"New Atheists" and Libertarians: Separated at Birth?
Brian Doherty | January 8, 2007, 12:58pm
Gary Wolf's November cover story for Wired, which I just got around to reading (and which Ron Bailey ably blogged about earlier), is a fine piece of journalism by many measures, and well worth reading. It's about the rise in a more militant intellectual atheism, told through profiles of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris (see Chris Lehmann's perspicacious and witty critique of Harris's The End of Faith from Reason's Jan. 2005 issue here), and Daniel Dennett (see Ronald Bailey's May 2003 interview with Dennett in the always-ahead-of-the-curve pages of, where else, Reason, here).
What kept leaping out at me was how many of Wolf's critical comments on the "new atheists" sounded very similar to complaints and critiques I often hear about libertarians of a certain stripe. A sample:
I have become a connoisseur of atheist groups -- there are scores of them, mostly local, linked into a few larger networks. There are some tensions, as is normal in the claustrophobia of powerless subcultures, but relations among the different branches of the movement are mostly friendly. Typical atheists are hardly the rabble-rousing evangelists that Dawkins or Harris might like. They are an older, peaceable, quietly frustrated lot, who meet partly out of idealism and partly out of loneliness.
Still, [atheist lecturer Clark] Adams admits some marketing concerns. Atheists are predominant among the "upper 5 percent," he says. "Where we're lagging is among the lower 95 percent."
This is a true problem, and it goes beyond the difficulty of selling your ideas among those to whom you so openly condescend......
As the tide of faith rises, atheists, who have no church to buoy them, cling to one another. That a single celebrity, say, Keanu Reeves, is known to care nothing about God is counted as a victory....
......the New Atheism does not aim at success by conventional political means. It does not balance interests, it does not make compromises, it does not seek common ground. The New Atheism, outwardly at least, is a straightforward appeal to our intellect...
Ah, the travails of not having ones mind for rent, to any God or government.
Pi Guy | January 8, 2007, 2:34pm | #
@John: I commend you on avoiding gross generalizations. *sarcasm*
I consider myself a serious atheist, a serious libertarian, and, alas, a former Catholic. I have never been a part of any
"whacked out religious group" (unless you count the Catholic church until my confirmation at the age of 14) and often am made to feel as though I exist at the fringe of society. On the other hand, people who thought that the world was round were also relegated to the fringe at one time. I think that I'll stick with people who remember that this is the 21st Century, thanks.
BTW: Dawkins is not merely hard on religion. He's hard on
anyone who faithfully accepts, without evidence, assertions that lack empirical support be they religious, psuedoscientific (like, say, astrology), or political. His greatest concern, however, and the motivation for his militant stance on religion, is that he contends that moderate believers pave the way for societal tolerance of extreme fundamentalists of any denomination by making faith virtuous in its own right. It's probably difficult to criticize
their beliefs without casting some doubt on your own.
NOTE: Article 124 of the Soviet Constitution actually says:
- "Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens."
If anything, that's sounds like
support for religion.
As for me, I wish O'Reilly would shut up already about the WoXmas and that the Jehovah's Witnesses would stop leaving Garden of Eden pamphlets in my storm door.
I relish the day when I am free from religious propoganda but don't expect things to change in my lifetime. It's been my experience that many people would rather continue believe something that isn't justified by reason than to come to accept something new that is, in fact, justified if it means that they must admit that they've been wrong all this time.
plunge | January 8, 2007, 3:52pm | #
John, you're still lying.
"He calls religous endocrtination by parents "child abuse"."
Have you actually read what and where he said this? He said it in the context of discussing parents who threaten their children with hell: one of the most violent and evil concepts ever imagined. Many kids demonstrably and by their own accounts are traumatized by the idea. In that context, I don't see how Dawkins is so out of line on calling that a form of abuse, albeit psychological.
"If it really is child abuse, why shouldn't the government intervene? That is precisly the conclusion Dawkins expects people to make. He just didn't have the balls to come out and say it after people called him on it and his signing of that petition."
Blah blah blah: in other words, you have no argument or defense of your lie against his clear statements to the contrary, and all you can do is try to imply this or that about what you want us to think he "really" wants.
"No, they think that people shouldn't have the right to profess their religous views in the public sphere."
You're lying again. Please, show any evidence that all that this is what ANY of the big bugaboos want. You hear this refrain about the ACLU, Dawkins, Harris, and all the rest: except that all are defenders of speech and free inquiry in the public square, religious speech included with all the rest. Generally, liars like yourself simply try to misrepresent their objection to _government_ sponsored special privilege to religious expression as an opposition to _public_ expression by private individuals.
I think you'll find that on a board of libertarians, not many of us are going to fall for that sort of rhetorical swithceroo.
plunge | January 8, 2007, 4:41pm | #
"The claim that babies are born atheist is an interesting one, but it doesn't seem to work. Using the dictionary to try to infallibly demonstrate this point doesn't seem to work either, since what people mean by words sometimes isn't the same as what the dictionary says."
