational defense. Someone who voices an opinion without being capable
of giving a reason for its veracity does not yet possess knowledge,
thinks Plato, but relies on unreliable appearances to justify her
beliefs. For our judgments to qualify as knowledge we must consult a
more reliable standard, and in the Republic Plato illustrates how the
philosopher can rise above sense perception to comprehend the Forms that
enable accurate judgments about particular objects.

<As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to
reality.
-- Albert Einstein>

In Book VI, Plato reveals that one Form in particular aids the
philosopher in judging wisely. The pursuit of knowledge begins, says
Socrates, with the Form of the Good. Just as the light of the sun
illumines objects and enables our eyes to see, the Good establishes the
horizon within which we encounter other Forms and obtain true knowledge
about reality. “Therefore,” says Socrates, “say that what provides the
truth to the things known and gives the power to the one who knows, is
the idea of the good” (508d). All knowledge for Plato is in some way
knowledge about the Good, and while he does not explicitly expound upon
the relationship between the Good and the other Forms, Plato does say
that the Good not only enables objects of knowledge to be known, but
also contributes to their very existence.7 The essence of things is
somehow rooted in their relation to the Good, and to gain true knowledge
about reality the philosopher must pursue it above all else.

<Just because “the Good” is immaterial, doesn't support theism. “The
bad” and “the ugly” are also immaterial. I'm afraid you're working up
to a false inference: “Some things are immaterial” => theism. Remember
that although Vic was a materialist, he held it as a scientific
hypothesis, and he readily admitted that the evidence did not rule out
deism. Whereas the evidence against existing theisms was much stronger.>

Plato insists that only philosophers “are able to grasp the eternal and
unchangeable,” and their distinctive vocation is to break free from our
sensory enslavement to particular objects and ascend into the light of
the Good.8 We should think of the philosopher’s ascent as a journey of
the intellect, Plato tells us, which unlike sense perception is capable
of transcending the objects of the physical world to perceive universal
truths. But Plato identifies the immaterial human soul, not the mind, as
the organ enabling the philosopher’s ascent, as it aids the intellect in
recalling the soul’s pre-embodied encounters with the Forms. In the Meno
and Phaedo, Plato describes the soul as having a life before its union
with the body, during which time it beholds the Forms in their true
natures without the corrupting influence of the senses. When joined to
the body, the soul’s knowledge of the Forms is temporarily obscured
until we recover it through persistent inquiry into the true nature of
things. Working together, the intellect and the soul contribute to our
recollection of the Forms and our apprehension of the Good, which for
Plato is the beginning of true wisdom and virtue.

To modern ears, Plato’s account of knowledge is too fantastic to be
taken seriously.

<Bruno Marchal takes it seriously, but not too literally. He thinks that
all can be explained as computation in arithmetic. But that's NOT
theism. You can't pray to arithmetic.>

We do not share his skeptical worries and so do not feel the need to
resort to claims about disembodied souls or immaterial Forms. But
questions about the basis of human knowledge would continue to plague
philosophers throughout the following millennia and Plato’s approach to
the problem proved foundational. Plato’s crucial contribution was to
explore the distinction between our perception of reality and reality
itself, a contrast his predecessor Parmenides had introduced to Greek
philosophy and that every subsequent thinker was forced to confront.
Philosophers after Plato also had to acknowledge difficulties in
accounting for the difference between individual things and the types of
things to which they belonged. Each had to answer questions such as
“What is the nature of the relationship between the type of things
called Good and individual good things?” and “How, if at all, can we use
knowledge of the type to accurately identify individual instances of the
type?” If one rejects Plato’s contention that perfect models exist
beyond the physical world, then how else should we confirm the accuracy
of our judgments? More urgently, how do we advocate for particular moral
responsibilities when nothing in nature appears to supply guarantees
that our moral intuitions are reliable? If Protagoras is correct and man
is the measure, then our opinions about morality and truth constitute
the only basis for our understanding of reality and we are left without
an authoritative standard when disagreements arise about how we should
conduct ourselves.
Regardless of our opinions about Plato’s solution to these problems, his
enduring merit lies in the fact that he took seriously the skeptical
problems arising when we consider the reliability of our senses and
intellect to supply accurate knowledge of the world around us, and his
framing of the issues shaped the development of Western philosophy for
the next two thousand years.

