For the last several years, the most common strain of complaint I see in my mailbox is the “atheism only means you don’t believe in gods” comment. Sometimes they try to say it politely, more often it’s accompanied by howls and threats and fuck-shit-cock profanity. It’s been like this for a long, long time — I recall hanging out on alt.atheism on usenet and getting exasperated because the whole forum was about dogma, and that dogma was that you got to shut down any discussion about complex social issues that you didn’t like by declaring atheism to be totally values neutral (the other thing they talked about that drove me mad was the distinction between “strong” and “weak” atheism, and how significant the difference between “I don’t believe gods exist” and “I believe gods don’t exist” was. Jesus. Hair-splitting atheologians.)
Anyway, the main thing people hate me for now is my declaration that atheism has implications and consequences beyond being an abstract philosophical statement that lets you skip church on Sundays, and that further, among those implications is a requirement for those good ol’ Enlightenment values of equality and justice (and that we do more than pay lip service to them, unlike many of those 17th century writers who argued likewise). It’s reassuring that a lot of commenters here at FtB are sympathetic to those ideas, but really, sometimes it’s a little depressing to discover how many other atheists elsewhere turn purple and start screaming if you dare to imply that women, for instance, are fully autonomous, thinking individuals, and that the Biblical tradition of treating them as secondary servants to The Man is invalid.
So it’s kind of a relief to see that James Croft agrees with me, even if he is at that blah pudding of religious pandering, Patheos.
And I think that responding to a post about the relationship between social justice and Humanism with forceful assertions about the values-free nature of atheism is bullshit.
Read the whole thing over there.
It is telling, whenever the relationship between atheism, the atheist movement, and social justice arises, that some of the same commentators who object so strenuously to the discussion of women’s equality, racial justice, or LGBTQ issues under the banner of the atheist movement nonetheless support efforts to to promote secularism, science education, and atheist visibility and acceptance under that banner. Yet if the reason discussions of racial injustice are to be out of bounds is because “atheism entails no values commitments”, then consistency requires this standard be applied equally to these other causes.
Simply being an atheist does not perforce commit you to caring about racial injustice, it is true. But nor does it follow from strict philosophical atheism that one must care about science education, secularism, or even the advancement of atheist acceptance in society. Just as it is perfectly philosophically consistent to be an atheist and to be an out-and-out racist, it is perfectly philosophically consistent (though unusual) to be an atheist who thinks secularism is unimportant, or even believes atheists should be socially ostracized. Simple atheism requires no moral commitments at all – including the ones these commentators are quite happy to fight for under the banner of organized atheism.
So why the double standard? It seems to be purely self-serving. These individuals wish to limit the purview of organized atheism to only the issues they personally feel comfortable about, and which they personally wish to support. They like science education and secularism, so support for those issues can be marshaled under the atheist banner. They don’t like being called on to fight for racial equality, so that’s an illegitimate expansion of the atheist cause. The pseudo-philosophical argumentation – “atheism requires no value positions! We must keep atheism pure (except for those issues I like)” – becomes a hypocritical cover for their own discomfort with some social causes.
Damn. Sounds like something I’d write if I suddenly became a little more polite.
Croft really ought to be at FtB, rather than Patheos. But then, Patheos sucks up to the religious much more, and so has a lot more cash to pay their writers than we do.
Sensible atheists are humanists.
Not all atheists are sensible atheists.
Case in point: Ayn Rand.
Patheos also sucks up to the misogynist harassers of atheism, so that’s another reason to avoid the site.
Oh dear, is it really that rare that someone agrees? That’s… discouraging. For whatever it may be worth, I agree also, and I was just as happy to see Croft’s piece.
People who agree don’t usually bother to tell you so — it’s boring. People who disagree are more likely to send you flames.
@kellym
The Patheos service as a whole? Certain bloggers? All the bloggers? How wide of a brush are we using, and how are we defining “sucking up”?
Yeah, I suppose so. That sucks.
Sven @ 1:
Sensible secular states support human rights
Not all secular states are sensible.
Case in point: the former Soviet Union
Yes, good on Croft. Movement atheism has had little trouble taking on board LGBTQ issues, secularism and science/critical thought/skepticism. So whatever *definition* of atheism you care to use, don’t even think about telling me that “not believing in God” is all it means experientially, or as a movement, because that’s bullshit; not as long as you march in the Pride Parade or do science lectures.
Also: agreed on alt.atheism. Wasn’t much impressed with the place either before or after my apostasy.
I guess I’m slightly conflicted.
I agree that an atheistic worldview *should* result in certain moral and epistemological conclusions if you are being intellectually honest and logically consistent, and that therefore there are some non-religious ideologies (I use that term neutrally. Everyone has an ideology) that are compatible with atheism, and some that aren’t. And I agree that therefore, any organisation that promotes atheism should also commit to those values when they become an issue, even if its primary function is the promotion of atheism or secularism or scientific thinking or whatever.
But I’d prefer we didn’t call an atheism-conformant ideology “atheism”, or “atheism plus”, or anything like that. Because “atheism” meaning specifically “non-belief in gods” is a useful term, and I’d rather we didn’t muddy it with even more connotations than it already has in everyday usage, by insisting that a “real atheist” should subscribe to this or that ideology. I’m okay with being an atheist while misogynistic manbabies are also atheists, because the difference between us is that they’re misogynistic manbabies, and I’m not.
The only reason “atheist” is even an identity for some people in some places is because they face so much outside pressure. The city where I live has no “atheist community” to speak of, not because there are no atheists, but because they generally feel no need to band together over what is here a fairly uncontroversial view. I’m not part of an “atheist community” any more than I’m part of a “there probably is extraterrestrial life somewhere community” or an “I think opera is overrated as an art form community”.
So ya, I don’t think atheism is values-neutral unless you live in some kind of abstract solipsistic vacuum, but I’d prefer if we kept a clear distinction between atheism, and the ideological positions we feel logically follow from atheism.
Still, this is a very minor quibble overall. Good on James Croft for understanding the issue.
What Sven said, I guess.
I’ll add that Neil Carter of “Godless in Dixie” seems to agree with this idea as well. See the “IS THIS REALLY AN ATHEIST THING?” section in this post of his: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2014/12/04/why-cant-you-see-the-system-is-rigged/
Already on Croft’s post there’s an endless stream of commenters protesting that no, really, atheism IS values-free! As if Croft was using “atheism is value-free” as a starting premise.
*sigh*
WASN’T not “was”
As if Croft WASN’T using “atheism is values-free” as a starting premise.
Dangit.
…but I’d prefer if we kept a clear distinction between atheism, and the ideological positions we feel logically follow from atheism.
The problem is that the distinction isn’t always that clear. As I said in Ed’s post about the same article, atheism is NOT just a mere lack of belief, it’s a conscious conclusion (that there are no gods or other supernatural beings), and a lot of conscious decisions that follow from that conclusion — decisions that differ significantly from decisions based on a belief in gods.
Atheism doesn’t automatically bind you to any particular ideology or set of policies; but if you’re really thinking about the matter, instead of just not choosing what to believe, then it will (and it should) alter how you reason from day to day, and thus which policies you will end up supporting.
um, atheism+ was intended to meet your preference expressed in the former, so I’m wondering if you grasp that what you expressed in the latter makes no sense?
Zeppelin @9:
I don’t think there is an “atheist conformant ideology”. I think what people have been saying (I know I’ve said it a lot) is that there are logical implications to non-belief. If you were raised your whole life to believe certain things based on the particular mythology you were indoctrinated into, if you become an atheist, should you still believe those things?
No. Rejection of a belief in deities should (but doesn’t always) result in rejecting the various beliefs one holds surrounding that theistic worldview.
That’s still ‘atheism’. It’s just thinking through the implications of atheism (e.g. if you once were a christian who believed gay people shouldn’t get married, or women should stay home and raise the family…you should reexamine those beliefs bc they’re so strongly tied to your former theistic belief).
I haven’t seen much of this “atheism-only” attitude first hand, and I find it totally bizarre. I mean, okay, atheism alone doesn’t necessarily entail specific views on political or morality or anything, fine. But atheists have views on those issues anyway. Obviously, we’re not all going to agree with each other, but that’s one reason the issues are worth talking about. A bigger reason is that issues of justice and morality are important because they have a major impact on people’s lives.
It’s one thing to sit some issues out. That’s fine. No one can pay attention to everything. What I don’t understand is the desire to shut down conversations that other people are having.
Croft puts his finger right on the B.S. center of the whole big rift controversy.
I do not think of myself in labels and am uncomfortable with them generally which probably stems from growing up where they were used to single out those who were different for “special attention”.
It is oddly inconsistent to adopt the rational stance and declare that there are no gods and not to apply that same reason to everything else.
maybe I am making a mistake by assuming that everyone who admits or claims to not believe in gods has come to that conclusion by the application of rational thought?
uncle frogy
maybe I am making a mistake by assuming that everyone who admits or claims to not believe in gods has come to that conclusion by the application of rational thought?
I think that’s probably part of it. There are all manner of different routes people take to atheism. Also, people are just generally really bad at reasoning. It’s difficult to notice inconsistencies in your own thinking (and quite easy to spot them in everyone else’s).
I have been watching this conversation for a couple years now, on this blog.. And I guess I still dont get it. If you are an atheist, you simply dont believe in gods.
This makes me, as I understand the discussion here, a “dictionary atheist”. You can be a REALLY shitty person and also be an atheist.
Looked at from a different angle.. If you dont believe in gods, yet do not give a whit about equality and social justice, does that mean you now believe in gods? I think no.. it just means that you dont believe in gods, and are kind of a shitty person. IMO, These are completely separate concepts.
As someone who has also been following along, what I get is that it’s been a long argument involving a category error with respect to atheism and values. Croft’s pointing out the hypocrisy of those picking and choosing values they associate with atheism is all well and good, but it also applies to A+ers. Hence, the point many who were responding to Croft was that it’s humanism, not atheism, that should properly be associated with progressive causes.
Cue the dictionary atheists whining, “but, but, what if I just want to run around telling people they are stupid for believing in gods, but I don’t like any of that other stuff”?
There are all manner of different routes people take to atheism. Also, people are just generally really bad at reasoning.
Another part of the problem is that a person can give up a particular religion, without giving up the patterns of religious/magical thinking that he/she grew up with. I’ve noticed that with Dawkins, Harris, and a lot of their fanboys: they’ve given up religion, but not the religious bigotry, arguments based on labeling, or any of the other deeply flawed arguments that tend to come from religious believers and apologists.
How does it also apply to A+ers, Wilford? They are explicitly stating that their value system is an addition to their atheism.
Hence, you know, the “plus” sign.
*SIGH*
EXACTLY.. If someone who self identifies as atheist does nothing other than that, is that person then not an atheist? We can have a larger discussion about whether that person is an ass, and that is fine, but, if a person has exactly the characteristics and behavior you describe in the quote above, is that person now “not an atheist” ?.
David…Greta said this just a few days ago:
“Some of the comments at the link are okay, but some are appalling. The next time someone says, “You shouldn’t call yourself an atheist, if you care about atheism plus social justice you should call yourself a humanist” — or the next time someone says, “Humanism already means caring about racism and sexism and all that, so why should I call myself a feminist or anti-racist, I just call myself a humanist and that covers it” — I’m pointing them to these comments. Self-identified humanists can be total fucking assholes.”
I’d add a second verse:
Sensible humanists are feminists, anti-racists, etc.
Not all humanists are sensible humanists.
I don’t know a specific case-in-point to use for the last line; the “I’m not a feminist/anti-racist/LGBT-rights activist because I support all humans equally” is just a really, really common fucking meme among the anti-rights crowd.
Nobody argues that point. But if the Xian morality based on an imaginary that permeates society isn’t also examined, and replaced with something better, you haven’t completed the job of examining the effects of not believing in imaginary deities upon society.
The atheist assholes think they can behave like society and an implied social contract doesn’t exist. It still does, and one needs to examine how one behaves and interacts with the rest of society.
If someone who self identifies as atheist does nothing other than that, is that person then not an atheist?
Sure he/she is an atheist. Just not an atheist worth paying a lot of attention to.
The atheist assholes think they can behave like society and an implied social contract doesn’t exist.
There’s plenty of theists who think that way too; so it’s kinda hard to link that to atheism.
To all saying “what about Atheism PLUS”, all I can say is you might as well call it “Atheism + Humanism”. I prefer to cut to the chase, call it humanism, and be done with it.
32bit@24: if that is the case, then you are an asshole, not a principled or movement atheist. What is the point of smugly declaring your superiority over theists, besides misanthropy? What are you doing besides shitting on them? Why bother? Why be a movement?
Oh, and for those saying humanists can be assholes, sure, there are some. But humanism does have a set of principles that you can find here:
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/12
Enjoy.
My understanding of rift or schism is to take the word “maybe” out from unclefroggy’s statement. It was also explained to me using example of imagine that someone called you a “dictionary humanist” when you went beyond what it means to be atheist but did not agree with the other person next step. You feel hurt and offended as do many atheists when called “dictionary atheist” when they stop at not believing in gods.
There is much good in going beyond what it means to be atheist because there are many things from religion that we should try to get rid. To work for secularism is a very good next step for example but you are still an atheist if you decide not to help with this or decide to do something else.
Put in other words the relationship between not believing in gods and being atheist is very direct and by definition. The relationship between secular and being atheist is almost the same. The relationship between things that cause rift or schism and being an atheist not direct enough to be worth the bad parts of what happened.
@32bituser
Of course you can be a shitty person and be an atheist. That isn’t the argument PZ or Croft is making. It’s that a cosmos with a god or gods is different from a cosmos without. If you believe that God created the universe and was free to create it how he wanted, you are obliged to confront the problem of evil. You can’t just reply “I’m a dictionary theist, and that just means I believe in a god. You can’t ask me to deal with that.” Well, you *can* but you’d sound pretty pick one: idiotic or dishonest. As an atheist, you have no problem of evil: nature is the way it is and part of the way it is is to deal out suffering and to produce living things that can suffer.
But atheism has its own implications: for example, without a god, there can be no such thing as divine right of kings. All governments are human governments. There was no god that created women to be the slaves of men. Gender roles are what we alone create them to be. If there are no gods, there is no revelation. Humans have to find out about reality ourselves through science. If there is no God, there’s no supernatural protection against self-destruction. If humans destroy our climate or pollute the planet or make it a radioactive wasteland, that’s that. Why is that so hard for you to accept?
Bee and Nerd (et al)..
Ok, good. That is kind of what I believed to be the case, but some of the wording wasn’t working for me.. The idea of a requirement, regarding atheism, in particular. I think that being a person worth paying attention to is not a requirement for lacking a belief in gods, it’s just a really really good idea.
@34 –
That really helped. Thanks for that, and, apologies to probably the thousand posts I have read that tried to say the same thing, but it just didn’t sink in.
Strictly speaking I still believe that whether or not you are an atheist is still a dictionary thing. Whether or not you are a decent, thoughtful person who examines the implications of your lack of belief, is another question
@32bituser
Ah, but see when PZ objects to “dictionary atheism” it’s about using it as an excuse for the atheist community/movement to avoid examining the implications of lack of belief—and only for some things and not others. He’s saying the community as a whole, the representatives and the organisations, the conferences and events shouldn’t cover themselves in a dictionary mantle so they can continue to be racist or sexist or libertarian because being those things means deliberately ignoring the implications of a godless cosmos.
Just a small correction. I think it’s a pretty universally religious trait to treat women as chattel, not merely a Judeo-Christian one. Lest the Christofascists charge you with being soft on Islam.
As an atheist, you have no problem of evil…
Yes, you do — it’s just a different problem of evil from the one some (but not all) theists invent and pretend to grapple with.
32bituser: I would also add that most, if not all, religious thought-patterns are the result of how the human animal brain is hard-wired — which is why it’s so hard to dislodge such thought-patterns from daily human decision-making, and from the basic fabric of our societies. So if you DECIDE to become an atheist (and yes, it’s a conscious decision, even if you’re only twelve when you make it), and if you actually give a shit about more than just skipping church and mocking believers, then you will surely be led, by your decision, to at least start to question the thought-patterns whose basic premise you’ve chosen to reject. That, at least, would be a basic part of growing up, something everyone should be expected to do, atheist or not.
