Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
That is absolutely true but doesn't change what I said at all.
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Atheism
- Thread starter 1137
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That is absolutely true but doesn't change what I said at all.
@Augustus said:
Let's take Marxism as a starting point. If I understand you correctly, you're claim is that Marxism is not dogmatic, and is evidence based. Am I reading you right?
Jacobinism and the Reign of Terror weren't "alternatives to religious morality"; they were religious themselves.
Robespierre strongly opposed atheism. His "Cult of the Supreme Being" was his attempt at an alternative to atheism, not religion, and was driven by his disturbance at seeing revolutionaries eschew religion altogether after leaving the Catholic Church.
The fact that Robespierre and the other Jacobins opposed the Catholic Church shouldn't be taken to imply that they opposed religion in general. To the extent that the rise of the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror was about religion, it was a sectarian conflict between competing religious ideologies, not a conflict between religion and irreligion.
Augustus
…
That starts getting really complex so it's probably not the best place to start. Marxism was very much a product of the Enlightenment based on reason though.
I'll start with the social Darwinism, scientific racism, eugenics nexus instead. Do you contend that these were not considered genuinely scientific by much of the intelligentsia?
Augustus
…
The RoT was driven by multiple ideologies that were products of the Enlightenment. Look up The Cult of Reason if you want a more clear cut example of an atheistic one. Violent anti-theism was a well-documented factor in the French Revolution.
The Deist ideologies were really a bridge between the Christian Divine Providence and the purely atheistic 'Reason' as the creator of public good. Some believed atheism led to nihilism, and thus an impersonal god who provided a grounding for liberty and virtue was convenient.
SkepticX
Member
That's certainly not a necessity though (not that I expect you have any problem with that notion). I'm pretty anti-theistic, but I'm a big fan of believers (and the vast majority of other humans), and I agree that most believers aren't fond of fanaticism. I certainly wasn't fond of it when I was a believer. But a lot depends upon where you draw the line of fanaticism. I tend to think if you do a good job of it you'll come up with exactly what you said--most believers aren't fans.
That depends somewhat upon whether or not you identify "religion" as what makes a given community religious rather than another kind (isolate your variables), or if you conflate "community" with "religion", lending the latter the legitimacy and merit of the former.
In either case though, religious belief is about human nature. Even if you could somehow remove the current paradigm or forms that wouldn't address the impetus behind it all. We'd just come up with other forms and expressions because what religion actually is won't be touched. Most of what we'd come up with would undoubtedly be functional duplicates--indistinguishable under the packaging. Religious institutions are just human communities, and they reflect the nature of those humans involved. All that would really be accomplished by getting rid of them, more than likely, is a great deal of chaos, and a whole lot of new stationary.
The idea of getting rid of religion in the common conceptualization (community conflated with the religious packaging and thinking) is just nonsensical--kind of like suggesting we do away with violence by banning sports or nationalistic warfare, as if violence is about a given expression of it, and as if we could just do away with it all by eliminating a most apparent existing form or two. But if we were to recognize "religion" as the packaging it may not seem so absurd.
There's a bit more to "religion" when isolated from "community" than just the packaging though--it's just not good stuff. The good stuff is all about "community" rather than "religion", but aspects of human nature are ingredients of the "religion" recipe as well, and they're not going away. We can learn to manage them better though, just as we have violence. If that were to happen "religion" would morph into "community", basically, as the "religion" aspects atrophy away ... which is exactly what's happening, just at a socially geologic rate.
The Deism of the Cult of Supreme Being was Robespierre's attempt to bring people back from atheism, not to ease people's transition to atheism.
I think it's wild that you think a group who set up its own religion is somehow anti-religion. They were anti-Catholic and anti-clergy, certainly, but so are lots of other religious groups.
Many atheists (or those I know, anyway) don’t care so much why theists believe or even what they believe (or, in my case, whether they actually believe what they think they do). What we care about is how belief informs action. I’ve never had an issue with the devout Catholic girl who does mass on her own lunch time, and keeps excellent accounts on the Company’s time – nor with the Muslim who prays faithfully in private, and writes brilliant code when he’s on the clock.
These people (real by the way) also know (are at least aware) that I’m an atheist, and that their own beliefs frequently contradict each other’s.
But what about the Muslim who refuses to write computer programs dealing with interest? (Does he really accuse himself of taking interest in doing so?) How about the devout Catholic girl who refuses to speak sociably to the gay guy in the Accounting Department? They’re real, too.
