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[Atheism] : ...Then Whence Cometh Evil?
The Ender
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What is atheism?
Hello!
So... this is not necessarily so straight-forward. 'Atheism', as the name implies, is a lack of theism; it describes persons who do not believe in deities and, for the most part, supernatural entities as a whole (though this is a little too broad-brushy - there are some atheists who still believe in kind of nebulous supernatural / spirit entities of some description).
This is a very large umbrella, and it covers a lot of folks who have tendencies towards non-conformity (or, at least, skepticism towards the idea of conformity).
There are atheists who couldn't give a shit anyway, there are atheists who have very strong opinions about theism, there are atheists who are really sure that deities are not a thing and there are atheists who aren't sure but are not at all convinced that deities exist. There are also lots of Special Snowflake atheist outlooks that I can't possible cover here, but I'm sure you'll be happy to talk about your own identity in the thread.
Also, in my experience, people tend to shift from one outlook to another based on how well their breakfast settled in the morning and/or how many fundamentalist family members, bosses, co-workers or customers they have had to deal with in the day (it's often more than you might think!)
...Wait. You covered 'people who aren't sure' under the atheist umbrella! Those people are agnostic!
This can get utterly and needlessly thorny, so:
Technically, if you're a lit Nazi, it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to claim to be 'agnostic' when they are asked about their religious beliefs. 'Agnostic' means 'lack of knowledge' - which is totally fine, but doesn't clarify one's position. 'Agnostic atheist' is a more coherent descriptor, because it says that you lack knowledge and are skeptical - whereas one could well also be an 'agnostic theist', not claiming any knowledge but nevertheless retaining faith.
BUT! That is also a pretty ornery argument to make, and the contemporary social context surrounding the term 'agnostic' suggests that many people who use it intend to say that they do not want to get into an argument about it & aren't sure about religion. Which is totally fine. So if people would rather be called 'agnostic' because they feel it is a label with less baggage, that's not a problem.
So I've heard about these New Atheists and a modern swell of atheist support groups, activism, conferences...
Okay, let's get this immediately out of the way.
Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennet, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, the deceased Christophen Hitchens and a lot of other public figures who are not as well illuminated in the public eye created an atheism activism movement. This movement requires some dissection.
First and most importantly, the foundations of the movement are rooted in the belief that religion is an actively harmful causal agent in society (Mr. Dawkins in particular believes it is essentially a memetic virus). This did not come out of nowhere, either: it was very clearly actuated into motion by the 9/11 attacks (and all of these voices often repeat, over and over, that Islam is an especially dangerous religion).
These beliefs are given incredibly unfair weight in some circles simply because the founders of the movement are practicing academics. There is not one piece of peer reviewed literature between them that substantiates the claim that religion itself is an especially harmful causal agent or that Islam is an especially harmful religion. In fact, academic experts in the fields that do study religious extremism find that the supernatural beliefs themselves are rarely the probable cause for violent acts.
BUT! Secondly, and almost as importantly, atheism is (as previously mentioned) a big ass umbrella, and a lot of atheists are non conformists even if they do like going to nice conferences full of people who are also skeptical of supernatural things, and a very significant and often downplayed bloc of these people do not like the attitudes that sparked the initial interest in the movement (including myself). PZ Meyers is an example of someone who is friends with Mr. Dawkins but does not like the overall tenor of discussion most of the time when it goes into full tilt scapegoat mode, Phil Plait regularly attends events & conferences to talk about & encourage more nuanced, evidence-based approaches to public education (and increasingly, as does Neil DeGrasse Tyson) and Mike Shermer tends to also be a cooler head who shows up to try and reel people back down to Earth.
Underneath that, Mr. Harris has an almost New-Age-But-With-Science! outlook on spirituality that has received substantial buy-in. Essentially (and 'lo, here ye will witness my bias. Behold!), Mr. Harris went on an ecstasy trip one day, and while he was on said trip, he felt like he would really like to have some gay sex with his friend who was sitting next to him and also tripping on E. Which is totally fine! But afterward, he attributed the trip and the boner to having a 'spiritual experience'... even though he was just high on a drug whose pharmacological effects include making you horny, and even though he has never since been able to replicate the experience without using drugs. He has talked to people whom have claimed to be able to replicate E-esque sensations without taking narcotics, but thus far evidence of this actually being a real thing (much less a thing tied to some nebulous force which Harris ascribes to 'spirits') is scant to say the least.
