If one were to name the most intriguing recent development in America’s religious life, it would have to be the unprecedented rise of disbelief, or what many have dubbed “the New Atheism.” The tendency in the media has been either to hail this phenomenon as the latest cultural fad or to dismiss it as a secular equivalent of religious fundamentalism. In reality, it is neither of these. The New Atheism is a complex movement that has the potential both to inspire positive change and, sometimes, to promote intolerance.
The New Atheism’s Positive Contributions
At their best, the New Atheists foster a renewed sense of respect for science, spur on social progress, and empower the growing but reviled nontheistic minority to find its voice in America’s public square.
Public support for science is notoriously low in the United States, especially when it comes to culturally controversial topics such as the origin of life and humanity, embryonic stem-cell research, and global climate change. Unlike most developed nations, where the theory of evolution enjoys wide support, only 4 in 10 Americans accept the scientific account of human origins, according to a recent Gallup poll. At this difficult time for science education in America—as it faces the ire of religious fundamentalists and its message gets distorted by promoters of quackery of all kinds—atheists and agnostics remain science’s staunchest allies. Most of America’s elite scientists hold no religious beliefs, compared to only a fraction of the general population.
Regardless of what one thinks of Richard Dawkins’ take on religion, few individuals have done more to raise awareness of the importance of science. A former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Dawkins exemplifies the best in science writing for a popular audience. His books, most notably The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable, combine clarity with passion to explain the evolutionary process in terms that make it both intriguing and accessible.
Dawkins’ success as a science writer stems as much from his expertise in biology and literary talent as from his refusal to confine science to the realm of dry facts. He approaches science poetically, demonstrating that it can enrich our lives and aid us in a search for meaning and purpose. “The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear,” Dawkins explains.
It is this belief in the power of science to open our eyes to the awe-inspiring splendor and mystery of the Cosmos and its contents that drives Dawkins’ passion for evolutionary biology and his criticism of religion. As he puts it, “I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” Certainly, atheists like Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and the late Carl Sagan do not hold a monopoly on science education. Religious believers, too, can represent science with integrity and success.
Geneticist Francis Collins and biologist Ken Miller are the most prominent examples of how one can be passionate about both science and faith. And yet, atheists seem to have a special affinity for science, perhaps because in the absence of God and divine revelation they see it as our only source of objective knowledge and the only hope we have of surviving and flourishing in an indifferent and often hostile world.
Related to the New Atheists’ support for scientific progress is their advocacy of progressive values. The social and political implications of the New Atheism are often overlooked because disbelief does not presuppose a particular political ideology. Even among the so-called “four horsemen” of the New Atheism (Dawkins, journalist Christopher Hitchens, author Sam Harris, and philosopher Daniel Dennett), there is little consensus on social and political matters.
Hitchens in particular tends to embrace political views that are unpopular within the atheist camp. A consistent supporter of the Iraq War, he has expressed opposition to physician-assisted suicide and some hesitation in regard to women’s reproductive rights. On the whole, however, atheists are among the most liberal segments of the U.S. population, and their spokespersons often advocate progressive values along with a naturalistic worldview.
In last year’s massive U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported that only 14% of atheists and 15% of agnostics self-identified as politically conservative, compared to the national average of 37%. In contrast, 50% of atheists described themselves as liberal, a percentage matched only by Unitarians and Buddhists. More than any other group, atheists and agnostics tended to express support for gay rights, a woman’s right to choose, stricter environmental regulations, and less government interference in promoting morality. Of course, American nonbelievers are also the strongest supporters of the separation of church and state. All of these positions frequently find reflection in the New Atheist books, documentaries, and blogs.
The truth is that a progressive president and a progressive political agenda would not be possible in the United States without the votes of the relatively small but fast-growing secular minority. In the 2008 presidential election, unaffiliated Americans accounted for 12% of the electorate (up 3% since 2000), and they voted for Barack Obama by a three-to-one margin, giving him the edge over John McCain. The only two groups that gave Obama more support were black Protestants and Jews. In a situation when mainline Protestant denominations experience a decline, nonbelievers are becoming a major constituency in progressive politics, and their role is likely to increase in the years to come.
One further contribution of the New Atheists is that for the first time in American history, disbelief has become a legitimate cultural alternative. Ironically, it took a devout president, George W. Bush, to galvanize American nonbelievers and turn atheist manifestos into national bestsellers. When President Obama acknowledged nonbelievers in his inaugural address, he recognized a group of people who had previously been invisible in American politics.
Of course atheists remain a distrusted and despised minority, and it will take time for politicians to begin to acknowledge personal disbelief publicly, but for the first time, led by a group of articulate spokespersons, nonbelievers seem to have found their identity and public voice. This cultural development should be celebrated by all progressives, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack of belief.
The Dark Side of the New Atheism
But there is a dark side to the New Atheism, too. Although they put a premium on critical thinking, atheist authors often forget to apply it in their critique of religion. Not satisfied with refuting arguments for God’s existence, they unfairly present religion as at best useless and at worst deadly.
One of the arguments Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens make, for instance, is that one need not be religious to be a moral person. They like to point to the evolutionary origins of our moral sense—or as Dawkins puts it: “the lust to be good”—in order to claim that morality precedes religion and does not require it. While plausible, this argument does not prove that religion has no effect on morality. In fact, study after study has shown that deeply religious people tend to give substantially more to charity and to volunteer more often than their nonreligious counterparts. Regardless of the reason for this trend, it seems obvious that something about religious communities and worship encourages individuals to love their neighbor, to share resources, and to be involved in the community.
Whether atheists like it or not, religion does have an ability to inspire remarkable acts of kindness and generosity, and usually it does so not by scaring people with hellfire, but by appealing to their highest ideals of love, compassion, and justice. Sadly, one would be hard-pressed to find any mention of the positive effects of religion in atheist literature. After reading Dawkins’ The God Delusion or Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, one comes away thinking that religion literally “poisons everything,” as the subtitle to Hitchens’ book argues, and is “the root of all evil,” a title of Dawkins’ 2006 documentary. There is nothing wrong with intellectual squabbles over God’s existence, but it’s at this point that the New Atheism crosses the line and undermines its own effort to promote critical thinking.
The problem with an exclusively negative approach to religion is twofold. First, while it helps sell books, it risks promoting intolerance and potentially even hatred of religious people. Atheists will point out that they do not fly planes into buildings or murder doctors, as some religious fundamentalists have done. However, it takes one visit to an atheist blog (e.g., RichardDawkins.net or Pharyngula) to learn that many commenters on these sites harbor deep resentments toward religious people, Christians in particular.
