Atheism, 21st century-style. New? Militant?

[MarkBastable]

Fat Mike said: I haven't met any atheist that didn't want to wipe out all the religions in the world.



You must get someone to introduce us.

[OrphanPip]

Rather than continue with the very tired, very old debate between the theists and the atheists, we might consider the apparent split within the atheist camp, as evidenced here.

On the one hand we have what we might call the “Calm Atheists,” and on the other hand the “Hysterical Atheists,” those in whom an inner voice keeps saying: The theists are coming! The theists are coming! as if they’re scared that the Theists might actually know something they don’t or refuse to know.

Well there quite literally are large groups of theist out to get me and people like me...

This probably has nothing to do with the main idea of this thread, but I'll state it anyway just for the hell of it. "Dostoevsky gves me more than any scientist" - Albert Einstein

That quote is apocryphal though, it was claimed Einstein said this in conversation.

[The Atheist]

This is what Wikipedia says about militant atheism:

The question is, is there more of that kind of atheism now than in the past?

It's simply rhetorics, to make atheism look worse than what it actually is.

Bingo!

In addition (and this is one of the worst things about Dawkins and Harris) the assumption that things only exist if they "can be scientifically investigated" is narrow minded.

Can you point to that quote from Dawkins, please.

Harris, you can mis-quote as much as you like, it won't be worse than what he says intentionally, but I would be immensely surprised that Dawkins would make such a statement, being completely unsupportable.

Dawkins was, after all, the chair of public understanding of science.

I believe you are mis-attributing your strawman to Dawkins. In my opinion, he has not and would never make the statement .

things only exist if they can be scientifically investigated

Their palliatives are just much better. Prospect of Heaven > Pint of Rocky Road Ice Cream

Yes, I always like to emphasise that if it were a sales contest, one side saying "When you die, you get to go to the cuddly place and have no responsibilities for the rest of eternity" and the other saying, "You die, then rot." is not much of a contest.

What amazes me, is with that sales pitch, how can they be losing customers so quickly?

Anyway I don't think the question is whether or not their are benefits to religion, just whether its benefits outweigh its costs

Spot on.

I think I can paint a clear case that the benefits to society outweigh the costs. Trouble is, like Orwell's pigs, some religions are more equal than others.

If all christians were "liberal", in the mould of the outstanding Rowan Williams, boss of the Church of England, there would be a lot fewer militant atheists.

But while that version of godliness is dying, the one growing is the one to be scared of - Pauline evangelism. These are the people who believe in and teach Dante's Hell, for crimes as small as unbelief. These are the people who insist that the earth is 6014 years old and want it taught in schools.

It's not a case of whether religion overall is good, it's which bits of it are worth preserving.

As to the militant issue. This is one of my biggest problems with Dawkins. His approach is just condescending and dickish, (from what I've seen of him) and I just see no reason to be rude and insulting in a discussion, if it can be helped, though I am guilty of finding the same stuff funny.

What constitutes rude and insulting? Is it rude and insulting to suggest someone will be tortured for billions of eons for not saying his prayers?

People are always more likely to accept, at least partially, and make concessions to the views of someone more reasonable and polite.

This is an often-made claim of which I have never seen any proof.

I'd really like some decent research to be done on what constitutes the correct and most successful approach to what is more likely to make think about their religion, and if you can show me that calm and polite actually does work better than getting to people do wonder "Why do these people despise me so much?" then I'll change my ways.

You may catch more flies wth jam than vinegar, but you catch even more with faeces.

Rather than continue with the very tired, very old debate between the theists and the atheists, we might consider the apparent split within the atheist camp, as evidenced here.

A split in the camp?

You must have missed the point that atheism is a simple lack of belief in god/s.

There are lots of little "atheism camps" within that, but there is no such thing as an "atheist camp" to split. You can start that when you manage to get a rift in the aphilatelist camp.

Some of the wee groups of atheists don't get along, but that's nothing new - humans have a species-long history of disagreement.

On the one hand we have what we might call the “Calm Atheists,” and on the other hand the “Hysterical Atheists,” those in whom an inner voice keeps saying: The theists are coming! The theists are coming! as if they’re scared that the Theists might actually know something they don’t or refuse to know.