So, yeah. It's kind of complicated, and unfortunately some of the more prolific voices have drowned-out the scene (though it is improving).
...So there was also that 'Elevatorg--'
STOP! I am not giving that incident a Goddamn '-gate'.
Here I will describe what happened, and then also describe the surrounding context that makes what happened extra problematic.
What Happened: A woman attending a feel-good atheism convention was cornered at an elevator and sexually harassed by a guy. If people want to talk about this incident, okay, but if it's possible I would appreciate it if people didn't split hairs here - she felt sexually harassed and it was not appropriate for the guy to do that, even if at the end of the day nobody got physically hurt.
EDIT: More nuance was requested. The woman in question did not actually call what happened sexual harassment; she said she felt it was inappropriate & that she felt sexually objectified by it.
Then Mr. Dawkins decided it was time to be Captain Asshole and used social media to call-out the harassment victim in a big and public way while also using some pretty racist language because he didn't personally feel like being cornered at an elevator and propositioned for sex constituted sexual harassment, and also because he thought that his personal feelings entitled him to call her out.
So, while that in and of itself is a problem...
The Context That Embiggens the Problem: Atheists whom are visible minorities, women, trans or gay are presented with a vast ocean of diversity upon entering an atheist conference, spanning from the Awkward Straight White Man Sea to the Dyed in the Wool Libertarian Strait.
It is not entirely clear how this happened (there are theories that surround particular personalities on particular YouTube channels, but honestly I don't care to try and push such a big issue onto just a handful of toxic personalities), but the movement has been dominated for a while by white guys with no social skills / no respect for women or minorities, libertarians and people who believe in evolutionary psychology. It is getting better, at a terribly slow pace (because it's hard to try and get the diverse crowd to come after they've seen what a shit show was presented to folks before them), but there is miles and miles for improvement yet.
We need a lot more community outreach, especially to black atheists whom often feel isolated within faith-based systems from the Civil Rights era that protect them from abuse while at the same time neglecting part of their identity (albeit, these systems do not intend for it to be this way, which is why outreach is so crucial).
I think I may be an atheist but I am conflicted! Halp!?
Alright; I am just not good at this, mostly because I have never been there.
What I have generally seen is that many people enjoy the community & support environment provided by their membership within a religion... but they don't actually believe any of the supernatural stuff. But they enjoy the outlet of, say, being dunked ceremonially in water or participating in Communion.
And I think that's totally fine. I don't even see a need for any compartmentalization in these instances; you like the activity & people, the other stuff is whatever. That's pretty much how it goes for just about any large organization.
If you're someone who just feels trapped or isolated... I honestly don't know what to say. Talk about it here, and hopefully folks can offer some support & advice.
Atheism!
What books on the subject are good? What are bad? How wrong and terrible am I for talking smack about your favorite New Atheist? What conferences are your jam? You always been an a, or did you grow out of it at some point? Did the Internet cause your a? When you go to burn in Hell forever, what would you bring with you in a futile attempt to prevent the crushing infinity from breaking you?
Hello!
So... this is not necessarily so straight-forward. 'Atheism', as the name implies, is a lack of theism; it describes persons who do not believe in deities and, for the most part, supernatural entities as a whole (though this is a little too broad-brushy - there are some atheists who still believe in kind of nebulous supernatural / spirit entities of some description).
This is a very large umbrella, and it covers a lot of folks who have tendencies towards non-conformity (or, at least, skepticism towards the idea of conformity).
There are atheists who couldn't give a shit anyway, there are atheists who have very strong opinions about theism, there are atheists who are really sure that deities are not a thing and there are atheists who aren't sure but are not at all convinced that deities exist. There are also lots of Special Snowflake atheist outlooks that I can't possible cover here, but I'm sure you'll be happy to talk about your own identity in the thread.
