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Not Another Religious Debate (Organized Atheism and Other Things)
Posts
Better useless than malicious.
Now I got a vision of podiums everywhere instead of churches/mosques/temples, with philosophers debating the ins and outs of existence like the old days in Greece. It was a very pleasant daydream, sadly very unlikely to happen. Thanks for the idea.
Well, if you are comfortable measuring the idea based on a little momentary picture and your no doubt profound knowledge of the place that philosophy filled in the ancient world, I guess that is your own affair.
Oh, I was going off on a stupidly idealized tangent there. I just found the idea pleasant to contemplate, as I don't think anything remotely similar has crossed my mind before. Reading it again, it doesn't come off as I planned. I probably should've structured that response a bit better.
In all seriousness, I like your idea about the philosophical schools/societies, as they seem an interesting alternative to major religions. Atheist "religion" doesn't seem to make much sense, considering how atheism isn't really a religion, but the lack of belief in deity/deities, etc. Different philosophical schools and ideologies might have a little more potential, although I'm not entirely certain how something like that would work in relation with the society as it is now.
There is a pretty strong case to be made that religion is on the whole a negative force in society. Mainly through violence and misinformation.
Inherent in all major religions is a mechanism allowing it to spread, most often by directly encouraging members to convert nonbelievers, sometimes by force. For example, Scientology is now buying up offices in a small town near me, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and so on. Even if religion will die off naturally on it's own as people become more educated, this mechanic will make sure it takes a long long time. It's also very hard to ignore these things when they happen all around you.
Surely we have an obligation to speed up this process, if nothing else to limit the suffering these people create. Imagine the damage caused every time a major religious leader goes out and condemns or lies about contraceptives. And yet, most atheists are still saying, "Dawkins is to extreme, we have to play nice".
People who think Richard Dawkins is an extremist asshole.
Did the mean scientist man hurt your feelings?
Boo fucking hoo, your holy book says I'm so morally depraved that I deserve to eat the flesh of my children.
It's getting to the point where I think this is an obvious ploy by religious people to avoid confronting the actual arguments put forth by people like Dawkins. Sort of like how some Muslims will label any valid criticism of Islam "Islamophobia" or "racism."
Apocalypse fearing:
Chayya Lal
Age: 16
Asharita, Sarangpur, India
Suicide
September 9, 2008
She was traumatized by TV programs about the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, which talked about the end of the world. Her parents told her not to worry and diverted her attention to no avail. She drank a pesticide from her father's farm.
Link
Seriously, people? How do you commit suicide due to news reports about the Hadron collider?
Girl was mentally ill, and her parents probably should have taken her to get help rather than approaching the problem as though she was simply unusually fascinated and fearful.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I mean if you want to pick on someone pick on Christopher Hitchens he comes across as way more of a dick.
Also anyone who mentions anti islamic sentiment as racist really annoys me. Islam is a religion, in some parts of the world its a government as well and could be argued that it is a culture - it is not, and will never be a race.
All religions do this. Forgive me if you have, but try having a conversation with a Mormon along those lines. Then the response is typically "religious oppression" or "anti-Mormon." It doesn't help when their prophet/president/God's grand poobah tells his flock that any and all questions regarding the religion are "anti-Mormon."
I'd say what needs to happen (though won't, it's pure idealism) is different groups need to have a more or less equal influence, atheists included. No group should have dominance.
Or even better (and even more idealistic), Americans could just stop caring one way or the other like most Canadians when it comes to politics. Seriously, I've never heard religion come up in a federal campaign here, at least not among the major candidates. When they try, like with Stockwell Day when he was the leader of the Alliance Party, they're mocked for it. I honestly don't think an atheist would have a problem getting elected here, at least not based on personal belief. People on both sides of the issue need to stop being so sensitive down in the States.
Atheism and religion are not like political groups. While it is healthy for no one political group to dominate the political landscape, it is definitely unhealthy for religious groups to have significant influence in politics. That is not to say that religious people shouldn't be in government. However, anyone crafting policy should be able to justify that policy using exclusively rational, secular arguments.
Using religious arguments to justify policy leads to things like Prop 8, where religious groups relegated homosexuals to second class status in society.
But frankly I wouldn't think that any Atheist group would agree on more then secularism, which is part of the constitution and should be enforced regardless.
sure it has. There was a big stink raised about funding private religious schools with government money.
Yeah it tends to resolve in favor of secularism in Canada but the conservatives are in power (for now) and that could change.
Because I'm not seeing how that would work. Atheism, obviously, isn't like a religion or a religious belief; it's merely a statement or a state of belief concerning religion. Religious groups work toward a certain view of society, presumably to bring it into accord with what their religion teaches, or in more oppressive states, merely make the free practice of their religion safe and legal.
