Fresh Outbreak of Religion-Bashing Threads

[Xenophanes]

Actually, I saw a fellow named Dan Barker (itinerant preacher and speaker-in-tongues who became an atheist and founded the "Freedom from Religion Foundation") speak at my college this year; a member of the audience got up and mentioned Hitler, Stalin, and the rest, and he (Barker) apologized for them. He said Stalin & Co. were a shame to their brand of unbelief in the same way that, say, Osama should be shameful to Islam or the Children's Crusade to Christianity. He said it was his responsibility to express shame for their actions and wish they hadn't been atheists. He did, however, draw the line at Hitler - as does Richard Dawkins, incidentally, and most of the "New Atheists" - because Hitler really wasn't much of an atheist at all; Mein Kampf spewed Christian pretensions and the ridiculous quasi-Wagnerian cult of the Nordics and whatnot can hardly be called atheism. Rationalism, certainly not.

In any case, as evil atheists Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot are most remarkable for their uniqueness/rareness. And for all being Communist.

I take Christianity seriously despite its track record of producing people like D. James Kennedy and Jerry Falwell. (Note: Not examples of evil, obviously, but of other unlovable traits.)

It seems to me that some of the so-called "new atheist" debaters (Hitchens, for example) wish to deal with a pure atheism, simple non-belief in God, which is basically an abstraction. They don't compare it with simple pure belief in God, another abstraction, which would be more logical. The want to compare an abstract atheism with concrete religions, replete with different revelations, ideologies, and historical baggages. They don't want compare  actual concrete atheist governments and movements with their ideologies and historical baggages with actual religions.

Rev. Al Sharpton called Hitchens on this very point, that Hitchens debated religions rather than God.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1006,n,n

You can find find a link to a site from which you can hear the debate of May 7, 2007.

[Brian]

They don't want compare  actual concrete atheist governments and movements with their ideologies and historical baggages with actual religions.

I doubt very much that Stalin et. al. should be classified as "atheist governments" first (is America a "deist government"?), but in any case definitely agree with you that the New Atheists ought to lay off specific straw-man examples of specific Western religions and argue their case on a slightly bigger scale.

[karlhenning]

I doubt very much that Stalin et. al. should be classified as "atheist governments" first . . .

Well, except that atheism is a central Marxist tenet, you know.  And Stalin made a point of destoying icons and vandalizing churches.  So your parallel ("Is America a deist government?") is faulty.

[PSmith08]

Well, except that atheism is a central Marxist tenet, you know.  And Stalin made a point of destoying icons and vandalizing churches.  So your parallel ("Is America a deist government?") is faulty.

He reopened churches during the war, too. What shall we make of that?

[Al Moritz]

It seems to me that some of the so-called "new atheist" debaters (Hitchens, for example) wish to deal with a pure atheism, simple non-belief in God, which is basically an abstraction. They don't compare it with simple pure belief in God, another abstraction, which would be more logical. The want to compare an abstract atheism with concrete religions, replete with different revelations, ideologies, and historical baggages. They don't want compare  actual concrete atheist governments and movements with their ideologies and historical baggages with actual religions.

Correct. We had an analogous debate here a while ago with respect to Dawkins's "The God Delusion", which is similarly flawed (well, it is fatally flawed in several other aspects too).

[Brian]

Well, except that atheism is a central Marxist tenet, you know.  And Stalin made a point of destoying icons and vandalizing churches.  So your parallel ("Is America a deist government?") is faulty.

Atheism didn't tell Stalin to destroy icons or churches, or to kill zillions of people. This whole point on some bad guys being atheists doesn't mean atheism is wrong. Just means some of the famous practitioners have derived very bad ideas from their belief systems, and/or have allowed some other bad idea from another source to infect their understanding of their belief system.* The fact that Stalin was an atheist is about as relevant to any prospective case against atheism as the fact that Ted Kaczynski was a Harvard alum is to a case against Harvard.

*I would stick to this position, since humanism, which goes hand-in-hand with the philosophy of most contemporary atheists, emphasizes the "sacred" nature of humanity itself and the natural world, and the need to protect it, rather than advising people that there's no judgment day and they can go ahead and do whatever they want.