It’s so weird, seeing as how social justice, or at least some shadow of it, is part of what got me into atheism in the first place. Realizing that the social values encoded in the Bible (the ones that a great many Christians pretend aren’t there) don’t exactly line up with modern egalitarian ones.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
It should be obvious that atheism necessarily entails certain values. In the absence of a belief in a certain god and religious ideology, one, for instance, must find a system of ethics outside of things like the ten commandments. It certainly entails that there does not exist an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being, so explanations for phenomena must have some other source, and through time the path to that knowledge has been shown to be science.
I don’t even think statements like that are controversial, so why when it comes to other parts of science and other parts of religious ideology are there atheists that refuse the former and maintain an embrace of the latter? The source of homophobia, for instance, is quite clearly religious, based in ideology and ignorance and reinforced in extra-religious culture at large. If you remove your own religious belief and look at what entails from the absence of that belief, homophobia (though perhaps with individual difficulty) would necessarily be unjustified and unjustifiable.
It continues to bewilder me that even when religious belief is stripped away, there are atheists who never exam what entails from the absence of that belief, indeed what entails from the absence of belief in every religious ideology. There are necessary consequences to atheism due to the existence and pervasiveness of religious ideology. This should not be a difficult concept to grasp.
Dear people whining about word choice:
Don’t go there, don’t go into the ” everything but the name” territory. It’s fruitless, and I have a hard time reading it charitably any more.
Let’s see how we could go about choosing another name for atheism plus not being a bigoted asshole.
a) something new
Hmmm, we could call it mfaafkigj. That’s a brand new word without any connotations. Might be a bit difficult to pronounce and I’m not sure whether we would add it only to the English language and make everyone else come up with “translations” or just make it an universal while we’re at it.
b) something borrowed
Trouble ahead!
Because words already have meanings (some more than one) and then we get into similar bullshit as with the word atheist or theory or privilege and then we’re back at the beginning again, conveniently not getting anywhere on the actual people not being bigoted assholes front.
So call yourself mfaafkigj or atheist or blue music out raimbow, just stop whinging about words and try to get to the actual point of the exercise.
Zeppelin wrote:
Keep in mind that the term already carries irrelevant baggage. This is the baggage the term already has, beyond “non-belief in gods”, and this baggage isn’t going to go away unless the term is pushed further than that.
If religion is so wrong, then I’m curious as to how this decision came about:
I maintain that people should behave and think rationally and that you should not believe in something unless it is supported by evidence. My worldview is often called scientism although that’s usually meant to be derogatory.
That perspective leads me to reject gods so I’m an atheist.
It can also lead me to other conclusions concerning social values. For example. I think that all people should be treated equally since this is a rational way to run a complex society. There’s no evidence to support the claim that discrimination leads to better societies.
I don’t believe in equality BECAUSE I’m an atheist just like I don’t believe in equality BECAUSE I think homeopathy is ridiculous and tooth fairies don’t actually deliver money. Both conclusions (equality and atheism) stem from the same root in my case but the one doesn’t demand acceptance of the other.
I’m perfectly happy to accept people who conclude that atheism is the only rational choice but who disagree with me about other issues. For example. I have many atheist friends who wholeheartedly adopt the views of American Secular Humanism (v. III) as outlined by the chief gurus of the American Humanist Association [Humanist Manifesto III, a successor to the Humanist Manifesto of 1933*] I don’t agree with that version or with Humanism in general. It does not follow, in my opinion, that just because I’m an atheist I have to be a Humanist.
I know lots of atheists who believe in capital punishment. I know lots of atheists who think that abortion is wrong. I know lots of atheists who are opposed to euthanasia. There are even atheists who are libertarians and think that universal health care is evil. I don’t agree with any of those positions but I would never say that all those people have to agree with me just because they are atheists. That would be irrational.
David Wilford @ 44
So because a bunch of Catholic bishops called for an end to fossil fuels, Catholicism is true? I’m in awe of your reasoning. Really.
Religion is based on the twin fallacies of an imaginary deity, and that a holy book of mythology/fiction written 2000 years to maintain a tribal identity is worth study and gives proper morality in this day and age.
Essentially religion is based on delusions. Like a stopped watch it may have moments where it is close to being right, but most of the time it is wrong. If you refuse to understand that, you shouldn’t bother us here. I think the horde fully understands the delusions of religion and its apologists.
David, #44
Simple. Being religious doesn’t mean you can’t be right about things or that you can’t make wise decisions about things.
Seven of Mine @ 46
It would seem those Catholic bishops are thinking rationally about the climate, and more importantly, doing something positive about it. Evidently they accept the science supporting the fact that the planet is warming due to the burning of fossil fuels, which for some here might come as a surprise.
@David Wilford #20:
Well dog forbid atheism become properly associated with progressive causes. I know that when I tell people I am an atheist, I want the first associations they make from that statement to be that I am probably a regressive bigot, don’t you? /sarc
If atheism is values neutral, I would very much appreciate it if atheists would stop using women’s issues and queer issues (et al) as a cudgel against the religious please and thank you. Nobody waving the banner of “Islam is the worst for women evah” then turning around and telling women in their own circle to STFU about their chick problems atheism isn’t connected to feminism no matter what they say. That would be awesome.
I am amused at this whole panicky assholishness over [everyone who’s not abled white cis males] trying to take the word atheism away from abled white cis males. Is the word atheist really the only thing you have, your only identity, that you so desperately need it to not be associated with anyone who isn’t like you and wants the world to be a more just place? Nooo! Eeeek! Don’t touch my word! Go be a humanist it’s mine you can’t have it! I was here first! Finders, keepers! My precious!
Srsly. Come the fuck on.
I strongly suspect that what we are seeing here is fear– fear that if atheism becomes widely associated with social progressiveness, with anti-racism and pro-disability rights, with feminism and LGBTQI rights, as well as supporting secularism, the regressives who identify as atheists are going to have to actually explain when they tell people they’re atheists that they are the regressive sort, rather than that being the default assumption. “I am an atheist, but that’s all I stand for, I am not like those other atheists who fight for social justice.” Rather than what we have currently, which is progressives having to explain over and over again, “but not like those assholes.”
I’ve read the term here enough now that I have to ask: What does “value neutral” mean?
What’s the value-neutral response to the question, “Should gay people be prohibited from getting married?”
No human can pretend to exist in some alternate universe/vacuum where they can be unconcerned with values so how can an atheist claim to do so?
Well, go ahead. Nobody’s stopping you. You’re not doing much to convince me why anyone should join you, though. You’re just expressing a personal preference.
Ehhh, that would be because “religion” is not the same thing as “religious PEOPLE,” and religious people are capable of getting things right, often in complete contradiction with the tenets of their religion. For example, most Christians are not slave owners and don’t accept that paying off the father of a rape victim is an acceptable punishment for a rapist.
In this case, it was probably easier for them to get it right because the Bible has nothing to say either way about carbon emissions or atmospheric science.
By being a liar and a hypocrite.
Nerd @ 47:
Just because I don’t agree with Catholics on matters of faith doesn’t mean I believe they’re human beings that struggle with rational thought, as the article I mentioned shows.
Saad @ 48:
Exactly.
You know, you could do this without trying to insult your interlocutors’ intelligence.
Think it’s worth a try?
@Saad #51:
As I have used it, “value neutral” means “refuses to say anything about things which matter, thereby supporting continuation of the status quo while washing one’s hands of the consequences.”
@45 Laurence A. Moran:
Yeah, good thing no one here actually believes this, including PZ and Croft. What weird strawman are you arguing against? Who are you even TALKING to?
Croft (quoted by PZ) explicitly says that atheism doesn’t require further beliefs, so that is NOT the point being made.
It’s saying Movement Atheism already has goals beyond dictionary atheism. Limiting those goals to just the versions of social justice that a cadre of atheists are comfortable with, while restricting Movement Atheism’s involvement in feminism, anti-racism, or the like on the grounds that those other social justice movements ‘aren’t part of atheism’, is just hypocritical and self-serving.
Movement Atheism is already WAY more than dictionary atheism. E.g., Movement Atheism is also about secularism, or being against religious discrimination against atheists, or for STEM education and science popularization. So the limiting of goals just makes Movement Atheists pretty obviously fucking selfish and short-sighted.
THAT is what is being said, not weird bullshit about “you don’t believe this, so now you’re not an atheist”. Try and pay some fucking attention.
David Wilford @ 49
Bullshit it would come as a surprise. Nobody here claimed that all religious people deny all science.
How it came about: gods, which they and other religionists so wrongly believe in, had nothing to do with such statements. Unless you’re curious about whether these bishops have godlike supernatural powers, I won’t argue the point that they somehow managed to do this all on their own, just as a mere atheist with only natural powers would.
That was easy. Next?
consciousness razor @ 59:
Agreed. To here some tell it around these here parts, religious poisons everything, and perhaps the bishop’s action on ending the burning of fossil fuels might surprise them in that regard.
Laurence A. Moran:
It’s rational to think they should agree with you, not that they “have to” “just because” of atheism, as if physical forces somehow conspired to make all of their behavior the same as yours as a consequence of non-belief. That would be a ridiculous way of characterizing the thrust of this point, considering that no one on the side you think you’re disagreeing with has implied any such ridiculous thing.
I don’t believe in gods. I also live in a big old universe with lots of stuff in it, and I have a life as human being which isn’t in any way constrained by my beliefs about supernatural entities. That stuff doesn’t go away, no matter how hard I squint at my non-belief in gods or how much I try to ignore all of that other stuff. There are facts about that stuff: what it is, how it works, how any given piece relates consistently to everything else, etc. (Why consistently? Because nature has a way of being consistent with itself.) So, we have every reason to hold anyone and everyone, atheists and theists alike, to have good, well-founded, consistent beliefs about all of that stuff, including but not limited to their beliefs about gods.
Wilford: you seem not to understand what the phrase “religion poisons everything” means. If you want to get a better idea of what we mean by it, try looking at the whole picture of what that group of bishops have to say. Is all of it as rational, compassionate or science-based as their statement on global warming?
David Wilford
The USSR did support human rights, and actually did a better job of it in some cases than the USA (EG: USA has ANC leaders listed as terrorists, the USSR meanwhile started funding the fight against Apartheid in 1962).
It just didn’t practice what it preached, and had a different view on which rights were more important, placing things like access to healthcare higher on the list than political rights.
Raging Bee @ 62:
I’m quite aware of what’s been said here (and elsewhere) about Catholic teachings on certain subjects, and I disagree with them. All I’m saying is that this doesn’t make Catholics incapable of rational thought or unethical.
brucegorgon @ 63:
I think the record on human rights in the former Soviet Union isn’t just a glib matter of health care access being prioritized over political rights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
@64 David Wilford:
So this is some weird thread derail to say Catholics are being unfairly discriminated against by atheists, as you make up some bullshit belief that I don’t think I’ve ever read here (or anywhere)?
I.e., that Catholics are incapable of thought and always unethical about everything?
Goddamn, I was a fundamentalist Christian, who was pretty sure Catholics were going to hell for deifying Mary and graven images of saints and otherwise recreating a priesthood in express violation of the Bible, and I didn’t think that automatically made them wrong about everything always and forever.
Hell, even when I believed Romans 2, that atheists were all liars, or deluding themselves, or demon-possessed monsters at heart, and I still didn’t demonize them the way you’re apparently trying to paint atheists here.
Stop making up strawman bullshit with this stupid martyr complex. It’s pretty gross.
David Wilford, the Soviet Union was not a secular state, and neither are any other states that puts any entity, such as leader, party, or motherland, or whatever, into exactly the same role that religious states put a God. They are all religious states that simply pretend not to be religious states by being dishonest with terminology.
David,
Great. We agree. I think most people here agree. Can you please step away from that poor dead horse now?
Thanks.
Are progressive values the logical extension/result of atheism, or are both atheism and progressive values the logical extension/result of rationalism? I think the latter is the case, because it would explain partly irrational atheists – dictionary atheists who are rational about god beliefs but do not apply rationality to women, gays, economics, etc.
A theist can arrive at progressive values without going through atheism. In that case, they are applying rationality to their values but not to their god belief. So it does seem that rationality is the root of it all, and it’s a matter of how thoroughly one applies it to their lives.
Several years ago I read Ken Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God, where he takes apart intelligent design, but then supports theism. And I remember thinking: If he just applied the same critical technique he used in the first half of his book to the second half, he’d be an atheist as well. So, only a partial application of rationality.
Amphiox @ 67:
The former Soviet Union was an officially atheist state, but religion was tolerated although often persecuted in the 1920s. But as long as it didn’t make waves or otherwise cause trouble, religion was left alone, except, of course, as always, the Jews.
I wish David Wilford would disappear. He is being tedious, arguing with ghosts, and repeatedly derailing in many different directions. Can a monitor send a note to PZ to nominate him for consideration for the banhammer please?
Atheism is not a philosophy. It’s simply a rejection of religion. As for my philosophy, I am a pragmatist. As for spirituality, I am a philosophical Taoist. When I realized that the Tao doesn’t give a shit whether I believed in it or not, I could follow it’s teaching without any contradiction.
DW
You keep acting like this is a significant change in Church policy. They have gone along with science in the past since they can’t keep the Dark Ages going. Until they change their position on abortion, contraception, pedophile priests, and imposing their religion into the political processes world-wide, I’m not really interested in anything they have to say.
Nobody has said they can’t do good. Just that they don’t understand the modern world enough to keep their religion in-house.
Your apologetics for religion are tiresome and boring.
They had a religion. Communism. Typical of religions. A holy script written by somebody treated as gospel, and imposed upon people by the priesthood (the Party) without any evidence it worked as written. And then doubling down when it wasn’t working. Didn’t you ever study history with the proper cynicism?
August Berkshire @ 69:
I don’t think rationality alone can help us make ethical judgments, because sometimes the coldly rational thing to do is to screw thy neighbor. There’s a gem of a book that I can’t recommend highly enough that offers an insight on how our emotions also inform our reason, from of all people an economist:
Passions Within Reason – by Robert H. Frank (1988)
Basically, Frank’s insight is that our emotions serve us as a way to solve what he calls the “commitment problem” between people who don’t necessarily trust each other by means of our emotions providing signals that communicate our sincerity. Of course if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. But we also have our ways to reveal fakers. Here’s a fairly recent paper by Frank on the same subject:
http://www.robert-h-frank.com/PDFs/MoralSentiments.pdf
Enjoy!
If Nazism was so wrong, I’m curious as to how Hitler’s belief that smoking was bad for the health came about.
I don’t think rationality alone can help us make ethical judgments, because sometimes the coldly rational thing to do is to screw thy neighbor. There’s a gem of a book that I can’t recommend highly enough that offers an insight on how our emotions also inform our reason…
Yes, and our emotions can form the basis for a solid moral code without religion — and in fact, all religion serves to do is gum up that process, by adding a made-up supreme being whose alleged will overrides our moral reasoning, thereby giving at least some people an excuse to disregard our concensus about the common good, whenever (they claim) the voices in their heads demand it.
Nick Gotts @ 76:
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.
That is only the case if it is assumed that selfishness is rational and altruism irrational. That is the basic assumption of neoclassical economics, but is completely unjustified: there is nothing irrational in having the good of others as a top-level goal.
David Wilford@78,
What point did you think you were making there? You came out with the fuckwitted nonsense I quoted @76, and I showed its absurdity with an obvious parallel.
Nick Gotts @ 79:
Have you ever bought a used car? I have and I can assure you that there are plenty of sellers out there who are willing to screw you. Granted, that’s not a top-level goal but still. That reminds me of the best political poster ever, IMO:
Would YOU buy a used car from this man?
And you have to assume some kind of opposition between “rationality” and “emotion,” which isn’t tenable (probably not even coherent) given a basic understanding of how psychological processes work.
Jesus wept, Wilford, can’t you understand anything? How the fuck could you possibly think that my #79 implied that everyone was an altruist?
@ David Wilford
You seem to have a FUBARed notion of what rationality and ethics even are. The fact that an individual gets hurt by an action you take doesn’t automagically make that action unethical. In fact, why the fuck did you decide that this “thing to do” that screws your neighbor is the “thing to do”? Screwing your neighbor could mean denying that person the opportunity to cause terrible harm to someone. From their perspective you “screwed” them by foiling their plans but the net result could still be good. It could be a side affect of an action you take that prevented some other, greater harm.
TL;DR you’re talking out of your ass.
I can’t decide if David Wilford is a crypto-goddist or an apologist for some other ideology, or if he’s just a confused troll who doesn’t mind derailing threads whenever his confusions are especially salient to him.