Atheist authors and bloggers have an obligation to take precautions against expressions of intolerance; but more importantly, they need to lead by example in drawing a clear distinction between a much-needed intellectual debate over life’s biggest questions and harmful attacks on persons who happen to hold a religious worldview. Atheists do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. Having witnessed the atrocities committed by twentieth-century godless regimes, the New Atheists should be at the forefront of advocating freedom of conscience and religious liberty for everyone.
A related problem is that the New Atheist approach to religion burns bridges that could otherwise help further the progressive cause. When atheists criticize religion, they usually focus on the excesses of fundamentalist churches: their intolerant attitudes, extremist behavior, a literalist interpretation of scripture, bizarre eschatological beliefs, and so on. One would think that atheists would find an ally in religious progressives, most of whom equally dislike fundamentalist positions. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Sam Harris in particular has accused religious progressives of being part of the problem by not speaking out harshly enough against the conservatives, and thus legitimating fundamentalist perspectives. I think Harris’ criticism is misguided. Religion Dispatches is a perfect example of a progressive media outlet that challenges the fundamentalist vision of both religion and society. In fact, religious progressivism, far from being the problem, may be the most effective antidote to the dangers of fundamentalism. The answer to radical Islam, for instance, is not atheism, but moderate Islam.
Perhaps the real reason behind Harris’ criticism of religious progressives is that they expose the weakness of atheist arguments against religion. Militant disbelief depends on the excesses of fundamentalists to sustain strong anti-religious sentiment. Progressive believers, on the other hand, demonstrate that faith and reason can coexist peacefully in modern societies; that is something the New Atheists do not want to admit, as it denies them the moral high ground and turns their case against God into an intellectual argument with little social or political significance.
Instead of attacking religious progressives, the New Atheists should seek ways to cooperate with them in order to advance science, reason, and progressive values.
One can cite numerous examples of fruitful cooperation. When science education was under attack in Dover, Pennsylvania, Ken Miller (a devout Catholic) provided key expert testimony in support of evolutionary theory, helping the scientific community win an important legal battle against proponents of Intelligent Design. The famous entomologist and humanist E.O. Wilson, in an effort to raise awareness of the dangers facing Earth’s biodiversity, composed a passionate book entitled The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, in which he called on religious believers to take active part in protecting the environment.
In both cases, dialogue and cooperation between believers and nonbelievers has helped advance the cause of science and social progress. This type of cooperation is the only way forward, and the New Atheists would be wise to embrace it.
Tags: atheism, carl sagan, christopher hitchens, daniel dennett, e.o. wilson, new atheists, new new atheists, richard dawkins
However, it takes one visit to an atheist blog (e.g., RichardDawkins.net or Pharyngula) to learn that many commenters on these sites harbor deep resentments toward religious people and toward Christians in particular.
I don't know Dawkins's site well (life's too short to habituate every potentially interesting site on the web!) but I often read Pharyngula. I cannot recall noticing any evidence there of those "many commenters [who] harbor deep resentments toward religious people and toward Christians in particular". Lots of commentators are severely critical of stupid people who deploy religious dogma in support of stupid things and are unamenable to reasoning, but this is, I think you'll agree, a behaviour quite distinct from "harbor[ing] deep resentment".
Perhaps the real reason behind Harris’ criticism of religious progressives is that they expose the weakness of atheist arguments against religion.
This strikes me as a severe misrepresentation of Harris's arguments. Harris isn't the brightest or best of rationalists, but this doesn't entitle his critics to construct straw men and ascribe them to him. As I understand it, Harris regards religious moderates in somewhat the same way one might regard carriers of typhoid fever: they don't suffer the full-blown disease, but they're perfectly capable of spreading it. Your typhoid epidemic isn't over until you've treated both sufferers and carriers.
Elsewhere:
(a) I don't think any atheist would deny that the religious impulse inspires many people to do many good things. However, it also inspires many people to do many atrocious things. The rationalist's point is that the latter very significantly outweigh the former (especially once one starts counting potentially genocidal "invisible atrocities" like the refusal to act to ameliorate climate change on the grounds that "God will take care of us"). You may disagree with the assessment; but you should debate the argument that's there rather than the one that you find easier to demolish.
(b) And those "atrocities committed by twentieth-century godless regimes"? The record of the godly (vide Hitler's regime) is at least equally appalling; if you were to look solely at the 21st century you would have to concede that the godly are so far significantly the greater atrocity-perpetrators. It was a godly US Administration that was responsible for the deaths of some one million Iraqis; the continuing terrorist atrocities in that land are frequently born from religious schisms within the Iraqi community. Meanwhile, religious differences inflame relations between Israel and some of its neighbours, generating countless deaths every year; Darfur is riven by what is at least nominally a religious war, and likewise Somalia; and so on. The truth is that atrocities are committed by human beings; religion offers merely one extra, by definition inarguable and uniquely powerful motivation.
Bravo on your above points, just felt like I could add a little extra information.
In regards to hitler's 'godless regime', i believe it is foolish to group that man into the godless category. Mein Kampf is riddled with strong religious language directly relating to his militant actions. One quote that always stuck out in my mind:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
Right on, Paul.
I could not have said it better.
Paul,
Many thanks for your thoughtful response. As much as I would like to agree with you, I think your comments only reinforce the criticisms I articulate in the article.
It is precisely my point that atheist criticisms should be aimed at bad ideas and never at "stupid people." It worries me that this distinction does not seem important to many atheists.
I do not think I mischaracterized Harris' argument against religious moderates. If the disease is bad religion, the cure is good religion. "No religion" is simply not an alternative in many parts of the world. By characterizing all religious people as diseased or deficient, atheists alienate potential allies.
The claim that religion does much more harm than good is a difficult one to substantiate empirically. All I am saying is that both sides should be presented, and atheists should focus on criticizing the negative effects of religion while praising its positive contributions.
I agree that atrocities are committed by human beings, religious as well as non-religious. A godless ideology can motivate violence as powerfully as fundamentalist religion. Rather than denying the past, atheists should learn from it and never repeat the same mistakes.
I have been a member of a mainline denomination Christian congregation for over 16 years. I like many members and I liked the pastor. However, the level of moral discourse in the congregation is awful. These people are well educated. The pastor has a bachelor degree in mathematics and holds a professional degree in ministry from the University of Chicago. He studied with prominent theological and biblical scholars. His wife is also a graduate of that school. Some members are university professors. Many members hold well-paying managerial jobs.
Most members are usually pleasant—as long as you do not challenge the status quo.
However, we rarely discuss anything particularly important or timely.
I think our congregation is the kind of religious community that Sam Harris attacks. His attacks seem timely and accurate. We are in some ways a festering cesspool of contagion. I respect Harris even if he is a bit thin.