Also, in my experience, people tend to shift from one outlook to another based on how well their breakfast settled in the morning and/or how many fundamentalist family members, bosses, co-workers or customers they have had to deal with in the day (it's often more than you might think!)
...Wait. You covered 'people who aren't sure' under the atheist umbrella! Those people are agnostic!
This can get utterly and needlessly thorny, so:
Technically, if you're a lit Nazi, it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to claim to be 'agnostic' when they are asked about their religious beliefs. 'Agnostic' means 'lack of knowledge' - which is totally fine, but doesn't clarify one's position. 'Agnostic atheist' is a more coherent descriptor, because it says that you lack knowledge and are skeptical - whereas one could well also be an 'agnostic theist', not claiming any knowledge but nevertheless retaining faith.
BUT! That is also a pretty ornery argument to make, and the contemporary social context surrounding the term 'agnostic' suggests that many people who use it intend to say that they do not want to get into an argument about it & aren't sure about religion. Which is totally fine. So if people would rather be called 'agnostic' because they feel it is a label with less baggage, that's not a problem.
So I've heard about these New Atheists and a modern swell of atheist support groups, activism, conferences...
Okay, let's get this immediately out of the way.
Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennet, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, the deceased Christophen Hitchens and a lot of other public figures who are not as well illuminated in the public eye created an atheism activism movement. This movement requires some dissection.
First and most importantly, the foundations of the movement are rooted in the belief that religion is an actively harmful causal agent in society (Mr. Dawkins in particular believes it is essentially a memetic virus). This did not come out of nowhere, either: it was very clearly actuated into motion by the 9/11 attacks (and all of these voices often repeat, over and over, that Islam is an especially dangerous religion).
These beliefs are given incredibly unfair weight in some circles simply because the founders of the movement are practicing academics. There is not one piece of peer reviewed literature between them that substantiates the claim that religion itself is an especially harmful causal agent or that Islam is an especially harmful religion. In fact, academic experts in the fields that do study religious extremism find that the supernatural beliefs themselves are rarely the probable cause for violent acts.
BUT! Secondly, and almost as importantly, atheism is (as previously mentioned) a big ass umbrella, and a lot of atheists are non conformists even if they do like going to nice conferences full of people who are also skeptical of supernatural things, and a very significant and often downplayed bloc of these people do not like the attitudes that sparked the initial interest in the movement (including myself). PZ Meyers is an example of someone who is friends with Mr. Dawkins but does not like the overall tenor of discussion most of the time when it goes into full tilt scapegoat mode, Phil Plait regularly attends events & conferences to talk about & encourage more nuanced, evidence-based approaches to public education (and increasingly, as does Neil DeGrasse Tyson) and Mike Shermer tends to also be a cooler head who shows up to try and reel people back down to Earth.
Underneath that, Mr. Harris has an almost New-Age-But-With-Science! outlook on spirituality that has received substantial buy-in. Essentially (and 'lo, here ye will witness my bias. Behold!), Mr. Harris went on an ecstasy trip one day, and while he was on said trip, he felt like he would really like to have some gay sex with his friend who was sitting next to him and also tripping on E. Which is totally fine! But afterward, he attributed the trip and the boner to having a 'spiritual experience'... even though he was just high on a drug whose pharmacological effects include making you horny, and even though he has never since been able to replicate the experience without using drugs. He has talked to people whom have claimed to be able to replicate E-esque sensations without taking narcotics, but thus far evidence of this actually being a real thing (much less a thing tied to some nebulous force which Harris ascribes to 'spirits') is scant to say the least.
So, yeah. It's kind of complicated, and unfortunately some of the more prolific voices have drowned-out the scene (though it is improving).
...So there was also that 'Elevatorg--'
STOP! I am not giving that incident a Goddamn '-gate'.
Here I will describe what happened, and then also describe the surrounding context that makes what happened extra problematic.
What Happened: A woman attending a feel-good atheism convention was cornered at an elevator and sexually harassed by a guy. If people want to talk about this incident, okay, but if it's possible I would appreciate it if people didn't split hairs here - she felt sexually harassed and it was not appropriate for the guy to do that, even if at the end of the day nobody got physically hurt.