[Al Moritz]

Atheism didn't tell Stalin to destroy icons or churches, or to kill zillions of people. This whole point on some bad guys being atheists doesn't mean atheism is wrong. Just means some of the famous practitioners have derived very bad ideas from their belief systems, and/or have allowed some other bad idea from another source to infect their understanding of their belief system. The fact that Stalin was an atheist is about as relevant to any prospective case against atheism as the fact that Ted Kaczynski was a Harvard alum is to a case against Harvard.

OIf course you are completely right. But equally holds, to paraphrase you, "this whole point on some bad guys being theists doesn't mean theism is wrong" (or fill in Christians/Christianity, or whatever).

No believer would feel the need to point out Stalin, Pol Pot etc. if some (say, many) atheists would not make such a point about theists being so bad (crusades, inqusition, 9/11, etc, blahblahblah).

[drogulus]

     No, theism/atheism isn't made right/wrong by the misbehavior of tyrants. And some of us don't wish to argue the point of who is good or bad, and stick to the question of what, if anything, counts as evidence for the truth of what is believed. Still, I agree that it's a worthwhile question to explore, though a very different one. For instance, you could follow Hitchens and say that religion is so bad that it ought to disappear as soon as possible for the good of the human race, or take a reformist position like Dawkins, who doesn't seem to think such a change is likely, and merely forbid the more extreme indoctrination. Then there is the milder reformism of Dennett, who advocates objective knowledge about religion as a curative.

     You don't have to teach children about the relativism of each cult's "truthiness", they will figure it out if you just provide a little history about the origins of religion. The good part is nothing more than a bland encyclopedia-level presentation is usually enough. The rather routine arrival of atheism in late childhood or early adolescence shows that it doesn't take much in the way of history to make the point. The opposition to objective knowledge ("there's no such thing" is a good example of it) is a good indicator. So yes, let's teach children, in as bland and inoffensive way as possible, that there have always been these cults (let's not call them that, it's not bland enough ) that they all have their versions, that they fight each other over the unknowable truth of them, and so on and on through the whole historical pageant. With enough objective information, they will be in a better position to scrutinze the wizardry that forms a part of their respective family traditions. That's a big part of what you send children to school for. And if that's not the reason for you, then it's your children that need to know history. A little knowledge now may save decades of deprogramming later.

      My position is that atheism is not an attempt to eradicate religion. I see it as the next step in a centuries-long movement of reform from without as well as within the various sects. Liberal religious sects have been historically replaced by more conservative ones, and that suggests that too much or too rapid change will produce a backlash, though the very different way Europe has evolved over the last half century or more shows that there are larger social and political causes at work (both religion and nationalism are deeply discredited by historical disasters on European soil that never reached the U.S.). Anyway, for the forseeable future religion will very likely continue as the conveyor belt for higher values for the majority of the population, though not for the conservative intellectuals who advocate for this interpretation (Alan Bloom, Leo Strauss etc.) These guys are fun because they argue coherently for the utility of religion without all the fuss about its truth. It's easier that way, and the frankness is appreciated.

     

[Conservationist]

What would they do for entertainment otherwise?

Speaking from some experience...

Anti-religion is a religion in itself, as atheism can be, and it takes the form of secular humanism.

People are afraid to bash any religion other than Christianity, because bashing those can be seen as racist or other social sins.

However, what they're really doing is looking for groups like them. As Samuel Huntington pointed out in "Clash of Civilizations," we're all regressing into organic groups of religion-ethnicity-culture-language.

People fear this future, so they're trying to find alternate groups, and failing. Good luck.

[drogulus]

Speaking from some experience...

Anti-religion is a religion in itself, as atheism can be, and it takes the form of secular humanism.

People are afraid to bash any religion other than Christianity, because bashing those can be seen as racist or other social sins.

However, what they're really doing is looking for groups like them. As Samuel Huntington pointed out in "Clash of Civilizations," we're all regressing into organic groups of religion-ethnicity-culture-language.

People fear this future, so they're trying to find alternate groups, and failing. Good luck.