I’m going to flip a coin.
Nick Gotts @ 80:
I was having a bit of fun pointing out your Godwinning the thread, actually. So Hitler had a correct intuition about smoking, versus the Catholic Bishop’s endorsing action to stop scientifically confirmed and human caused by burning of fossil fuels global warming. I don’t think that’s the droid, er parallel you were looking for.
David Wilford,
Are you drunk?
I was having a bit of fun pointing out your Godwinning the thread, actually.
He was doing no such thing, actually. I have to echo Beatrice’s question: are you drunk?
Nick Gotts @ 83:
O.K. Granted there’s a top-level goal of altruism, but as you say not everyone is an altruist and we shouldn’t expect everyone to be. So we muddle though trying to devise a society that favors altruism, even as some prefer the virtues of selfishness.
Beatrice and Raging Bee,
Only on free association.
Seven of Mine @ 84:
So – do you think the ends justify the means? Many a vile act (not to mention war) has been justified by that logic. Sure, sometimes I could justify doing something that really harmed another by rationalizing it as something done for a greater good, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did.
I vote drunk or maybe too many joints to make sense.
uncle frogy
David Wilford @ 91
No, you dishonest, shitwit, I don’t and that isn’t what I said. What I said was the fact that X person got hurt in some way is not enough information to tell you whether the action that caused that hurt was unethical.
Again, a strawman. That’s not the logic which was used. We are faced with different ends, one of which can be better than the others in terms of that outcome, along with all of the results leading up to it taken as a whole. The means used to get to one end or another aren’t being used to justify such an outcome. The argument was clearly that a means which involves some degree of “harm” doesn’t simply and necessarily disqualify the end as being better than the possible alternatives. If we can’t avoid less “harm,” then we should go with the one that involves the least, not irrationally insist that there be none whatsoever and merely shake our fists at the world in frustration. We shouldn’t pretend that we can do things that we can’t do, like for example not causing any harm under any circumstances.
Seven of Mine @ 93:
So – intent is magic then?
Even if atheism is value-neutral, people aren’t. You could say that atheism doesn’t – can’t – exist in some abstract sense, absent the presence of an intelligent entity that can conceive of it, because atheism is by definition a philosophical position held by an entity; a response to a fact-claim of theism by a different entity. Atheism is entirely contingent on the presence of intelligent entities; the only intelligent entities we’re aware of are people; people are not value-neutral, therefore: the atheist position, while value-neutral, can not be held in a value-neutral environment.
A person who is atheist would by definition have no theistic bases for their values. That does not imply “atheistic” values, as atheism is value-neutral, but the absence of theistically-derived values and the simple presence of the atheist position requires interaction with and potential influence on a person’s other values. Atheism also necessitates a non-theistic source for any values held by that person. While an atheist may not hold “atheistic” values per se, they can and almost certainly do hold non-theistic values as a direct consequence of their atheism.
To say that atheism is value-neutral is true, but in only the most trivial and practically useless sense. Unless a person engages in cognitive dissonance and isolates their atheism from every other position they hold, atheism will have some effect on their values.
David Wilford is trolling then?
David Wilford @ 95
No, but whatever you’re smoking apparently is. Jesus fuck.
Those of us who exist in the real world understand that it is impossible to never cause any harm. Sometimes you’re in a situation where someone is going to get hurt no matter what you do. You do the best you can to make the decision that causes either the least harm or the easiest to remedy. Yes, someone got hurt and that sucks but that doesn’t mean what you did was unethical. It may have been the most ethical option available to you.
Again, all you’re doing here is showing that your notion of “rational” and “ethical” is just FUBAR. That’s your problem; not ours.
consciousness razor @ 94:
What you’re proposing is utilitarianism, but the rub is when you get to just who is being harmed and who benefits. Le Guin’s story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas comes to mind.
consciousness razor @ 97:
Nope. Just pointing out that harm isn’t something that can be rationalized away, regardless of an intention to achieve a greater goal.
So you’re not trolling, you’re just tilting at windmills. Glad we cleared that up.
Seven of Mine @ 98:
Agreed that it’s impossible to never cause any harm. I’m thinking more of the dangers of rationalizing harm caused to others, which can also be used for less than laudable goals. That’s one of the reasons I’m not a utilitarian, because I don’t buy the premise that the greater good can be achieved by the convenient suffering of the Other.
As a complete aside, just my curiosity regarding timelines and how things change over said timeline, I wonder when the good doctor was active on alt.atheism. Back in the 80s, I was pretty active there and the keeper of the FAQ (to the point where I underwent a bit of apotheosis when I stepped down…the FAQ gave a bit of history and declared me as the burning bush, writing it on stone tablets (http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/athfaqdo.htm) And if you search for the alt.atheism FAQ from later, you can still see some of my handiwork. The “avoiding the wrong hell” text in the discussion of Pascal’s Wager is mine.) I was there when the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Blessed Be Her Horn) came into being.
But when I was there, there wasn’t any real talk about ethics at all. It was mostly about recognizing that yes, there are atheists in the world, that being an atheist doesn’t make you evil, that religious intrusions into public life are bad, and such. There were discussions about “strong” and “weak” atheism, but we all knew that such was deep philosophical stuff for those that like picking over nits rather than the entire point of being. In my version of the FAQ, there was no mention of it at all. In later versions of the FAQ (http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/atheistf.htm), you’ll notice that no more than a dozen sentences are about the distinction, half of which point out that you can’t assume that someone who identifies as an atheist is of any particular philosophical bent. It was more discussions from people who finally had a chance to talk to other atheists and thus, the discussions really weren’t about “where do we go from here?” We were dealing with proselytizers and were establishing that atheists have a morality, it just isn’t based upon submission to a supernatural authority as to what it is. Perhaps because we were mostly college folks, we assumed a more “liberal” stance regarding morality since we talked about how humans are a social species and thus, we need to figure out how to get along with each other cooperatively. We were more focused on responding to, “Since you don’t believe in god, what’s to stop you from killing people?” rather than, “How does atheism combat racism?”
So I’m curious…when did that all change? I haven’t been on USENET in about 20 years, I should think, so I have no idea what’s happening with the group.
@rrhain, sometime around when the statement of “Guys, don’t do that” caused the internet collective of atheists to lose their collective shit. It wasn’t such a huge leap from there to discussions of privilege and realizing that “atheism” wasn’t the endpoint, but a starting point. That the disbelief in gods does have logical consequences, that one should think about and act upon.
And this is where I will once again thank all the regulars who’ve taught me directly and indirectly what a shithead I’ve been in the past.
There are two kinds of people, those who examine their values and those who do not. There are people who examine their values to see if they are consistent or contradictory and when they find contradiction, think things through, learn and analyze until they can come up with something consistent. There are others who have no trouble holding all sorts of contradictory values and beliefs. There are people who examine their values and lives to see if they are living according to their values and when they discover that they are not, question their values or change their lives or a little of both. And then there are the people who say they value this and that but behave as if they didn’t and don’t care or notice it. There are atheists of both kinds. Dictionary atheists are of the second kind, those without reflexivity in their thinking, as are a majority of people on the political right.
Congratulations, David Wilford, you’ve completely derailed an interesting topic by making this thread all about you and your superficial, one-dimensional philosophy.
Amen Al Dente. You caught the crux of the motormouth….
I don’t think Croft agrees with PZ at all. PZ argues (rightly or wrongly) that social justice follows logically from rejection of moral authority from gods. Croft argues (only wrongly) that as the dictionary definition of atheism includes neither chocolate cake nor secularism, both must be of equal concern.
Really? Sounds like the Discovery Institute to me. Along the lines of “Materialists can’t believe logic exists because it isn’t physical so by even arguing they have admitted they are wrong”.
I think Croft is more right than wrong throughout the piece, but I agree with woozy in #108. It’s not the strongest argument, but it falls in line with the sort of claim a churchy-humanist-type like Croft would make. He seems like a decent guy, so I don’t mean to be too harsh about him here. The thing is, he apparently just isn’t fond of the desert landscape that he figures atheism must be like, so he wants things a little more populated with what he calls “humanism.” So when people call it a desert, he agrees….
That’s an awfully big “if”…. What reasonable person, who isn’t already motivated to oppose to racial equality (e.g.) for other reasons, would make such a worthless argument? “No, because it’s not entailed by my ideology”? Don’t be silly. These fuckwits are against it for reasons having nothing to do with that, and this is the best diversion they can come up with because they’re a bunch of fuckwits.
Let’s carry on to the second part anyway. “Consistency with what?” you might ask. Not consistency with reality, just mere internal consistency with a sacred definition and a claim about what it supposedly entails. That’s a substantive claim, which merits close scrutiny. When you actually do that, to see what it and doesn’t entail, they turn out to be wrong about that. So the assertion is false. (Where is Croft’s argument about that, or even a hint that there is one which he won’t address right now? Nowhere.) And consistency, if there’s something behind saying it ought to be required of people — if we’re humans, in the world, inside or outside of some kind of a social movement (none of which is a big if) — should be consistency with the world and everything in it, not just some detached abstract concept. You’re making basically no demands at all from a person, when you ask for consistency or inconsistency relative to something like that. Those things just don’t have the kind of oomph behind them that you’re looking for when you say something like this.
David Wilford
Keep in mind that you will not be confined to the Thunderdome.
chimera at 105: I think you are onto something. I know there is something at work in the background in these “dictionary atheist” debates and your ideas there get closer to it than I have seen, imo.
re: Atheism vs. Humanism
For what is worth, here in Brazil the Humanist Party is a small group of Christian-democrats who oppose LGBT rights and want the return of the monarchy. So, where I stand, humanist is no better label for someone who promotes social justice than atheist.
Why they do social justice is my problem with humanists. Especially if they do it in the name of religion, which often seems to be the case.
dõki, Nerd
I’ve always felt that religious humanism is kind of an oxymoron; ‘dictionary’ humanism is “an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.” How the living fuck does anyone manage to merge that with Christianity (just for instance), which is all about focusing primarily on god/jesus? (I know, I know, the answer is compartmentalization and rampant hypocrisy, but still).
@ woozy, consciousness razor:
I really don’t understand that reading of the piece. Croft’s point, at least as I read it, is that you can’t advocate for Issue A while claiming that you can’t advocate for Issue B, strictly on the basis of dictionary atheism. That’s bullshit, to use his word. Finis.
I agree that he’s perhaps too polite in refusing to use certain terms to describe the sexist/racist assholes, but the argument isn’t directed at those people. It’s directed at people who might not quite be paying attention, and may just be receiving these messages about “value-free atheism” peripherally.
Reading Croft’s piece and concluding:
is rather off. He’s rather unambiguous when concluding that people who condemn issue advocacy on the basis of dictionary atheism are assholes. Did we read the same piece?
More to the point, consciousness razor, I don’t see how you can read this:
and then selectively quote only the last sentence. There’s no way you could have failed to read the preceding sentences. Why would you quote-mine that?
You mean the one titled “Atheism’s Lack of Values is a Bug, Not a Feature”? Yeah, I read it a second time actually, while responding to woozy. Of course, I’m also reading Croft in the context of lots of other shit he’s been saying for many years now.
Anyway, the piece did put forward the notion that it would useful to talk about atheism as buggy and lacking values, as well as making a dubious fact-value distinction to characterize the issues shithead-atheists want no part in, while taking what the shithead-atheists say about this at face value, as if it were actually true and as if it had any relevance at all to why they are shitheads. What they’re saying is true and relevant, he thinks: he says so right in the title. These here are principled and deeply philosophical shitheads we’re dealing with now, apparently. They care so very much about a concept and a word and logical entailment, which everybody knows is the real issue — but also, they must insist, fuck women/gays/black/brown/assorted other people.
Leaving aside that nonsense, this argument of Croft’s was done in the service of making a simple point that they’re hypocrites, if they support other atheism-related causes — that is, making the highly implausible assumption that such people also take a very strong stance to the effect that atheism has literally zero implications for how they should behave. Seems a bit excessive. He wouldn’t have to burn the whole atheist tent to the ground to make such a simple criticism of these shitheads. But that’s evidently not the only criticism he wanted to make. So… Humanism to the rescue! That’s just how he rolls.
David Wilford
Which is why I say they didn’t practice what they preached.
One can also equally well say the same of the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
Supporting human rights is not the same thing as actually enforcing them. Supporting is really more often than not just saying, actually doing is another matter.
1) As your link would have told you if you’d read it, Godwin’s Law simply states that as an online discussion grows longer, the chances of a comparison to Hitler or Nazism approaches 1. The “law” itself says nothing whatever about “Godwinning”, i.e. mentioning Hitler or the Nazis, being in any way inappropriate or a “losing move”. Whether such a mention is appropriate or not has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. In this case, I needed some person or group who would be agreed by all with a shred of decency to be wrong both in their actions and in their understanding of the world, who nevertheless got something important right. I was not, as in the cases of “Godwinning” that are rightly disparaged, inappropriately comparing the wrongs committed by some group (here, Catholic bishops) to those of the Nazis.
2) There was in fact considerable research in Nazi Germany indicating the dangers of tobacco smoking, and the main bad effects attributed to it (lung cancer, cardiac disease) are exactly those subsequent research has confirmed as most serious.
3) Even if we discount that, your original stupidity was to imply that anyone who thinks religion is bad must be surprised that the Catholic bishops accept climate science. So presumably, you must think that anyone who thinks Nazism was bad must be surprised Hitler was right about anything. That you are too stupid to grasp the parallel, or too dishonest to admit it, is no surprise at all.
Which admission, of course, makes nonsense of your claim that:
because that claim assumes that any deviation from self-interest is irrational.
So what? If you refuse to do something ethically justifiable because you would feel bad about the harm it caused others, that’s just another kind of selfishness.
This question is for Chimera. I agree that one should always try to be consistent but this takes me to opposite conclusion as you. Atheism is the lack of belief in god or gods which could also be written as the lack of belief in some invisible guy who controls everything. That is all that atheism is so it must be consistent in the same way that sphericity is always true when the data have only one set of pairs. Atheism+ is the same lack of belief in the invisible guy who controls everything but now added is a positive belief in some invisible force that controls every person making things bad. That is much less consistent because it is the opposite of the skepticism that makes people atheist.
Bea Essartu
Que? People aren’t invisible. Well at least not so long as they aren’t on motorcycles.
Atheism+ is simply the idea that without a God to dictate morality, we need to find an alternative basis for formulating the concepts we use as a society to live with each other relatively peaceably and to each other’s mutual benefit.
This also means we have to question the things that have been accepted as “morality” – such as defined gender roles, racism or classism. Because there is no God who made us high or lowly or ordering our estates, we have to look at whether the current status quo is in fact justified.
More often than not it actually isn’t for a variety of reasons covered by a wide variety of academic fields. Because we have no easy source on these things, we need to study them, which implies a lot less talking and a lot more listening to the people who are hurt by the way things are.
There is no invisible force that controls every person making things bad, there are just people making individual decisions. Figuring out how they judge the rightness or wrongness of those decisions is pretty important, and figuring out the impacts of those decisions on others is also important.
Can anyone give me an example of what they would call a “dictionary atheist” that is not synonymous with “A person who believes in no deities and has not reached the same ethical conclusions as myself”?
Everyone defending the OP has to begin by admitting that the “atheism only means you don’t believe in gods” comment is true. And then there’s always a “BUT”, followed by an explanation of why that person thinks atheism has such and such moral implications.
Why even invent the pejorative of “dictionary atheist”? Why not just say “I believe that atheism has such and such moral implications” and then have that discussion?
Or even better, why not just say “I believe that people have such and such moral obligations” or better still, “I posit such and such a meta-ethical system to describe how people should make moral judgments” and then you can be doing actual moral philosophy.
All the support of the OP here is just table-thumping about why your interpretation of morality is correct and people who disagree are wrong. Sure. Fine. Have that discussion. Leave the word “atheism” out of it. It’s a perfectly good word doing its job just fine. It doesn’t need to rhetorically incorporate all of your ethical theories and intuitions. If no one brings up the concept of a deity it doesn’t need to be involved at all.
inb4 “Yes, BUT, atheism really DOES entail blah blah blah”
governmentman #122:
And there’s where you almost get it, but manage to miss the point by a gnat’s whisker.
The argument is that the lack of a god has implications. Full-stop.
What we should do in light of those implications (support certain social justice positions, keep creationism out of science lessons, etc) is another argument.