Well, for centuries, the word "atheist" was also defined in dictionaries as people who are immoral and evil. I think we atheists are just fine defining atheism, instead of people eager to either slander non-believers, or make straw man arguments easier on themselves.
I often find that most people who insist that atheist means "dogmatic belief that there is no god" often don't even themselves use the word like that in practice. For instance, if they ask if I believe in god and I say no, THEY will call me an atheist. And then they will spin around and demand I justify my "belief." That is the sort of incoherent rhetorical treatment non-believers get tired of.
But hey, what words we use are not important. I'm also perfectly happy being called a non-theist. That's basically what I (and most atheists) mean by "atheist."
"When people say the word "atheist," they usually are referring to someone who has had time to consider the question of God, namely, a person who is a teenager or older."
Correction: when most people who are brought up to hate and despise atheists say they word, this is what comes to mind.
"Ascribing atheism to a baby is like assuming that babies are anarcho-capitalists, since they surely have no idea of what government is."
The reason babies are non-believers is not any fundamentally different from the way I am a non-believer. The baby CAN'T believe (anything), and I DON'T believe (in God specifically), but for both of us, this lack of belief stems not from any act: we just are that way because we haven't become believers.
"BTW, I have a Merrium-Webster Dictiobary right in front of me which defines atheism as "one who denies the existence of God.""
You're leaving out what it probably also says (depending on the edition): 2. Godlessness.
Here's a pretty good rundown on how different dictionaries treat the definition through the years:
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/dict_standard.htm
Suffice to say, dictionaries (especially Webster) are generally written by theists. But when atheists look back at atheism through the centuries, what it has meant to various people, famous atheists, and so on, we see a pretty clear line of defining it the way we say and the way the word derivates: without god belief. You'll also find "disbelief in God" which is ambiguous: it can imply either lack of believing or actively believing not. Which is ok, because atheism encompasses both views (strong atheism is a subset of weak atheism).
plunge | January 8, 2007, 4:53pm | #
Here's another pretty good summary of the controversy over what "atheism" means:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist4.htm
Keep in mind that since the issue is semantics, there is no real "right" answer, and in the end, in a perfect world, I don't think it matters who is right. But in the short-term it often DOES matter, because all the different definitions are all used at different times by different people, giving a lot of rhetorical room to haggle over various things for bragging rights.
Again, I think the key takaway is that:
1) theists are the ones who will decide "common usage" but theists are of course generally hostile to defining atheism in a charitable way (hence the fact that "wickedness" is still found as definition for atheism in some dictionaries, though some at least note that this is archaic)
2) even those theists who insist that atheism means "belief in no god" most strongly still use the word inconsistently themselves, regularly applying it to people who simply don't believe despite their claimed bright line definition
3) the majority of self-identified atheists define the word as the more inclusive "lack of belief" which at the very least gives us the right to a sort of "technical" definition.
4) the real goal in defining things is clarity and consistency. I don't really care about what words are used to define what, but I strongly suspect that certain definitions are insisted upon by theists for the purposes of equivocation (i.e. ease of confusion and swapping around definitions without acknowledging it)
I think most atheists wouldn't mind if you called them a non-theist. The problem with using that instead of atheist is mostly just historical habit and a sort of parallel to the seizing upon the term "queer" by the gay-rights movement: we don't want to let people to hate us control the words we use to describe ourselves.
Akira MacKenzie | January 8, 2007, 5:08pm | #
As a both a libertarian and an atheist, I have come to see parallels in how most mainstream people, statist and/or theists, tend react to both my minarchism and my atheism:
Statist: "If there's no government, people would be robbing, raping and murdering in the street."
Theist: "If there's no God, people would be robbing, raping, and murdering in the street."
The only thing that the statists has going for them in this comparison is that at least government exists, while the Theist's tyranny of choice is suspiciously inscrutable. Of course, in my experience, a large portion of my fellow blasphemers do have a tendency to be leftists, however I can't say I blame them given that the Bible-beaters some to have co-opted capitalism. I got a feeling that perhaps there would be more "godless capitalists" if we didn't have
As for John's cliche chest nut aobut the USSR and atheism, I pose a question: If the tyranny of the USSR was a prime example of what happens in an "atheism" society, then what do you think will happen to someone like.... me in the USSR? Surely since Lenin and Stalin et al. were such committed atheists they would overlook my support for free speech and economic freedom, right? Right?
I got a feeling that if you were to look into the beliefs of Russia's political prisoners, there were more than a few atheists languishing the gulags than people like John would like to admit.
I've spent the past few weeks reading both Harris and Dawkins and I found them to be just what atheism needs: People who are willing to stand up, kick ass, take names, speak their minds and political correctness be damned. I'm soooo sorry that so many spineless people--even among atheists--who are too concerned about offending the willfully ignorant to appreciate their message.