     Do you find it interesting, as I do, that when one wishes to discredit a nonreligious belief, you call it a religion? What defect is highlighted when the inference is made that secular humanism resembles a religion? And how is faith in the natural world, its existence as well as the possibilities it affords, to be compared with faith in invisible, unknowable entities? Why are religion and faith considered to be negative when they are employed like this? If the worst thing you can say about your opponents is that their vices resemble your virtues, then you have made a rather significant admission.

     The arguments for religious propositions are weak when they are not false, and you'd like nonbelievers to think this applies to the counterarguments, too. You'll need to make a separate case, though, for why lack of faith in a natural world is the best position. There are good arguments for naturalism, and the postmodern attempt to discredit them failed utterly, and they used similar tactics (it's just a belief system, you can't get outside theories, it's a mode of discourse, a conceptual scheme among others, etc). Postmodernism is fading fast, and science is almost entirely untouched by its criticisms.

      Religions and secular humanism are systems of belief, but they are not of the same kind (as usual religion here refers to the monotheist dictatorships). It's not only possible but common for humanists to hold their beliefs as a program for human betterment that doesn't rely on superhuman guarantees of absolute truth. This is our project, and we are responsable for the shape and direction of it according to human conceptions of what is good. That is how it does not resemble religion, where nothing can be good without a god saying so, through its infallible spokespersons or otherwise. This curious buffer arrangement, where people tell each other things and pretend something higher is really doing the telling, is entirely absent from humanist discourse, though not from antihumanist ideologies like Communism, which replicate religious metaphysics reconfigured in materialist terminology.

[Joe_Campbell]

I don't think the term 'religion' is being used in a disparaging light when referencing atheism. I believe its usage is supposed to be ironic in that atheists will claim it is not a religion, when it is virtually impossible to separate atheism from secular humanism. I think people want to believe in anything, and for the atheist, SH provides a nice alternative aka a belief system.

[drogulus]

I don't think the term 'religion' is being used in a disparaging light when referencing atheism. I believe its usage is supposed to be ironic in that atheists will claim it is not a religion, when it is virtually impossible to separate atheism from secular humanism. I think people want to believe in anything, and for the atheist, SH provides a nice alternative aka a belief system.

     JCampbell, it's meant to be disparaging. Why would atheism's chief disparagers suddenly "compliment" atheists by saying they are religious? That's the real irony.

     As far as nice alternatives go, I don't think atheists think in those terms, since ideas do not fit in slots like that, where if you give up a bad one you have to find another bad one to fill the space or you'll feel "empty". It's probably a feature of human nature that some amount of believing beyond evidence is inevitable. I wouldn't try to deny it, and atheists generally see this as a feature of human consciousness that the appeal to reasoning about evidence is designed to counteract.

     I think this does in fact work very well when applied, which is good since philosophy would be pointless otherwise. It isn't pointless, because civilization is built on the understandings that it delivers, through science, ethics and other human disciplines, and even indirectly through religion which, though it misattributes its wisdom to the supernatural, acts as a repository of what tradition can teach for those who can only accept it in that form.

[Joe_Campbell]

     JCampbell, it's meant to be disparaging. Why would atheism's chief disparagers suddenly "compliment" atheists by saying they are religious? That's the real irony.

Yes...I think I didn't word that sentence correctly. It is meant to be disparaging by its irony, in that atheists are sometimes vehemenently anti-religion.

     As far as nice alternatives go, I don't think atheists think in those terms, since ideas do not fit in slots like that, where if you give up a bad one you have to find another bad one to fill the space or you'll feel "empty". It's probably a feature of human nature that some amount of believing beyond evidence is inevitable. I wouldn't try to deny it, and atheists generally see this as a feature of human consciousness that the appeal to reasoning about evidence is designed to counteract.

I think humans just need to know everything. In other words, there has to be something that explains everything, i.e. the Theory of Everything. If that exists, and it is ultimately determined, I can't help but wonder if there will be a collective melancholic sigh at the days when a new discovery meant nothing more than finding out that electricity can transmit data.

     I think this does in fact work very well when applied, which is good since philosophy would be pointless otherwise. It isn't pointless, because civilization is built on the understandings that it delivers, through science, ethics and other human disciplines, and even indirectly through religion which, though it misattributes its wisdom to the supernatural, acts as a repository of what tradition can teach for those who can only accept it in that form.