‘It only means lack of belief in gods’ is a hypocritical position in most cases, because the people claiming to take it are quite happy to use the argument that it implies we should have an opinion about, for instance, education policy, whilst at the same time claiming that it cannot imply that we need to take a position on social justice matters.
To put it another way…
An actual meeting of ‘it only means lack of belief in gods’ atheists would go something like this:
‘I lack belief in gods.’
‘Me too.’
‘Me also.’
‘So, we need to do something about creationist science teachers.’
‘Why do we need to?’
‘Well, surely being atheists means we don’t want…’
‘Uh, no, it doesn’t. Atheism implies nothing more than lack of belief in gods.’
‘Oh, okay. Well, I guess that wraps the meeting up then.’
governmentman wrote:
Poor strawperson. The term “dictionary atheist” was created to refer to those who object to those in the atheist movement taking stands on things like social justice, while having no problem with members in the same movement taking stands on secularism, science education or anti-atheist bias in culture. I disparage them not because they “[have] not reached the same ethical conclusions as myself”, but because they’re hypocritical asses, who adopt this argument merely out of convenience and laziness.
governmentman @ 122
1) Because we mean something specific when we say it. We’re generally talking about people who will insist that movement atheism shouldn’t be dabbling in social justice concerns because dictionary while simultaneously being totes OK with movement atheism dabbling in the social justice concerns they personally care about (i.e. separation of church and state, science education, etc.).
2) Because it’s easier to type.
Bea @120:
This is utter nonsense.
Atheism+ is atheism plus social justice…atheists who focus on social justice issues. Where the fuck did you get this “invisible force that controls ever person making things bad”?
governmentman:
There are plenty of liberal dictionary atheists: They have the same ethical conclusions but refuse for philosophical reasons to accept that any of that has any link to their atheism.
Which is precisely the point. Dictionary atheism is bullshit for that reason. It ignores two things: The things that lead someone to atheism, and the things that logically are derived from an atheist worldview.
Same thing for theism. There is no dictionary theist. Theists have cultural clout, so there is not necessarily a reason why they became theist but there is a reason why they are some specific flavor of theist and that also has implications.
“Dictionary atheist” is a summary of that discussion. We have had that discussion. Several times.
Also been done but it is irrelevant to the point that atheism is more than the dictionary definition.
Am I the only one who thinks that this part contradicts the other parts? “Leave the word ‘atheism’ out of it” is precisely the argument we argue against when we talking about dictionary atheists. What is your point? What is your argument? What exactly have we done wrong? Please, specify.
Atheism and ice cream are both unconcerned with values, but atheists and ice cream eaters cannot be.
Someone thinks “social construct” is a synonym for “supernatural force,” perhaps?
All the support of the OP here is just table-thumping about why your interpretation of morality is correct and people who disagree are wrong. Sure. Fine. Have that discussion. Leave the word “atheism” out of it. It’s a perfectly good word doing its job just fine. It doesn’t need to rhetorically incorporate all of your ethical theories and intuitions. If no one brings up the concept of a deity it doesn’t need to be involved at all.
Who the fuck are you to tell anyone else how to use the word “atheism?”
And if we can’t use the word “atheism” when talking about issues we consider important, then what kind of a “job” is the word doing “just fine” that’s of any use to us? How can a word “do its job just fine” if no one is using it?
Also, most of us live in places where plenty of people are indeed “bringing up the concept of a deity;” so the word does indeed need to be involved.
BTW, the comments chez Croft are… amusing. I somehow induced a whiny man-baby to rage-quit the forum and delete all his comments to me. Without even trying!
My misandry-fu is getting stronger.
I see the extra word “movement” being added when trying to argue that being an atheist means more than not believing in god or gods. Please try it again without the extra word because I have same idea as governmentman and don’t see these consequences of simply not believing in god or gods. Likewise I don’t agree that you must find an alternative basis for morality if you are atheist as many of us never had any belief in god or gods and have always had a sense of morality.
I should have said also that if you start one step before with being a skeptic and therefore being an atheist then you can look for other consequences of being a skeptic that would be hand in hand with being an atheist but these do not include many of the things that atheism+ says.
Jesus wept. No-one at all has claimed that “being an atheist means more than not believing in god or gods”. Learn to read for comprehension, then you won’t look quite such a numpty.
Likewise I don’t agree that you must find an alternative basis for morality if you are atheist as many of us never had any belief in god or gods and have always had a sense of morality.
Um…yeah, if you never believed, and you already had a sense of morality, then you don’t have to find an alternative. It’s only believers who change their basic beliefs who have to do that.
Bea Essartu #134:
Okay, here goes:
There is no god to whom we may look for help with our problems, or for any kind of justice.
Therefore we have to solve our own problems, find our own ways to ensure justice.
I have observed that such-and-such groups are treated unjustly.
…
Please fill in the blank.
(Please note: this is not dependent upon how one comes to atheism. I’ve never believed in any god: therefore my reasoning has always, by default, been that humans need to find solutions to human problems. Step one was merely an unspoken, and mostly unnoticed, given.)
@ SallyStrange
Full disclosure, I’m Joshua. I was enjoying watching you argue with him and when I saw the tone troll I just had to speak up. He just could not deal with your challenge to him. It was kind of surreal wasn’t it?
Bea Essartu, #133:
Let’s take the belief/nonbelief fuzziness out of the equation for now. We can put that back in later, if we need it.
There are two sets of facts, two possible worlds if you like:
W1: A god exists, and it interacts with a universe similar to ours
W2: No such gods exist, but there is our universe exactly as it is
I’m framing it this way because a god existing has (by hypothesis) implications for the state of the universe at a given time, since such hypothetical (“theistic”) gods interact at least once with the universe in some way. We have reason to be concerned with theistic gods, not ones for which people can dishonestly wiggle out of proposing any interaction whatsoever and hold to a “belief” in it on an a priori basis. That question, about what dishonest proposals irrational believers may or may not make, is not about nailing down which facts anyone could have any experience of or what there is which could make some observable difference in the world.
And I put it this way because I think there is no god, which is to say we are not in that “similar” universe, W1, but in the one without a god, W2, exactly like ours. In other words, the world would be different than it is if there’s a god; and on the basis of all of the evidence available to me, I’ve concluded it is not different from a universe without a god. (A theist, if their beliefs depend on some kind of evidence, however tenuous, could likewise say a godless universe is not one which corresponds to their experience, and switch those labels around accordingly.)
So, I make different conclusions about how we should act, because concluding how we should act follows the same a posteriori considerations as determining what there is the world. I don’t determine what’s “right” prior to any and every experience of the world. I have to look at the world to figure out what there is, how it works, what I expect to happen when I act one way or another, and use that sort of information to determine which ways I should or should not act. If you thought that you could determine what we should and shouldn’t do, independently of the rest of the facts as we determine those a posteriori, then you just plain thought wrong. There is no escaping that.
Now there are some odd questions left: could somebody believe something which is contrary to the facts? Yes, of course they can. They can believe lots of shit. What about atheists: do they necessarily believe all of the relevant facts concerning what we should do? No, they obviously don’t need to have beliefs like that. They don’t need to be omniscient or infallible, etc., but there clearly is a basis for saying when and how they are wrong about what.
Brony–yeah, it is pretty surreal now that all his comments are just “.” Yet he returns to tell other people why he can’t talk to me because I’m not a good person and not worth talking to… Like, um, what? Okay, then.
Bea Essartu
That’s because what’s being argued is that once you have an atheist movement–which we do–you have already moved past the question of whether being an atheist means more than just not believing in gods. Once you have an atheist movement, you have answered “yes” to the question, “Are there any ethical, philosophical, or political positions that flow from your atheism?” Once you have an atheist movement, the question to answer is “WHICH ethical, philosophical, or political positions flow from your atheism, and why?”
If you want to say that zero positions flow from your atheism, go ahead, nobody is stopping you, but then on what basis are you bothering to comment here? Not believing in gods does not mean you should have any strong opinions about whether people should be able to come to certain conclusions by adding the premise that “gods do not exist” together with other premises and observations about the world.
It’s like… words have multiple definitions sometimes. Sure, one definition of atheism means JUST the godlessness, and that’ll be a valid definition for generations to come. Frankly, the english language DOES need a word that ONLY means disbelief in gods, because languages need that sort of specificity.
But as to the CAUSE of atheism, that’s a whole other beast. Why not ALSO act for humanitarian and civil rights issues? Why not get whole groups otherwise gathered for atheist causes behind it? It’s a fact that plenty of atheists are going to be against such important issues, and that’s a sad reality that I can never white wash away with a “no true Scottsman” style redefining them out of being atheists. At the same time, it’s really disconcerting that trying to start discussion about parallel issues like that gets shut down on forums about atheism. Those forums aren’t atheism itself, they are gatherings of people, and sometimes it’s good to step outside of just one idea.
@SallyStrange
You are correct about the emotional fragility. Aggressive are more easily aroused about certain specific things, like when a person they perceive as inferior challenges them. So much bullshit is hidden in the language.
The hiding is because aggressive authoritarian types only have two options when it comes to mistakes and the personal flaws that produce them. Own it or hide it. Both have their own set of behaviors that collect over a lifetime.
I notice that he’s only worried about how his comments look in comparison to you. That is craven, cowardly and utterly sexist. I’m rather grateful that I got help to install this perceptual filter over here.
Here is quote from second paragraph of the original post: “atheism has implications and consequences beyond being an abstract philosophical statement that lets you skip church on Sundays”
Here is quote from Nick Gotts: “Jesus wept. No-one at all has claimed that “being an atheist means more than not believing in god or gods”. Learn to read for comprehension, then you won’t look quite such a numpty.”
It is not Jesus who is weeping.
In other replies to me I see lots of words and one false dichotomy but no reason to say that being an atheist means more than no believing in god or gods.
Bea Essartu:
You’re making this too difficult. If atheism is true (if there are no gods), that has numerous implications even if there is nobody like an atheist who believes them. Atheists are people, with all sorts of fucked up beliefs, lacking knowledge, having other motivations besides their atheism, etc. Atheism, if we’re going to be consistent with our terminology, is not a person: it’s the thing about there being no gods. If you don’t take it seriously that anthropomorphizing atheism has any use or validity or reality to it, then this should already have been obvious to you.
You keep saying that atheism has implications but I don’t see what are they and how are they implications of atheism. The one idea I have seen is that without a belief in god or gods you need alternative or replacement basis for morality but that only true is you got original sense of morality from god or gods which is not true for many people including me. Going back a step you see that idea of religion is basis for morality is a very bad error because religion only gives false sense of morality by rules instead of true sense of morality. Other ideas such as equalism or simply being nice to each other are not implications of a lack of belief in god or gods as they have nothing to do with each other as shown by very nasty atheists in history or on internet.
Bea Essartu #143:
You are correct. Nobody is arguing that the meaning of the word ‘atheism’ is anything but that.
The argument is that not believing in gods (especially interventionist gods) has implications; knock-on effects on other parts of one’s worldview. These implications are not part of the definition of ‘atheism,’ any more than ‘not red’ is part of the definition of ‘blue,’ but they do exist, just as saying that the sky is blue implies that the sky is not red. We may disagree on what we want to do about those implications, but it’s frankly silly to argue that they are non-existent.
Again someone says nobody is arguing that atheism means more than lack of belief in god or gods but that is what the original post and atheism+ does say. Is P Z Myers and all of atheism+ nobody to you?
@145 Bea
I agree that the only implication of atheism is that one can’t appeal to religious authority to either derive or justify one’s moral beliefs.
And “not red” is part of definition of “blue”
I am happy someone says he agrees but maybe we don’t. If you say that not being able to appeal to religious authority is an implication of atheism then we use word “implication” differently because I say that not being able to appeal to religious authority is part of atheism and not a consequence or implication. This is “not red” and “blue” again to me. A consequence or implication must be quality different such as idea that atheism implicates equalism or being nice to each other which is what I see in original post and atheism+.
Bea Essartu #145:
Then you already have a lack of belief in morality-giving gods. Thus you see questions of morality as something human beings need to work out for themselves. See? Your lack of belief in something implies something about your world-view.
Now extend it to full-on atheism: lack of eternal afterlives means the one life we, and others, have becomes more important.
The lack of a god who must be appeased means the only way to judge the need for a law or code of behaviour is whether it’s needed in order to address our own problems.
And so on.
#147
You noticed the plus sign in ‘Atheism+,’ right? It means something is—to use what I realise is a highly technical term you may not have met before—’added’ to basic atheism.
#149
You are joking, I hope. Is ‘not a dog’ also part of the definition of ‘cat’?
The confusion arises, I suspect, over what “means” and “being” mean.
The word “atheist” means “not believing in god or gods”, but being an atheist means more than “not believing in god or gods”, because PZ’s contention — which I agree with — is that beliefs don’t exist in isolation.
Would you argue that beliefs do exist in isolation?
I actually lean a little more toward agreeing that “secular humanism”, as a term, might better describe the overarching set of beliefs and values are being arguing for. But I also agree that “movement atheism” — or perhaps rather, being a movement atheist (someone who thinks that atheists should join together and promote certain social goals regarding atheism) — already means more than “not believing in god or gods”.
Why? You might just as easily disbelieve in gods, yet also think there is utility in using the appeal to religious authority to enforce social order. Atheism means not believing in gods and not believing in gods ONLY. It has nothing to say about the morality of appealing to the authority of those gods you think don’t exist.
If anyone needs an example of a hardcore, die-hard dictionary atheist, Bea Essartu fills the role perfectly. Xe is bound and determined that atheism means only “disbelief in gods.” All you social justice types need to keep your dirty, disgusting social justice away from hir pure, pristine, resolute atheism.
@150 Bea
Then using your definition of implication, I would say there are no implications to atheism. One could similarly say there are no implications to theism.
From what I’ve seen, dictionary atheists fall into three general groups. The cranky pedant, who is really liberal, but doesn’t like what they consider imprecision. The other two fall into the liberturd and MRA/PUA categories, where they can only feel good about themselves if they can look down on others. Like non-liberturds, women, POC, LGBT, and any other groups they have xenophobia for.
Given that, why would one want to be dictionary atheist except for self-serving reasons?
I think I see the point on morality even if I do not agree because it says nothing more than just atheist. Your idea that atheism implicates you must get morality from basis other than god or gods then goes to infinite list of things that you must get from something other than god and gods. It adds no meaning to just saying atheist to me but I do see the point and it seems to be just wording and not important. Same for “blue” includes “not red” so “not red” is not an implication. Not important to argue about when the real disagreement is the specifics. Some people say that atheism implicates equalism or feminism and being nice and helping minorities but this is the part where there is large disagreement starting before Ayn Rand made opposite conclusion. If you are an atheist and asshole you are still an atheist if you lack belief in god or gods. If you are atheist and sexist you are still an atheist. If you are atheist and racist you are still atheist. The lack of belief in god or gods does not implicate specific ideas on questions of how to behave or the difference between sexes or races. That is source of rift or schism I believe from what I have read.
Bea,
Theistic movements are concerned with values and morality. Therefore, atheistic movements are concerned with values and morality.
Unless, for some bizarre reason, you think the very idea of morality itself was invented by theism.
You already went off the rails right here. Again. What are, in fact, the implications, no matter how or whether our beliefs correspond (or don’t) to those facts in the world?
There aren’t any supernatural people, places, things, powers, events, processes, etc. Thus, they don’t do anything, because they aren’t around: prayer doesn’t work, magic healing crystals don’t work, spirits don’t reveal things to us, people don’t have magic powers, pets don’t have magic powers, plants and rocks and particles don’t have magic powers, astrologers and psychics have no access to any kind of nonphysical goings-on in reality, etc. Another thing that follows from this line of thought is that there’s also no fundamental teleology: things don’t exist for some cosmic purpose, which depends on a supernatural agent like a god. So, for instance, women don’t exist in order to serve men. Groups of people (races, genders, classes, countries, etc.) aren’t “chosen” to be superior or inferior to one another, because some deity has a plan in mind for them. Humans generally aren’t meant to rule over the planet and do whatever the like to it. And so forth. The facts are that we are not actually in those sorts of worlds, in which such things would be the case and we would have to think about the way to act on the basis of those facts. We are in a place where that stuff, from the word “go,” is not even on the table, because nothing in our experiences correspond to any of it.
When you say “the one idea I have seen…” then are you saying none of this is at all familiar to you? Or are you saying that none of this was on your mind, because you didn’t bother to think of it that way?