EDIT: More nuance was requested. The woman in question did not actually call what happened sexual harassment; she said she felt it was inappropriate & that she felt sexually objectified by it.
Then Mr. Dawkins decided it was time to be Captain Asshole and used social media to call-out the harassment victim in a big and public way while also using some pretty racist language because he didn't personally feel like being cornered at an elevator and propositioned for sex constituted sexual harassment, and also because he thought that his personal feelings entitled him to call her out.
So, while that in and of itself is a problem...
The Context That Embiggens the Problem: Atheists whom are visible minorities, women, trans or gay are presented with a vast ocean of diversity upon entering an atheist conference, spanning from the Awkward Straight White Man Sea to the Dyed in the Wool Libertarian Strait.
It is not entirely clear how this happened (there are theories that surround particular personalities on particular YouTube channels, but honestly I don't care to try and push such a big issue onto just a handful of toxic personalities), but the movement has been dominated for a while by white guys with no social skills / no respect for women or minorities, libertarians and people who believe in evolutionary psychology. It is getting better, at a terribly slow pace (because it's hard to try and get the diverse crowd to come after they've seen what a shit show was presented to folks before them), but there is miles and miles for improvement yet.
We need a lot more community outreach, especially to black atheists whom often feel isolated within faith-based systems from the Civil Rights era that protect them from abuse while at the same time neglecting part of their identity (albeit, these systems do not intend for it to be this way, which is why outreach is so crucial).
I think I may be an atheist but I am conflicted! Halp!?
Alright; I am just not good at this, mostly because I have never been there.
What I have generally seen is that many people enjoy the community & support environment provided by their membership within a religion... but they don't actually believe any of the supernatural stuff. But they enjoy the outlet of, say, being dunked ceremonially in water or participating in Communion.
And I think that's totally fine. I don't even see a need for any compartmentalization in these instances; you like the activity & people, the other stuff is whatever. That's pretty much how it goes for just about any large organization.
If you're someone who just feels trapped or isolated... I honestly don't know what to say. Talk about it here, and hopefully folks can offer some support & advice.
Atheism!
What books on the subject are good? What are bad? How wrong and terrible am I for talking smack about your favorite New Atheist? What conferences are your jam? You always been an a, or did you grow out of it at some point? Did the Internet cause your a? When you go to burn in Hell forever, what would you bring with you in a futile attempt to prevent the crushing infinity from breaking you?
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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Posts
However, if you are a stickler for epistemology then this is a very bad distinction to draw. Importantly, it is rarely used in the philosophical circles in both contexts of epistemology proper and the philosophy of religion (or its criticism). In fact, when it is used it is usually used in the second sense the OP refers to (being that of a position of perfect doubt or indecision due to a lack of decisive/undecided evidence/argument)
It is based upon the same principles of lack of evidence, lack of implausibility, lack of parsimony etc... that one is not a theist that one is not an astrologer. It is rare that we have people claiming that they are an agnostic non-astrologer.
Agnosticism is bad epistemology in one way or another (happily, the almost the same arguments that show that the "agnostic atheist" is a bad use also show that the "perfect down/undecided" sense is bad).
Eventually I just stopped making deals.
Not going to lie, learning organized atheism was every bit as corrupt and hypocritical as the organized relgieon I had just left was both hilarious and depressing.
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The whole New Atheist thing just highlights that you don't need magic for harmful beliefs.
I have to say, I don't particularly agree with the 'just as bad' arguments (although, I'm unsure if this is simply due to the relative scale of organized atheism vs organized religion).
A lot of people are just not horrible because they lack power.
I mean, like Evo Psych. Brrrr.
i don't follow
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No. Not at all.
The only country in contemporary history with an implicitly "WE ARE ATHEIST!" state was Albania under the rule of Hoxha.
And that period is... complicated. Hoxha went on a brutal pogrom, but also instituted public education programs that lifted the country out of illiterate serfdom. 'Atheism' arguably was not the problem - enforcing rule of law with secret police forces and an enthusiasm for revolutionary violence were the problems.
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Because "atheism" isn't a very useful term. Like "non-astrologer". It should probably go away.
