Speaking
up for Atheists
Here is a list of speaking up or standing up for
Atheists. It is quite a long list, but I will begin adding as time permits and
reorganized it.
We see God as one, none and many and in every form;
male, female, genderless and non-existent, being and non-being, nameless and
with innumerable names. We are one nation under God, indivisible with liberty
and justice for all. We are represented by every race, nationality, ethnicity,
language, culture and religion. Americans together are committed to preserve
this pluralistic heritage of America.
ATHEISM ON RISE
Whether we admit or not, most of us have a percent of
Agnostic or Atheist residing within us, and I was no exception. Mother Teresa
in her letters to the Vatican had expressed her occasional doubts, and that has
helped me free myself that it was Ok to have doubts. A Catholic Nun and a Saint
with fervent conditioning in religious beliefs had the doubts, she happens to
be one of my mentors.
http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2010/04/atheism-on-rise.html
The
Atheist delusion
Mike Ghouse:
The article follows my note.
Humans have
always wondered about God, its existence and its appearance. We go through the
phase of being a disbeliever, particularly when we cannot understand the
injustices to us and to the world around us. Many of us have had the delusions
about God as presented one time or the other.
The Atheist
reject the notion of God as presented to them by the organized religion, which
is based on having faith, whereas they look for a physical evidence.
It took me a
long time to develop my own understanding of it, he or she. When I got closer
to understand the concept of Justice and balance built-in by the causer's
automated system, I felt like screaming Eureka. I found God!
The cause
and source of all life, whatever form that cause may have been and is, can be
called the creator, God or any identifier like - Allah, Yahweh, Krishna, Jesus,
Guru, Buddha, Mahavir or Ahura Mazda. The Jewish understanding of God may be
the first anchor for atheist to catch on understanding G-d. Give me the time, I
am researching on just what I have said above to give more clarity.
The atheist delusion
The
Guardian.
'Opposition to religion occupies the high ground,
intellectually and morally,' wrote Martin Amis recently. Over the past few
years, leading writers and thinkers have published bestselling tracts against
God. John Gray on why the 'secular fundamentalists' have got it all wrong.
An atmosphere of moral panic surrounds religion.
Viewed not so long ago as a relic of superstition whose role in society was
steadily declining, it is now demonized as the cause of many of the world's
worst evils. As a result, there has been a sudden explosion in the literature
of proselytizing atheism. A few years ago, it was difficult to persuade
commercial publishers even to think of bringing out books on religion. Today,
tracts against religion can be enormous money-spinners, with Richard Dawkins's
The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great selling in the
hundreds of thousands. For the first time in generations, scientists and
philosophers, high-profile novelists and journalists are debating whether
religion has a future. The intellectual traffic is not all one-way. There have
been counterblasts for believers, such as “The
Dawkins Delusion?” by the British theologian Alister McGrath and “The Secular Age” by the Canadian
Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. On the whole, however, the anti-God squad
has dominated the sales charts, and it is worth asking why.
The abrupt shift in the perception of religion is only
partly explained by terrorism. The 9/11 hijackers saw themselves as martyrs in
a religious tradition, and western opinion has accepted their self-image. And
there are some who view the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a danger
comparable with the worst that were faced by liberal societies in the 20th
century.
For Dawkins and Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Martin
Amis, Michel Onfray, Philip Pullman and others, religion in general is a poison
that has fuelled violence and oppression throughout history, right up to the
present day. The urgency with which they produce their anti-religious polemics
suggests that a change has occurred as significant as the rise of terrorism:
the tide of secularization has turned. These writers come from a generation
schooled to think of religion as a throwback to an earlier stage of human
development, which is bound to dwindle away as knowledge continues to increase.
In the 19th century, when the scientific and industrial revolutions were
changing society very quickly, this may not have been an unreasonable
assumption. Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest may still believe that, over the
long run, the advance of science will drive religion to the margins of human
life, but this is now an article of faith rather than a theory based on
evidence.
It is true that religion has declined sharply in a
number of countries (Ireland is a recent example) and has not shaped everyday
life for most people in Britain for many years. Much of Europe is clearly
post-Christian. However, there is nothing that suggests the move away from
religion is irreversible, or that it is potentially universal. The US is no
more secular today than it was 150 years ago, when De Tocqueville was amazed
and baffled by its all-pervading religiosity. The secular era was in any case
partly illusory. The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles
for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is
reviving now that these movements have collapsed. The current hostility to
religion is a reaction against this turnabout. Secularization is in retreat,
and the result is the appearance of an evangelical type of atheism not seen
since Victorian times.
