Atheists Giving Thanks to the Sun
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Atheists Giving Thanks to the Sun Eric Steinhart 1 Received: 25 June 2020 / Revised: 26 August 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the sun, and our finely-tuned universe. Atheists can give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. They can give thanks to the sun by performing rituals in solar calendars (like stone circles). They can give thanks to our finely-tuned universe, and to existence itself, by doing science and philosophy. But these linguistic types of thanksgiving are forms of non-theistic contemplative prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Atheistic paganism may be part of an emerging ecosystem of naturalistic religions. Keywords Atheism . Thanks giving . Grooming . Rituals . Prayer
1 Introduction At least since the Stoics, gratitude has been a topic of enduring philosophical interest (Manela 2019). It is now standard to distinguish two types of gratitude (McAleer 2012; Manela 2016). The first type is propositional gratitude: you have gratitude that some good fact is true. The second type is prepositional gratitude: you have gratitude to some benefactor for some benefit. We express prepositional gratitude by giving thanks to our benefactors. For example, both theists and atheists agree that we can give thanks to other humans (and perhaps some other animals) for giving us mundane benefits. But theists extend this mundane account of thanks-giving. They say reality contains deep personal agents: spirits or deities working in the depths of nature. These deep persons give us goods on which all mundane goods depend. These deep goods include benefits from our evolving biosphere, from the sun, from our finely-tuned universe, and from the fact that anything exists at all. For these deep goods, the theists say we ought to express deep gratitude: we ought to give deep thanks to the spirits or deities for these * Eric Steinhart [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA
Philosophia
deep goods. We ought to offer sacrifices, hymns, or prayers of thanks-giving. These activities of giving thanks are usually thought to be central to religion. According to Dawkins, atheists correctly feel extremely powerful urges to give thanks to something for deep benefits (2010: 35:30–40:40; see 2017: 243–5). Now Dawkins asks: “Give thanks to whom? Or to what? To providence? To the fairies? To the gods?” (2010: 27:01–17). Dawkins answers that atheists cannot give deep thanks to anything. At most, they can be grateful that we have these deep goods. While atheists want to express prepositional gratitude, they can only express propositional gratitude. So their urges to give deep thanks are frustrated, and atheism is emotionally unsatisfactory. If the theists are right that we are morally obligated to gi
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