We are all atheists here but we have little in common with the howling MRA/GG atheist critics of Saarkesian (though, I am also a critic of Saarkesian but of a different kind). Atheism has no content beyond the rejection of deities, you cannot do something because of atheism in remotely the same way you can with religion or ideology.
I need to tag @Synthesis to keep me honest here, because I don't know this history as well as I should:
The Soviet Union's initial Bolshevik revolution was in opposition to the Tsarist theocracy, and in that sense can fairly be said to be anti-theist. That's where the images of church bulldozing and palace razing come from.
After the civil war & WWII, tensions about religion in the USSR waned. There were a lot of Orthodox Christians from different sects that the Kremlin had to at least pretend to appease, and they did so.
Mao's Great Leap forward was a pseduo-scientific mess, with derp New Agey policies and 'natural' remedies recommended by the state (in fairness, this was at east in part because China had extremely limited wealth & resources). I'm pretty sure they didn't go on a pogrom against Buddhists or destroy temples, but again, I' sure Sythesis can correct me if I'm wrong.
But didn't the various communist powers have a staye mandate of atheism? I was always kind of fuzzy on how religeon operated during those times.
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All of the major revolutionary players were materialist atheists, yes. It was a fundamental part of what the were revolting against - entrenched theocratic Christendom.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
The thing is, that also started as an atheist state (modeled after Hoxha's Albania, oddly enough). The civil war is what changed everything - people rallied together, and this was exploited by the Kim family to forge what we've now come to see as the Kim cult of personality.
A nation that required everyone to be religous is not automatically a theocracy. There also isn't a structure in atheism to provide for rulership.
You could have rule by an atheist religion; I don't think we have a good word for that.
"Religous" fervor over a belief is hilariously common, including for non-deific concepts.
I have to say that I have some issues with how atheism presents itself as a movement (not that this is particularly coherent, nor do I think it could be or even needs to be), but that's probably because I have some sympathies for faith (it's something that has helped me through difficult times, though I wouldn't call myself religious at present), and especially because the brand of religion I see most directly among friends and colleagues is pretty much socialism with a theist edge, and as my social circles are predominantly made up of socialists/social democrats there's little practical difference between the ones that have religious beliefs and those that don't. Similarly, each subgroup is as critical of organised religion and fundamentalism as the other. As such, atheism that targets religion as the greatest evil simply doesn't tally with the world I live in, and I don't see any purpose in that particular fight in this particular framework. I imagine I'd think very differently if I lived in a less secular country and particularly if I lived in a place where the Church still has social and political power and uses this to make things worse for many people.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I used to pray for successful installations of new videogames on my family's old computer.
But I never thought it'd really make a difference. Just something to do while waiting to see if everything worked or not.
When I was even younger than that, when I still got dragged to church on Sundays, I somehow got the idea that, once upon a time, in the distant past, magic really existed. Jesus and Moses and God and those Egyptian priests all did real magic and worked actual miracles (for a given definition of 'miracle' - one that includes the Ten Plagues and the Flood), but none of that stuff happened now, so, obviously, at some point, the magic went away. I figured it was somewhere during the Middle Ages.
In hindsight, I guess my atheism was kind of inevitable.
I consider myself agnostic, and I tend to dislike it when people call me an atheist, even though my beliefs overlap far more with atheists than with theists. There's a quote by William L. Rowe: "In the popular sense of the term, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of God, while a theist believes that God exists, an atheist disbelieves in God." Practically speaking, there's essentially no difference between how my beliefs impact my overall view of the world and what is right and wrong, but I think that the distinction is nevertheless an important one. Theists and atheists both believe that the universe exists in a certain state - though obviously, they disagree about the nature of the state. As an agnostic, I take no position and claim no knowledge of the universe.
Well, it is a deceptive description. There is a distinction between being incidentally X and inherently X.
It is coherent to say that some movement or organisation is inspired by Christianity (or indeed any ideology) - in that Christianity has intentional content. A Christian human rights mission is inspired by the Christian preachments toward Charity and loving thy neighbour. It is coherent to ascribe a motivational causation in the content of radical animal liberation ideologies to their actions to disrupt medical research that uses animals.