This is the 21st Century. We have no need for the grunting primitivism that religionists have to offer. The stakes are the future, and they too high to be "nice" anymore.
Jay J. | January 8, 2007, 5:09pm | #
Actually the dictionary I have defines atheim only as "one who denies the existence of God." Sorry.
But I still say that dictionaries are guidlines, not necessarily rules that trump all subtle understandings.
The reason I gave a definition was to answer an invite made by an earlier poster who claimed that the dictionary would vindicate his/her understanding of the word, and it turns out it didn't.
As to what people generally believe about what atheism means, I really don't know why one must hate atheists to believe it means "one who denies the existence of God." If 90% of Americans believe in God, and if people are constantly ascribing strong atheism to all forms atheism, then it could just be a good ole' fashioned misunderstanding. Most religious people probably aren't familiar with Russell's teapot, but over time, they probably will become more familiar, and will understand that atheistic arguments are more sophisticated than simply claiming to disprove a negative.
Still, I maintain that most people, when they say atheist, are referring to someone who has considered the question. The closest I could get to agreement is to allow that PERHAPS babies could possess something like a weak atheism.
But even then, that seems to assume that God is an artificial concept that people wouldn't naturally believe if others didn't present it to them. The thing is, we have no idea whether God is natural or unnatrual as a concept (leaving aside God as a reality). People may tend to develop ideas about God (or the supernatural in general) inevitibly (as historical evidence would suggest). Or it could be that all the supernatural belief systems around the world were just a fluky historical coicidence, something I'm disinclined to believe.
If supernatural belief is inevitable from a evolutionary and/or historical perspective, and most people around the world are religious because of this inevitibility, then how do we know what a baby's unformed mind leans toward? If by the time a baby forms language, the baby is drawn to supernatural explanations moreso than naturalistic ones, (I don't know if this is true or not) then it doesn't seem to do the atheist position any good to ascribe atheism to babies who may or may not lean toward the position when they can finally know what the hell is going on, and can talk to us.
BTW, I agree that weak atheism, according to the technical definition, fits what seems to be a baby's state of mind. I just don't think it does any good for either side, and I think it may be a way of trying to demonstrate that this form of atheism is more natural, and that seems to cut corners in the debate.
dhex | January 8, 2007, 5:52pm | #
"I don't see him or anyone else give particularly good reasons for it other than they don't like murder and rape."
well, oddly enough, there's more than a few arguments against it that aren't religious in origin. one is indeed utilitarian, which i don't particularly take issue with because (barring other explanations, supernatural and otherwise) that's how things tend to work. (if they don't work, population in question doesn't work)
i prefer a different path, myself, in that while i agree that morals are an illusion (in that there is no enforcing agency in the sky, at least not that has ever made itself known, so it might be a bit more laisse-faire than we can possibly use in this case), that the idea of natural rights is fundamentally indefensible, but i accept such things are necessary. a kind of "noble lie" to keep cohesion, to cover up the blend of utilitarian ends and cultural gloss that make up the rules and laws of a particular people. so i'm ok with morals being an illusion, because i don't treat them like one, and most other people don't (at least most of the time). there are plenty of good, utilitarian reasons not to rape or rob your neighbor - first and foremost is retribution, and cycles of revenge that tend to follow - but they don't suffice for people.
why? i have no fucking idea. on this question i am deeply, deeply agnostic. apagnostic, even - i don't know if i coined that term or someone else did, but i think it describes a great deal of people who have no real religious beliefs and don't really care to, if only because upsetting one's neighbors and one's life isn't always really high on someone's agenda. maybe it's a gloss, and maybe it's just something we all pretend to believe, but so long as we avoid stepping backwards into greater violence against our neighbors, how much does it matter?
it's a great idea that there is a divine source (if not maintainer, but i think again history doesn't really support that view, unless He She or It has a taste for wanton destruction and horrible violence against children and other innocents, in which case It should probably go fuck Itself.) or at least a post-human source of morality and individual worth, but what that could actually be is strictly a matter of faith. it also involves ignoring the stories of many religious traditions, almost all of which have some form of violence being done towards another population group in direct violation of the stated tenets of the religion in question. (buddhism and jainism are, at least as i can tell, some of the few to buck this trend)
while i don't particularly care for dawkins' style at all - i sympathize with him, but i also think he's a dick whose main saving grace is he's far too smart to be a total fuckwit like harris - john's assertion that he's to be more feared than a falwell type strikes me as, well, john.
Pi Guy | January 8, 2007, 6:32pm | #
@MikeP:
You've taken two statements by two different people and formed a syllogism by adding your own conclusion. Does this somehow make sense to you? If it does, well, okay, but you can't really expect anyone else to see such a assertion as logical or convincing.
And
dogmatic atheism? I mean, is there some document somewhere to which we atheists are supposed to refer in order to know what we think or something? If you're looking for an obvious contradiction, I'd think that conjoining the words
dogmatic and
atheism pretty much nails it.