That's an awefully generous admission for you to make of religion I agree with most of what you've stated, aside from your claim of misattribution.

[drogulus]

Yes...I think I didn't word that sentence correctly. It is meant to be disparaging by its irony, in that atheists are sometimes vehemenently anti-religion.

     That's a motive for accusing atheists of being religious. It doesn't provide a reason for thinking it true. Atheists oppose the grounds on which religious beliefs are held. We tend to think that all proposals about what might be true should be judged the same way, and that if you say that knowledge can't be had about entities beyond space and time (a reasonable view ) you shouldn't lecture others on how much these creatures care about us, or any other of their supposed habits. You want to claim and deny knowledge at the same time! The most sensible position to take is that you're wrong to claim knowledge because you're right to deny it. 

[DavidRoss]

     That's a motive for accusing atheists of being religious. It doesn't provide a reason for thinking it true. Atheists oppose the grounds on which religious beliefs are held. We tend to think that all proposals about what might be true should be judged the same way, and that if you say that knowledge can't be had about entities beyond space and time (a reasonable view ) you shouldn't lecture others on how much these creatures care about us, or any other of their supposed habits. You want to claim and deny knowledge at the same time! The most sensible position to take is that you're wrong to claim knowledge because you're right to deny it. 

Again:  atheism is utterly irrational.  Atheism is faith in a preposterous and completely unprovable assertion:  that God does not exist.  The "religious" fervor with which some atheists proselytize for their absurd belief puts the most vigorously obnoxious theists in the shade.  The inability or unwillingness of such atheists to critically examine their most cherished assumptions is especially sad inasmuch as these poor deluded souls are often the very same folks who pride themselves on their "rationality!" 
    There's no point in trying to pry open a mind so fiercely closed. 

[Joe_Campbell]

Haha...I wasn't going to be quite that disparaging, David. At least all of drogulus' (Ernie's?) views are internally consistent; one has to admire his composure during this recent uprising of religiously themed threads, although I've not been witness to the apparent irrationality that oozes from his lips all the time. Though we DID has a minor quibble in 'The Religion Thread' not long ago, although I thought it was kind of funny.

[Al Moritz]

Again:  atheism is utterly irrational.  Atheism is faith in a preposterous and completely unprovable assertion:  that God does not exist. 

Right, and it is a belief that pretends to only be based on evidence, whlie it has no evidence to go with. Atheism has no evidence whatsoever that the ultimate basis for the material world is materialistic, and treats its unevidenced "extrapolation from science" as evidence. And without realizing that that extrapolation is not even scientific, but philosophical.

The claim of atheists that their beliefs are based on evidence is their ultimate grand delusion.

The "religious" fervor with which some atheists proselytize for their absurd belief puts the most vigorously obnoxious theists in the shade.  The inability or unwillingness of such atheists to critically examine their most cherished assumptions is especially sad inasmuch as these poor deluded souls are often the very same folks who pride themselves on their "rationality!" 

Or on their "clear thinking" and "free thinking". Clear thinking I have not encountered much in my latest discussions with atheists here (notable exceptions notwithstanding), and "free thinking"? When your mind is enslaved in the cage of materialistic thinking and cannot think outside that box, as has been obvious from many of the atheists' responses in recent discussions here, then calling this "free thinking" is reaching new heights of self-delusion as well.

There's no point in trying to pry open a mind so fiercely closed.

As I have noticed myself to great disappointment, rational arguments have much less impact on atheists than should be hoped for, if objective thinking were the benchmark instead of the criterium how well things conveniently fit into their world view.

[Al Moritz]

At least all of drogulus' (Ernie's?) views are internally consistent;

No, they aren't, as I have repeatedly shown on The Religion Thread for those who have paid attention.

[Wendell_E]

Again:  atheism is utterly irrational.  Atheism is faith in a preposterous and completely unprovable assertion:  that God does not exist.... 
    There's no point in trying to pry open a mind so fiercely closed. 

If only we could all be as open-minded as Mr. Ross. 

[DavidRoss]

If only we could all be as open-minded as Mr. Ross. 

Great idea!  Let's start with you.