As in the past, this is a type of atheism that mirrors
the faith it rejects. Philip Pullman's Northern Lights - a subtly allusive,
multilayered allegory, recently adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster, The
Golden Compass - is a good example. Pullman's parable concerns far more than
the dangers of authoritarianism. The issues it raises are essentially
religious, and it is deeply indebted to the faith it attacks. Pullman has stated
that his atheism was formed in the Anglican tradition, and there are many
echoes of Milton and Blake in his work. His largest debt to this tradition is
the notion of free will. The central thread of the story is the assertion of
free will against faith. The young heroine Lyra Belacqua sets out to thwart the
Magisterium - Pullman's metaphor for Christianity - because it aims to deprive
humans of their ability to choose their own course in life, which she believes
would destroy what is most human in them. But the idea of free will that
informs liberal notions of personal autonomy is biblical in origin (think of
the Genesis story). The belief that exercising free will is part of being human
is a legacy of faith, and like most varieties of atheism today, Pullman's is a
derivative of Christianity.
Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of
Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of
universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be
transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that
one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody.
To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely
reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is
a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet
that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonize religion.
A curious feature of this kind of atheism is that some
of its most fervent missionaries are philosophers. Daniel Dennett's “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon” claims to sketch a general theory of religion. In fact, it
is mostly a polemic against American Christianity. This parochial focus is reflected
in Dennett's view of religion, which for him means the belief that some kind of
supernatural agency (whose approval believers seek) is needed to explain the
way things are in the world. For Dennett, religions are efforts at doing
something science does better - they are rudimentary or abortive theories, or
else nonsense. "The proposition that God exists," he writes severely,
"is not even a theory." But religions do not consist of propositions
struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the
heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have
priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognized that in spiritual
matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never
defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western
Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried
to turn religion into an explanatory theory.
The notion that religion is a primitive version of
science was popularized in the late 19th century in JG Frazer's survey of the
myths of primitive peoples, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.
For Frazer, religion and magical thinking were closely linked. Rooted in fear
and ignorance, they were vestiges of human infancy that would disappear with
the advance of knowledge. Dennett's atheism is not much more than a revamped
version of Frazer's positivism. The positivists believed that with the
development of transport and communication - in their day, canals and the
telegraph - irrational thinking would wither way, along with the religions of
the past. Despite the history of the past century, Dennett believes much the
same. In an interview that appears on the website of the Edge Foundation
(edge.org) under the title "The
Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion", he predicts
that "in about 25 years almost all
religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in
most quarters religion will no longer command the awe that it does today".
He is confident that this will come about, he tells us, mainly because of
"the worldwide spread of information technology (not just the internet,
but cell phones and portable radios and television)". The philosopher has
evidently not reflected on the ubiquity of mobile phones among the Taliban, or
the emergence of a virtual al-Qaida on the web.
The growth of knowledge is a fact only postmodern
relativists deny. Science is the best tool we have for forming reliable beliefs
about the world, but it does not differ from religion by revealing a bare truth
that religions veil in dreams. Both science and religion are systems of symbols
that serve human needs - in the case of science, for prediction and control.
Religions have served many purposes, but at bottom they answer to a need for
meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation. A great deal of modern
thought consists of secular myths - hollowed-out religious narratives
translated into pseudo-science. Dennett's notion that new communications
technologies will fundamentally alter the way human beings think is just such a
myth.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins attempts to explain the
appeal of religion in terms of the theory of memes, vaguely defined conceptual
units that compete with one another in a parody of natural selection. He recognizes
that, because humans have a universal tendency to religious belief, it must
have had some evolutionary advantage, but today, he argues, it is perpetuated
mainly through bad education. From a Darwinian standpoint, the crucial role
Dawkins gives to education is puzzling. Human biology has not changed greatly
over recorded history, and if religion is hardwired in the species, it is
difficult to see how a different kind of education could alter this. Yet
Dawkins seems convinced that if it were not inculcated in schools and families,
religion would die out. This is a view that has more in common with a certain
type of fundamentalist theology than with Darwinian Theory, and I cannot help
being reminded of the evangelical Christian who assured me that children reared
in a chaste environment would grow up without illicit sexual impulses.
Dawkins's "mimetic
theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is
spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere. Along
with Dennett, who also holds to a version of the theory, Dawkins maintains that
religious ideas survive because they would be able to survive in any "meme
pool", or else because they are part of a "memeplex" that
includes similar memes, such as the idea that, if you die as a martyr, you will
enjoy 72 virgins. Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the
sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a
theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged
Darwinian metaphors.
Dawkins compares religion to a virus: religious ideas
are memes that infect vulnerable minds, especially those of children.
Biological metaphors may have their uses - the minds of evangelical atheists
seem particularly prone to infection by religious memes, for example. At the
same time, analogies of this kind are fraught with peril. Dawkins makes much of
the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less
attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were
committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. Nazi
"scientific racism" and Soviet "dialectical materialism"
reduced the unfathomable complexity of human lives to the deadly simplicity of
a scientific formula. In each case, the science was bogus, but it was accepted
as genuine at the time, and not only in the regimes in question. Science is as
liable to be used for inhumane purposes as any other human institution. Indeed,
given the enormous authority science enjoys, the risk of it being used in this
way is greater.