But if you’re going to tell me that all of that, or even any single piece of it, constitutes “no implications” whatsoever, you haven’t been paying attention to what atheism is about. Your idea of atheism is literally meaningless, if it says literally nothing about anything like that. But in fact atheism isn’t meaningless. People do mean things when they say that there are gods or that there aren’t gods — things like the fucking laundry list of bad thinking that I described above. And that isn’t even the half of it, but it’s enough to stop there.
I want to say thanks to chris61 for disagreeing with me nicely. You made a good point with opposite of what I said for atheism and I move towards your idea.
Please try it again Saad with the word “movement” as I am talking about the implications of belief not what groups of people with the belief like to do.
Bea Essartu, would you describe yourself as a “movement atheist”? Do you in fact belong to atheist organizations? Do you try to counter religious hegemony in politics and in schools?
This is to consciousness razor. I think I now agree with the idea that there are questions or categories or issues that are affected by belief or non-belief in god or gods. Thank you for helping me with this part but that does not seem to be the problem that makes rift or schism or make people send emails to P Z Myers.
I am moving the goalposts now!
The disagreement is on what the specific implication would be as some say be equalist or feminist and not sexist and racist but others say that opposites are also possible for atheists. I am of course not saying that I am for the opposite so please no more labels for me. I am saying that atheism does not have the specific implications that are in the original post and atheism+.
Bea Essartu #157:
Well there you go. You are now discussing what the implications of atheism are or might be. That you disagree with someone as to what those implications are, and what we should do about them is, for the moment, immaterial. You are tacitly admitting that lack of belief in gods has implications. Well done. You just agreed with the OP.
@158 Saad
I would argue theistic movements are specifically about defining which are the ‘right’ values and moral beliefs. If atheistic movements are concerned with the same things as theistic movements that seems to me to play into the idea that atheism is just another religion.
I do many activities that are from my atheism as much as I can and be safe. I ask for secularism in all government mostly. I also do activities for women but this is not because of atheism and many others with me on this are religious. I learn that when you do atheism and feminism at the same time it does not work well as many people run away from atheists.
This is to Daz. You are saying that the original post and atheism+ only say implications without specifics? I need go make more quotes now?
Can you please answer my question, Bea Essartu? I am curious about your response. I will repeat it here for your convenience.
Again, atheism means not believing in gods. If we accept that that’s all it means, then we must also accept that there’s nothing about atheism that says that we cannot appeal to an authority which we personally believe to be false or imaginary. That (not appealing to false authority) is an ethical value which you have “imposed on atheism”, to borrow the language of the dictionary atheists who have come round here before.
Uh… sure, I think. These fuckers don’t care at all about the definition of atheism. They are racists, misogynists, Randians and assorted other fuckers, coming up with a flimsy smokescreen which suits their nefarious purposes. That’s so patently obvious it hardly needs to be said. However, if they wanted to establish that they’re right and we’re wrong, then all of this definition of atheism bullshit is irrelevant. The only thing this does is (if anyone actually buys it) protect them from criticism — like a creationist, if you buy into their claims that they’re doing legitimate “creation science” or that scientists are “dogmatic.”
We’re in one world. So there is some fact of the matter about what the world is like and how we should act in one situation or another. I think it’s true that women should be treated equally to men (for example), and I think I get this information from the way the world actually is. There’s nothing incoherent about such a claim. If you’re not comfortable with realism like this, then the issue isn’t specific to atheism anymore or what it entails. And that’s whole other kettle of fish.
Bea, #161
Theist: God will punish those who murder.
Atheist: God doesn’t exist, but murder still feels wrong. Hmm, religion doesn’t seem to be a trustworthy guide for morality or ethics. But acknowledging god’s nonexistence alone didn’t seem to explain or magically solve any of the moral issues of the world either. I guess it’s up to us humans to work them out without appeals to superstition.
Atheism as nothing but lack of belief in god would only make sense if religion was nothing but belief in god. Since religion is a package deal, atheism must be as well (otherwise it isn’t anything worth talking about).
See Daz’s #124:
Bea Essartu #167:
Not exactly. The writer has their own ideas of what the implications are. The main thrust though is that it is hypocritical to claim—as many have—that we shouldn’t even think of advancing certain ideas as being implied by atheism, on the grounds that atheism has no implications, whilst simultaneously advancing ones own ideas on the grounds that they are implied by atheism. [See my #124.]
We are saying ‘these issues, we think, are directly implied by an atheistic worldview.’ Feel free to disagree with that premise; but it would be hypocritical for anyone involved in movement-atheism, which already deals with other issues implied by atheism, to do so on the grounds that implications of atheism do not exist.
@chris61
Atheism and religion are words that while they have different meanings, are both descriptions of humans. Religion objectively exists and exists all over the place. Despite the fact that the narratives are false, it’s deep and important because it has to do with human social instincts and behaviors.
Just like atheism has something to do with human social instincts and behaviors, because atheists are humans. There is a common denominator that is at the heart of this debate. A shared feature of atheists and religionists that is an objective fact independent of any definitions.
[…]
OK, so the general movement might be called equalist (or equalitarian, or egalitarian). Promoting secularism in government is to oppose religious bias in government; promoting feminism is to oppose bias against women; promoting anti-racism is to oppose ethnic bias.
But anti-racists should not be sexists or religious bigots (and should support feminism and secularism even if that’s not their main focus); feminists should not be religious bigots or racists (and should support secularism and anti-racism even if that’s not their main focus). Would you not then agree that movement atheists — secularists — should not be sexists or racists (and should support feminism and anti-racism even if that’s not their main focus)?
Yes, and that’s not good. It’s not good that there is bias against atheists among feminists, and it’s also not good that there’s bias against feminists among atheists.
Do you agree?
chris61,
But atheistic movements are concerned with many of the same things as religion. Why does something have to be a religion to be concerned with community, charity, family, education, etc. Both religion and atheist movements deal with those topics.
This is to consciousness razor. What you wrote makes me think that the confusion between atheism and movement atheism is the real problem. Atheism without any other label does not care if people who disagree with you on everything else are also atheist. You either have a belief in god or gods or you do not. Movement atheism is a social thing and much more than just being atheist and now who else is under this label makes a very big deal because you do not want to be the same as someone you do not like or respect or worse. I am saying that we would all agree if we were good at talking about the same thing at the same time and did not answer question about atheism with movement atheism or answer question about movement atheism with atheism. This brings us to rift or schism where the opposite from your specifics of movement atheism is given nasty label of dictionary atheism as if the people who are not with you in your specific are not atheists any more. This is what I am saying is not good and maybe because the specifics of your movement atheism do not have basis is atheism without extra label you should stop saying that it does. You are atheist and also this that and other while other people are equal atheists but with different specifics. You confuse things by saying that your specifics come from your atheism because they do not. They have other basis.
I must go but I will try to come back tomorrow to talk to Owlmirror as this sounds interesting.
I’d also point out that a great part of the Big Schism™ began with and still concerns the treatment of women and minorities within the atheism movement. Whether one agrees that feminism, LGBT rights, racism and so on within society at large are within the purview of movement-atheism or not, failure to address such concerns within our own community, at the very least, would be plainly stupid. Not to mention hypocritical as all hell. If you ever criticise a church for maltreatment of a group, whilst continuing to sideline or actively discriminate against that group yourself, then, well, there’s a word for that…
@172 Brony
If atheism implies a particular set of moral values (as PZ seems to suggest in his OP), how does atheism differ from a non-theistic religion?
Bea, #175
Show me (or even present a hypothetical case) of an atheist who is able to avoid contact with social issues for the entirety of his or her life and you will have shown me a “only no gods” atheist.
Like I said, theism is concerned with morality: Don’t kill because god. Atheism says no god. Atheism is left with don’t kill because _________. Can’t leave that shit incomplete.
Or a better example is theism says mistreat certain people because god. Atheism says no god. Atheism is left wondering how to treat those certain people.
But here’s the thing. A lot of confused people (who I won’t otherwise label) waltz in here and tell me (and others) that I’m saying they’re not atheists. I’m not. I’m saying that they’re not being consistent and not properly accounting for all of the facts, given the nonexistence of gods. Sure, they’re atheists: they don’t believe in gods. I don’t care about that. I care that they’re not following through with it, given the fact that gods don’t exist, to see where that should actually lead our thinking when it comes to various other topics. Their beliefs about that other stuff are mistaken, given their actual beliefs that gods don’t exist. We can talk about “movements” and such, whether they do or don’t belong or how I want to act toward them, etc., after that first basic fucking distinction has been sorted out.
@179 Saad
Theism has no implications as to what a person’s views on social issues are either – some religions may be interpreted to say mistreat certain people because god but a belief in god per se doesn’t imply that you believe people should be mistreated (although aligning yourself with certain religions may have that implication).
chris61 #178:
Umm. Does PZ say that? It (or at least, the sum of his posts on the topic) reads more to me like “Here’s what I think it implies. Now, we can argue about that, but please stop claiming that it implies nothing at all.”
chris61, #181
I think that’s what this entire discussion is about: Theism and atheism as they actually exist. Not just the words themselves.
As it exists, theism has very strong implications on a person’s views on social issues.
I guess I’m just chopped liver to Bea Essartu. =(
Let me see if I can say this in small words:
Atheism (the belief that there are no gods) does not inherently lead to any other beliefs. An atheist can be a raving misogynist or a radical feminist, a racist or an anti-racist, vehemently pro-LGBT rights or viciously homophobic.
PZ’s stance, and the stance of many people here, is that while atheism doesn’t necessarily lead the atheist to espouse certain other stances, it should.
The A+ stance, generally speaking, is “now that you’ve rejected god, how about we talk about the gross things that goddism has made in society and work on fixing them?”
@183 Saad
A belief in god may well be the source of a theist’s views on social issues but how it influences their views will differ from one person to another. I know plenty of people who identify as Christians who also identify as anti-racist or feminist and who argue that it is their belief in god that makes them identify that way.
You still aren’t getting it. When somebody loudly proclaims they are a Xian, what is your immediate reaction? My immediate reaction is to look for signs of political dog-whistles for bigotry, misogyny, and xenphobia. More often than not, they aren’t far away. Those who do good deeds don’t loudly proclaim that they are Xian.
At the moment, when somebody proclaims they are an atheists, the theists, strong or weak, presume a criminal since there is nothing to prevent them from doing whatever the hell they want. We atheists need to change that impression. By promoting social justice across the board, it implies we have a strong moral/ethical system.
My question to you, is why do you want to fall into the trap of not showing the Xians you have a strong moral/ethical notion, and even if it doesn’t agree with theirs, it is based on something other than the principle you can do anything you want?
A dictionary atheist is someone who hurts the atheist movement, and atheists in general, by promoting atheists as having no moral/ethical core. Whereas atheism+ shows the world we do have principles.
@187 Nerd
I don’t necessarily assume that a proclamation of being a Christian means a person is bigoted, misogynistic or xenophobic because like I said I know many Christians who are none of those things.
I also don’t agree that “dictionary atheists” are promoting atheists as having no moral or ethical core, they are simply saying that their moral/ethical core isn’t defined by their atheism (as in @45).
Does the term “dictionary atheist” mean a person who claims the nonexistence of gods has no implications, at least when it comes to ethical or social implications? That’s what I’ve seen people claim, right here in this thread and in various other places for a long time now. That’s the group I refer to when I use that term, however they might identify themselves.
But you’ve moved the discussion somewhere else. When somebody says something like their ethics “isn’t defined by their atheism,” that could simply mean it isn’t entirely determined by that one thing (much less necessarily for every other atheist, as a function of their possibly confused/mistaken beliefs about that thing or about something else). But that’s very different from claiming that thing in fact has no such implications whatsoever. It just is the case that such people are saying what they are saying — we don’t need to agree or disagree about something like that, and you’re just wrong if you think your disagreeing with simple facts like that carries any weight behind it.
Do you think we should try to be clear about that, if it’s worth our time to express our agreement or disagreement with one another about something along these lines?
@Esteleth 185
You sure that’s true?
It would be interesting to see if any studies have been done that indicate whether or not atheists tend to be liberal or conservative, for example.
Ditto, but the loudmouths are the bigots. Which is why my first impression is what it is.
Either they promote something, or they don’t. If they don’t, they hate good, will rape at will, steal etc., etc., since there is nothing to hold them back, by a majority of theists out there. Which hurts the movement, unless there is sufficient and consistent evidence to show otherwise. What are you doing to show otherwise?
Just a heads-up:
When quoting, the <q> tag, when used on Pharyngula, produces the comic-sans ‘piss-take’ quote. Assuming you don’t actually want to be snarky, you should use <blockquote>.
pharyngsd,
Whether or not atheists tend to hold certain beliefs is beside the point: the attitude that there is no supernatural does not automatically lead to a person holding specific other attitudes. It of course can, and some patterns can be observed in which attitudes/beliefs/stances are common. That said, these are the result of the person in question making inferences: “because I have concluded that there are no gods, I have also concluded ______” or “because I have concluded that there are no gods and because I have also concluded ______, I conclude ______.”
To make an analogy:
The understanding that the sky is blue does not automatically lead to any other conclusion. However, it can be used together with knowledge about what different gasses do to light and knowledge about what wavelengths of light the sun emits to make conclusions about what the atmosphere is made of.
While y’all are at it, consider Libby Anne’s latest. A writer on the Gospel Coalition wrote a piece about Ferguson, racism and police brutality, and the commenters there laid into him for, among other things, writing a piece that had nothing to do with spreading Gospel. She screencapped numerous responses, a few of which I’m transcribing here.
Evangelicals of the Gospel Coalition Respond to Ferguson
@chris61
Seeing this requires looking at society from a purely human standpoint. Or at least the best one that any of us can manage.
The atheist community is a group of people with a particular history and culture that formed a politically active group for socially convenient reasons. They did not like the effects of religion despite the fact that the definition of atheist says nothing about how they should feel about religion. The fights against creationism were a historical artifact of pissed off scientists who became atheists for the same reasons that most of the elite scientists are atheists, human social behavior that is not limited to atheists. Some of that history and culture is from the skeptical community, but that is not an atheist phenomena as there are religious skeptics that compartmentalize.
Our currents values and morals are the result of historical contingency and collections of ideas amassed for their usefulness to humans. Just like religious groups.
The narratives of Religion are not true. What we are left with is a collection of stories that attach to group emotions, traditions that provide social information used to do things, rituals that bind the group in shared activity to emotionally bond, in-group language to enhance group bonds and make things more difficult for outside groups, and more. All of that involves the best and worst of us from genocidal horrors to selfless caretakers. We try to have narratives that are true (many of the social ones are utter crap), but outside of the first sentence this paragraph matches a description of atheists as a community. This is how I see religion, and it applies to us precisely the same. That part of their brain that has “god” in it? It’s going to correlate with things involving big emotionally charged information with some overlap with authorities and group persuasion. That is going to apply to us too but it just won’t have a super parent/judge/avenger/savior/etc as an easy means of group persuasion. We will find other ways to sway emotions in those areas because we are primates.
Those people that became atheists or are from families that rejected a majority religious culture for real reasons. Those reasons are the real thing with emotional force in this society and that is one means for how I sort the atheists that I meet. Defining ourselves by what we are not contains no information that allows any social or political activity. We are quite naturally sorting by what we have in common in terms of motivations, ethics, morals and actual behavior.
The difference between us and the religious is a thin as the skin on an apple. We have different methods to assemble a narrative and we hope that these will make us correct and consistent with reality, and we have better information. That’s it. We will still appeal to reality as we present it to persuade, scare, threaten or other ways of trying to change each others behavior. We still have members willing to mythologize about what they or others saw or did for other people. We still have members that manipulate, lie, and abuse other people. What we are is not enough and learning from what we share with the religious (a huge amount) does not require doing more than finding a common denominator to understand how human primates do the social thing.
A word like atheist or religion on it’s own is as useless outside of
Ignore that last cut-off sentence in 196. I meant to delete it.
@ Brony
But that would seem to the root of the problem. Atheists apparently don’t agree about what they have in common in terms of motivations, ethics etc. and indeed don’t even agree that they should agree on those issues.
chris61: The operative word is “sorting”. As in, Brony is, quite obviously, not assuming that all atheists have the same motivations, ethics, morals, and actual behaviors. In fact, they are stating the opposite. There is no need for a consensus.