Aristotle and the turn to immanence

Despite the influence of Plato’s contribution, his successors wasted no
time in straying from his commitments. Aristotle, the other giant of
Greek philosophy, made the first move away from the metaphysical
grandeur of his teacher towards a more naturalistic solution to
epistemological problems, especially moral ones. While he did not wholly
abandon Plato’s reliance upon immaterial Forms to account for the
identity and value of things, Aristotle reimagined Forms as immanent
essences embedded in matter, not disembodied entities floating in a
remote realm of existence. Whereas his philosophical predecessors had
focused on clarifying the basic composition of matter and, in the case
of Plato, the unique Forms that distinguish one type of matter from
another, Aristotle expanded his efforts to include an account of the
initial causes that bring things into existence and the final aims
towards which those existences tend. Considered together, Aristotle’s
four causes – the material, formal, efficient and final – offer a more
comprehensive picture of an entity’s nature than any thinker before him.
Every living and inanimate thing, says Aristotle, derives its qualities
from these four constitutive elements: the basic material stuff out of
which it is composed (material cause); the Form or blueprint that
imposes the distinctive shape and attributes onto its material makeup
(formal cause); the initial impetus that results in its creation
(efficient cause); and the purpose its creation and attributes satisfy
(final cause). Cats are unique types of creatures, thinks Aristotle, in
that each cat possesses an immaterial but immanent blueprint explaining
why it looks and behaves as it does. There is no abstract ideal Cat from
which we must derive knowledge about particular cats – only embodied
Forms that account for each cat’s traits. This eliminates the need for
an elaborate epistemology explaining how we perceive immaterial Forms
and relocates the focus of philosophical inquiry back to physical
objects, thereby promoting sense perception to a reliable and
indispensable faculty of the understanding.
On Aristotle’s epistemological model, the outward manner in which
organisms exhibit their immanent Form and the behaviors through which
they pursue the fulfillment of their natural needs reveal their ideal
function and moral purpose. We can easily observe what sorts of
behaviors benefit cats, and we don’t need to consult a metaphysical
ideal to determine what constitutes feline goodness. Observation alone
confirms that a cat’s final cause – the purpose towards which its nature
tends, or its “cat-ness” – requires that it eat, play and reproduce.
Cats are happy and content only under these conditions, and happiness
for Aristotle is the hallmark of genuine flourishing and virtuous
action. Likewise, we shouldn’t seek some disembodied notion of Goodness
to learn what we, the rational animal, should do, but should attend to
our essential natures to identify the human good. In Nicomachean Ethics,
Aristotle argues that the distinctively human attribute, our rational
capabilities, indicates that the pursuit of human goodness requires the
virtuous application of reason and, in particular, philosophical
contemplation. When human beings exercise their unique abilities as
rational animals they achieve the good suitable to their natures. They
flourish.
While a seemingly subtle revision of Plato’s theory, Aristotle’s
transference of Forms to immanent objects entails consequences that only
become fully apparent centuries later. In rejecting Plato’s contention
that true knowledge requires understanding of unchanging Forms and in
focusing attention on the embodied essences of organisms, Aristotle
connected moral epistemology to biology in ways that would prove
problematic. After Darwin in the nineteenth century, scientists drew on
evolutionary explanations of adaptation to account for organisms’
physical characteristics, leaving little room for the influence of
immaterial existences. According to natural selection, the evolution of
a species proceeds from the selective retention of spontaneous mutations
providing reproductive advantages, not from the dictates of Forms. By
gaining advantages through beneficial mutations, the fittest members of
a species thrive in the contest for finite resources and pass the
favorable mutations on to subsequent generations.
This still dominant account of biological diversity complicates
Aristotle’s vision of moral goodness, even secularized interpretations
that attempt to retain elements of his thinking. By responding to
contingent environmental factors, the evolutionary process eliminates
the possibility of a fixed correlation between an organism’s biological
attributes and an eternal standard of goodness. If, as Darwin says, the
engines of biological adaptation are spontaneous mutation and
environmental pressures, we cannot expect physical and behavioral
attributes to remain static over the course of a species’ natural
history. After all, we can easily imagine life evolving under conditions
much different than those common to Earth’s history, and in a few
hundred million years our evolutionary progeny will look and behave
differently than we do. If, as Aristotle suggests, an organism’s
essential characteristics are the best means of inferring the good for
that organism, then we must abandon Plato’s idea that the good is a
constant fixture of reality. Much like Heraclitus’ notion of eternal
flux, Darwinian evolution describes a physical world prone to continuous
change and incapable of furnishing the epistemological basis for a
permanent moral order.