Contemporary opponents of religion display a marked
lack of interest in the historical record of atheist regimes. In The End of
Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, the American writer Sam
Harris argues that religion has been the chief source of violence and
oppression in history. He recognizes that secular despots such as Stalin and
Mao inflicted terror on a grand scale, but maintains the oppression they practiced
had nothing to do with their ideology of "scientific atheism" - what
was wrong with their regimes was that they were tyrannies. But might there not
be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of
freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and
culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison", would have
agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies. It is true
he was worshipped as a semi-divine figure - as Stalin was in the Soviet Union.
But in developing these cults, communist Russia and China were not backsliding
from atheism. They were demonstrating what happens when atheism becomes a
political project. The invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be
maintained by tyrannical means.
Something like this occurred in Nazi Germany. Dawkins
dismisses any suggestion that the crimes of the Nazis could be linked with
atheism. "What matters," he declares in The God Delusion, "is
not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically
influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it
does." This is simple-minded reasoning. Always a tremendous booster of
science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarized Darwinism and by theories of
eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism. He
used Christian anti-Semitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the
churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi
belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without
parallel in history. Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people
in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards
religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or
that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.
Nowadays most atheists are avowed liberals. What they
want - so they will tell you - is not an atheist regime, but a secular state in
which religion has no role. They clearly believe that, in a state of this kind,
religion will tend to decline. But America's secular constitution has not
ensured a secular politics. Christian fundamentalism is more powerful in the US
than in any other country, while it has very little influence in Britain, which
has an established church. Contemporary critics of religion go much further
than demanding disestablishment. It is clear that he wants to eliminate all
traces of religion from public institutions. Awkwardly, many of the concepts he
deploys - including the idea of religion itself - have been shaped by monotheism.
Lying behind secular fundamentalism is a conception of history that derives
from religion.
AC Grayling provides an example of the persistence of
religious categories in secular thinking in his Towards the Light: The Story of
the Struggles for Liberty and Rights That Made the Modern West. As the title
indicates, Grayling's book is a type of sermon. Its aim is to reaffirm what he
calls "a Whig view of the history of the modern west", the core of
which is that "the west displays progress". The Whigs were pious
Christians, who believed divine providence arranged history to culminate in
English institutions, and Grayling too believes history is "moving in the
right direction". No doubt there have been setbacks - he mentions Nazism
and communism in passing, devoting a few sentences to them. But these disasters
were peripheral. They do not reflect on the central tradition of the modern
west, which has always been devoted to liberty, and which - Grayling asserts -
is inherently antagonistic to religion. "The history of liberty," he
writes, "is another chapter - and perhaps the most important of all - in
the great quarrel between religion and secularism." The possibility that
radical versions of secular thinking may have contributed to the development of
Nazism and communism is not mentioned. More even than the 18th-century Whigs,
who were shaken by French Terror, Grayling has no doubt as to the direction of
history.
But the belief that history is a directional process
is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism. Secular thinkers such
as Grayling reject the idea of providence, but they continue to think humankind
is moving towards a universal goal - a civilization based on science that will
eventually encompass the entire species. In pre-Christian Europe, human life
was understood as a series of cycles; history was seen as tragic or comic
rather than redemptive. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be
believed that history had a predetermined goal, which was human salvation.
Though they suppress their religious content, secular humanists continue to
cling to similar beliefs. One does not want to deny anyone the consolations of
a faith, but it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth
created by the need for meaning.
The problem with the secular narrative is not that it
assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the
belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be
reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge
increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was
abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a
vast scale in Nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was
prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be
adopted as an instrument of policy by the world's pre-eminent liberal regime at
the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been
repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one
another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the
same.
Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of
history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would
start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his
critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today's
secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of
Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not
assume any connection between atheism and liberal values - on the contrary, he
viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly
for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves
as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have
come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating
them.
Among contemporary anti-religious polemicists, only
the French writer Michel Onfray has taken Nietzsche as his point of departure.
In some ways, Onfray's “In Defense of
Atheism” is superior to anything English-speaking writers have
published on the subject. Refreshingly, Onfray recognizes that evangelical
atheism is an unwitting imitation of traditional religion: "Many militants
of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of
clergy." More clearly than his Anglo-Saxon counterparts, Onfray
understands the formative influence of religion on secular thinking. Yet he
seems not to notice that the liberal values he takes for granted were partly
shaped by Christianity and Judaism. The key liberal theorists of toleration are
John Locke, who defended religious freedom in explicitly Christian terms, and
Benedict Spinoza, a Jewish rationalist who was also a mystic. Yet Onfray has
nothing but contempt for the traditions from which these thinkers emerged -
particularly Jewish monotheism: "We do not possess an official certificate
of birth for worship of one God," he writes. "But the family line is
clear: the Jews invented it to endure the coherence, cohesion and existence of
their small, threatened people." Here Onfray passes over an important distinction.