"Hysterical atheists"?

Crikey, that's a notch or two up from militancy, I guess.

The trouble is, we have proof that the theists are indeed coming.

You must have heard of various attempts by christian groups to pervert the US education system? Scopes, Dover, Kentucky school boards, et al ad nauseum?

There is ample proof that if the US law allowed school boards to set curricula based on their personal beliefs, a huge percentage of US school pupils would right now be being taught that the earth is ~6014 years old and that, accordingly, all science is fake.

I just don't think that's a good thing.

Nor do I think it's hysterical not to presume that it wouldn't happen if everyone just ST*U.

I think Dawkins and Hitchens fit very nicely into the "hysterical" category. I, on the other hand, am a "calm atheist", perhaps because of all the prescription drugs my doctor gives me so I can avoid worrying about what will happen when I die.

Dawkins hysterical?

Crikey, the man's an antichrist, Stephen Fry's safe at last.

I've seen him get a bit emotive at times, but hysterical? Come on.

Pity, because your meds comment was worth a couple of smilies, but the joke got lost in my amazement that Dawkins is seen as hysterical. He is getting some punishment in this thread.... and I haven't even started on him yet!

[MarkBastable]

This probably has nothing to do with the main idea of this thread, but I'll state it anyway just for the hell of it. "Dostoevsky gves me more than any scientist" - Albert Einstein

I never understand why this is trotted out. The argument is whether religion or science best explains the universe. I don't see why it's germane to suggest that Russian literature does the job better than either of them.

[The Atheist]

Fat Mike said: I haven't met any atheist that didn't want to wipe out all the religions in the world.

You must get someone to introduce us.

What????!111???

I'll have your bloody atheist card back.

When you undertook the sacred Oath of Atheism, you forswore to attack and hate all religion equally. Don't be getting soft on me or we won't let you wear that "A" badge any more.

That quote is apocryphal though, it was claimed Einstein said this in conversation.

I just get a lot of pleasure out of people thinking Einstein knew everything. Maybe they should learn about his personal and private thoughts where he speaks his mind about belief.

[oshima]

I would problably be considered an atheist just because I think the idea of a personal/creator god a pedantic conception (though I find some of the tradions that are classified under the umbrella of religion facinating and in some cases transcendental) . However, having read God is Not Great and The God Delusion, I must say that while I found these books an entertaining and somewhat informative diversion, they are terrible as arguments. Hitchens writes well but is too insulting to be read by anyone who isn't a secularist, and Dawkins lame attempts at at using science to negate the existance of god, while amusing, show a lack of intuitive understanding of what makes religion so attractive. His proposal to call Atheists "Brights" to maybe combat it's negative connotations just makes him sound foolish. These people don't bring much new to the table that hasn't been there before, but at least they remind some people of "the other side" of the argument. Hitchens himself half-jokingly said in a disccusion with Dennet, Harris, and Dawkins, that he hoped religion never stopped becasue he loved arguing about it (much to the wide-eyed incredulity of Dawkins). Dawkins himself is most effective when he writes about science. Dawkins, at his best, writes so well about science in his other books that one doesn't even feel like wasting time with the tired "existance of god" debate.

As the OP states, Atheism is has been around for a long time in all areas of the globe where there were humans. Even Atheism as found in the public forum is not new, during what is refered to as the Enlightenment there were open public disscussions and books about turning away from worship of something that doesn't exist and moving on with the "progress of mankind". Buddhism 500 years before Christ rejected the idea of a personal god and the idea of quintessential self in a country that had literally thousands of deities, and I don't think I need to explain how popular that got (although it can't be denied that many sects turned Siddharta into a god like image and turned much of his story into mythology).

Taking all this into account, I think at least as far as the public forum is concerned, the resurgence of pulic atheism is certainly welcome as a balance to people like Pat Roberson and the like, but as far as changing minds about religion they are pretty weak.

[PrinceMyshkin]

What????!111???

I'll have your bloody atheist card back.

When you undertook the sacred Oath of Atheism, you forswore to attack and hate all religion equally. Don't be getting soft on me or we won't let you wear that "A" badge any more.