Atheism has no such uniting goal. Do atheists not come from all points on the political spectrum? If the purpose of these groups would be to achieve some political end, then atheism doesn't seem specific enough to form a unified group. If you wanted to talk about a group of "secularist progressives" (or whatever) that would be a little more meaningful.
If, on the other hand, we're just talking about groups where atheists could meet as a group so they could be around people with similar beliefs, I was under the impression that groups like that already existed.
Disanalogy: when an atheist claims that his opponent is being irrational, he is making a claim about the strength of that person's argument. When a religious person claims that his opponent is being bigoted or racist, he is making a claim about the strength of that person's character. One is engaging in argument, the other is circumventing it.
As stated before an atheist group would be offering many of the same services as a church, such as weddings funerals etc. and a lobby groups would also be great. Atheists and agnostics represent a large minority in the US and they are the only ones without a lobby group to represent them. There are lobbies that promote secularism but they do this to push their own forms of religious worship and not so much on keeping religion out of government.
You're in a fantasy land populated by strawmen, you blind fool. Get the hell out of there.
Most atheists I have encountered did not come from an "atheist background" - that is, parents who were atheists who raised them to be skeptics. Of course, there are exceptions to this, and a few people in this thread have said as much about themselves. From what I've seen, though, it is much more common for atheists to either have a) families who are either moderately or perfunctorily religious, and they simply don't care to continue practicing the religion for whatever philosophical or scientific reason; or, occasionally b) families who are fervently religious, and their atheism is a reaction against teachings or practices which they grew to disagree with strongly. So, in other words, it is much more common for an atheist to find or "grow into" their belief than be born into it.
Religious institutions are very different - people are born into them, their lives are structured around them, they see them as part of their cultural identity. These organisations are already well-established and they continually replenish themselves with believers (or at least, people who believe enough to affiliate with the group) every generation.
What I'm trying to say (probably not very well) is that religious groups - both at the local level and the larger societal level - are cultural institutions as much as religious ones, and structure the lives of their adherents in a way that it would be difficult for atheist institutions to duplicate. I suppose that, were such atheist groups to be formed, they might eventually begin to have the same sort of hold and significance over its members as a church or a synagogue would, but it would take a couple of generations. Even then I'm not sure it would be quite the same, because, unlike a religion, there would be no shared values as a given other than their common disbelief.
tl;dr - atheists are usually made, not born, and this would cause group dynamics to play out very differently.
Actually, people with non-traditional beliefs (especially atheism, but to a lesser extent, agnosticism, deism, and less literal theistic interpretations) are more likely to be liberal than conservative: being conservative involves conforming to social & cultural norms, and being "traditional," generally, while being liberal involves challenging or rejecting the norm. Atheism is a rejection of religious norms, which means it's much more likely they will reject or challenge other things as well.
Put another way,
On the moral politics compass, The Democratic party is in the bottom left, stressing nonconformance and independence, while Republicans are in bottom right, stressing conformance and independence. In this case, independence is talking about economy and the U.S.'s strong capitalistic tendencies. People who stress nonconformance and interdependence are socialistic, with the Democratic party just barely going above the middle line and crossing into interdependence for some moderate socialists that are called Social Democratic in European countries.
Besides all this, though, there are several studies (page 5) which, in one way or another, confirm that non-traditionalists tend to be more liberal.
Having said all that, I think this means that any atheist group would probably be able to get away with promoting liberal ideas as a set of moral foundations, and just like the Democratic party includes an array of people with differing ideas about specific policies or implementations of policies, the atheistic group could as well.
I definitely agree that atheists are inherently more liberal on cultural issues. They pretty much have to be, since they reject religion, which is the most traditional aspect of most cultures.
I would guess though, that there isn't much correlation among atheists in regards to other political views.
Atheists don't believe in the invisible hand of the market, because if it was real why wouldn't it make itself visible and prove it?
Take myself for example. I just read this article over on Salon about Orthodox Sabbath observers and how they can't use a building's intercom system because it violates the Sabbath. I then follow the above article to the link of activities prohibited on Shabbat over at wiki: link.
When I read about how stapling on Shabbat is banned because it joins two objects permanently together, and how drinking filtered water violates Shabbat rules I can't help but shake my head. The anti-religious, militant side of me wants to tell them how ridiculous such rules are, and how ridiculous it is to apply 3000 year old standards regarding a day of rest to modern day contrivances (the argument about how electricity is a physical mechanism instead of a chemical mechanism, thus allowing it to exist regardless of the prohibition of fire in particularl was mind-numbingly pointless). But the nice, we should all get along and play nice side of me just wants to let them live their lives. I think I am not alone in having this schism within myself amongst my fellow atheists/agnostics.