Why does there need to be a consensus, when some of the fuckwits of dictionary definition are liberturds and MRA/PUA folks who need to be minimized for the movement to grow as a moral force? You are just being contrary, and not asking, what are you doing to promote the positive image of atheists. Dictionary atheists can’t do that….
chris61 @181:
Broadly speaking that’s true, but specific flavors of religions do carry implications as to what a person’s views on social issues.
That shit above? That’s part of that mans religious baggage. That’s shit he believes and finds support for in his religious views. If he were to become an atheist tomorrow, should he still continue being a homophobic shitstain? Or should no longer believing in god cause him to look at those beliefs he holds that stem from or are affected by his former religious views?
@chris61, #178:
Good point!
Also, if a restaurant implies a particular set of moral values (and it does, by engaging in capitalism), how does a restaurant differ from a religion?
Oh, oh! And if medicine implies a particular set of moral values (and it certainly fucking does), how does UCLA medical school differ in any way at all from the Vatican?
Wait, wait: If staying at home to parent your children implies a particular set of moral values (and it does!), how is stay-at-home parenting different from a cargo cult?
wow! I’m getting good at this! I just have to find one similarity between any two things, and PRESTO! the two things are interchangeable!
I can’t wait to sell my finger paintings for millions of bucks because **Van Gogh Also Used Paint!**
This is so awesome!
@ 201 Tony
I think that would depend on whether his former religion was the cause of his moral views or how he chose to justify those views. If it was the cause of his views then I expect he would rethink his views. On the other hand if the religion was how he chose to justify his views, there is no reason why he couldn’t retain the views and adopt a new justification for them.
What the fuck? No. Nobody should be a homophobic shitstain. It does not depend, for fuck’s sake. There is no justification for it, and “how he chose to justify” this shit also does not make one single fucking whit of a difference, because those are simply wrong. Get your head out of your fucking ass and talk about reality. Don’t give us yet more bullshit about the kind of bullshit rationalizations people use to believe all sorts of incoherent nonsense. But after this thread, assuming you’ve been reading it while still saying such garbage, maybe it’s already too late for you…. You’ve been sucked into the vortex of sophistry and there may be no way out. Have fun with your bigot friends and their chosen “justifications.”
chris61 @203:
In both cases, there are implications to him becoming an atheist.
Saad #170
Just quoting for truth.
@205 Tony
But do those implications include a requirement that he adopt a new set of moral values? That is the question I thought you were asking.
chris61:
I still see no reason for anyone to take you seriously when you have asserted that atheism is indistinguishable from religion if it has moral value implications.
Defend that assertion, and moreover, defend the idea that we should actually engage with yet another person asserting (albeit in fancier language than that employed by some rubes) that atheism is a religion.
chris61:
This sort of thing has has been hashed over several times already in this thread and others. What do you mean by “requirement that he adopt” something? I’ll offer some options:
1) That person is determined, by the laws of physics and the conditions stipulated, to adopt it. If anyone else were in the same conditions (i.e., believing there are no gods), they are also thus required. It’s physically “necessary” that a person like that behaves that way. We are, for no good reason at all, assuming these fairly vague macroscopic properties about beliefs tell us enough to guarantee this.
2) There is a law somewhere, or a group of atheist goons, which makes it so atheists are “required” to believe everything the law claims is “implied” by atheism. But this law (or its enforcement) need have no simple relationship to any factual circumstances which actually obtain in reality about the alleged implications. Maybe these laws are totally stupid and arbitrary, but you’re “required” to think like this because if you don’t you’ll pay for it somehow.
3) There is a correct position to have about what is entailed by a factual belief (like the nonexistence of gods, e.g.). You are thus “required” or “compelled” (in an extremely loose sense), on pain of irrationality, to believe things that are consistent with one another. But no one will come haunt you in your sleep about it, and you’re certainly capable of not doing what is “required” of you in this sense.
Just pick anything like that. With a little more detail, say what kind of condition you were thinking about here.
@chris61
Absolutely! Given that at this point the primary thing unifying us due to historical contingency is a simple lack of belief this situation seems obvious in retrospect. It’s also not really a problem for me. There are a lot of atheists that I have less in common with than many religious folks. Quite a few of those atheists can fuck off. They are in every effective sense not in my community. A simple shared disbelief is not even remotely enough for me to think more of them than I do a member of the fox news loving set, the homophobic set, or any other socially regressive set.
chris61 @201:
I apologize for not phrasing my #201 correctly (bc I can see why you thought that was what I was asking). My intent was to point out that if the pastor chose to become an atheist tomorrow, there would be implications to that decision.
@Esteleth 193.
The inability to predict an individual response doesn’t eliminate a correlation. E.g. Just because you can’t say that smoking automatically leads to lung cancer for an individual smoker doesn’t mean that smoking isn’t positively correlated with lung cancer.
It may very well be that certain kinds of values, like the need to protect the weak, correlate (either negatively or positively) very strongly with atheism. It would be an interesting area of study.
pharygsd @212:
Perhaps you missed this note from Daz @192:
The tag you used @212 to quote Esteleth is the snark tag around here. Is that what you were aiming for in response to her?
Chris61, you appear to be making a very elemental is-ought mistake.
Correlations in group identities in the world (the “is” that you appear to be interested in talking about) are a rather different thing from the abstract theoretical consequences of abandoning belief in the supernatural (the “ought” which is the topic of discussion here).
@208 Crip Dyke
I apologize then for having left the wrong impression. I didn’t intend that as an assertion but a question.
@214 SallyStrange
I am trying to understand why abandoning a belief in the supernatural ought to lead one to a particular set of values and who gets to determine that set of values.
Easy Peasy. One chucks religious based values, and looks at the real world for those values. Your values don’t have to agree with PZ, but if you start with certain axioms that are not present in religion, like all humans are people and members of your tribe, you will come close. Religion is about defining your tribe and hostility toward others.
chris61, #216
The same reason rejecting astrology leads us (forces us) to look for better ways to address the concerns of our lives (when to buy a house, when to have children, etc). When we realize that planets don’t give a shit about our pregnancies, we realize that we ourselves have to make those decisions. When we realize there’s no god character to tell us how to behave, we realize that we ourselves have to make those decisions. The only way to avoid this is to kill yourself instantly after becoming an atheist.
Atheism doesn’t answer the question “Who gets to determine the values.” It answers the question, “Who doesn’t get to determine the values.
I am trying to understand why you are trying to understand this, as it’s really not complicated at all.
There’s no particular set of values that it leads to, without other accompanying premises/assumptions.
You get to determine that set of values. As do I and every other human on the planet.
JAQing off in public is impolite.
I am trying to understand why abandoning a belief in the supernatural ought to lead one to a particular set of values and who gets to determine that set of values.
You (and the other querulous questioner upthread) really sound like you’re looking for excuses NOT to make your atheism meaningful in any way, and NOT to feel any sense of responsibility arising from becoming an atheist. It kinda sounds like you’re trying to treat your atheism as something separate from the rest of you, whicnh is silly: it’s one of many salient features of a whole and complex person, and there’s no need to disconnect it from the other parts. That just sounds like Dr. Atheist & Mr/Ms Person With Values: which is the “real” you? Which is in charge? Can you keep the wrong one from coming out at the formal ball?
If you don’t want to feel responsible, we can’t force you to do so, so there’s no reason for you to keep on badgering others with this nitpicking. If you want to wear your atheism as some sort of identity-badge, then you at least have to take a good look at what other people will think when they see your shiny new badge: will they be impressed, respectful and curious, or will they just roll their eyes and not care?
If you have a set of values, then find other people who share those values, and do things together to enact those values. If you don’t, then there’s no need for you to bother us — and no need for us to bother with you, since that would likely make you a rather uninteresting person to hang around with.
Why are you even bothering to ask such questions? Perhaps you should instead be asking what your values actually ARE, and what you should do to make your life better. If your atheism leads you to do something you think is right for yourself and/or others, then just do it already. If something else leads you to do the same thing, then, again, just do it already. If you’re doing the right thing, chances are no one else will care to pick through your motivations. I’m a Pagan and a Democrat…should my paganism lead me to be a Democrat, or vice versa? Where does my taste in science-fiction come into all this? Tune in next week to find out WHO BLOODY CARES?!
Atheist or not, you’re going to need to decide which moral principles you will act on, and which activities you will fill your life with. Just make the damn decisions, own them, and deal with the consequences.
Good morning. The argument that atheism implicates specific ideas of morality now is depending on the idea of religion being the opposite of atheism for example: “Atheism as nothing but lack of belief in god would only make sense if religion was nothing but belief in god.” This is incorrect because the opposite of atheism is theism and theism does not implicate a specific religion and does not even implicate any religion at all. I agree with one comment by Saad that atheism only says that one option for answering any question is ruled out because you can’t refer to a god or gods to answer the question. This is not very useful because it is similar to the idea that rocks cannot think makes them not useful too. Making a very long list of the things that you cannot use to answer a question is not a good method for answering the question soon because ruling out using god or gods to answer a question does not tell you anything about the specific answer. You may end up agreeing or disagreeing with the conclusion of any or all religions and that is irrelevant.
This is to Raging Bee. It may seem that I am trying to make atheism less related to normal life but I am trying to do the opposite because I am trying to prevent atheism from being hurt by ideas that have nothing to do with atheism so that atheism can do the one thing it should which is secularism. If you ruin atheism by making it part of something political instead of the simple idea that there is no reason to believe in a god or gods so put that book down then you could make things worse for everyone by keeping religion part of society for longer time by using invalid argument against it which makes people dig in heels harder.
See, YOU have defined atheism as meaning one thing, secularism. I don’t agree, as secularism is only part of what it should mean. Your idea is limited, and doesn’t address questions like “are gays born that way, or is it a choice?”. This is why you are getting no traction, nor will you, here, with such a limited outlook.
Bea, #222
If you love your dictionary so much, why don’t you marry it?
Theism only exists as specific religions. Start living in the real world.
Bea Essartu, you ignored my question yesterday, and my question is directly related to the unfounded assertion you just made, i.e., that atheism “should do” secularism.
On what basis do you make that assertion? As I said, there is nothing about not believing in gods that requires you to encourage others to not believe in gods. There is nothing about not believing in gods that requires you to value secularism. Why are you imposing secularism on atheism? Why is your imposition of an external, non-atheism-related, political idea like secularism not “ruining” atheism while others’ imposition of external, non-atheism-related political ideas like feminism or anti-racism do “ruin” atheism?
Bea #222
It’s quite useful because it tells us, “Holy shit, there is no daddy to tell us what to do! We gotta do it ourselves.”
SallyStrange,
I have a feeling these will get ignored again…
Saad–
There are theists who aren’t specifically religious–my mother and my boyfriend are two examples–but they are the exception rather than the rule. And the theists who are part of a religion most definitely do have a package deal of god-belief, ideology, and rules. Bea Essartu is indeed not living in the real world if they think that this isn’t the case.
Me too. Sad, isn’t it? I think I really am getting at the crux of the issue, at least as far as Bea Essartu is concerned, yet they persist in not engaging with my question. We could be having an excellent discussion, but they playing. Or so it seems.
(emphasis added)
This is very confused. Secularism is already political — as I pointed in #173, and which you seemed to agree with. It’s also implicit in your own words @#166: “I ask for secularism in all government mostly.” (emphasis added)
What happened overnight that caused you to write this?
Why do you use the word “hurt” and “ruin”?
What is the relationship between not believing in god or gods and the empirical question of why some people are homosexuals? Please do not just say again that atheism says do not ask god for the answer to this question because there are millions of other people and rocks and trees that you should not ask either.
SallyStrange, #229
Oh, I stand corrected then.
And yeah, Bea can’t possibly use such cases to point out that religion is just a belief in god.
Also, atheism as it exists in the real world is largely a response to religion anyway, not to some valueless philosophical thing called theism. Only in a dictionary is the opposite of atheism merely theism. In real life, the opposing ideas are atheism and religion.
Overnight I tried to be as open as I can to the idea that atheism implicates more than I thought before. The only place where I could find something was how much religion should be used for government so I say that working for secularism is implication. I am not very confident in this other than to say that I do not mean that a particular form of secularism should be the goal only that government should be determined by objective data and the lack of any evidence for a god or gods then rules out anything from theism for government.
What is the relationship between not believing in god or gods and the empirical question of why some people are heterosexuals?
This is to Saad. We need to decide if we are going to use arguments such as person X or religion X or society X is bad and X believes or argues for Y so we should not have Y because X is bad or if we are going to be rational about this. I would be an atheist even if every religion with basis in theism were very good and did nothing bad to anyone.
Deliberately being obtuse again. Religion says homosexuality is bad as a value. Once religious values are tossed out, you must develop your own values. So, are homosexuals real people to be treated as fully human, or are they subhuman monsters per religious values? Your choice cricket. You must make a choice.
Bea #235
Where did I do such a thing? If I did, point it out and I’ll correct it. I would deem the thing Y to be bad first before I would call person X bad for arguing for it.
Me too. I don’t get your point here.
Bea Essartu @ 223
Naive rubbish. Atheism has implications beyond secularism (which as already pointed out is political anyway). I am an atheist therefore… it’s up to you to finish that sentence. If all you get to is non-belief in a deity then what good are you? Not believing in a deity will shape the way you approach the world. You say you don’t want atheism hurt by ideas that have nothing to do with it but atheism should be where you start, not where you finish.
This is BS. Everybody reads your posts and can comment on them. There are no private conversations.
For clarity, please use blockquotes rather than identifying people
<blockquote>Material to be quoted</blockquote>
produces:
Nerd of Redhead, #236
This actually sums up nicely what I’ve been trying to get at in all those posts.
Once you declare atheism (in response to surrounding theism/religion), you must then find your own answers to the plethora of moral issues that so far religion had been addressing on its own. You must. There’s no other option. So your atheism made you answer those moral questions. It had implications.
Whoops. I did miss that note from Daz. I had no idea there was such a thing as a “snark tag.”
Thanks for reinforcing that, Tony.
Sorry about that, Esteleth. I certainly didn’t intend to make fun of anything you said.
*ahem*
This is a test to see if my posts are visible to Bea Essartu.
Hey! Bea Essartu! You’re a pig-ignorant shitwaffle! Fuck you, you warthog-faced, pus-eating douchecanoe!
*sips tea, waits*
SallyStrange@ 243
Can’t speak for Bea but I liked it. *snort* Shitwaffle. Enjoy the tea.
SallyStrange
What kind of tea?
I’m having rosehip and hibiscus.
Black, with lemon and sugar.
Cheers.
I am trying to prevent atheism from being hurt by ideas that have nothing to do with atheism…
First, why should one idea be isolated from other ideas? Did it ever occur to you that ideas are more effective when interacting with other ideas, rather than isolated in a vacuum? If you are an atheist, that’s not a thing in your brain that functions separately from the rest of it — it’s a salient feature of a person with a complex and interrelated set of ideas, priorities, experiences, etc.
And second, how do you decide which ideas are or are not connected to atheism? If a person becomes an atheist for one or more particular reasons (and how many people become atheists for no reason at all?), then that person will (at the very least) connect atheism to whatever other circumstances, events or reasons led him/her to become an atheist. Who are you to say that person is “hurting” atheism?
…so that atheism can do the one thing it should which is secularism.
Okay, but secularism has general and very specific moral/political implications, by definition, such as laws, educational and governing institutions free of religious influence, separation of church(es) and state(s), freedom of religious or irreligious expression, fighting religious discrimination and intolerance, and making public-life decisions free of religious thinking. So right there you’ve admitted that atheism leads to a certain moral/political agenda.
Now if you really don’t want to do anything WRT any of those secular causes, or any other cause, we can’t force you to care, so you don’t have to bother us looking for justifications. Just don’t expect us to have anything to say to you, or care what you think. The last thing atheists or atheism need is more isolation from the concerns of people in the real world.
Bea, #223
I had totally missed this and just saw it now thanks to Raging Bee.
So you get to decide which unrelated value gets associated with atheism (solely a lack of belief in god)? How does “there is no god” mean you must now strive for secularism? Secularism has nothing to do with your weird theoretical definition atheism either. You’re being a total hypocrite.
Second, how in the world does atheism get hurt by feminism? You’re starting to sound like part of the problem.
I will try one last time on certain point. You say that once religion is thrown out you must come up with new way of deciding if homosexuality is good bad or neutral. OK. Now please show me how the absence of evidence of god or gods helps you decide which is correct without referring to religion because we just ruled that out.