It took me 94 seconds to find this on pharyngula. I make space for the possibility that it's a mole attempting to make the New Atheists and their followers look bad, but it's a sentiment I've seen many times before:
Posted by: RichVR | June 24, 2009 11:05 PM
I am so tired of this accommodationist bullshit. Science and religion are enemies. I refuse to give an inch to anyone who professes to believe in a god.
Fuck you, you deluded morons. Your delusions are twisting the minds of children and destroying lives.
Godbots are the enemy. And while I won't ever physically injure a god blatherer, I reserve the right to abuse any and all that I meet.
Let your god fuck with me. I dare him, her, elephant, or whatever.
Fuck them all. You're all a bunch of twisted and deluded assholes. The world would be better without you. Shut the fuck up already.
Hide your sick beliefs the same way that pederasts and rapists do. If they are smart. Otherwise I'll be glad to make you miserable. Verbally of course.
Peace.
I have to second Evan's contribution. There really IS a lot of resentful vitriol from many atheists, the "militant atheists" or "New Atheists." I've lived in small-town middle America, and I can understand where a lot of the resentment comes from, but it really doesn't help. And FORGET the college-boy-hipster atheism. Ugh.
I myself am atheist and I applaud Konstantin's efforts at promoting collaboration among reasonable people who are secure in their own beliefs. I think he's absolutely right about the New Atheists being just as damaging to the world as Fundies. (I also appreciate his careful usage of "New Atheists" rather than generalizing to "atheists").
Keep in mind: if you pride yourself on using reason, don't let yourself succumb to knee-jerk reactions. Question your own prejudices seriously; some of them may hold, but you sound a lot smarter and more reasonable if you discard most of them.
Alternatively, you catch more flies with honey. You'd be amazed how many people you can coax into atheism. And how many people I know who got kicked out of Brigham Young University for that.
"If the disease is bad religion, the cure is good religion."
What? Show me "good religion" and I'll show you a group of people cleaning up the mess their religion made in the past.
"A godless ideology can motivate violence as powerfully as fundamentalist religion."
Learn your history. People don't get together and say "I don't believe in god - let's kill others!" Atheists, just as any group, may get together and kill for another reason, but lack of religion ain't it.
Your personal hatred and willful misunderstanding of atheists is what makes me mad at people like you. Just because you're too weak to imagine a world without a sky daddy doesn't mean the rest of us have to go along with your mythology.
And finally - WHERE IS YOUR PROOF? Why does your all-powerful god hide from us, right when we need proof?
For someone who's bashing someone else for "personal hatred" you seem to have a lot of contempt for the religious, and no respect whatsoever. "Too weak to imagine a world without a sky daddy"? Really? Were you beaten up by a devout Christian when you were a child or something?
Calling religion "mythology" and implying it's completely ridiculous is disrespectful and narrow-minded, and asking for proof? Just plain ignorant. The DEFINITION of faith is "belief that is not based on proof."
So please think before you start justifying yourself with your rude, self-righteous and hypocritical nonsense. Thanks in advance.
The word FAITH has been co-opted by the religious. Now people act like it only has one definition but it doesn't.
From Merriam Webster:
1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions
2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust
3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs
I have faith that the sun will rise every morning and that my friends and family would help me if I needed it because of past experience. If people have faith in religion it should be because they see results from there dedication to their beliefs (that would be proof IMO).
Just seems odd that you can't have faith in something without it being religious.
As an atheist (and one that has been called militant, condescending, and pretty much every other bad word), I would like to take an opportunity to distance myself from the idiocy of the above commenter and his lack of reading comprehension. (chuckle).
"The answer to radical Islam, for instance, is not atheism, but moderate Islam."
They say atheists betray religion, fundamentalists betray reason, but moderates betray both religion and reason.
They are call fundamentalists because they practice the FUNDAMENTALS of their religion. Fundamentalist are not bad people, they are people who really believe and have decided to take their religion seriously instead of half-baked. Moderate Islam, or Islam lite, is not the solution because it can only be achieved when one ignores or is kept ignorant for key ideas of their faith. You, in no way, have shown that moderate Islam is in fact the true interpretation of Islam its founders intended.
A little wrong in your belief/definition of Fundamentalism. It is not that they practice the FUNDAMENTALS of their religion, it is that they are "GOING BACK TO THE (PERCEIVED) FUNDAMENTALS" of the religion. Corrected for you , but you see the difference in meaning and actions.
e.g. The number of Fundamentalist sects in the US Evangelical movement ...
I think Konstantin himself has "put aside" his critical-thinking cap when he claims that atheists do so.
Dawkins has plenty of empirical and historical evidence to point to when he claims that religious is useless at best and dangerous at worst. Religious people may do good things, but there's no particular reason to think that those people did so because they were religious. In fact, it's likely that people who want to "do good things" seek out religion because they are told that that's where "good" people congregate. That's the opposite of what Konstantin suggests.
But there is ample evidence that religion - especially monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam - teaches anti-moral values, such as: Might makes right, Submission and ignorance are valued, and The Ends justify the Means. That's what atheists are critical about. One has to only look at what's going on in Iran this week to see the latest example of religious leaders in power using lethal force and the claim of knowing what Allah wants to see these anti-moral values in full action. If atheists are angry at religionists, it's because they see the willful ignoring of such immorality being practiced in their religion's name.
Being irresponsible is about as immoral as it gets. When religious leaders should know better, yet continue with their promotion / coercion of those same practices, it slides into outright evil.
Steven Weinstein said it well: "Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things; but it takes religion for good people to do bad things."
It's not that religion teaches anti-moral values, it's that religion claims to know what morality is. The problem on both sides (the radical religious and the radical atheist) is that they both only accept one idea of how the world should be. They then categorize everything as good or bad, with no gray area.
To the radical religious, atheism is blasphemy; to the radical atheist, it's willful ignorance, which is something someone who values intelligence as a core virtue can't accept.
The premise of this article is weird, as if atheism were new and in need of defense. The public face of atheism may be reemerging in polls, but it was there in fact and in plenty when I grew up (50s, 60s).
Notably, Europeans don't need religious labels. Most historians of religion and I bet most experts in Biblical history are skeptics, if not atheists. Atheism isn't a virtue or a vice; it is evidence that organized religion has become incredible, and that there are more interesting ways to approach religious texts and religious history. This point of this article is specious.
I prefer Professor Dawkins and the others to Billy Graham and the other televisions preachers. The silly things that Graham has endorsed amaze me. He is not an evil man but he is a nut.
MK -- well said. I am in complete agreement with you. Atheism is certainly not new, and because there is a change in the polls certainly does not mean a new brand of Atheism, even, is emerging.