Amusing, but a lot of this does read like an inter-collegiate match between Team Atheists and Team Believers, each side counting the number of adherents it has gained or the other side has lost. Like many games, it's a dumbing-down of reality to a zero sum game, rather than the virtually infinite number of possibilities there are in reality.

Indeed "God" may be analogous to Schrodinger's cat, in this case simultaneously existent and non-existent until someone opens the lid.

And it's possible that a lot of atheists share the feeling of Julian Barnes, who said: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."

[AuntShecky]

Amusing, but a lot of this does read like an inter-collegiate match between Team Atheists and Team Believers, each side counting the number of adherents it has gained or the other side has lost. Like many games, it's a dumbing-down of reality to a zero sum game, rather than the virtually infinite number of possibilities there are in reality.

It seems as if that may be the case, for good or ill. I just checked the "score" (if the criterion is the number of views --this one versus William James Redux
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=57272)
21st Century Atheists -- 735
William James -- 386

Indeed "God" may be analogous to Schrodinger's cat, in this case simultaneously existent and non-existent until someone opens the lid.
Brilliant analogy.

And it's possible that a lot of atheists share the feeling of Julian Barnes, who said: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."

I think I can discern this idea in recurrent themes in the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

[Rores28]

What constitutes rude and insulting? Is it rude and insulting to suggest someone will be tortured for billions of eons for not saying his prayers?



This is an often-made claim of which I have never seen any proof.

I'd really like some decent research to be done on what constitutes the correct and most successful approach to what is more likely to make think about their religion, and if you can show me that calm and polite actually does work better than getting to people do wonder "Why do these people despise me so much?" then I'll change my ways.

You may catch more flies wth jam than vinegar, but you catch even more with faeces.

Yes christians often overlook the fact that what they are doing is rude but from their perspective it isn't seen as rude. It's seen as attempting to save you from the worst fate imaginable. In any case, my motherly advice is two wrongs don't make a right and I still maintain it is better to take the high ground.

I can't produce any peer reviewed papers on what best persuades people on issues of that magnitude, and this claim is only from my experience, however, I'm sure if you looked some study to that effect must exist. It would be interesting to see the findings.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

Sure, you just think they a more frequent and severe than I do.

Of course it's true that the people I knew could be lying or hiding the fact, but there's not much reason to if they'd already admitted that they had some questions about God's motives or his existence. It's not like one would cause more judgment from peers than the other.

"I don't understand where that God fellow is coming from" is much different than "You know, I don't think God knows what he's doing."

I wasn't there for the conversations, but one of those is blasphemous.

Nonetheless we've seen that religion does have good attributes and can be good on the individual level.

No, we've only seen that when people pray to god about their problems and then make the false attribution that that action is what helped them then the consequences can be at most neutral. Its probably more often negative once they progress and buy into dogma. Bigotry limits you on a personal level so that has to be factored in.



The high ground doesn't pack enough punch to wake people up. And people need to be woken up. Religion causes so many social ills there's no reason to give even an inch. Of course on an individual level religion can be good in a very narrow way, but that you don't convince people that it's worthless by admitting that. Beat it into the ground. People, like Dawkins, are convincing far more people to reassess than the so-called Calm Athiests. Christianity (the only one I'm very familiar with) and from what I've seen, Islam are seriously that bad that something needs to be done.

I can't produce any peer reviewed papers on what best persuades people on issues of that magnitude, and this claim is only from my experience, however, I'm sure if you looked some study to that effect must exist. It would be interesting to see the findings.

Look at politics. People claim to prefer level headed straight talk, but react to smear campaigns.

The fact is that it's going to take a sea change and that means that it's going to take an extremist approach to bring us all the way from one side to, maybe even just the mid point. Also, the majority of people are not capable of rational discussion or logical thought.

[MarkBastable]

...one of those is blasphemous.

To an atheist, 'blasphemy' is like 'time travel' - it has conceptual meaning but no practical application.

[JuniperWoolf]

And people need to be woken up.

Also, the majority of people are not capable of rational discussion or logical thought.

