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Spirituality for the Godless

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

Michael McGhee
Michael McGhee
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

‘Godless’ was never a neutral term: in 1528 William Tindale talked of ‘godlesse ypocrites and infidels’ and a ‘godless generation’ is one that has turned its back on God and the paths of righteousness. An atheist, by contrast, a new and self-conscious atheist perhaps, might now wear the term as a badge of pride, to indicate their rejection both of belief and the implication of moral turpitude. Traditionally, though, those who declared themselves ‘atheist’ had a hardly better press than the ‘godlesse’, since ‘atheism’ was and in some cases still is considered a form of intellectual and moral shallowness: thus Sir Francis Bacon offers a bluff refinement of the Psalmist's verdict on the fool who says in his heart that there is no God:

The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 68: Philosophy and Religion , July 2011 , pp. 227 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

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References

1 Many of my reflections in this paper run in tandem with my ‘Spirituality and Humanism: or How to be a Good Atheist’ in Cornwell, & McGhee, (eds.) Philosophers and God (Continuum, 2009)Google Scholar.

2 I have used Vickers, Brian (ed.) Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996), 371–73Google Scholar.

3 Buchan, John remarks of the divines of the Seventeenth Century Scottish Kirk that ‘Finding little warrant for force in the New Testament, [they] had recourse to the Old Testament, where they discovered encouraging precedents in the doings of Elijah and Hezekiah and Josiah’, Montrose (Cornwall: House of Stratus, 1928/2008), 29Google Scholar.

4 See ‘Facing Truths’ in McGhee, (ed.) Philosophy, Religion and the Spiritual Life (Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Lash, ‘The Impossibility of Atheism’ – page 29 of Theology for Pilgrims (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2008)Google Scholar in which he quotes from page 21 of his The Beginning and the End of ‘Religion’ (Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 See Norman, Richard, On Humanism (London, Routledge, 2004), 18Google Scholar.

7 See Norman, Richard, ‘Secularism and Shared Values’, in Cornwell, & McGhee, (eds.), Philosophers and God (Continuum, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 See his Christianity and Creation: The Essence of the Christian Faith and its Future among Religions: A Systematic Theology (Continuum, 2006)Google Scholar. I should like to record here my indebtedness to his writing more generally.

9 To say this is to remain neutral about the question whether the world ‘really is’ God's creation.

10 McGhee, Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice, (Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.