"That would be a contradiction: Atheists really don't know in a provable way that there is no God. Yet they don't admit they don't know." And, you've provided the perfect segue for this comment with your Flying Spaghetti Monster comment.
I, nor any atheist that I know (we all hang out together, don't you know - burning goats and drawing up pentagrams), have never sought
disproof for my non-belief. I don't require it any more than you apparently require any rational evidence for you choice to believe. And, I'll admit, that I am not aware of any manner in which that conjecture can be disproven. I've merely chosen to not believe because I've yet to encounter
proof that would convince me of his/her/its existence. The burden of proof, it seems, is on those who believe to convince those do not. And that, you see, is the entire point behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
As with all other gods, FSM was created to address issues that were otherwise difficult to address. Your "You can't prove that there's no god!" statement is that very issue. Namely, that
you can't prove that the FSM (RAmen!) doesn't exist! Do you get it? Do you see the logic, not to mention the humor, here?
Bobby Henderson developed the idea with the aim of intervening in the KS Board of Ed's attempt to subvert the scientific enterprise by introducing what is plainly a religious concept - Intelligent Design - into the science classroom. This is an hotly battled, extremely contentious issue and Mr. Henderson found a witty and relevant argument, with the same degree of logic offered by ID proponents, that equal time should be given to FSM as they propose should be given to ID. It's a pretty compelling argument if you can divorce yourself from you indoctrination in religious belief. But, I don't harbor any hope of convincing you since you (1) already have plainly stated you position on the existence of god and (2) demonstrated that you aren't too clear on the nature logic anyway so no argument (and that's what logic is - the rules of interpreting an argument) that I can come up with would have any impact anyway.
Jay J. | January 8, 2007, 6:51pm | #
Greg,
An earlier poster declared that a baby would fit the definition of an "atheist." All I'm doing on this subtopic is quibbling with that.
If you're trying to establish onus by pointing to a baby's state of mind, it seems like you're at the end of the rope. The thing is, I know that you're not. There are much better arguments.
My point about what humanity would inevitibly believe is that it is very difficult to ascribe one tendency or another to babies in the argument between atheists and theists.
After all, the atheists justification for their non-theism isn't "goo-goo gaa-gaa." No, it's much more sophisticated than that.
Some people claim to have always had a concept of God as far back as they have memory, do you know that they are mistaken in this memory? Or do you have strong reasons to believe that they are?
If people tend to inevitbily rely on supernatural explanations when left to their "natural" state, then we don't really know what potentialities or tendencies lie in the baby's fluid mind.
I assert that when people use the word atheism, they almost always are referring to someone who has surveyed the situation. Even a weak atheist is someone who can communicate that there are no good reasons for believing in God. A baby would say no such thing, and I believe that there's no good reason to believe a baby thinks such a thing.
Even this definition of atheism is more charitable than the one I've provided from Webster's and the one provided by another poster.
You can establish onus without reverting to what babies think, and you can actually do it much better, IMHO.
Seriously, do you think a baby would more naturally understand free and spontaneous relations than they would paying taxes for a police force? If the answer is yes, then does that lead you to believe that babies are anarcho-capitalists? Or does it lead you to leave babies ot of the discussion until they grow up and can decide for themselves?
plunge | January 8, 2007, 7:19pm | #
Jay,
"But if atheism doesn't at least include the conscious decision to decide that there are no good reasons to believe in God, then the term is rather meaningless isn't it? If it means ONLY a lack of belief in God, then I suppose rocks are the perfect atheists."
It's amazing! I think you may actually be starting to get it!
Yes. Just because there are bunch of people running around who make claims about gods, it DOESN'T mean that everyone else must be somehow fundamentally defined by this activity. Atheists are a group that only exists definitionally because there are theists. Without theists, we'd just be a bunch of different people and things, none of us god believers, but that fact wouldn't mean anything: it defines nothing positively about us, lists no affirmative characteristic.
The fact is, babies are not believers, and I am not a believer in the same way, so it is perfectly sensible to place us in the same group: and yes, rocks too. You insist that I must hear and then reject as unconvincing the arguments of theists before I can be a non-believer. This flies in the face of logic, the burden of proof, and just basic decency. No, I have no onus to care about or even listen to the arguments of theists. I myself have, in fact, done so, but plenty of people could care less.
There's nothing particularly special about any of this other than that you seem to DEMAND that theism be given some special treatment when it comes to logic, definition, and so on. Other claims, even commonly believed ones, don't get the same treatment.
plunge | January 8, 2007, 7:41pm | #
Lets get some things clear about the issue of morality before any more confused goofy thinking muddies the water:
1) Moral values, whatever they are, are not facts in the same sense that "this rock is heavy" is a fact. Talking about them being faith in the same way that "I have faith that god exists" is simply using the fallacy of equivocation
2) Theists have exactly 0 advantage on non-theists when it comes to explaining or justifying morality. At least things like utilitarianism explain in detail some standard, why we might all equally value it, and how to evaluate things. Theism rarely has anything better than "because god doesn't like that" which in addition to being obscure, just begs the question of why it's MORAL to care, outside of god simply being able to threaten or command (which has no particular moral value).