<But it may well provide a moral order for human beings as objective and
permanent as human beings are featherless bipeds.>

By locating the indicators of moral excellence in organisms’ embodied
attributes, Aristotle exposed ethics to the contingency of Darwinian
biology and established a tension between ancient ethics and modern
science.
We will have more to say about how the facts of nature relate to ethical
obligations when we discuss Hume and Nietzsche, two thinkers who expend
great energy on the subject. My point in raising the issue here is to
stress that Aristotle took the first steps towards liberating ethical
systems from immaterial standards of goodness requiring special methods
of inquiry. As an accomplished natural scientist, Aristotle was less
concerned with proving the reliability of our senses than he was with
the orderly and logical application of reason to empirical observation.
By looking to the observable world for clues as to what constitutes the
good for particular organisms, he inaugurated a tradition in western
philosophy of relying upon scientific understanding to determine moral
obligation. While himself not a materialist, Aristotle prepared the way
for a thoroughgoing empiricism that would embolden the materialists of
later centuries.

Christianity and the Middle Ages

Aristotle’s devotees could not have anticipated that his innovative
interpretation of the theory of Forms would shake the foundations of
ancient ethics centuries later. Had his philosophy fallen out of favor
and not dominated for thousands of years, the tension between
Aristotle’s moral epistemology and Darwinian evolution would hardly
matter to us today. But like Plato’s philosophy, Aristotle’s ideas
factored crucially in the formation of moral theories that shaped the
course of western history. The founding principles of the United States,
articulated in the Declaration of Independence, bear witness to the
abiding impact of Aristotle’s moral reasoning, especially by invoking
self-evident natural rights meant to ensure the equality of all people.
We are, for better or worse, inheritors of these Greek legacies, and the
moral edifice upon which our society rests relies for its philosophical
coherency upon competing elements of Plato and Aristotle’s epistemologies.

<This isn't wrong, but it gives to much credit to philosophizing and to
little to the Enlightenment's hindsight. Even the Greek lawgivers like
Solon referred to the empirical results of laws and customs that were
known to him.>


Understanding how modern institutions preserve ancient Greek philosophy
helps explain why materialism threatens to erode our value commitments
today. Because Plato and Aristotle relied upon immaterial entities to
defend their theories of moral goodness – and because their ideas
contributed so dramatically to the formulation of western ethical
systems – conflicts between ancient ideas of virtue and modern
scientific consensus remain troubling. Once we recognize that the
foundations of our moral thinking derive from sources sympathetic to
Greek epistemology

<I think this is false. Love and empathy, cooperation and competition
all precede the Greeks by a million years – going back to species before
humans.>

