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Defining Atheists and Agnostics

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13:00 / 04.10.07

Great article by Sam Harris in the Washington Post.

A sample:

America is now a nation of 300 million people, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet this influence is being steadily corrupted, and is surely waning, because 240 million of these people apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers. . . .

Given the absence of evidence for God, and the stupidity and suffering that still thrives under the mantle of religion, declaring oneself an "atheist" would seem the only appropriate response. And it is the stance that many of us have proudly and publicly adopted. Tonight, I’d like to try to make the case, that our use of this label is a mistake — and a mistake of some consequence.

17:41 / 04.10.07

Ahhhhmmm.... to get the gist of that pelicular piece of prose:

Atheists should refrain from calling themselves atheists, generally shut up about god, and meditate in order to achieve higher levels of conciousness?

Somehow I get his point, but his suggestions for action remind me of the good old Taoists:

To do nothing. (On a big scale with publicity)

His point about religions being very specific is, of course, true. Somehow, this doesn´t change the fact that they are religions, with lots of baggage attached to that moment of higher consciousness.

I´m all for higher consciousness, but not at the cost of constant asceticism. (See Karlheinz Deschner in The cock crows once again) Ceremonial drug use is much more efficient.

14:17 / 05.10.07

A "fundamentalist" atheist would continue disbelieving in god even if he was confronted with considerable amounts of evidence.

I find the application of the term 'fundamentalist' to atheism to be seriously insulting. There are no fundamentals of atheism - no rules for behavior, no symbols or rituals, no sacred book or stories, no interpretation of humanity's relation to plants, animals, earth, stars, or other people - so it is not possible to deviate from those fundamentals, or to seek a return to them. It may often go hand-in-hand with acceptance of other ideas (for example, evolution) but it is in no way tied to them.

To use the term 'fundamentalist' is to apply a term used to describe some people's approach to their religion to atheism, and thus to imply that it's just another religion, just another type of faith. I cannot speculate on the personal beliefs of any individual, religious or not, or what that person would consider evidence, but atheism as a concept does not deal with an individual's need or desire to cling to the idea that no gods exist, but only with the idea itself.

If atheism is going to be treated as being about personal notions rather than about ... I don't know, epistemology or something, can we move the thread over to the temple? I'm sure a perfectly interesting thread could be had about what role atheism plays in people's lives, how identifying as an atheist informs worldview and how this varies from culture to culture, or something. Anything. Please just not another rehash of 'atheism is just like religion X.'

19:16 / 05.10.07

If I believed in a all powerful, all knowing creator who will one day judge me and, doing so, either raise me to his side or cast me away to be burned like the autumn leaves, who promised an old man in despair a son and, once he had this son, demanded him as a sacrifice, well, I'd find your Pastafarianism pretty condescending, e.

These gods are very, very abstract creations for an atheist, but they are not at all abstract for a believer. God does exist, and it's obvious, I think, but only in the mind of those who believe in him.

All Acting Regiment

19:29 / 05.10.07

Would people say there's a difference between "atheism" and "anti-theism"?

22:17 / 05.10.07

@ elene: Of course. But doesn´t the similarity and hilarity of it all somehow strike a note in most (religious) people?

I´d like to guess that anyone genuinely offended by pastafarianism is most probably a fundamentalist of some sort... e.g.: you can try this on many people on the left. Most will laugh. Those who start an argument on how the people´s front is better than the popular front.... well, you know.

To my use of the phrase "fundamentalist" atheist: I used parenthesis, thus distancing myself from that notion. I find the point of KB quite well phrased... I´ll use it in future rebuttals of that claim.

But Harris somehow isn´t all wrong to criticise... (although his conclusions are a bit defeatist and just a tiny bit esoteric, really.) Assuming that the term "fundamentalist" cannot be used for atheists, how do we call those who simply follow the classic "God doesn´t exist, you´re stoooopid, nananana" line of debate? Perhaps "simplistic" atheists? Or "populist positivist" atheists?

07:56 / 06.10.07

I think you might mean fundamentalist secularist rather than fundamentalist atheist.

All Acting Regiment

08:33 / 06.10.07

Are all the people who use the simplistic "no god nanana you're stupid" line 'arguing' from the same position, though? Ought they to associated as a group sharing ideology/beleif or is the only thing they have in common a poor way of expressing that beleif?

All Acting Regiment

08:41 / 06.10.07

This blog might be of relevance here as well, dealing as it does with the writer's attempts to synthesise between born again christians and secular progressives - his deal is to try and find the progressive Christians.