We're all in the same boat when it comes to moral philosophy. However, while things philosophically are very controversial and ultimately unsatisfying in the sense that we cannot find any ultimate justification for why one should value not raping that would convince, say, an alien, the point is often pragmatically moot. Human beings really do seem to mostly all have common enough moral values taken as axioms that allow us to have sensible debates over things like rape: even with people who seem alien and irreconcilable to our views. The conservative attitudes of some of the Muslim world towards rape, for instance, aren't simply hopeless from our perspective. We do generally believe that by appealing to other values people in those cultures still share with us, we can convince them that their views are wrong: not just "wrong for the west but right for us" but wrong period.
Theists, again, may claim advantage here, but when challenged to explain what, they come up with nothing distinctive or unique to their point of view that makes any more sense than anything else, outside of appeals and arguments over value. We're all, as I said, in the same boat.
Jay J. | January 8, 2007, 7:54pm | #
Since I've gotten a few responses in the mean time, I'll repsond again.
I never said that theism was natural, never. I didn't say it.
I am pointing out that people have tended to believe in some supernatural system. Ok so babies latch onto what their parents say. So what, why did their parents believe it? If the answer is that their parents believed it to, well it had to start somewhere. And it just so happned to have started all over the world in cultures that were independent of one another.
Now, I'm approaching this from 3rd-person neutrality OK? But when you say that a baby is in the most natural state, and that a baby would only believe something that their parents told them about, why did some humans way back when tend to believe in supernatural explanations? And why did it happen over and over and over again? Now, this does not, to me, establish that theism is more natural. But it does seem to pose a problem for the over-confident claim that babies are naturally atheistic. If the behavior of humans when they grow up is X, then how does that show that they're natural behavior is Y? I'm sorry, but we don't have a window into a baby's state of mind.
I re-assert that if atheism refers ONLY to non-belief, then the term is rather meaningless.
Poiting out that babies tend to grow up and believe what their parents taught them doesn't touch the question of why societies overwhelmingly choose to believe these things in the first place. If all the reasons for believing are evolutionary, then it still doesn't demonstrate that babies naturally are atheistic. If evolutionary psychologists are correct that religion served an evolutionary purpose and that we have, to some extent, evolved religious tendencies, then that would seem to be more evidence that a baby might lean toward theism, if it had half a chance. I'm not claiming that it would or wouldn't though.
Please don't take anything I've said as being an endorsement for theism. If you do, you're reading too much into my post.
Also, I realize that babies aren't being tallied up on one side or another. And I understand that babies are being pointed out because they represent the clean slate. I demonstrated that I understood this when I said it is an attempt to establish atheism as the natural fallback position. What I said about babies being on a "side" was toungue in cheek, which I tried to make clear.
Even if we used the more broad definition of atheism as "holding no gods," that would still imply that one is capable of holding something. I'm sorry, but you really should try and confrom SOMEWHAT to what people mean by the word atheist.
A person who is just hopping along naked in the forest is not what hardly anyone means by the word atheist. That person may be non-theist, or agnostic, but not atheist.
Again, break down the etymology all you want, but also try and live in the real world. Dictionaries and common usage are on my side. Try and come around and meet me half way.
And please, if the definition of atheism makes rocks and babies the perfect atheists, then the word really has no practical utility. Rocks and babies don't believe in a whole lot of things.
plunge | January 8, 2007, 8:22pm | #
"I re-assert that if atheism refers ONLY to non-belief, then the term is rather meaningless."
You're really making some major breakthroughs: you may understand atheism yet!
Yes, the term IS ultimately meaningless: it's a privative rather than affirmative definition. It's meaningless in the same way that "non-Donald Trump" is, because it doesn't tell us what someone is as opposed to what they are not.
Why is it useful regardless though? Because there are lots and lots of theists running around assuming that everyone else is a theist and that their way of being is the only way. Atheists don't agree. You can't just make that assumption: because there are atheists.
Atheism does include those atheists who are anti-theist, who assert that there are no gods, it's just that isn't the most fundamental similarity shared by all non-theists: that we aren't theists.
If you want to insist that atheist MUST mean ONLY those particular atheists who make strong claims about the existence of gods, then go right ahead. Ignore the history of atheism, OUR common usage, and all the else. It doesn't ultimately matter. But if so, then, please, have a heart, and be consistent. Call us all non-theists, and admit that this term is _useful_, if not particularly meaningful outside the context of discussing theism.