we can more readily appreciate the disastrous consequences of removing
the objects of knowledge authorizing them. To appreciate the true extent
of our indebtedness, we must turn to the early Christian church.
Greek philosophy became engrained in modern western culture through
Christian intermediaries who exerted tremendous influence upon the
ethical and philosophical development of Europe. Theologians in the
early centuries C.E. and throughout the Middle Ages praised Plato,
seizing upon opportunities to lend their faiths greater intellectual
credibility by adapting theological doctrines to the lexicon and logic
of respected Greek philosophy. These Christians didn’t think that an
association with Plato would weaken the epistemological framework
promoted by the Bible, but viewed commonalities between the pagan Greeks
and Christianity as proof of a shared comprehension of God’s orderly
world. Through the application of divinely bestowed wisdom, Plato had
struck upon truths that only Christianity could fully illuminate, but
that philosophy could help popularize among Roman audiences. This
attempted synthesis between Christianity and Greek philosophy accounts
in large part for the impact of Plato and Aristotle upon the formation
of the western world.
The adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire in the late fourth
century C.E. would rapidly promulgate Christian ideas, among them
interpretations of Plato by early church fathers such as Justin Martyr
and Saint Augustine. As Christianity spread it bore traces of Platonic
influence with it, especially the distinction between appearances and
reality that Christianity understood in terms of separate material and
spiritual realms. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas drew on the
newly rediscovered works of Aristotle to defend the notion that the
whole of humankind perceives God’s moral order through natural
intuitions about what actions compliment the human essence. Aspects of
these two strains of thought – the Platonic commitment to an
otherworldly existence and the Aristotelian conception of immanent
natures – took root in Christian Europe and, eventually, North America.
The objects of knowledge enabling these epistemological systems,
including Plato’s immaterial soul and Aristotle’s embodied essences,
became enmeshed in the very fabric of the western moral consciousness
through their incorporation into Christian apologetics.
While deeply indebted to Greek philosophers, Christian theologians would
do more than assimilate existing theories from classical sources.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians developed their own innovative
arguments for the plausibility of theological claims. Around 1078,
Anselm of Canterbury devised an ontological argument for the existence
of God based upon the idea of a supreme being in possession of every
possible degree of perfection, including existence. Two centuries later,
Aquinas offered his own seminal assessment of arguments for God’s
existence in the Summa Theologica. In their confidence in the human
intellect’s ability to ascertain truths about God, these Christian
philosophers venerated reason as a powerful instrument of human
understanding capable of discerning truths imperceptible to the senses.
By relying upon reason to reinforce and clarify their faith commitments,
theologians of the middle ages modeled themselves after their Greek
forbearers and carried the ancient tradition of rational inquiry into
the modern era.
But by the eighteenth century, these theological perspectives came under
assault by an increasingly skeptical philosophical community. As
Christianity’s philosophical credibility began to wane, so too did the
credibility of its Greek counterparts and the objects of knowledge
supporting their epistemologies. It became increasingly difficult for
metaphysically-minded philosophers to appeal to the immortal soul or
immaterial essences as plausible explanations for how we gain access to
ethical and ontological truths. The remarkable expansion of scientific
knowledge and the astonishing achievements of Isaac Newton, in
particular, appeared to leave little room for belief in unchanging
realities beyond the reach of empirical methods.

<But science developed by explicitly avoiding questions of “the good”
and concentrating on what can be seen and tested and predicted.>

With the rejection of metaphysical foundations, the traditional moral
principles that shaped our civilization began to lose their logical force.
Worse still, the efficacy of reason itself came under attack by
Enlightenment philosophers as they became increasingly skeptical of its
application to theological inquiry. What began as a celebration of
reason ended in deep-seated mistrust of the rational excesses of Greek
and Christian metaphysics, and by the end of the Enlightenment even some
Christian philosophers began to embrace a more rigid empiricism than
their Greek and medieval predecessors. By the nineteenth century, a few
bold atheists rejected reason’s ability to deliver reliable knowledge
outright.
This denial of reason emerged during a series of debates beginning in
the seventeenth century that again centered around epistemological
issues. As the so-called rationalist philosophers of the early modern
era struggled to devise more credible methods of grounding human
understanding than those provided by ancient Greek and Christian
sources, they established conditions of knowledge that Enlightenment
thinkers found impossible to accept. The ultimate inconclusiveness of
rationalist methods cast doubt on the credibility of all human inquiry,
and Enlightenment thinkers responded by denying that abstract reasoning
achieves the certainty philosophers had historically accorded it. The
modern period was the last golden age of metaphysical speculation, and
its perceived failure to deliver on the promise of reason led many
philosophers to abandon metaphysics and commit themselves to the
empirical model of the natural sciences. Appreciating the failure of the
rationalist project, and the crisis of confidence that ensued, helps
account for the rise of skepticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries and the popularity of Secular Humanism today.