It is not coherent to proscribe atheism as the cause of pretty much any behaviour as it is without any real degree of intentional content. It is not an ideology, it is a property ideologies have.
Describing a movement or political movement as implementing atheism is semantically odd as describing one as implementing non-astrology.
There are agnostics who believe that the current state of the universe makes it impossible to have knowledge about the existence of God, and will argue this position the same as one would argue an affirmative believe.
You can see that the church hierarchy in Russia still exists, reveres Stalin as a saint (with halo), and is pushing racist and homophobic policy today.
It never went away. Just stayed out of the limelight.
Yeah, but agnostic is not a subset of atheism. Atheism is an affirmative belief that there is no divine. Agnosticism takes either the form of "I don't know" or "I can't know", which is distinct (and can I suppose be a dodge in conversation).
I suppose in the literal sense agnosticism can overlap with other options. It's logically consistent to say "I believe X but also that X cannot be shown", but this isn't a stance often seen (unless you're Goedel) and normally agnoticism implies you're neither atheist or theist - that you don't claim any specific belief. It's basically the none of the above option.
I also feel it's the only scientific positionon the matter, since atheism vs. theism is untestable, but...
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Personally, I look at it as the chicken and the egg argument. (as an agnostic)
Everything you find, scientifically, came about as a reaction of what came before it. It's generally accepted that when you follow that chain far enough you hit the 'big bang'.
So what came before that? I mean, something has to have, right? And if something didn't, why does *anything* exist. Does a superparticle just pop into existence when nothing else exists, starting a reaction? If so, why would it do that if nothing else came before? You could say god, but then you just run into the argument of where god popped out of.
I mean eventually we're going to have bigger and better microscopes and telescopes and whatever, and we'll find ways to keep following that chain back. But you're either going to find the end of the chain, whatever that is, the very act of finding it being a bit of a conundrum, or the chain just keeps on going forever, which means we just keep on knowing nothing of the whole 'god' question.
It really is basically the catch all when the other categories don't work.
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This is plainly, bad epistemology.
Either you are an atheist, because you acknowledge that the arguments for a god fail. Or you are a theist because you think they succeed. Or, you think that the arguments are arguments that you are unqualified to judge the validity of, or you think they are undetermined as to their validity and are thus, an agnostic.
Plainly, the arguments for theism fail, they are uniformly bad - so you would not be justified in being a theist or agnostic under those criteria.
The maintain agnosticism despite that is to carve a special epistemological exception without cause - usually, holding the evidence for a position to be an empirical question relating to facts, but for its rejection requiring proof. Which is not a workable epistemology - it is confusing synthetic and analytic propositions. And furthermore, it is inconsistent in that it is an exception granted only to deities.
Wasn't there a recent push bringing that back, painting him as the savior of the people? It's certainly a useful tool for Russian nationalism.
Atheism and theism are a binary position. "Do you believe in a god" is the question. The answer can only be either yes or no.
Agnosticism answers an entirely different question altogether.
Regarding the bold, no. Nothing has to; there is no logical principle that states that it must. The current Cosmologies may or may not involve a precursor state (such as the collision of m-brand micro universes). The "you can' they something from nothing" and "things have to start somewhere" are empirical in their nature and a property of the universe (and aren't really true anyway, given the properties of quantum foam and virtual particles).
However, it also seems like a perfect failure to imagine nothing - if there were ever truly nothing there would also be no rules about what could or could not happen and why should things not happen and things spontaneously occur (though, without time this makes things even less simple to describe). At which point it becomes quite hurtful to the brain meats.
My mind was pretty blown.
Even though, once my family immigrated here, my grandmother decided to take up religion full force, it was much too late for me, as I was too old and too skeptical to buy any of it.
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Or you can refuse to engage the question. If you refuse to look in the box then both states are equally valid.
But you probably can not give a satisfactory definition of God.
False dillema. "I don't know" or "Insufficient data" are valid responses.
Also, answering no is not atheism. Atheism is the belief there is no god, which is logically distinct from not having a belief there is a god.
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This is what I'm talking about in my opening sentence, and something that truly baffles me about some atheists - the need to assert that lack of belief in god or gods is the same as a belief that no gods exist.