Babies are non-theists. Understanding that helps theists understand that their beliefs are not so fundamental and important that us non-believers have to run around all day long straining not to believe in gods: which is basically what they imply when they claim that non-belief is some sort of religion or ideology to itself.
"Again, break down the etymology all you want, but also try and live in the real world. Dictionaries and common usage are on my side. Try and come around and meet me half way."
You've cited precisely ONE dictionary that none of us can see. I've posted entire articles about the history of the word in dictionaries comparing lots of them. You are the one not coming halfway, or even really making an honest effort.
Dave | January 9, 2007, 5:48am | #
Some responses to some implausible claims:
"Atheism is a religious stance": Well, it's a stance on an issue with religious significance. But it needn't be 'religious' in a bad way. If someone thinks about the issue, looks at the evidence, arguments, and reasoning out there, tries to figure out what's most likely, and ends up an atheist, that's a very reasonable stance to take. Indeed, if someone does all that and ends up a theist (maybe convinced by a design argument), then while I disagree with them, there's nothing irrational or contemptible about the way they're forming beliefs. (If someone ends up a Scientologist or a Jack Chick acolyte, that's a different story)
"Atheists ought to be moral nihilists": The problem of finding an objective foundation for morality is everyone's problem, not just atheists. Theists often end up stuck with moral subjectivism/relativism, with God's arbitrary commands or attitudes determining what's right or wrong. (This is something all educated people should know, as it goes back to Plato's Euthyphro.) Theists and atheists are in exactly the same boat on this one.* (People seem to think utilitarianism or Randianism might help resolve these problems, but I'll go on record as saying they won't) If the issue is less theoretical and more practical (where a 'nihilist' is someone who simply doesn't care about right and wrong), then I'll just point out that if there's anyone out there whose commitment to morality really is contingent on God's existence, then that person has remarkably bad character (and probably bad parents).
"Morality is objective or transcendent just in case all beings everywhere share a certain sort of psychology": The thing about objectivity/transcendence is that it's completely independent of anyone's psychology (this is why divine command theory fails). If 2+2=4 is objective/transcendent, then even if everyone everywhere forever thought 2+2=5, still 2+2=4 would be true and everyone would simply be wrong. Likewise, if "torturing animals is wrong" is objective/transcendent, then even if everyone everywhere forever denied it, still it would be true and everyone would simply be wrong.
"Atheists ought to be starve-the-poor survival-of-the-fittest types": First, atheism and Darwinian evolutionary biology are completely different topics -- what connection there is, is merely social and historical. Second, biology doesn't say what's right and wrong, and it certainly doesn't say that people with 'unfit genes' are to be starved. Biology just says that genes that make for reproductive success (a highly context-sensitive matter) tend to show up more and more in populations of living things.
"Believing that torturing animals is wrong is just faith": If this is faith, then faith is sometimes fine (better than fine!). But this is irrelevant to the theism/atheism issue. In general, claims about supernatural beings require a justification not required by basic moral judgments. Or at least this is how things seem, and I see no reason to doubt the appearances.
"Agnostics are cowards, they refuse to take a stand": But some agnostics
do take a stand, looking at the reasons and evidence for and against God's existence, and arguing that it's roughly balanced. Paul Draper, for example, takes this position. I disagree with such agnostics (I think the balance tips towards atheism), but there's nothing irrational or contemptible about their way of forming beliefs.
"Atheists are stupid because you can't give a knockdown disproof of God's existence": You pretty much never need a knockdown proof in order to reasonably hold a position. I have no knockdown proof that Earth has only one moon. I have no knockdown proof that it's wrong to torture animals. I have no knockdown proof that Julius Caesar existed. But I think those things are true, and I'm reasonable in doing so. Just because I have no knockdown proof that there's no God, it doesn't follow that it's unreasonable to think it's true.
"If you don't have 100% confidence, then you're an agnostic, not an atheist": I don't have 100% confidence that Julius Caesar existed. Am I now an agnostic about that? I (almost?) never have 100% confidence in things I believe. That doesn't make me an agnostic about nearly everything.
"The whole debate is pointless because you can't define 'God'": The term is pretty stretchy, but it has clear exemplars and it can't be applied to just anything. If a non-English speaker used the term to refer to an ordinary dryer sheet, and didn't think the dryer sheet was special, and didn't think it was worthy of worship, etc., we'd chalk it up to linguistic error. Why? Because the term has a clear enough meaning to guide interpretation. Likewise, it has a clear enough meaning to figure out whether there really is anything in the world answering to the term.
"'Atheism' can only mean the absence of belief in God's existence": a-theism, it's the lack of theism": But etymology is no safe guide to meaning, otherwise pedophiles are those with a friendly love of children. The meaning of 'atheism' is determined by usage and nothing else.
"'Atheism' can only mean belief in God's nonexistence; otherwise you have no room for agnostics": Plenty of people use 'atheist' for anyone who doesn't subscribe to theism -- 'agnostics' and 'strong atheists' alike. This is a quite common use of the term.