Modern Philosophy and the collapse of reason

Intellectual historians typically agree that modern philosophy began in
the seventeenth century with two figures, the Frenchman Rene Descartes
and the Englishman Francis Bacon. Both men were dissatisfied with the
Aristotelian logic that dominated academic philosophy and sought better
ways of obtaining reliable knowledge about the world. Their approaches
to solving epistemological problems varied dramatically, however, and
their unique solutions deepened the divide between two developing
schools of philosophical investigation, empiricism and rationalism.
Descartes’s rationalist approach signaled a return to the skeptical
mindset that characterized much of Greek philosophy before Aristotle,
and like Plato he sought metaphysical foundations for epistemological
first principles. Bacon adopted a more scientific orientation, insisting
that ancient philosophy relied too heavily on abstract reasoning while
neglecting to carefully observe the phenomena in question. By stressing
the importance of classification, Bacon greatly advanced modern
scientific method, while Descartes, himself a scientist of astonishing
achievement, turned to rational abstraction as a means of grounding
knowledge. Bacon’s approach would over time prove the more durable,
especially among Anglo-American thinkers who shared his commitment to
empirical confirmation. Descartes ambitious plan to verify the
reliability of reason through the aid of indubitable first principles,
on the other hand, failed to convince influential figures in the
following centuries. The shortcomings of Descartes’ methods triggered a
crisis of epistemology, provoking philosophers to drastically reconceive
of the nature of knowledge and to reject speculative reason’s purported
ability to provide answers to fundamental questions about religion and
human purpose. In denying reason’s traditional role, philosophers of the
Enlightenment restricted access to truths beyond appearances and imposed
harsher criteria on what qualified as genuine knowledge.
Descartes’ approach in many ways mirrors Plato’s skeptical beginnings.
Like Plato, Descartes recognized the presence of widespread disagreement
among purported experts in every scholarly field and viewed sense
perception as an unreliable means of resolving the conflicts. Educated
at the elite Jesuit school at La Flèche, Descartes excelled early in
mathematics, and his appreciation of its accuracy led him to lament the
imprecision of other disciplines. If so many of his school masters
disagreed about basic issues confronting human experience and no
reliable procedure existed among the liberal arts to prove the certainty
of our judgments, what ensured that his opinions were valid? Many of the
ideas he held as a younger man he later concluded were false, and the
possibility that his remaining convictions were also misguided drove him
to search out a method of confirming his knowledge. After a period of
service in the military and almost a decade spent traveling in pursuit
of worldly diversions, Descartes left France in 1628 for the
intellectual and religious freedom of Holland to evaluate the
reliability of his opinions.
To begin his inquiry, Descartes subjects to radical doubt everything
that he cannot prove with absolute certainty, including his senses. By
presuming his opinions and sense perception are prone to error,
Descartes seeks an indubitable foundation on which to build his
knowledge about the world. Too frequently we rely on unexamined
presuppositions that appear to support our knowledge, Descartes warns,
and before we can accurately gauge the reliability of our understanding
we must put aside all prejudices coloring our judgment, even those that
seem most intuitively certain. In Meditations on First Philosophy,
Descartes writes, “I am forced to admit that there is nothing among the
things I once believed to be true which it is not permissible to
doubt.”9 It is at least theoretically possible, Descartes notes, that
conditions might obtain that render our apparent grasp of reality
illusory. We cannot rule out the possibility, for instance, that we are
all in a dream-like state of permanent slumber, living out our daily
experiences in delusional solitude. Nor can we exclude the possibility
that an evil god deceives us by flooding our minds with experiences
completely at odds with the true nature of things. How, given these
unlikely but logically possible scenarios, can we achieve certainty
about any of our opinions?
Through a series of inferences, Descartes discovers what he considers to
be an incontrovertible fact about our natures. Even if we are deluded by
a malicious deity or languish ignorantly in perpetual slumber, our
consciousness vouches for our existence. For though we might perceive
wrongly about the nature of our bodies or the particular character of
our lives, the fact that we perceive at all constitutes evidence of our
mental being. “Cogito ergo sum,” or “I think therefore I am,” provided
Descartes a logical argument in support of his existence, but it also
introduced a problem. For though Descartes had established rational
grounds for his existence, his proof only accounted for the immaterial,
mental essence of his personhood. The status of his body and the
physical objects around him remained unaccounted for, and to ascertain
their reality Descartes turned his attention to determining the origins
of his ideas about himself, the world and God.
How do we acquire our ideas, asks Descartes, and can they be trusted? To
test whether our ideas correspond to realities independent of our minds,
Descartes subjects his ideas to a criterion drawn from his understanding
of the relationship between cause and effect. No effect, thinks
Descartes, can exceed in power or reality its cause,

<To bad he didn't think to doubt this – since Darwin noted that it's false.>

so there must be a cause equal to all of the ideas we possess in our
minds. We can easily account for the presence in our minds of ideas
pertaining to everyday objects such as trees, tables and other people,
for these are no greater in stature nor so radically different in kind
from ourselves that we could not invent them unaided. But the idea of
God is unique, argues Descartes, in that nothing about our existence
suggests the possibility of an infinitely powerful being. I cannot
derive from myself the concept of a creature possessing every degree of
perfection, nor can anything supplied by the senses instill in me the
idea of a limitless entity. God himself must have implanted the idea,
concludes Descartes,