You must come up with new way of deciding if heterosexuality is good bad or neutral.
—
Want some more tea, SallyStrange?
Bea Essartu, post #249
Now please show me how the absence of evidence of god or gods helps you conclude that a secular government is the best kind of government.
Or, just keep ignoring me, like the intellectual coward you are shaping up to be.
———————————–
Cheers, Chigau, I think I will have a refill.
Crumpet? Scone? It’s nice over here in Invisible Land.
SallyStrange
I’m making bread but I’d love a scone in the meantime.
Let’s just note that atheism, being simply the lack of belief in god or gods, nothing more and nothing less, is incapable of being hurt by anything, whether an idea or a person.
Another thought:
Why one last time? How odd.
This is pretty simple, actually.
Premise 1: Homosexuality is morally bad because God (via his earthly lieutenants) decrees that it is morally bad.
Premise 2: God does not exist.
Premise 3: There is no evidence that people having romantic and sexual relationships with persons of the same gender causes any discernable harm apart from the normal amount of heartbreak found in heterosexual relationships.
Conclusion: Homosexuality is morally neutral.
Voila, easy!
Now, Bea Essartu, are you going to answer the question I have posed? Or are you going to continue to ignore my question, like the intellectual coward you appear to be?
If atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods, then how did you connect your atheism to secularism? For the 4th (5th?) time, the mere lack of belief in gods by no means obligates that you reject religiously-informed or theocratic forms of government.
@Bea Essartu: Do you no longer believe that egalitarianism is the value that should inform politics and shape how society works?
I am also drinking tea.
Bea Essartu @ 223
I’ll add my voice to the chorus of people trying to get an answer out of you on this: why should atheism do secularism?
Sally already answered this but:
Step 1) God sez gay is bad.
Step 2) God doesn’t exist.
3) Step 1 is invalid.
Now please show me how the absence of evidence of god or gods helps you decide which is correct without referring to religion because we just ruled that out.
Um…the absence of evidence for God(s) further reinforces the idea that we have to figure out what’s right and wrong without relying on any religious doctrine or the alleged word of any God(s), because there’s no evidence that those sources are valid. Not sure if that answers your question, but that’s my stab at it.
Things a lack of belief in gods has to do with according to Bea:
Pledge of allegiance
Church tax breaks
High school biology classes
Hobby Lobby
Things a lack of belief in gods does NOT have to do with according to Bea:
Women
LGBT people
Black people
Poor people
Bea, what it is about being an atheist that suggests you should participate in conversations despite having absolutely no background information or familiarity with the topic at hand?
Easy Peasy deaf one. Look at the real world, and the real facts, and ask the question “are homosexuals full human beings, with the rights and privileges thereof?” You question yourself without reference to religion. Just the facts, and make up your mind based on that and your innate preferences.
Not selling your idea, which is too limited. You won’t see the consequences of being an atheist, because you don’t want to. They exists no matter what you claim.
Bea @223:
Ah, so you approve of atheists (not atheism…the philosophy of atheism doesn’t *do* anything) advocating for secularism. So you approve of atheists advocating for that social justice issue, but not others. Just like other dictionary atheists.
I’m glad I was able to understand something you wrote.
I am now drinking lemon-ginger tea.
Bea @233:
By that reasoning then, you should be on-board with atheists who are interested in social justice issues. After all the lack of any evidence for a god or gods then rules out anything from theism on social issues.
By the way, you can stop addressing things to specific people. This is an open thread. Anyone from across the planet can comment on the things you say.
Also, if you want to directly address what someone is saying, you could use the blockquote function like I and many others do in addressing you.
If you type
<blockquote> place text to be quoted here</blockquote>
you’ll get
Bea @223:
Oh gee. Does the world really need Warriors for True Atheism? Is that the secular version of Warriors for Christ?
Nothing is going to “hurt” atheism. And why do you get to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide what atheism “can do”?
Also, why are you ignoring SallyStrange? She’s responded to you several times, and all she’s gotten are chirping crickets.
Yes I personally believe that egalitarianism should be one basis of government and maybe even most important but that has nothing to do with my atheism. I would never say something like “I don’t believe in god therefore everyone should be treated as equal” but I would say “I don’t believe in god and I also believe that everyone should be treated equal.”
On question of my secularism coming from my atheism I can see how this could seem to be inconsistent with above but it isn’t for me. I have no problem saying “I don’t believe that a god or gods exist therefore government which is for everyone should not assume a god or anything that people have claimed about god.”
This is to Tony. You seem to be making the error of denying the antecedent. I do not assume that ideas that have no evidence are definitely wrong just as I do not assume that people that I disagree with on one question will disagree on all questions. This already been shown by my disagreeing on implications of atheism while agreeing on equality.
Bea @266:
Since you refuse to copy/paste the comment you’re responding to, I have no idea what I said that you’re making a response to. You’re not communicating very clearly.
I propose that everybody copy-paste my question, or a paraphrase of it, until Bea Essartu sees fit to answer it.
Whoops! My bad. Of course, I have to wonder why Bea Essartu seems to have a problem with me personally. They answered my question, but without addressing me as they have done everyone else, and only after Tony specifically called them out about it. Who wants to bet that Bea Essartu is a man?
So you basically you’re just a raging hypocrite–in other words, you fit the unflattering description of a dictionary atheist to a T.
I suppose getting answer about how it’s even possible to hurt “atheism,” the abstract idea, is just out of the question.
Thank you for explaining quotes.
I was looking at something else before because this is a different mistake. Here you are claiming that not being a theist makes you an atheists who is interested in social justice issues. Those are a false dichotomy. Not being a theist makes you an atheist only which includes atheists who disagree with you on social justice issues and also atheists who do not care about social justice at all.
Only in your delusional opinion. My social justice issues come directly from rejecting religious imposed values, and having to come up with my own due to my atheism. You can believe what you want.
What I have found is those who argue the dictionary definition do so because they want to continue to be “bad” human beings, othering those who they decide aren’t worthy, be it women, POC, LGBT, etc.
The last day has been too good to be true. You say that requiring a link between two things that is better than one rules out one of a billion options for the other is delusional so I must be delusional. It is good that there are no dictionary psychiatrists here to argue with you about what is evidence of being delusional because that would probably end up as proof of existence of gods and then we all look very stupid.
The bread is rising, now we’re making pizza sauce.
Drinking black tea with honey.
Tony! was the third person to explain blockquotes.
Well, hold on. The belief in (or value of) egalitarianism may not arise from your atheism qua atheism, but it implies that the government (and presumably, society in general) should not be biased against you because of your atheism, correct?
That’s OK, I think, as far as it goes. But if you really do believe that, then why not acknowledge that atheists should not be biased against homosexuals (or women, or ethnic minorities/people of color), either?
So advocating secular government and social policy based on your atheism is OK, but not it’s not OK for other atheists to advocate for feminist and anti-racist and non-gender-essentialist government and social policy based on their atheism?
You can’t have been expecting a good, or even cogent, answer anyway.
I do not assume that ideas that have no evidence are definitely wrong…
Neither do we — we CONCLUDE such ideas are not reliable because we OBSERVE that there’s no evidence to support them.
Not being a theist makes you an atheist only which includes atheists who disagree with you on social justice issues and also atheists who do not care about social justice at all.
If you’re so hell-bent on making the word “atheist” as meaningless and irrelevant as you possibly can, why are you banging on and on about how we should be using the word?! Seriously, what the fuck is the point of telling us how useless you think a word should be?
The last day has been too good to be true. You say that requiring a link between two things that is better than one rules out one of a billion options for the other is delusional so I must be delusional. It is good that there are no dictionary psychiatrists here to argue with you about what is evidence of being delusional because that would probably end up as proof of existence of gods and then we all look very stupid.
Can anyone make any sense of what this dog’s breakfast of a paragraph is supposed to mean?
Is that seriously the logic you want to go with?
Drink!
Happy Birthay!
Correct with one little change which is that I am putting atheism a bit higher than any specific religion because of my belief that government should be based on evidence. I would believe this even if I was religious.
Because it is illogical and because it will push some people away from atheism and because I would have no idea where to stop with this. I also believe that trees cannot think which it is part of why it is OK for me to cut them down for a fire but I am not going to start including my disregard for the rights of trees to get involved in my atheism.
Correct because secularism is directly linked with atheism but equalism between sexes and races is not. Secularism is defined in terms of the same question as atheism while sexism and racism is not. It is not a rational position to say “I do not believe in god or gods but I want god involved in government” but it is rational to say “I do not believe in god or gods but I do believe that Persian women are better than anyone else and should be running the world.”
Živeli!
I am not hell-bent on making the word “atheist” meaningless I am hell-bent on making it mean exactly what it means without more that is both not part of what it means and among other things part of why some people avoid saying in public that they are atheist.
In reply I ask why you are hell-bent on making “atheist” mean more than a lack of belief in god or gods? Is that not enough? That is a very big deal to many people and should be faced on its own with no other issues. If I can be rude I ask why you are making moving the world towards atheism more difficult by including your view on sexes and races in a very simple question about existence of god?
Thanks to my interactions with dictionary atheists, I now believe in and worship Perkūnas.
What are you prepared to do to those atheists in order to entice me back to the fold, Bea? (Hint: if it doesn’t involve punching them into sentience, then fuck you and your atheist friends. Enjoy never getting elected in the US, fuckfaces!)
No, seriously. I’m a wish-washy atheist being driven away. Court me, Bea.
Because all of the proscriptions against egalitarianism stems from religion and religious texts. Throwing out the religion and religious texts necessarily implies throwing out the proscriptions against egalitarianism that’s just as rife in our society as religion and came into being BECAUSE OF religion.
Also, Bea, you didn’t answer my earlier question in comment #259. You’re pushing me away from atheism!
If someone gets hurt by a religious person because you pushed me away, Bea, know that it’s on your head.
Bea,
Can you please address Christopher Justin Kyle Mark’s posts #168 and #226?
Let us take your ideas to the extreme to see what happens. In order to be a special atheist you need to agree about sexism and racism and cops with guns and is waterboarding torture and whether supply economics is best and whether gluons have three flavors or spins and whether trees should have the right to refuse to be firewood and on and on. One of two things will happen before you get to the end of the list. Either you will find that there is only one person in the entire world who is a special atheist or you will end up forcing more and more people to take on more and more ideas that they do not really agree with in order to remain in the special atheist club as more issues are added to the list.
Bea, #283
That’s not rude, but atheism in the real world (since we’re both talking about atheism in practice) is a response to religion, not to the dictionary definition of what the word theism means. Hence atheism will bring with it all kinds of moral issues to consider and address.
That is simply false. Start with Ayn Rand then people such as Pinker and finish with Dawkins when he says that he is against discrimination when it is not justified instead of saying he is against discrimination.
I must leave again now. Bye bye.
All right then, let me rephrase. A large part of the power of these inegalitarian principles comes from it being connected to religion through religious texts and so on. If it were just Rand or Pinker screaming into a void, that would have been fine, but they’re shouting into a world that’s already primed to accept inegalitarianism because whole religions are founded upon the concept that some people are more worthy than others. The root and the power of that thought comes from religion.
So in other words, “I don’t have an answer”. Ok, got it.
Can I still be an atheist and believe in gods? I’m sure that your first impulse will be to say no, but remember what happens when you start putting qualifiers on it: dogs, cats, and reductio ad absurdum arguments living together.
You didn’t answer any of my questions, Bea. Thanks to your lack of engagement, I now also believe in Inti. You just fucked atheism over again. I hope you’re fucking happy.
Chas @ 278
Yes, Chas, it is. I’m confident that I needn’t pay any attention to moral proscriptions made by beings which don’t exist.
How is it illogical? Your own words: “I also believe that everyone should be treated equal”
Are you saying that atheism should include people who are biased; who don’t believe that everyone should be treated equally?
Can we please stick to discussing the rights of people, which is entirely the original topic? Talking about trees at this point is a derail.
Not necessarily. I’m pretty sure that conservative atheist S. E. Cupp does not support secularism (one of her books is titled: Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity).
But someone who espouses that doesn’t actually believe that everyone should be treated equally.
It could be. Consider the quote: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” Those in power might well want to cynically appeal to god in order to manipulate people even if they don’t personally believe in god. It goes without saying that such people would not honestly believe that everyone should be treated equally.
Not if you actually believe that everyone should be treated equally.
Why should it be higher, unless atheism leads one to an evidence based ideas of social justice should be the goal. You ARE making a value judgement on what government should do, so you should also do the same. You just don’t want to admit it.
There is no reason why atheism shouldn’t also be linking with social justice. It is good morality. It show we have progressed beyond “god given morality”.
So what do JustPlainAtheists do?
Besides sleeping in on Sunday.
Your attempt at an argument by ridicule instead shows with prima facie evidence the problem with your dictionary definition atheist. They should be the minority shoved off the side and ridiculed for their backward beliefs and attitudes.
In other words, it should be special atheists doing that, but rather most atheists. Why don’t you want to do that, other than being obtuse?
Bea, #281
No. Atheism means you don’t believe in god(s). How does imprisoning someone who speaks against Christianity violate atheism? Now that you’ve embarked on this pure dictionary atheism quest, you have to stick to it. You can’t have it both ways. Sorry.
If someone avoids saying in public that they are atheist because some atheists oppose classism as a consequence of atheism, that’s too bad. I don’t care about such atheists.
Dang,
Correcting the first sentence in my last paragraph #301.
I think I have a potential solution to some of the problems around here. It involves trying to find the most relevant level of complexity that we must be at to solve the problem.
Why did I bold “the problem”? Because is is what everyone in here seems to be talking about. It’s the subject. I don’t think we agree on what the problem is. I assert that the place that people should start talking is in defining what the problem is. If we did that I would bet that a lot of you would see that you have totally different ideas on what the problem is. Sure it’s a whole new argument, but at least you are at the most basic level you need to be at to avoid endless arguments.
Issues surrounding the word atheism is a relevant topic, but anyone who wants to start there in their mindsare going to go around and around in circles with other people because they are choosing to use language and concepts for the wrong relevant resolution of reality to solve the problem. If you are at an irrelevant resolution of reality you will be excluding important pieces of information (zoomed in too far), or including information that is not necessary and slows things down (zoomed out too far).
So what is the problem? That depends on who you are right now. That depends on what side of the schism you fall on. That depends on what issues you want tied to that word “atheist” in community politics sense. That depends on your morals, ethics, and values. I assert that talking about the word atheist now is at too small a resolution to solve the problem because the problem is the most basic issue.
For me the problem is the fact that I see people who are suffering in this community. Period. End of subject. I care about reducing suffering. As atheists we just don’t believe in gods or the supernatural and similar issues for a large number of reasons. All that means is that we reject the means of creating a shared sense of community, and how that community should do what communities do that has been traditionally used.
So since the problem is human suffering in this community of primates thrown together by historical contingency and the ability to attach social emotions to a group of seven letters, the necessary solution will require addressing all the things that produce suffering among atheists. That is the proper relevant resolution of reality to fish for useful concepts. The definition of a word is of such small relevance to this that it’s embarrassing. The word is there for emotional convenience in doing group things. It will not be a significant concept that will solve our problems. It is literally community drama.
I assert that when we disagree it is proper that we leave one another alone when requested* in our pursuit of things to alleviate our suffering. That includes our interpersonal efforts in creating functional social sub-groups** that address suffering that some atheists don’t think should be a social priority. Anyone violating this is essentially an attacker in a conflict and I act accordingly despite the fact that all harms are emotional. What will the resulting suffering priority list look like? It’s hard to say but I predict that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be an approximation with some accuracy.
*Harassment is repeated unwelcome and harmful behavior. We will argue and debate but if someone tells you to stop doing something that affects them and bothers them fucking do it. As far as I am concerned you are a shitty human being if you don’t.
**Social spaces under the personal control of specific persons (single or a definable community) like blogs, forums, and more get to have their own rules. End of subject. Rules imply a standard of behavior. If you want to behave a different way you stay out of that community and don’t get a personal voice there any more. Communities can be harassed too so the previous counts.
[Checks dictionary] Nope. ‘Sleeping in on Sunday’ isn’t listed under atheism at all. If they want to catch up on their weekend zeds, they’ll have to do it as humanists.
Can you nag other atheists about keeping atheism pure as a dictionary atheist if the dictionary definition of atheism doesn’t include nagging other atheists as a dictionary atheist?