The premise of this article is indeed strange, and I find myself trying to pinpoint exactly which side of the argument this writer is positioned. Good scholarship should remain passionately neutral. Though I see some small attempt at such neutrality here, there is undoubtedly defensiveness coming through on both sides of the story.
Overall, I find myself somewhat disappointed in the article... I thought it would have been better. At least, it once had the potential..
Regardless of the reason for this trend, it seems obvious that something about religious communities and worship encourages individuals to love their neighbor, to share resources, and to be involved in the community.
Obvious to you, perhaps, but as you neglect to cite any of the many studies that you say support this claim, it is far from obvious to me. And even if it were, I’m deeply unsure that there’s any net payoff in the bargain. I’d be willing to trade a bit of neighborly love, sharing, community involvement, and charitable donations in return for a two-state solution in Palestine, for example.
Sadly, one would be hard-pressed to find any mention of the positive effects of religion in atheist literature.
You haven’t established that there are any positive effects; you say that they “seem obvious” based upon studies which, according to you, demonstrate nothing beyond correlation. Even granting your argument, you have made no attempts to weigh your tepid positive effects against the clearly negative symptoms of religious delusion that we see all around us.
Otherwise, and this should matter just as much: Religions make a wide variety of completely incompatible and wholly unsupported claims about reality. Even if organized religion did have a demonstrably beneficial effect on human behavior, the fact remains that it is very, very unlikely to be true. You may like the idea of deluded individuals forking over portions of their salary to religious charities in order to secure an entirely fictional eternal reward. I don’t like that idea at all. Either
There is nothing wrong with intellectual squabbles over God’s existence, but it’s at this point that the New Atheism crosses the line and undermines its own effort to promote critical thinking.... [New Atheistm] risks promoting intolerance and potentially even hatred of religious people.... [I]t takes one visit to an atheist blog ... to learn that many commenters on these sites harbor deep resentments toward religious people, Christians in particular.
I am confused about what you mean by “intolerance”; it’s such an imprecise word. Do you mean that some atheists are rude to religious people? Because I don’t find rudeness to be symptomatic of intolerance. The faithful alone want shelter for their unsupported claims; all other ideas are subject to argument, criticism, and (in the event that they are wrong or superceded) rejection.
Many commenters on atheist sites do, of course, “harbor deep resentments” about Christianity. Doesn’t that tell you rather more about the nature of Christianity than it does about the ‘New Atheists’? Note that resentment a provoked response, and that Christians, particularly American Christians, tend to be very aggressive and assertive about their unsubstantiated beliefs.
Continued in subsequent post
Continued from above
Atheist authors and bloggers have an obligation to take precautions against expressions of intolerance.... Having witnessed the atrocities committed by twentieth-century godless regimes, the New Atheists should be at the forefront of advocating freedom of conscience and religious liberty for everyone.
There’s that word “intolerance” again. Do you mean that “New Atheists” should refrain from any criticism of religion that amounts to anything more than an “intellectual squabble”? And can you indicate a “New Atheist” who has campaigned against freedom of conscience or religious liberty?
Otherwise, your appeal to the “atrocities” of various “twentieth-century godless regimes” is a very tired and unconvincing tactic -- one that is invariably unsheathed by apologists for the Abrahamic religious tradition, that great companion of empire and patriarchy. For your citation to have any relevance, you would have to show that these “godless regimes” perpetrated their atrocities because their atheism provided a license or rationale. Any argument in favor of an atheistic license is hardly credible, given the many atrocities perpetrated by more godly political structures; and arguments in favor of an atheistic rationale or motivation do not fit the historical circumstances.
In fact, religious progressivism, far from being the problem, may be the most effective antidote to the dangers of fundamentalism. The answer to radical Islam, for instance, is not atheism, but moderate Islam.
It is odd (though far from uncommon) to hear such weak platitudes coming from someone with a professional interest in religious matters. Within each of the three Abrahamic religions, there is a fairly wide distribution of fundamentalists and moderates. This distribution is the religion; you can’t have Islam or Christianity or Judaism without having a certain slice of faithful who interpret their tradition literally and rigidly – who are, in other words, fundamentalists. The moderates, on the other hand, owe their moderation to outside pressures on the religious culture, and they come from a different (and more rarified) slice of the socioeconomic spectrum. Thus Tehran and New York, for example, are relative havens of religious moderation; while rural America and rural Iran are full of fundamentalists. If religious moderation were such a great “answer,” you would know how to implement it. And yet there is no way to do so; in whatever religion it exists, fundamentalism is inherent.
The answer to radical Islam, or radical Christianity, is not moderation, and it is not atheism either. It is, rather, the denial of privileged status to organized relgion, on a political and societal level. I have never read a New Atheist argument for anything else. You want to worship the Invisible Pink Unicorn, fine, but you have to do it on your own property and with your own money, your delusions cannot be taught in any public schools, your charitable outfits get no public money, your clergy have to pay taxes. Your ideas and arguments receive the same consideration and criticism that all other ideas and arguments receive. Your delusions receive no more specious tolerance than disproven scientific theories, failed political programs, etc.
I very much appreciate all of the comments on my article. A few things strike me as particularly intriguing:
1. The fact that most commenters came from the perspective of disbelief demonstrates just how vibrant and vocal America's atheist community has become in recent years.
2. Most commenters reacted strongly to my brief critique of the New Atheism, ignoring the rest of the article that pointed out the many positive aspects of the movement.
3. The comments reveal a strong sense of certainty and a reluctance to accept criticism of both the New Atheists and the twentieth-century godless regimes.
The comments reveal a strong sense of certainty and a reluctance to accept criticism of both the New Atheists and the twentieth-century godless regimes
A reluctance to accept unreasonable criticism, for reasons laid out at length by several commenters, can hardly be characterized as 'intriguing.'
And can you point out which comments rejected your criticism of "twentieth-century godless regimes"? All I can find is a rejection of the idea that modern atrocities can be ascribed to a lack of belief in gods.
I just wanted to point out that your response to the great deal of negative outpouring here is admirable in its restraint. If all such conversations between the religious and non-religious could be so amicable I think there would be a great deal more happiness in the world.
Your complaint about people ignoring your pointing to the positive aspects of the "movement" is fair, but as stated earlier, it's not really any different than "well, she's beautiful, but boy-howdy is she stupid" and then complaining that no one compliments you that you said she was beautiful. Obviously the negative aspects are going to receive attention, much as the negative aspects of religion receive undue attention.
Finally, as you say, can criticism be applied to the so-called "godless regimes" with validity? Absolutely, but only with the vocal acceptance that you're preaching a "do as we say, not as we do" when critiquing the leadership in these godless places. I mean, wouldn't Christians take offence when it's pointed out that the outcome of mixing Christianity and state leadership has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster? Is it an overbroad statement? Maybe, but the truth is there.