Most egregiously of all, how should a democratic state deal with the strong and persistent effort of believers to shape public policy (educational, medical, financial or social) on the basis of pure faith belief – belief that is not universally shared even within that state? I’m remembering the efforts to forbid abortion, to deny the mercy of a peaceful, dignified death to those suffering too much to bear, to disallow loving same-sex couples to marry and share in family life like everyone else, or to teach Intelligent Design (a non-science, if ever there was one) in science classes, and deny teaching of sex education in social studies and health classes.
And here is something else to consider, something I think is shatteringly definitive: the study of Theology ought, because it cannot directly study “God” but only what “God” has wrought, to yield the same results as the study of science. Both are studying the same thing, after all, are they not? (If you cannot study “God,” you can only study “God’s works,” and if “God’s works” is the universe and everything, then that is what science studies, as well.)
And both theology and science – wait for it – are subject to “revelation!” Paul, on the road to Damascus, is not really so different from August Kekulé’s dream of the Oroboros, leading to the discovery of the structure of the benzene molecule. Trying to understand difficult, often intractable, problems frequently relies on these flashes of insight, and it’s a wonderful thing that there are those of us who have them.
But it can’t end with the flash! And here is where theology and science immediately diverge, with science seeking to justify the insight on the basis of the paramountcy of truth (and abandoning it otherwise), and theology seeking to dogmatize the insight on the basis of the “holiness” of the source, and developing apologetics to explain away the discrepancies when this proves impossible.
Theists and atheists really do, in many ways, think and process information very, very differently. Is it any wonder that they often understand one another so abysmally?
These people (real by the way) also know (are at least aware) that I’m an atheist, and that their own beliefs frequently contradict each other’s.
But what about the Muslim who refuses to write computer programs dealing with interest? (Does he really accuse himself of taking interest in doing so?) How about the devout Catholic girl who refuses to speak sociably to the gay guy in the Accounting Department? They’re real, too.
Most egregiously of all, how should a democratic state deal with the strong and persistent effort of believers to shape public policy (educational, medical, financial or social) on the basis of pure faith belief – belief that is not universally shared even within that state? I’m remembering the efforts to forbid abortion, to deny the mercy of a peaceful, dignified death to those suffering too much to bear, to disallow loving same-sex couples to marry and share in family life like everyone else, or to teach Intelligent Design (a non-science, if ever there was one) in science classes, and deny teaching of sex education in social studies and health classes.
And here is something else to consider, something I think is shatteringly definitive: the study of Theology ought, because it cannot directly study “God” but only what “God” has wrought, to yield the same results as the study of science. Both are studying the same thing, after all, are they not? (If you cannot study “God,” you can only study “God’s works,” and if “God’s works” is the universe and everything, then that is what science studies, as well.)
And both theology and science – wait for it – are subject to “revelation!” Paul, on the road to Damascus, is not really so different from August Kekulé’s dream of the Oroboros, leading to the discovery of the structure of the benzene molecule. Trying to understand difficult, often intractable, problems frequently relies on these flashes of insight, and it’s a wonderful thing that there are those of us who have them.
But it can’t end with the flash! And here is where theology and science immediately diverge, with science seeking to justify the insight on the basis of the paramountcy of truth (and abandoning it otherwise), and theology seeking to dogmatize the insight on the basis of the “holiness” of the source, and developing apologetics to explain away the discrepancies when this proves impossible.
Theists and atheists really do, in many ways, think and process information very, very differently. Is it any wonder that they often understand one another so abysmally?
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Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
In fact, I do care why people believe the things they do. People who believe things for bad reasons often act in bad ways because of those beliefs.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
I agree with one.
I find nothing that gives Atheism a free license to critique others while they leave their own ideology not to be critiqued on the same arguments.Atheism is a fragile ideology neither based on Revelation nor on science.
Please
Regards
Augustus
…
You need a bit of 'bigger picture' perspective rather than a Wikipedia article and narrow fixation on one or two words with vague meanings. Rationalism is about emancipation of the mind from irrational and harmful tradition, and this is part of the history of the attack on traditional religion and the search for an alternative.
Think of this as a discussion of the Enlightenment Rationalist response to traditional religion. CoSB was an attempt to ease people's transition away from traditional religion and towards informed, secular civic virtue.
The Rationalist criticism of traditional religion is not that it is called religion, but that it is outdated, irrational and harmful. Starting around the Enlightenment, there was a desire to create rational alternatives that promoted civic and social virtue. Whether they were deistic or atheistic, they were based on Reason and designed to be rational.
There always has to be a replacement for traditional religion, these replacements were from the Enlightenment Rationalist tradition (Marxism, Cult of Supreme Being, Cult of Reason) or the Romantic tradition (Fascism, Nazism).