"Atheists are bad because they
believe in God's nonexistence": There's nothing wrong with believing in God's nonexistence. If you think about an issue, look at the evidence, arguments, and reasoning out there, and try to figure out what's most likely, it's only natural and right to end up taking a position. If you end up thinking God exists, OK. If you end up thinking God doesn't exist, OK. If you end up thinking it's 50-50 odds, OK. The question is whether your reasons are good reasons.
"Creationists don't deny the big bang": Young-earth creationists think the entire universe is 6000-10000 years old. Roughly 45% of Americans appear to agree (you can Google it).
* Apparently plunge already said this. Good. (S)he's absolutely right (about this anyway).
plunge | January 9, 2007, 2:16pm | #
"I understand the differences between strong and weak atheism. I understand Russell's teapot. I've already stated this."
Saying you understand and showing it are two different things.
"I have been willing to expand the definition of atheism beyond what many theists use. If you go back and read all my posts you will see that. I suppose you can choose not to believe what I say about the dictionary if you choose. It's the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, published by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated in Springfield, Massachusetts, Copyright 1997."
Right: a single edition of a single dictionary, and frankly, not one of the best (especially since Webster had a long history of slipping biased definitions into his dictionary that only got cleared up over a long time. For instance, Christian things are defined as matters of fact, while other religious and spiritual beliefs always have a caveat of "some people believe.") As many have shown, many other dictionaries include the non-belief definition, and some even put it first as the primary definition. Coupled with the fact that this is how most atheists themselves use the word, and coupled with the fact that it is the most logically clear and consistent usage, I think we're made a fair case that you citing a single dictionary is not good enough. Jefferson used our definition. Most famous historical atheists used our definition. It's not a cut and dry issue.
"Now it's obvious that strong atheism isn't a baby's position, but I am skeptical that weak atheism can even be attributed to babies. Even weak atheism assumes that there is a conscious person holding the non-belief, at least when the vast majority of people use the word."
Then the vast majority of people aren't thinking very clearly, regardless of how they wish to define things. The majority may define common usage, but when this becomes and excuse to misrepresent atheists, that is precisely why I object to such a shifty, equivocating usage.
"Now plunge, this is not the same as me saying that atheists must affirmatively deny God. I've been much broader than some atheists have here, who seem to use the word atheist as it could ONLY mean a weak version."
Again, you're wrong. The weak INCLUDES the strong. Anyone who affirmatively believes that there is no god ALSO does not believe in god. That is what people are saying, not that strong atheists are somehow not atheists.
"Once again, this is not the same thing as ascribing strong atheism to all atheists."
Ok, so then why do you object so vehemently to someone pointing out that babies aren't believers? They are not believers in the same way that many if not most atheists are not believers. We were born. We didn't believe. We grew up not believing. Some of us never really paid attention to the god claims, and others did but found them unconvincing, and others did and did find them convincing and became theists.
I certainly agree that anthropomorphizing things is natural for obsessively social creatures such as ourselves, and thus the historical development of seeing spirits behind natural events all the way to the one-up-man-ship of expanding this concept to all of existence, as the more abstract and modern gods do, is predictable. But clearly, it's not an inherent or natural thing for all humans to believe. Because for many of us, we don't believe and never have. That's why we are like babies and why we bring up the comparison. Not to claim babies on our side because babies are cute and cuddly.
dhex | January 9, 2007, 5:32pm | #
"arguments indeed is knowledge..."
indeed is is.
"But, the stance that agnostisism is a valid theistic/atheistic stance is just wrong to me."
standard answer, honed after years of having this conversation: ok. that's cool. whatever floats thine boat, m'lord.
alternately, if drunk or feeling particularly mysterious: there is no enemy anywhere.
"But, the stance that agnostisism is a valid theistic/atheistic stance is just wrong to me. You are agnostic because you dont care to spend the time thinking to reach an actual conclusion."
obviously!
orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
the question has been deemed to be unimportant!
sorry!
this isn't that hard. even an atheist should be able to figure it out! [rimshot]
buth theriously...
long answer: the question is unanswerable to any degree of satisfaction, at least for my own satisfaction. furthermore, the data is largely unavailable, even if certain religious practices will make it appear to be more available (at least according those who undertake these things).
but furthermore, let's presume there is a divine being in the christian sense (so as to not complicate things), who doesn't really make itself known, but intercedes in the world in ways both sublime and mysterious to us, but not directly outside of through intermediates of varying degrees of reliability.
we must contend with various interpretations of what this thing's will actually is, from the deeply individualistic christian mystic tradition and christian anarchism to established religious organizations. none of these are particularly harmonious, except on some major broad points, and that's not really much of a help to us.
one possible answer, presuming one is falliable and of limited capacity for piercing the veil of maya like any regular human, is that the question is then unimportant. if we cannot know it's will, then what use does obeying one set of religious rules over the other really do for us? not a whole fucking lot, really.
and if even the worst jesus crispie on the face of the earth, the most westboro baptist church motherfucker you ever done met...even if these fucks are right, and their god is both vengeful and righteous and a total fucking prick, and hell is both real and eternal and filled with all sorts of horrors...so what?
would you bend a knee to something like that?
short answer: either shit's cool, shit's unknowable, or shit can go fuck Itself.
long answer, con't: on the other side, if there is no organizing principle, the question is even less important, outside of social organization and community, both of which are very important. it doesn't matter what you do, metaphysically, because it's irrelevant to anything but your immediate spiritual peer group and your own mental landscape.
short answer, con't: shit ain't even shit, so fuck it.
does this help?