1. I am glad the community is vocal. It is a welcome change from being forced into a closet.
2. As well they would. "Your a nice person, and your breath stinks," is not a statement geared to generate sympathy.
3. The reluctance is to accept badly formed criticism. While some of your points are well-enough made, the majority come from false assumptions. Since your overall point is that atheists should avoid generalizing when talking about followers of faith, generalizing the beliefs of the atheists is a bad way to convince people that that is really what you are trying to argue.
Also, none of the comments objected to criticism of the twentieth-century godless regimes, they merely pointed out that you do your audience a disservice by not also pointing out the (numerically much greater) harm done by regimes that indulged religion.
This study convinces me even more that New Atheism has all the qualifications of a being its own religion. It seems to be becoming more organized and the tenets of its "faith" more scripted or set in place, with even four? main "bishops"; ie. Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.
Reading Dawkin's quote and your description of his love for and faith in the great Cosmos, I'm struck with how "worshipful" his devotion is to the Universe.
You wrote, "He approaches science poetically, demonstrating that it can enrich our lives and aid us in a search for meaning and purpose. “The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear,” Dawkins explains.
It is this belief in the power of science to open our eyes to the awe-inspiring splendor and mystery of the Cosmos and its contents that drives Dawkins’ passion for evolutionary biology and his criticism of religion."
To me this is just one religion criticizing the others. "Nothing is new under the sun."
In my opinion, the intolerance of the new atheist is only a result of his/her commitment to their own set of beliefs and their worship of what is seen rather than what is unseen. The resentment to Christianity, in particular, definitely stems from the spiritual side of things, even from those who deny its existence. Have you ever met a religion which doesn't resent Christianity?
Whatever "New Atheism" is (and it's patently obvious that this isn't a label that atheists apply to themselves except in the context of rebuttals to arguments like this), a "religion" it certainly isn't.
Organised? If by that you mean that there are discussion fora, community web sites, (arguably) sceptical conferences, then yes. If you mean that we all gather in a bunch of rooms every so-often and pat ourselves on the back, you're onto a wrong 'un.
Tenets? What on earth is a tenet of atheism (or "New Atheism", whatever)? Even the most elastic definition I could find (dictionary.com) defines a 'tenet' as "any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc., esp. one held as true by members of a profession, group, or movement."
The closest tenet of so-called "New Atheism" then could be the collective position (as per the original definition of "atheism", rather than the populist strawman definition) that we don't believe in gods. Any gods. All gods. Not just the christian gods.
Bishops? Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Grayling? Really? They hold services every now and then and tell us exactly what to think based on their pontifications of our holy books? Oops, we don't have any.
Faith? What faith? Atheism is a respondent position, not an accusatory one. It's a position based on the question "do you believe in the existence of any gods?" and if the answer is anything other than "yes", then one is, by definition, an atheist.
Worship? An appreciation of the fact that we're alive in the here and now and can look at the universe with a sense of wonder and try to figure it how it works? Please.
You've also completely ignored to tell us what the rest of our supposed religion's trappings are. So, please tell us what our "holy book" is, what our "rituals" and "traditions" are, where our "churches" are, what our "dogmas" are, who our "popes" and "saints" are, how we "pray" and what we "pray" for.
I'm surprised you didn't go the whole hog and call us "militant" while you're at it. By 'militant' you would of course means "doesn't shut up when told to", rather than the usual definition of militant meaning going out with a gun and shooting someone, or carrying a belt of plastique into a crowded market place. You know, the usual use of the word 'militant', it's even one you can find on Fox News! But then conflation and equivocation is a traditional refuge of the unreasonable mind.
It's typical of people like you to call atheism a "religion" and then deride it. Just in case you don't get it, this fails for at least two reasons:
1) it's a strawman argument and anyone with even an ounce of common sense can see through it; and
2) by calling it a religion and then decrying it as such lends absolutely no credibility to any religion, especially that of the arguer.
There are other reasons, but I'm not entirely convinced that you'd understand why your accusation fails for the two reasons above, and frankly it'd be a waste of time.
"New Atheism" is nothing if not responding to the unjustified demand of "you can't criticise religion (especially mine!)" with the flat answer of "yes, I can, why can't I?".
Atheists, "New" or otherwise, can hold any number of positions including an appreciation, an indifference or a hostility to classic organised religions, including (but certainly not exclusively) christianity.
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[continued from above]
To claim that we resent christianity en masse is to a) completely fail to understand the basic position of an atheist (see above fro hints); b) play the "persecution" card (don't worry, we know it's in the christian scripture, so we expect it) and c) demonstrate that you appear to think that everyone who is an atheist used to be a christian (but obviously not a True Christian™) which is not only untrue but absurd and only serves to show a startlingly narrow experience and mindset.
Your basic argument (and pay attention because there's a big point here, but I'll write slowly so that you can keep up) seems to come down to "New Atheism has all the qualifications of a being its own religion ... [because] [h]ave you ever met a religion which doesn't resent Christianity".
Completely risible.
And I laugh at you (no, not because you're a christian before you decide to replay the same persecution card) but because you can't seem to reason your way out of a wet paper sack, even with the aid of a chain-saw and an angry claustrophobic ferret.
is to point out that belief in the non-existence of god requires just as much faith as belief in the existence of god and is therefore a faith and not a scientific outlook.
And the best way to confuse a theist is to explain, ad nauseam, that atheism is a lack of belief in gods, rather than their strawman of believing there are no gods.
But I forget, you therefore must also have the faith that there is no Zeus, no Attis, no Ares, no Ahura Mazda, no Ganesha, no Tabaldak, no Quetzalcoatl, no Marduk, no Tammu, and so on for the other tens of thousands of gods. I guess we do have more faith after all(!) even if it's just for the three modern christian gods.
Pascal's Wager = fail.
"Atheism" and "religion" are not separate categories. Atheism is distinct from theism, that's it. Nevertheless the "insight" that one can fit anti-dogmatic arguments into the same structure as dogmatic, theistic religion is a testament to the human capacity for pattern matching, not a useful insight about what's new under the sun.
If you believe in magical ghost that is all knowing, you're a moron. End of Story.
Liberals don't hate Christians. Rather, liberals are quite understandably annoyed at the Christian religion's intrusion into their lives. Christians and Mormons (whether they're Christians or not is not a question I know how to answer) are at least largely responsible for many evils of our society, most recently, the fight AGAINST civil rights. They very prominently fight against marriage (they say they're "protecting" marriage by not allowing people to have it) by insisting on religious grounds that only some people should have the right to get married. They also very prominently fight against basic science by trying to require secular schools to teach religious biology and Earth science. They fight to impose religious morality; in Massachusetts, alcohol is not allowed to be sold on Sundays for some religious reason. They fight ridiculous "culture wars" to secure America's status as a Christian country.