16:03 / 08.10.07

hmmm... I´m not so sure about religion being able to really re-adjust its values... somehow, the whole "helping of the poor" - gig is often just an excuse to go out and "help" them by bringing them into the one true faith... That one passage from Che´s motorcycle diaries hits the spot: The nuns would only give the people food after they attendend mass...

It´s never wrong to help the poor, but it is wrong to use that situation of obvious inequality to pressure them into a belief system, imho.

And the whole idea of a group of christians standing in a circle and chanting "We´re going to change our system!" is a bit like that old python piece... "We´re all individuals!"

But then again, I read this post on bobby hendersons wonderful Venganza , which suggests that there are quite a lot of moderate religous guys equally upset with what some nut jobs are preaching. According to Dawkins, this guy must be atheist and he just doesn´t know it yet. Is there another explanation? Can one knowingly support a system that preaches stuff you don´t believe to be true? Perhaps it´s just lack of consequence...

22:16 / 09.10.07

I believe the term for people who attack the deeply held beliefs of others with "no god nanana you're stupid" is "asshole".

All Acting Regiment

13:08 / 04.03.08

I think this might be relevant here. There may be better threads for it, but while we're talking about religion:

Varieties of Secularism

Secular leftists as well as liberals tend to think that religion is an ideology, a product of alienation, whereas secularism isn't. Secularism, however, is a political doctrine, and as such, it is as much of an ideology as religion.

What kind of ideology is secularism?

There are at least three major varieties of this ideology that we need to study:

* republican secularism (secularism won from below through authentic social revolution, seen, for instance, in France and Mexico);

* authoritarian secularism (secularism imposed from above, for instance, Kemalism, an ideology invented as much to dissociate Turkey from its own region and make it a member of the mythical West1 as to pacify the working masses by dictating and controlling their ideology, purging religion here, promulgating a state-sanctioned variety of it there);

* the American separation of church and state (which makes the state legally secular but makes religion, both good and bad varieties, flourish in civil society).

Not all varieties of religion are valuable, nor are all varieties of secularism. Among the three, only republican secularism may serve as a path to the proletarian Enlightenment, political or intellectual, that empowers them.

Nevertheless, even republican secularism, if the Left is not careful, can be deformed by the power elite into an instrument of social control, for example, as a weapon of xenophobic attack on predominantly proletarian migrants from France's former colonial possessions in the MENA region. An uncritical approach to secularism just helps make the empire more powerful at the expense of working people, in the North as well as the South.

Now this acceptance of the complexity and problematics of secularism - despite it being basically a good idea, according to both religious and the non-religious thinkers, to have a secular government - is something I don't see in Dawkins and Harris, or in the Dawkins 'attitude' one finds around the web and the press, and I think that's a problem. What do others think?

14:47 / 04.03.08

Well, as a general principle it seems a touch flawed to me. What this type of criticism strongly reminds me of, is the arguments of the "decent" left. Namely, that before you can criticise US foreign policy in Iraq, say, you must acknowledge the good points of US democracy and institutions, you must condemn all the actions of Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda and the human rights abuses of Islamism and the horrors of terrorism. Maybe a quick condemnation of the problems in Darfur is also in order.

Maybe you don't mean it like that - that a person making an argument must acknowledge all counter points before they can actually proceed - but it sounds like you are heading that way. For instance, I'm not sure that anyone actually claims that secularism, by itself, is a guarantee of a flawless society. So the fact that secularism may be part of a society with deep problems isn't something one actually needs to spend time on. If there are specific criticisms of something proposed, then sure, but to criticise one's own position in the abstract as a precondition to a "reasonable" debate? Thats just silly. At the very least, I'd be more persuaded to accept that this rhetorical move wasn't made in bad faith if one also applied it to people "defending" religion.

All Acting Regiment

11:19 / 05.03.08

Hmm, I'm not sure. Surely these very different kinds of secularism make it important that, if you argue for secularism, you argue for the right kind? Just arguing for 'secularism at all costs' would seem to open the door to the authoritarian kind, which potentially doesn't do its job properly, gets used as a false solution, and ultimately turns people against secularism.

Although - and I've just realised this - I'm talking about people who are arguing for secularism in other countries than their own. I can see it's different if someone was arguing for secularism in their own country. Hmm.

14:53 / 05.03.08

I guess I'd find it helpful to see an example of someone arguing for secularism at all costs. I am rather doubtful that Dawkins has argued that secularism should be imposed, even if this means some kind of human rights violating quasi dictatorship, but I'm willing to hear it. Though, in all honesty, I think my original point stands. This is just a bad faith rhetorical move, isn't it?

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