[Insert head-asploding gif from “Scanners” here.]
Of course, you can’t even refer to a dictionary as a dictionary atheist. You have to do it as a linguistic prescriptivist.
[Insert Alderaan-asploding gif from “Star Wars” here.]
Anthony K
Why are the humanists sleeping in on Sunday?
Shouldn’t they be trying to save Christians from themselves?
Why would I refer to a dictionary as a dictionary atheist?
A ‘dictionary’ is a book, a ‘dictionary atheist’ is a person reading that book.
Or is that too comma prescriptivist?
You’re right; I don’t know that they are. I do know that nobody is sleeping in on a Sunday as an atheist. Because atheism doesn’t have anything to say about human sleep cycles or our septenary system of day names or time allotment.
I have 15 more minutes. Let us see what I can do.
This is the burden of proof trick. I ask why you say that your social justice is an implication of your atheism and give reasons and examples for them to be separate and now you say “why not?” as if this is an argument. Why not believe in god even though there is no reason to?
I will try one more time. Secularism is to keep religion out of government. Religion is central to the idea. Atheism is related to religion in that it specifically rules out all religions that assume a god or gods. It is directly related to religion too which is why it is so easy for simple minds to next say that atheism is a religion. In contrast to this all of these other issues that you are trying to link with atheism such as sexism and racism do not have a direct link with either belief in gods or religion. I will add to this after next quote.
Do you see what your rephrase did? You admitted that the link between atheism and these other issues is not direct or deductive but is an inference that you have made based on correlation you have seen. You can come to same conclusions on these other issues whether you are atheist or theist and you can come to different conclusions on these issues even if both atheist or both theist. That is why these other issues are not part of atheism vs theism. An issue has to depend by definition in atheism vs theism to be a direct implication. Atheism has a direct implication for whether you believe that what people have said that god wants should be part of government. We have not yet had one other example of some issue that has such direct linkage.
Since dictionaries are incapable of beliefs in anything, including gods, they’re atheists by default. So I don’t see that it’s wrong, per se, to refer to the type of atheist that’s also a book called a dictionary as a dictionary atheist.
Maybe we need to rewrite the dictionary.
atheist, n.
1) someone who does not believe in god or gods
2) someone who sees a consequence of (1), combined with egalitarian values, as driving support for general egalitarianism in society and politics, and therefore as driving support for secularism, feminism, anti-racism, and other social justice movements.
3) someone who points to (1) and says that anyone who tries to tie atheism to general social or political egalitarianism is “hurting” atheism and/or “ruining” atheism, and that only supporting secularism “should” follow from (1).
4) someone who points out that an atheist of def. (3) is making a category error and special pleading fallacy.
5) someone who is (1), but also thinks that (1) is sad, and (probably) bad, and perhaps even that someone who is (1) should not be trusted (S. E. Cupp)
Bea, #310
Sexism has a direct link to the two major religions of the world (Christianity and Islam).
You’re talking utter shit at this point.
Why, Bea?
Why should we keep religion out of government? Explain why.
No, I’ve stated specifically, once you admit god doesn’t exist, then you should question “god given morality”, and ask “what should I replace it with?. Specifics come with the answer to that question.
What you want is why social justice became the end? Easy, start thinking of all of humanity as your equals, start looking at your privileges, and realize “egalitartians” are hung up on the appearance of the law, and not the results if those laws were treated with respect. Feminism is still needed for the results equality of women to be seen, just as POC do not see equal results to whites in the US as far as income, opportunities, etc.
Bea @283:
I can’t see anyone doing that in this thread. The definition of atheism does not change just bc people acknowledge that there are implications to non-belief.
Anthony K #311
It’s a real shame that you are sipping tea with us in Invisible Land.
’cause you could give Bea Essartu some lessons in Dictionarism.
I have fresh bread and have moved on to rum.
It is not fair that you get to play fun games with words but I do not. I am taking my turn so you may want to skip what I write.
Rocks and trees do not believe in god either. Maybe get their help with your other issues. You could have the rocks throw themselves at the windows of a church for example.
This is a very good way of dealing with things you do not like. Pretend they do not exist and sing la la la until a new one that you like comes along. While you are waiting for new dictionary you can teach the rocks and trees to use twitter. Except for the rocks that have thrown themselves through church window of course. Those are lost cause.
Which is why they are religions instead of some other kind of place to go on Friday or Saturday or Sunday. Anything that is sexist is a religion because sexism will be the definition of religion in the new dictionary that you are waiting for. In fact the question of whether there is a supernatural force will be removed from the dictionary definition of theism vs atheism and to be an atheist will be defined as being not sexist which brings us back to our new best friends the rocks and trees because they are not sexist so they are atheists like you. Just remember that having rocks and trees as best friends get boring very quickly.
As to question I keep avoiding. You are not chopped liver to me. Chopped liver has a use because I can feed it to my cats.
Have a good weekend.
Bea Essartu
You actually haven’t shown this. To use your words:
There are many theists who are in favour of a secular government, there are atheists who are in favour of a religious government.
So no, you’re also making an “inference based on a correlation you’ve seen”, just as much as I did. Difference is, you don’t want to admit it, because that means that it’s logically inconsistent then to reject social justice as part of the implication of atheism.
I’m glad that there are atheists who have expanded their criticism of religion beyond secular issues. For instance, when it comes to homosexuality, religions such as Christianity and Islam have proscriptions against homosexuality and homosexual acts (many atheists are onboard with criticizing religiously derived homophobia, which is a good thing, IMO, bc such actions seek to reduce the suffering of others). Those who reject religion ought to reject those proscriptions. Some people get this. Others, such as Bea do not. Because it will hurt atheism. Poor, poor delicate atheism. Its fee fees would be so hurt.
Time. (n)
1. The system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
You can’t possess time. It’s like saying you ‘own’ 15 metres. It’s just silly.
Well, that’s what you’re doing when you try to wedge ‘secularism’ into atheism, for fuck’s sake.
I’m beginning to think Bea is just trolling, bc nonsense like this is just ridiculous:
Still at the office, or I’d already be drunk.
I imagine if there was an atheist conference and the topic switched from evolution to the mistreatment of women, Bea will get up and storm out. They’re ruining my atheism!
Gee, why would one think that, given all the insipid dog whistles being given off. Makes me wonder if Bea is really female, and not an MRA trolling, for all differences there are in the attitude.
It’s like saying we have this thing here in the dictionary:
But we can’t say what this has to do with anything in trigonometry or geometry (including multiple, different geometries) or algebraic math. Or anything else. No Pythagorean theorem, no making triangle-shaped stuff, none of it. That would be “hurting” the sacred Triangle, which we must not do. The only proper thing to say is that a triangle is a plane figure with three sides and three angles. The end. That’s how real human beings work in reality. That’s totally plausible, as a psychological and sociological theory, and it just makes good philosophical sense generally. It’s just you weird triangle+ people who want to hurt the Triangle. Everybody else understands why they shouldn’t do that.
Bea:
What’s your position on atheists who condemn religiously motivated laws intended to limit a woman’s access to contraception or an abortion?
Saad @324:
You don’t know (or maybe you do) how many atheists we’ve watched do exactly that.
Why? It’s not like this conversation is so unlikely that you need to assume dishonesty. This horse has been beaten so thoroughly again and again I’m using it to stick the macaroni to my Perkūnasmas collage.
IF you do not believe atleast one god exists, you will deny the soundness of arguments which use a gods existance as a premise. To derive secularism from this is a really small leap, as you personally are unimpressed by religious arguments.
Owlmirror @312:
We’ll need to check with Bea on this. I’m not certain humans have the power to rewrite dictionaries. We are slaves to the meaning of words as defined by dictionaries.The meaning of words can never change. Words can never take on new meaning.
Bea Essartu #318
I say we take this as a threat and request an in absentia ban!
Who’s with me?
{it would probably be better if sober persons replied}
There are a bunch of unspecified premises in this. First of all, who’s ‘You’?
Nonetheless, it’s not the size of the leap, it’s the fact that a leap is still required.
Atheism is the non-belief in gods, as we get hammered with again and again.. Anything beyond that requires a leap. For instance, it’s entirely reasonable to not believe in gods yourself, but believe that those who do generally behave in a way you desire, and so advocate for a system of governance based on a believe in gods you don’t hold.
Specify ‘better’.
Did they ever claim to be, or is the assumption based on the name? “Bea Essartu” doesn’t seem like a woman’s name so much as some sort of anagram.
Anthony K
8:15 – 4:30
Get thee to a bar!
Just for the fun of it I can’t resist pointing out that what we call the dictionary as we use it was significantly altered by a guy with the same tourette’s mental shape as me. His ability to do what he did in making his dictionary is an area of historical scholarship. There is something interesting about TS and the rule based parts of language.
On my way, chigau. On my way.
Okay, but exactly what kind of “leap” are we talking about? It’s a “leap” from what to what?
If you think of someone who doesn’t believe a god exists, it seems like that already involves some notion that they have of “existence” and whether a “claim” about a “fact” is “true,” along with definitional idea that arguments are “sound” if they contain true premises. We get ideas like that for “free,” presumably, as soon as a person starts categorizing themselves as an atheist (along with a lot more specific ideas about gods, nature, etc., which must have come from something like background empirical and cultural knowledge). We started out with a full-fledged human being, in the same world as all of these other people who have different beliefs and might (as you suggest) act the way you want them to act on the basis of a false belief, if they follow your little Machiavellian plan. That doesn’t mean they do act that way, of course.
So, the jumping-off point, if we’re taking it seriously, is something kind of vague and complicated and hard to define, not some bare fundamental fact in the world isolated from everything else. So it isn’t clear why this doesn’t already introduce everything you need rationally to go the other way and reject that kind of thinking that you’re talking about. I mean, as a general rule, believing things which are true gives you predictable results and lets you accomplish things that you want. Believing false stuff doesn’t (as I said, the people with false beliefs might behave any number of ways). That’s sort of the point of having a true belief. So, this might not be a leap at all, if we’re assuming a fairly “rational” and “observant” person, because it seems like a lot of this is built into the way we experience the world, not to mention that it seems to be the way the world itself actually works: it is consistent and follows regular patterns like that: at the level of natural laws, at the very least, but also being in certain sorts of conditions here on Earth, all of us coming from the same evolutionary source to be very similar to one another, and so on.
Sure, we’re now a long, long way from the efficacy of “secularism” at this point, but it’s more like part of a generalization or set of generalizations, which we tend to make as humans in societies and which tends to work out appropriately when do it well in all sorts of other cases, not so much a leap from one isolated thing to another.
It’s not my Machiavellian plan, of course. People who hold false beliefs act in predictable ways. Priests, politicians, scammers and the like make their living on this fact. Lying is a pretty core component of many human interactions, even by generally honest people.
Er, what?
You seemed to have missed the point of the ‘Machiavellian’ scheme: believing untrue things may certainly undermine your ability to predict the world to some degree. The fact that religion (if untrue) has not led to the extinction of the humans who believe it suggests that predictability isn’t all that important. The fact that we’re all a kludge of mental biases and filters and yet haven’t died out yet further supports that. A fairly “rational” and “observant” person might note that humans aren’t very good at true (their precursors even less so), and yet have managed to survive for a few million years.
People, whatever they believe, are fairly predictable. They turn left in grocery stores and buy beer if it’s advertised next to scantily clad women. It may be untrue that I’m a savvy business person who will increase the value of your initial investment. If I can convince you to think it’s true that I’m a savvy business person who will increase the value of your initial investment, I might make myself a tidy little sum, despite your inability to predict the future.
You can certainly argue that some leaps are smaller, and I think despite my criticisms you’ve made a few good arguments to that effect, but the central idea that atheism doesn’t naturally lead to anything else (unless you want to start sneaking in some other assumptions) still stands, I think.
Hell, the world is full of predictability because humans don’t believe things are true. As any casino’s accountant.
And sorry if those responses seem flip, CR. you obviously put a lot of thought into your post, and it deserves a modeler thoughtful response than I have time for right now, but I wanted to deal with that one aspect. I may have misunderstood your post as well. I’ll return when I have more time.
Yes, people can have all sorts of false beliefs, but the results don’t correspond with what those people believe. If you thought one thing, but that isn’t true, you are going to be somewhat surprised by the world, because it doesn’t care about what you believe (or who lied to you about it, or whether it’s a component of human interactions, etc.). With a false belief, you will not predict things to be the way they really are; you would have some other kind of expectation which isn’t going to be met. It will be any number of other ways instead.
When it comes to secularism, I’ll put it this way: it’s not a very safe strategy, to want a whole society of people acting in ways so that they can’t predict what will happen. And I don’t think the S.E. Cupps of the world are secretly manipulating exactly which false religious beliefs everybody else has (not least because they aren’t identical), so that they can somehow predict what the results will be based on their deep understanding of how such human cognitive biases will play out in reality. They’re not like your savvy con artist or salesman who has that kind of control over how one person will probably act in a fairly limited situation. I think the S.E. Cupps out there are just full of shit and stuck in this big mess with the rest of us; and they’re not competent enough to manage some massive social conspiracy like that even if they wanted to.
That might only suggest religions aren’t all-important in a person’s life, or that it isn’t so maladaptive that it hasn’t happened (yet). How long have people had “religions” exactly? I don’t know. Enough time for the whole species to die out, if it (not predictability) were such a strong factor in their survival and reproduction? Doubtful. Besides, given that people are generally moving away from having many false beliefs, when we learn new things and have fewer superstitious beliefs and so forth, maybe that sort of thing is being phased out to some degree. If not for evolutionary reasons, then at least cultural ones are going to have to explain that, because that sort of thing isn’t going away, whatever the explanation might be: we do generally know a whole lot more true stuff than we used to.
I think it’s wrong to consider these “assumptions” too. It’s not an axiom, that I snuck in prior to any experience of the world, that there also aren’t ghosts (in addition to gods). That’s the sort of thing you find out after having some experience, some rudimentary sort of evidence-gathering. Putting it in these terms, as if we simply postulate facts like this out of the blue, is just plain inaccurate and confusing. Because these are facts about reality, not just some weird abstraction only in your mind or in Platonic heaven or something like that. Atheists are in the world, and they get such information from it, if they’re getting it at all. There’s no importing it from some other realm. I’m sure all of that isn’t exactly what you meant, but do you see what I’m getting at and why it’s a problem? It’s just the wrong concept to be using here.
When asked:
But if you really do believe that, then why not acknowledge that atheists should not be biased against homosexuals (or women, or ethnic minorities/people of color), either?
Bea answered:
Because it is illogical and because it will push some people away from atheism…
Whoever is pushed away from atheism by such ideas SHOULD be pushed away. As far away as possible. That would be far better than letting the people who oppose such decent goals push US away from that otherwise respectable label.
There’s nothing inconsistent about being an atheist but believing that it’s best for the ignorant proles to be religious, and for the state to support religion, the better to keep them in line – quite possibly the position of Leo Strauss, godfather of neoconservatism.
Why, Bea?
Why should we keep religion out of government? Explain why.
It is not fair that you get to play fun games with words but I do not.
Well, that pretty clearly shows Bea’s level of maturity.
You are not chopped liver to me. Chopped liver has a use because I can feed it to my cats.
If we’re of no use to you, then why did you spend so much time arguing with us?
I give this flounce a grade of C-.
Bea Essartu #310:
Why does it have such an implication? Where, in the dictionary-definition of atheism, does it say anything about making judgements about the value of theism-based public policy?
You’re trying to have your cake and eat it. If atheism is ‘allowed’ to have implications in regards to secularism (politics without non-existent beings’ commands), then it is also ‘allowed’ to have implications regarding humanism (morality without non-existent beings’ commands)—which includes feminism and other social issues. If you don’t allow the latter, then you should not allow the former if you wish to avoid hypocrisy.
Yep, it’s been pointed out several times: it’s not theoretical, actual people have actually held the position that gods don’t exist, but it’s no good telling the masses that, and certainly not worth it to try to reduce the influence of religion on government policy.
Too bad Bea Essartu is not around to explain why they’re making a mistake, and how he knows that without referencing any facts about the world, or non-related assumptions or values, other than that gods don’t exist.
atheism, n. disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
Nope. Nothing about governments there.
Stop ruining atheism, Bea.
oops, I don’t actually know Bea Essartu’s gender.
My bad.
Why am I keeping this bookmarked?
Bea Essartu has done flounce’ed.