You don't think very highly of people. What makes you think that you're in a position to tell people what to think? Don't you know that it's better to let people think for themselves, because if you try to impose your will onto anyone they're just going to react against you? I could give you some studies that indicate that individual people are, for the most part, very reasonable as long as they're not feeling that their status is being threatened or they are in a group situation. If you spout off about how "the majority of people are not capable of logical thought," you're just going to get people thinking that you're a jerk and thinking the opposite of what you want them to just to spite you. I'm not passive by any means, but I usually just try to react against outspoken bigots as best I can and let the quiet majority reason things out for themselves without indicating that they’re all morons, because that doesn't really accomplish much and also it's not true.

[The Atheist]

Amusing, but a lot of this does read like an inter-collegiate match between Team Atheists and Team Believers, each side counting the number of adherents it has gained or the other side has lost. Like many games, it's a dumbing-down of reality to a zero sum game, rather than the virtually infinite number of possibilities there are in reality.

"Virtually infinite possibilities"?

You're making an infinity from a trilogy. God-belief, no god-belief, don't know - three choices only.

Since we're discussing atheism, those are the only three options. There are certainly lots of options in both other camps, but atheism is very, very simple. I'm not quite sure why you want to try to make it into something it isn't, but feel free to carry on.

Have you simply missed the point of the thread? This one isn't actually about whether any god/s exist.

And it's possible that a lot of atheists share the feeling of Julian Barnes, who said: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."

Yep. It's also possible that Bertie Russell's teapot is still orbiting Venus.

Yes christians often overlook the fact that what they are doing is rude but from their perspective it isn't seen as rude. It's seen as attempting to save you from the worst fate imaginable.

I don't actually buy that for a second, because of the context and manner of delivery on every occasion I've heard a christian talk about unbelievers going to hell. It is never a case of "Crikey, I wish you'd listen to me/Jesus/someone, because I really fear for your immortal soul.", but always "Atheists are going to go to hell, LOLOL!!11!"

In any case, my motherly advice is two wrongs don't make a right and I still maintain it is better to take the high ground.

I have yet to be convinced that attack is wrong. To paraphrase one of Dawkins' faves, it isn't necessary for the truth to be somewhere in the middle - one side can be completely wrong.

In the case of fundamental Pauline christianity, I'm sure that is true.

I can't produce any peer reviewed papers on what best persuades people on issues of that magnitude, and this claim is only from my experience, however, I'm sure if you looked some study to that effect must exist. It would be interesting to see the findings.

I've looked for years and I'm confident there isn't any research, because no interested group has the funding to organise it. Unless Dawkins decides to spend some his writing millions finding out, I doubt we'll ever know.

[FaederStole]

The amount of disgust a person feels towards religion is not entailed by their lack of belief in supernatural entities.

That being said, atheism has been a comforting notion throughout my life.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You don't think very highly of people. What makes you think that you're in a position to tell people what to think? Don't you know that it's better to let people think for themselves, because if you try to impose your will onto anyone they're just going to react against you? I could give you some studies that indicate that individual people are, for the most part, very reasonable as long as they're not feeling that their status is being threatened or they are in a group situation. If you spout off about how "the majority of people are not capable of logical thought," you're just going to get people thinking that you're a jerk and thinking the opposite of what you want them to just to spite you. I'm not passive by any means, but I usually just try to react against outspoken bigots as best I can and let the quiet majority reason things out for themselves without indicating that they’re all morons, because that doesn't really accomplish much and also it's not true.

This appeals to me as a calm, enlightened point of view. When I posted earlier of the "two camps," the calm atheists vis the hysterical ones, I was thinking more of a psychological rather than a theological difference. The calm atheists have examined the evidence - or lack of it - for a "God," and having concluded that it's unconvincing, they go about their lives as best they can.

The hysterical atheists, on the other hand, need the believers. Raging against them gives purpose to their lives. It amuses me to imagine a world in which theism and all those who subscribed to it have disappeared, and the dedicated atheists run around looking desperately for something or someone else to be against.

There is always the one-billionth of a percent chance that theists know something and as long as they don't try to legislate on the basis of what they believe they know, why not leave them alone - and carry on our lives as morally and usefully as we can?