Jay J. | January 9, 2007, 6:37pm | #
Plunge,
I assume, in the course of having exchanges on a blog like this one, that those I’m interacting with will read my posts. Perhaps I’m wrong about that. Let me reiterate a couple of things:
I understand the difference between strong and weak atheism. Why don’t I explicitly define it for you? Because its becoming more and more tiresome talking to you. I mean hell, if you had read my posts, you would see that I demonstrated already that I know this difference. I understand that Val was using the terms incorrectly, and I’ve already acknowledged that technically speaking, a rock or baby does embody weak atheism. I only ask you to consider what Dave said above. What atheism means is what it is commonly meant.
If those mean ole’ theists have been hurt you, well I’m sorry, go and cry on your momma’s shoulder. It’ll be OK.
I’ve already acknowledged that Webster’s definition is too narrow, but I haven’t gotten the same courtesy from your side. Webster’s definition is too narrow, but it is PART of the range of definition. Your side needs to clarify that weak atheism is the version being referred to when atheism is attributed to babies. Also your side needs to proclaim that one need not be a conscious agent or even be capable of understanding what the term atheism means in order to qualify for being one, as this is the most idiosyncratic part of your usage.
As for me, I’m an agnostic. I understand that this is technically the same thing as weak atheism. I wish to call myself something besides that in order to put as much psychological space between me and people like you, stopping before making a massacre of my intellectual conscience by becoming a theist. I’m also more ambivalent about the ontological status of spirituality and morality than most self-described atheists seem to be. Of all the organized religious traditions, I find the psychological insights of Buddhism the most appealing, and therefore don’t have the animus for organized religion in general the way many atheists seem to. For each of those reasons, I choose to call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist, even though I realize that my position is technically the same as weak atheism. BTW, if I said my own agnosticism was the same as atheism in general, this would be too vague, and a little misleading.
So you see, I’m an agnostic, and you’ve alienated me. Dave didn’t explicitly sound like a theist, but he acknowledges the importance of common usage. Now I’ve acknowledged weak atheism and the way the word is used by many atheists, but maybe because some theists are mean, you refuse to yield to common usage. Oh well, whatever blows up your skirt.
As an agnostic and as someone who understands that this is technically the same as weak atheism, I assert that you have added nothing to the debate by bringing in babies and rocks…go figure. I’m able to understand burden of proof and all that stuff without agreeing with the utility of appealing to baby atheists. Wow, how did that happen? Maybe its that I see that there are other ways of talking about these topics without appealing to a particularly peculiar usage of the word atheist, one that doesn’t require the atheist to even be conscious, or even be a “one” at all. Maybe people should mean what you think when you say atheist, but most of the time they don’t. You have to accept that if your going to be persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. Once again, sorry for all those meany theists.
As for you, with the way you use the word atheist and the way you ascribe it to babies and rock, that’s fine. But in your presentation and your declarations about the words, you’ve been as rigid as a religionist and as prickly as a postmodernist, so I’m gonna leave it with you.
Have a good…whatever it is you're having...
Larry A | January 10, 2007, 11:36am | #
"Weak athiests?" I don't think so.
But, the stance that agnostisism is a valid theistic/atheistic stance is just wrong to me. You are agnostic because you dont care to spend the time thinking to reach an actual conclusion.
Not necessarily.
Here's the question: "Does God exist?"
Proofs:
There is no definitive proof that God exists.
There is no definitive proof that God does not exist.
Lack of proof is not proof.
Answers:
Theist, "Yes, God exists."
Athiest, "No, God does not exist."
Agnostic, "I don't know whether God exists."
Reasons:
Theist, "Despite the lack of evidence that there is a God, I believe God exists."
Atheist, "Despite the lack of evidence that there is no God, I believe God does not exist."
Agnostic, "There is no evidence that God exists, and no evidence that God does not exist, therefore I don't know whether God exists or not."
"I believe..." is a faith-based response not built on facts. The only
reasonable (based on reason) conclusion is agnosticism. It is not necessarily a matter of laziness or lack of application. Even the most diligent search for answers does not always produce them.
And, BTW, I can appreciate the above argument even though I remain a lifelong Christian. Faith is not a dirty word.
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