temporalities of atheism and of theism

Human beings are characterised by an extraordinary capability to observe, analyse and reflect upon the outside world and upon the actions to be taken in order to master the daily necessities and, thereby, to survive. furthermore, humans have (throughout thousands of years) acquired abilities which resulted in and led to the development of a vast variety of civilisations and cultures. these steps achieved by mankind enabled an increase in the number of approaches how best to understand and grasp the outside world, i.e. with the help of such concepts as e.g. (in todays’ terms) causality, structure, complementarity. however, given the vastness of the unknown world, the processes of gaining knowledge are not ones of a continuous, linear path – but of trial and error (popper). even conclusions appearing to represent justifiable truths will possibly be historicised at some time in the future, namely due to newly gained perspectives. one such perspective influencing human views (about nature, culture, cosmology as well as theology) arises from the fact that the question how best to grasp and understand temporality remains unsolved – despite the variety of conceptions regarding temporality that have emerged throughout the course of human history. these philosophical concepts of time have been constructed and used not only in the course of scientific undertakings to discover laws of nature (toulmin and goodfield, 1965) but also to distinguish the different kinds of temporal concepts constituted by social systems (luhmann, 1973). – in my paper i intend to analyse and discuss the aspect of temporal concepts involved in religions, especially in monotheism. despite myself not believing in a god, i doubtless consider the cultural significance of any religion worth respecting and remembering. in the process of developing my arguments i, therefore, do not intend to merely to historicise the circumstances under which new beliefs arose. rather, i shall focus upon discussing 1) the temporal concepts enabling beliefs in an eternal god and, as well, 2) the temporal concepts apparent within beliefs of divine revelations. such analyses, based upon the time-related foundations of religions, facilitate, i argue, comparisons between distinct religions on the one hand as well as between theism and atheism on the other hand. in other words, i consider concepts of time and of temporality to be not merely a suitable but indeed a significant common denominator whenever atheism and theism are compared or contrasted with one another. furthermore, i shall argue that mutual understanding between religious and non-religious people could be fostered by choosing time-related common denominators, namely due the possible abstract nature of temporal concepts.