I would be interested in information on how many atheists arrive at their beliefs, since that would be crucial to seeing how an atheist (collective? 'church' just seems like such a misnomer) would play out.
Create a poll with options based on suggestions; I'm sure PA has enough atheist/agnostics to be worth polling.
I really should be studying for finals, though, so don't hold me to it.
See, that's where you're wrong. Everyone is born an Atheist, it's only in childhood that one is roped in to religion, if a child is raised without a real exposure to religion, they will grow up atheists and may or may not be exposed to a religion later in life. But this is a more common event now then ever as there are more and more couples with either conflicting religious beliefs (try deciding what to raise a child in a Jewish/Islamic relationship) or a couple that simply does not observe a religion(excommunications tend to really dampen the desire to go back to church).
Either way, if kids don't hear much about religion, they tend to grow up nonreligious, just try convincing a grown up person that there's an invisible man that listens to you.
Well, let's see what I can come up with.
edit: Apparently not much.
Typically I don't react to religion at all ... until they become offensive. Either by annoying me in some fashion or attempting something I consider immoral (prop 8 supporters, for instance).
"Well, calling something illogical is an actual argument."
"And saying that crazy shit Dawkins is a crazy shit is whiny and stupid, right?"
Its like he's acting it out for you!
It's like saying Obama has a baseless reputation for being eloquent.
I mean, are there any quotes of him that you think are particularly "vehement" compared with the general tone of persuasive nonfiction? I mean, compare him to C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.
I guess calling God-belief "delusional" is sort of hackles-raising, but I've certainly called religious people worse ("dishonest" and "fucking idiots" for example). It would help if you gave some examples of what you're talking about.
For one thing, it plays into the notion of the "Religion-destroying atheist" that is so prevalent in pop culture, especially fundamentalist pop culture. It's not going to be a good way to win over their hearts and minds.
I don't see why atheism and religious devotion can't coexist. If atheists, as a group, want to change society, then they should focus on changing the effects of religion that they consider harmful, be it hate speech or prejudice or female genital mutilation or whatever. Religion is a multifaceted thing and all its effects are not negative; it is also a crucial part of cultural identity. It's true, without religion we might not have had the Crusades or the september 11th attacks, but we wouldn't have The Messiah or the works of Hawthorne, either. Trying to get people to abandon religion - not its negative side effects - smacks of an attempt to impose cultural homogeneity.
Dawkins has said that he thinks it will be most effective at deconverting the Christmas-and-Easter-type Christians who are only going through the motions and haven't really thought about it.
I disagree, but let's be clear about something:
You and Dawkins, you and me—we are not disagreeing about the content of Dawkins' argument religion. Instead, your beef is with the strategy with which this argument is deployed.
What on earth are you implying here?
I have a better idea. Why don't we all try to have rational arguments about things we care about and believe are true. Why don't we all not shy away from such discussions because we don't want to offend people. Then, in a few generations, when more people have had a chance to think about these arguments, why don't we see how society has changed.
I am sick and tired of people like you implying that atheists like Dawkins have this secret agenda to "eliminate religion" or "impose cultural homogeneity." All the man did was write a fucking book.
Where are your concerns about political books that try to persuade Republicans to be Democrats, and vica versa? It's odd that only the subject of religion seems to provoke such concerns.
I assume you mean the dishonest implication is that the agenda is secret, right? Because the idea that folks like you and Dawkins want religion to vanish from the face of the earth is pretty much established.
And, for the record, I never said that Dawkins - or for that matter, anybody else - had some sort of nefarious "secret agenda". Dawkins has his view of how society should be structured, and he is working toward achieving that as a goal. Part of that goal would be a lesser influence of religion in public life. I don't think that anyone is debating this.
Also, my concern with devaluing religion has nothing to do with "offending people". I study archaeology, and in most US anthropology we believe that every culture has something of value. A great deal of anthropology is learning to distance yourself from your own culture and beliefs and trying to see the world through someone else's perspective, and learning not to pass value judgements on other people.
Therefore, I'm wary of the idea of external forces attempting to change people's values, especially when it concerns religion. As I mentioned in a post on the first page of this thread, people might have noble goals when they're trying to do this sort of thing, it can do more harm than good, and when a targeted group loses some aspect of its identity - a religion or anything else - something is going to fill the vacuum. If the change is caused by an external group, then something which originated in that external group is going to be what fills it. This is why I used the term "cultural homogeneity".
We have seen this in the past, with Native North Americans. Whites saw their religion as something backward and unfit for existence in the modern world, so they did their best to get rid of it, and Native cultures all over the country are considerably Anglicised. We still see this today, when we saw the French attempt to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools a few years ago.
As far as books trying to get people to follow a different political persuasion, I think it's obvious that has more to do with different groups jockeying for political influence than anybody trying to achieve societal goals or achieve some sort of culture change.