We liberal atheists don't like that, especially because, if we were to reason with the Christians in order to change their minds, the discussion would necessarily fall into Bible-quoting rather than real ideas, and this is EXTRAORDINARILY frustrating to an intelligent debater. I agree that it doesn't help anyone for atheists to be anti-Christian, but in their defense, the people who are most vocal against things liberal atheists would consider to be common sense are Christian.
In contrast, you see that usually this kind of enmity (in America) doesn't extend to Muslims. Are Muslims less fundamentalist? No, they're just far away and aren't about to take away our rights or block us from finally having them. Plus, Muslims are unfairly oppressed by the ignorant in the US.
The problem with religion though, is that with the progressives, you also get a crop of fundies and extremists. This is because of the fundamental problem with religion, that it disregards evidence, and prefers your own emotions over the truth.
8 years of having religion shoved down my throat is what makes me a bit salty of the whole industry. Religion is an excuse for those who don't want to think. Too bad for them.
I would say that fundies and extremists are part of the equation for all ideologies, and that includes atheism. What is a "militant atheist", afterall, but a fundamentalist of a sort. Oh, I know the argument that you can't be a fundie without being part of a religion - but it's a pointless semantic argument. Fundamentalism, in the colloquial sense, has come to mean anyone who adheres to their position while ridiculing everyone else, and being closed to any sort of compromise or attempt at understanding of another. It's rather clear from several of the responses here that New Atheism is an extremist position itself.
The inability to recognize that there are people who are intelligent and generally secular in their political views, even though they also have spiritual faith, is, itself, a case of "prefering their own emotions over the truth." Despite the evidence that there are progressive and liberal people of a religious/spiritual persuasion who agree with the new atheists on a whole lot of political issues, we are constantly lumped in together as fundamentalist idiots, weak minded and weak willed, and a whole slew of other insults, because we have faith in something beyond the physical.
Really, what is the difference between my voice being ignored, even though I could be an ally, just because I'm stupid enough to believe in ghosts and an atheist voice being ignored by the evangelical wingnuts because they believe that only those who believe in their "invisible sky daddy" could be moral?
Both positions are biased, fundamentalist in the most negative, common expression of the term, and inherently flawed.
Both positions ignore evidence, and offer nothing more than knee-jerk emotional reactions as opposed to a semblance of truth... to an attempt at understanding and finding our common ground, instead of denying that there could possibly be any because of difference of opinion regarding the belief, or lack of belief, in a god(s).
*People* are prone to extremism. Religion can be a handy tool, and an easy way to manipulate people, but it certainly is not the only culprit, as this article and the reactions to it clearly suggest.
"Unfortunately, their record is also marked by an intolerance of religious people and the alienation of potential progressive allies."
"If you aren't nice to us we'll take our ball and go home!" is what I'm hearing. I don't think many atheists care about the support of the progressive believers. What good could a believer do for us?
We aren't looking for tolerance, and we aren't really interested in tolerating the religious. The whole point of "New-Atheism" is that the religious are killing in the name of God and interfering with our rights to our own bodies and families, and we won't tolerate it any more.
Well said. As I age, I find myself more open to critics of religious institutions. The zeal to control the lives of other people haunts the voices I hear from both progressive and fundamentalist Christians.
Who is someone like Rick Warrant to make five demands on politicians? He can make them, but I don’t support his demands. Who are the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to demand that doctors not provide health care to women? What makes these people think that they merit telling the rest of how to live? They can suggest. They can recommend. But I can also ignore them. And I often do.
Perhaps you're reading to much into it. Many religious people think that if one doesn't politely respect someone's "right" to make binding assertions based on third-hand prophecy from some supernatural entity, they are being persecuted.
Religious people crave being persecuted like a vampire craves virgin blood - it's a little extra tasty than mere pontificating.
Yep, good observation. Thanks.
and you, my friend, just proved how much ignorance plays a part in fundamentalism
"What good could a believer do for us?"
Well, a believer who shares many of your political views and agrees with you about not allowing the most fanatic religious types to interfere with our rights to our own bodies and families could offer numbers, for one thing.
One of the reasons that the evangelicals are able to interfere as much as they do is because they present a more cohesive front - they have numbers, thus they have influence. But we have no such advantage, because of this sort of attitude - let's ignore everything we might have in common because of the one thing we definitely don't.
As the article says - we could be allies working together against a common enemy with many a common interest and goal. But instead we tear down each other. You're letting the fanatics you don't like win because of your own blind fanaticism. Congratulations.
Amen
most people whom have dismissed religion have very little depth of education or knowledge about the mystical and mythological sides of religion (to think that all aspects of religion are expressed in those that are simply at the 'steps to the temple - fundamentalists, etc. is downright crass and reactionary). they therefore throw out the baby with the bathwater. ALL belief systems are creations of the human mind and are therefore limited and cannot be said to be absolute.science practices just as much dogmatism and false language use as any religion does. most scientific information is decidedly not presented in objective language.
It can very easily be argued that Atheism has the same psychological underpinnings as any type of fundamentalism as it is an absolute belief that cannot be proven and is practiced as dogma.
the humblest, most progressive stance in regards to any belief system is that of model agnosticism (or zeteticism), admitting that one cannot absolutely know something - that we simply choose what works best for us as individuals.
too many people do not recognize that the need to be right and to tell others that they are not is more insidious than physical violence, as it is a brand of psychological violence that veils itself in a cloak of self righteous 'goodness' while attempting to perpetuate brainwashing and coercion.
it seems to me that the largest problem civilized culture has is the need to be right (which directly impedes on objective thought) and the need to support our own egos and save face at any cost.
wise people stay as far away from those that practice these things as possible, for those individuals which practice it are not interested in truth, but interested in being 'right' which is an aesthetic quality in this regard and is completely relative to culture, species, etc.
I would suggest you take up your struggle against the invidious "need to be right" with medical professionals and the judicial system. After all, if being "right" is such a sin, why should we allow these doctors and judges tell us what the particular malfunctions of our bodies are and how to treat them, or whether a person is innocent or guilty.
Would you consider it my "need to be right" that motivates me to tell you that you should have started your comment, "Most people who have dismissed religion..."?
I second Jorg in his appeal to accuracy. I rarely have a problem with religion except when it gets between a problem and its solution. For example, I can't stand when people want to indoctrinate children into religion as a method of education. And I don't like it when one group of people attempts to subjugate another based on divine right.