<Motivated reasoning. If he'd been honest he'd have realized he had no
clear idea of this prefection or of infinity.>

as he is the only cause equal to the effect, and his having done so is
evidence that he created and sustains me in my knowledge about the
world. Only the existence of a benevolent God who refuses to deceive me
can account for my possession of innate ideas such as perfection and for
the accuracy of my judgments about other objects. A good God rewards
persistent inquiry into the nature of the universe and will not deceive
those who seek out “clear and distinct” knowledge of his creation.
In the short space of the Meditations, Descartes believed he had
successfully employed reason to prove the reliability of human knowledge
and the existence of God. But while he aimed to eradicate doubts about
the authority of human understanding and promote humankind to “masters
and possessors of nature,” the practical consequence of his efforts was
to force a skeptical wedge between subject and object that later
philosophers struggled to overcome. Portraying knowledge as
correspondence between the immaterial mental awareness of human
observers and the physical realities of exterior objects, Descartes had
little choice but to resort to a mediating agent who could close the gap
between subject and object and ensure the accuracy of our judgements.
Only God, Descartes argued, guarantees that our perception of things
tracks the realities of a world beyond our immediate reach as immaterial
entities, and Descartes’ entire method depends upon his proof of God
from causality to defend the reliability of our knowledge. Yet as Hume
and Kant would claim, Descartes’ argument for God fails, leaving only
the gap separating human subjectivity from the objects of inquiry. By
doubting the veracity of basic human judgments and erecting almost
insurmountable boundaries between immaterial subject and physical
object, Descartes established a model of human understanding requiring
supernatural intervention. But his deity could not withstand the high
standard of certainty demanded by his system, and in the end Descartes’
skepticism infected his whole project. Despite his efforts to defend
knowledge, Descartes inadvertently strengthened the case for skepticism
and further discredited metaphysical approaches to clarifying the range
of human understanding.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume would exploit these skeptical
vulnerabilities a century later in his attack upon Descartes’
rationalism. Our ideas do not originate in our minds, Hume averred, but
enter the mind through the senses.
[Hume on causality, Kant on the thing-in-itself, Nietzsche on truth
and science, Ayer on metaphysics, Rorty]

[Brian Silston]

What seems missing here is the variability at the level of the individual. In Lawrence's example it is clear that Feynman had a high tolerance of uncertainty. Such a trait will be predictive of affective states in the face of continued uncertainty, ambiguity, and unpredictability, or any circumstance that has a potential to induce stress. Individual variability in these traits will determine whether atheism will have a deleterious impact on life or in the non-Feynman case, how deleterious.  It seems you are reasoning from a low tolerance of uncertainty mind-frame, but be careful because this doesn't generalize very well. When I conducted my first experiment manipulating uncertainty with respect to a stressor I thought I had done something wrong in my design, but upon closer examination when binning individuals it was clear that when these traits are taken into account the individuals sort themselves quite neatly. This is quite remarkable, actually. It means our perceptions and responses to them are far more important to our quality of life than what are often termed objective factors (though there are clear constraints on this that may come with great cost - certain illnesses, e.g. cancers will ultimately win; failure to critically examine data that would otherwise undermine a perception, etc.).  Just take a look at the health neuroscience field - a main finding is that perceived stress is the major predictor of an incredible range of illness, from metabolic syndrome, to hypertension, to risky health behaviors, and so on. 

If you take this into account you could argue that atheists that have low tolerance of uncertainty (and probably higher levels of state or trait anxiety) probably suffer some emotional instability and reduced quality of life in some respects.  But you could also argue a tortured existence for a theist listening for but not hearing god, or uncertain if their actions are appropriate, or what signal events are providing, etc. The claim about deleterious impacts will simply not hold for the Feynman types, or I would bet for many if not most individuals on this list. Whether you think one should feel despair will be a rather poor predictor of whether one actually feels it. Whether we like it or not, we must work within the confines of our psychological framework. What comes with this is significant variability in our perceptions and internalizations of the very same stimuli, be they thoughts or sensory.

Another point that doesn't seem considered is that many find the question of the existence of god(s) wholly uninteresting, or irrelevant to their lives (ditto religion). This position is neither atheistic nor agnostic, it is indifference, or in some cases the pursuit of this endeavor is just a waste of time that we could otherwise be spending improving our lot here. I tend to think this is Peter Singer's stance, and most any consequentialist, though Singer likely feels obliged to cover the topic given his position as a professional ethicist. 

I will also try to read more later in the week, I need to prep a talk first.

Brian