CoSB was an attempt to recreate religion along a rational lines as a civic philosophy. Secular Humanism is another rational attempt to recreate religion (but without the ritual aspect). It was a 'rational' solution to the 'problem' of traditional religion designed to create public utility.
During the Enlightenment, people were actively trying to find replacements for tradition and superstition, but understood that you couldn't replace these with a vacuum. There were all kinds of these philosophies created, and many of these contained ritualistic components because the importance of ritual was understood in spreading and maintaining a creed.
Also remember that this was the 18th C and was a venture in governance, not a purely philosophical discussion. CoSB's deistic character was to fix the idea that humanity had an innate capacity for justice and to make it more palatable to the masses. Atheism was seen as being oppressive and elitist being a preserve of the educated upper classes, and a potential driver of nihilism. It was a practical, rational solution to a problem.
And you need to cut the condescension and stop assuming that positions that disagree with yours are uninformed.
Honestly, other than S.E. Cupp, I haven't seen an atheist who's as eager to twist facts to support religion as you seem to be.
Augustus
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Twist facts? Like for example...?
In the context of Enlightenment based alternatives to traditional religious morality I provided examples of such replacements.
You then mischaracterised CoSB as being to 'bring people back from atheism', when it was much more a practical attempt to move the masses away from traditional religion towards a political philosophy of secular ethical civic virtue.
You were talking about attacking religion from a position of humanism and scepticism. This was an example of someone trying to move people from traditional religion towards a humanistic secular political philosophy.
Why do you consider it not to be an example of Enlightenment based alternatives to traditional religious morality?
What meet your criteria for philosophies based on 'Enlightenment Values'?
I think maybe the issue here is that you're defining terms in unusual ways. For example, if I take this sentence as sincere, then your definition of "religion" must be pretty malleable.
Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
Which ideology does atheism have? It is the rejection of claims made by the religious. It has no ideology of its own. But by all means, point out this supposed ideology if you can.
Augustus
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Religion imo is a guiding philosophy with ritual component.
Modern Humanism is a guiding philosophy without ritual component. It attempts to define 'sacred values' and a way of living your life and is a replacement for religion. That's all I'm saying there.
There have been many forms of humanism that have had this ritual component, Comte's Religion of Humanity for example. Some modern atheist 'churches' are doing likewise. If you have the ritualistic component then it is a clear attempt to recreate religion, as I noted, SH generally lacks the ritual part.
The whole tree of humanisms are evolutions of the Judeo-Christian tradition and simply replaced faith in Divine Providence with faith in Reason. It is something that fulfills the role of religion, because there cannot be a vacuum there.
Agree? Disagree?
Okay, what do you call "Revelation?" Something that (somebody told you that) God said (to them) and that you are now required to believe because it is, after all, from God. And you know that because the person who had the "Revelation" told you so, and they couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive, be mistaken, or be insane, could they? BEST PROOF EVER!
Atheism is not an "ideology," and not very fragile, either. Atheism is based on observation -- here's me, here's the world, here's what's happening, here's what people say about God -- and here's how that last bit appears to be perfect nonsense because it simply doesn't fit with a single actual observation that anybody can demonstrate.
So I give it to you, my "revelation:" the reason that events in the world contradict pretty much everything that religion says is because the Fribbitz wrought hoblitism! And now that it's been "revealed," are you not compelled to believe?
Your definition of religion is far more generous than mine. I have to come up with new labels for Augustus-based-religion and try to think from that perspective before I can say whether I agree or not.
I can say though that for the most part I think religion also includes a big dose of dogma, and this is one aspect of religion that I think causes a lot of trouble.
I've been having a related conversation (I can't recall which thread), that I think applies here. I see an important distinction between a philosophical axiom and a bit of religious dogma. For example:
axiom: actions that improve the well being of others are good.
dogma: don't criticize god.
Do you see an important distinction between axioms and dogma?
Augustus
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A replacement for a religion; the functional equivalent of a religion; something that fulfills (part of) the role for religion. Not necessarily a literal religion.
Getting caught up in the terminology is unimportant, as long as you understand the concept. Something must fill the vacuum that used to be filled by traditional religion.
Some of these are simply ideologies/philosophies, others might be ideologies with a ritual component. It's just whatever meta-narrative you use to create meaning in this world.
Acceptable?
No sure I get your point, can you explain further please?
What happens if the dogma is positive and the axiom is negative? In that situation is the dogma preferable?
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Atheist are simply normal people, no hang ups with a man in the sky, just simple living, how hard should that be ?.