On the other hand, I have no problem with someone more easily accepting his/her mortality because of a belief in the afterlife.
"[T]hey therefore throw out the baby with the bathwater"
What baby?
Why do religious people always try to push the burden of proof onto the atheists? Were not the one making fantastical claims, if you claimed Bigfoot exists i require proof, not just that he might or you believe he does. I reject god/religion because I think the idea is silly, I cant disprove god but once again I cant disprove Bigfoot either.
science is honest and pure. There is no blood on the hands of the scientist. In science, something that is not proven is stated as theory and is loosely debated. In religion, things that are not proven are preached and driven into young, vulnerable minds as fact that is not to be doubted for fear of a 'fiery' conclusion. Any Christians ever heard of Dante?
The observation that 'religious people' give more to charity, volunteer, etc. is not proof that religion produces morality. Some people are both moral and religious, some moral and atheist, some immoral and religious. One can point to the savagery of Godless Communism, but one can also point to the massacres conducted by Christian regime; pogroms against Jews, the slaughter of the Crusades, the religious wars in Europe.
After 70 years of observing people, I have concluded that one's religion has almost nothing to do with the sort of person one is. Good people are good, bad people are bad. We all see the hypocrisy with which religious people cloak their evil and the more devoutly they believe, the more hypocritical they usually are.
I have known many people who consider themselves religious, including not only the laity but priests, ministers and rabbis. I have noticed that the most decent, caring, moral ones usually didn't take religious matters too seriously. The more zealous the believer, the less I trust them and the more likely they are to be hypocrites.
Exactly what I was thinking. "...study after study has shown that deeply religious people tend to give substantially more to charity and to volunteer more often than their nonreligious counterparts." Actually, it was one study, and the finding was that self-identifying religious people (not "deeply religious" as if there were some objective measure of religiosity) report that they give more to charity (no confirmation in the study). This is clearly an association, not a causal relationship.
"Regardless of the reason for this trend," Mr. Petrenko provides one: "it seems obvious that something about religious communities and worship encourages individuals to love their neighbor, to share resources, and to be involved in the community."
This hypothesis is not contradicted by the observation, but neither is the hypothesis that people inclined to do good things may join or stay with religions more than those who aren't - perhaps because of the professed mission of those religious institutions. Or, alternatively, people who belong to religious organizations are more inclined to report that they engage in "charitable" giving (regardless of the truth of that report) because appearing to give to charity is important to them. Or, it's likely that the study authors counted donations to religious institutions as donations to "charities"; in which case, the finding comes down to members of religious institutions tend to report giving more money to religious institutions than non-members do.
I would say these are all equally valid, except that I believe people who need to prop up religious institutions as a force for good tend to do so unscrupulously (oh, the irony). That being the case, I am disinclined to believe that evidence supports the argument - purely for the poetic symmetry.
Less atrocious, but worthy of mention, is the selling of indulgences and similar practices that helped enrich the Catholic church at the expense of its followers. Why does the leader of a religion that professes that the meek shall inherit the Earth live in a house of gold? Nor do Catholics have the monopoly on these practices--megachurches run by charismatic Christian church leaders in $5000 suits, enormous missionary compounds owned by the leaders of the LDS church, and the obscene amounts of wealth generated by Scientology's practitioners--all are perfectly good examples of people in power using other peoples' morality for their own ends. These immoral people are empowered by those charitable people below them--they would not have their pulpits were it not for their congregations, congregations filled almost by definition with kind people who subscribe honestly to their beliefs.
I don't know why Mr. Petrenko thinks there is anything "new" about atheism. Isn't it the null hypothesis?
Maybe not in Waco.
As a supporter of Dawkins, I found this article interesting. Thanks for taking the time to compose it. You raise some points Dawkins' should address.
The part of Dawkins' argument I find most persuasive is that he speaks not of correctness, or benefits, but of truth. He does say that religion is no good, but that is not he real argument. His argument is that religion is wrong. And it is not good to continue to believe wrong ideas. Your argument seems not to address this issue. We can debate the merits of religion all day. The question is: Is it correct? And if it isn't, why should we continue to believe it? To me there are some deeply human reasons why we should, but believing it won't make it true.
I'm not sure if Penn Jillette is a "New Athiest" or not, but I did find his "This I Believe" on NPR very worthwhile (Google Penn and This I believe).
"In fact, study after study has shown that deeply religious people tend to give substantially more to charity and to volunteer more often than their nonreligious counterparts."
CITATION NEEDED, as they say on Wikipedia.
Please cite any one of these alleged, numerous studies.
I'm a Christian. I tolerate Atheists and all people of other faiths, as long as they're not trying to kill me. Most of the Atheists I've known, however, have attacked me (verbally) at every opportunity, which has made me question why I tolerate them. But I will continue to tolerate them, because they have a right to their beliefs and I have a right to mine.
"I tolerate Atheists and all people of other faiths, as long as they're not trying to kill me. Most of the Atheists I've known, however, have attacked me (verbally) at every opportunity, which has made me question why I tolerate them."
Congratulations for answering your own question.
You say that "The answer to radical Islam, for instance, is not atheism, but moderate Islam," but can you back that up?
The religious experience is based not on some external focus but rather comes from the Self. Its the reason that all religions eventually fraction. A quote unquote moderate religion will eventually split into moderates and fundamentals, and the fundamentals will do whatever they think is necessary to confirm their religious views.
Study after study shows that religious people give more money to charity? Just recently a study showed the exact opposite. I am not interested in looking it up for someone as dense as yourself, but I am not writing an article, claiming things without citation. You and this piece is riddled with failure and your credibility is shoddy.
The reason that I, as an atheist, am more against christianity than other religions, is that a large cornerstone of christianity is based around conversion. Great if you need people. Bad if you don't want to get involved.
Having people try to "save" you left and right gets annoying after a while.
We have to recall the radical dissent at the core of both Jewish and Christian experience. Think of the entire Exodus narrative in terms of dissent. Think of Hebrew prophets like Amos--dissenters. Think of Jesus executed by an oppressive imperial power. Dissent is a gift from the best in religion.
i mean, you guys have kinda been douchebags about the whole god thing for way longer than we've been douchey about the lack thereof. can't we be pretentious and irritating for a little while? only seems fair.
Do we as atheists really scare the holy people that much that they have to come up with basically the first thing they can conjure up in their heads.
Look as dumb as I think it is for you to believe in "the invisible man in the sky" theory, you have the right in this country. On the other hand you may think I'm an idiot for looking at the world in retrospect, weighing all the options, not falling in line like a sheep, and doing some critical thinking about the world i live in, thus realizing that religion is nothing more than elaborate hoax in my eyes. I also have that right.
So can't we all just get along.
Also resent was a poor choice of word. I, as an atheist, don't resent the believers, I just happen to think that your wrong. Very wrong, like your wasting your entire life on a 2000 year old mythological story book. So I don't resent you, but i will make fun of you for it.
Not to mention I don't think that the guy that wrote this article has ever met an atheist.
Plus none of us are going around killing mass amounts of people for really no good reason at all. I mean if I'm going to go kill someone its gonna be for my own personal reasons.
"Look as dumb as I think it is for you to believe in "the invisible man in the sky" theory, you have the right in this country. On the other hand you may think I'm an idiot for looking at the world in retrospect, weighing all the options, not falling in line like a sheep, and doing some critical thinking about the world i live in, thus realizing that religion is nothing more than elaborate hoax in my eyes. I also have that right. "
That's not biased at all.
Please can we drop this canard about the worst regimes of the 20th Century being godless. - Stalin was a trainee priest in his adolescence, Hitler was at least nominally a Roman Catholic until the day he died, Pol Pot and Idi Amin were both educated in church schools... the list goes on.
Should we tolerate murderers so as not to be closed minded to their choices? What if they murder someone very evil, then they are doing good and by condemning the murderer we aren't acknowledging the good that they do.
Religion is overall a force for destruction and conflict. The few isolated cases of good behavior do not counterbalance this.
"Atheists will point out that they do not fly planes into buildings or murder doctors, as some religious fundamentalists have done." Well, not yet but the movement is relatively young. Perhaps some day people will be killing priests and crashing airplanes into churches on Sunday morning in the name of Atheism. You never know. . .
People like you make me embarrassed to be human.
Right. That's why we need appreciate pluralism and diversity and not let one group dominate over the other. Both groups need to cooperate " in order to advance science, reason, and progressive values". Well said!
Konstantin
3. The comments reveal a strong sense of certainty and a reluctance to accept criticism of both the New Atheists and the twentieth-century godless regimes.
You might get a better response if you actually had the balls to say whom you are actually accusing of being "evil" on account of their "godlessness". If you are trying to paint Atheists as guilty by association with some unspecified evil (those nasty godless bastards of history), you shouldn't be surprised when Atheists aren't particularly impressed by your arguments.
If you don't have the balls to stand up and say who you're accusing, then it just looks like you don't want to submit the claim that "godlessness" and "evil" are related to any scrutiny.
You also may wish to consider why you insist on using "godless", rather than the more common descriptor for a regime based on non-religious ideology, "secular". "Godless" is a term that was most frequently associated with the disparagement of Communism in the era of McCarthyism and I can only see that your use in this context is deliberately inflammatory. If you set out to offend, don't be surprised when people get offended.
hahahahahaha snicker
I find that too much time is spent arguing the number of angels that could fit on a pin head... the simple truism here is that the Bible cannot be regarded as anything other than fiction. It follows that belief based on a fiction is not worthy of debate.
What separates Scientology from Christianity/Islam/Judaism? Nothing.
Yes, atheists (what's a "new atheist"?) dismiss religion, even though religion has inspired men to do good. Why? Because once you're shown there are no gods (more technically, once you've shown no one has proven there ARE, which is the real issue -- the burden of proof is entirely on those who claim there's an invisible pink unicorn in their garage), then using religion as a means to inspire men to do good is clearly a system built on lies and deceit which can only come back to bite you in the end. If, as noted, you can be good WITHOUT religion (you can), and if there are not god (there aren't), then all religion does is add another layer of useless clutter to basic morality, and it brings with it the baggage of irrationality, divisiveness, and intolerance. (Not that atheists are immune to this, of course -- atheism doesn't mean total agreement on all issues. Put Ayn Rand and Karl Marx in a room and let them discuss economics or morality! However, atheists at least begin with the premise of "We're all living in a real, knowable, world", whereas believers begin with the premise of "There are invisible magical beings all around us." The first premise allows for the *possibility* of reaching mutual conclusions, of finding out you're wrong, but the second does not.)
The reason for my post's title is this: If atheism does not prevent people from being good, RELIGION IS AN UNNECESSARY CRUTCH. The goodness, higher purpose, yadda yadda religion "inspires" is WITHIN YOU ALL THE TIME. There ARE no gods, so it is YOU doing the good works, YOUR will and values and ideals which motivate you to aspire to greater things. Throw away the magic feather -- YOU DON'T NEED IT.
The goodness, higher purpose, yadda yadda religion "inspires" is WITHIN YOU ALL THE TIME.
Some religions are all about this.
Replace the words "atheism" with "people who do no believe in walking on water, raising the dead or magic flying unicorns" and you will quickly realize how ignorant this article is.
It seems many religious people feel the need to put others down, perhaps in an attempt to make themselves feel better. Atheists (an unorganized, non established demographic of people) are an easy target.
If you replace the word "religious" with "atheist", and you will quickly realize how the door swings both ways.
"It seems many atheist people feel the need to put others down, perhaps in an attempt to make themselves feel better."
I do have some questions about religion. It is mostly about Christianity. Now don't take what I say as negative as I am a true believer.
Isn't Christianity a polytheistic religion? I mean that there are any number of 'churches' in any given community. And very few of these 'churches' agree on just who and what God is. Oh yes, they do teach out of the same Bible, but they also say everyone else is wrong, except for them. (I know that last sentence is stating my views in very simplistic terms).
When I think about Christianity, I can't but help but compare it the older religions. Whether Greek or Egyptian or Roman or any other number of beliefs. They all had many different ways of worship and many different gods. The person chose how the wanted to believe.
I have spoken with different preachers, ministers and priests, and they all seem to believe in a different God. Oh, they call him by the same name, read the same book, but that's about all that is the same amongst them.
I am confused and how do I chose which Christian God to follow?
Here's my take: there are core principles of Christianity that unite all Christians, i.e. Jesus rose from the dead. Then, there's a bunch of leeway for interpretation beyond that, there's where the different sects come from.
Now before all the lurking atheists jump down my throat, consider the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. Approximately goes like this:
39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" (Sound familiar from these comments?)
40But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."
42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[f]"
43Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
THAT'S IT. Even though he was a "bad guy", he was saved because he asked to be saved.
So I would say, ask yourself if you believe in the big uniting tenents of Christianity, then move on to choose which sect feels right to you.
"If you replace the word "religious" with "atheist", you will quickly realize how the door swings both ways."
Haha! So true!
Atheism has a holy book and a set doctrine? When did this happen?
You're right, but both groups can have emotionally charged views (whether it is religion or atheism) and use emotionally charged language that stands in the way of effective listening.
What militant-atheist blog linked to this? Geez.
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