It may be true that Jews first developed monotheism, but Judaism has never been
a missionary faith. In seeking universal conversion, evangelical atheism
belongs with Christianity and Islam.
In today's anxiety about religion, it has been
forgotten that most of the faith-based violence of the past century was secular
in nature. To some extent, this is also true of the current wave of terrorism.
Islamism is a patchwork of movements, not all violently jihadist and some
strongly opposed to al-Qaida, most of them partly fundamentalist and aiming to
recover the lost purity of Islamic traditions, while at the same time taking
some of their guiding ideas from radical secular ideology. There is a deal of
fashionable talk of Islamofascism, and Islamist parties have some features in
common with interwar fascist movements, including anti-Semitism. But Islamists
owe as much, if not more, to the far left, and it would be more accurate to
describe many of them as Islamo-Leninists. Islamist techniques of terror also have
a pedigree in secular revolutionary movements. The executions of hostages in
Iraq are copied in exact theatrical detail from European "revolutionary
tribunals" in the 1970s, such as that staged by the Red Brigades when they
murdered the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
The influence of secular revolutionary movements on
terrorism extends well beyond Islamists. In God Is Not Great, Christopher
Hitchens notes that, long before Hezbollah and al-Qaida, the Tamil Tigers of
Sri Lanka pioneered what he rightly calls "the disgusting tactic of
suicide murder". He omits to mention that the Tigers are Marxist-Leninists
who, while recruiting mainly from the island's Hindu population, reject
religion in all its varieties. Tiger suicide bombers do not go to certain death
in the belief that they will be rewarded in any postmortem paradise. Nor did
the suicide bombers who drove American and French forces out of Lebanon in the
80s, most of whom belonged to organizations of the left such as the Lebanese communist
party. These secular terrorists believed they were expediting a historical
process from which will come a world better than any that has ever existed. It
is a view of things more remote from human realities, and more reliably lethal
in its consequences, than most religious myths.
It is not necessary to believe in any narrative of
progress to think liberal societies are worth resolutely defending. No one can
doubt that they are superior to the tyranny imposed by the Taliban on
Afghanistan, for example. The issue is one of proportion. Ridden with conflicts
and lacking the industrial base of communism and Nazism, Islamism is nowhere
near a danger of the magnitude of those that were faced down in the 20th
century. A greater menace is posed by North Korea, which far surpasses any
Islamist regime in its record of repression and clearly does possess some kind
of nuclear capability. Evangelical atheists rarely mention it. Hitchens is an
exception, but when he describes his visit to the country, it is only to conclude
that the regime embodies "a debased yet refined form of Confucianism and
ancestor worship". As in Russia and China, the noble humanist philosophy
of Marxist-Leninism is innocent of any responsibility.
Writing of the Trotskyite-Luxemburgist sect to which
he once belonged, Hitchens confesses sadly: "There are days when I miss my
old convictions as if they were an amputated limb." He need not worry. His
record on Iraq shows he has not lost the will to believe. The effect of the
American-led invasion has been to deliver most of the country outside the
Kurdish zone into the hands of an Islamist elective theocracy, in which women,
gays and religious minorities are more oppressed than at any time in Iraq's
history. The idea that Iraq could become a secular democracy - which Hitchens
ardently promoted - was possible only as an act of faith.
In The Second Plane, Martin Amis writes:
"Opposition to religion already occupies the high ground, intellectually
and morally." Amis is sure religion is a bad thing, and that it has no
future in the west. In the author of Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty
Million - a forensic examination of self-delusion in the pro-Soviet western
intelligentsia - such confidence is surprising. The intellectuals whose folly
Amis dissects turned to communism in some sense as a surrogate for religion, and
ended up making excuses for Stalin. Are there really no comparable follies
today? Some neocons - such as Tony Blair, who will soon be teaching religion
and politics at Yale - combine their belligerent progressivism with religious
belief, though of a kind Augustine and Pascal might find hard to recognize.
Most are secular utopians, who justify pre-emptive war and excuse torture as
leading to a radiant future in which democracy will be adopted universally.
Even on the high ground of the west, messianic politics has not lost its
dangerous appeal.
Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like
repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise. In the 20th century, when it
commanded powerful states and mass movements, it helped engender
totalitarianism. Today, the result is a climate of hysteria. Not everything in
religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of
anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which
most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also
made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality,
control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected
categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no
religion has the right to break the peace.
The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads
to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms. A credulous belief in world
revolution, universal democracy or the occult powers of mobile phones is more
offensive to reason than the mysteries of religion, and less likely to survive
in years to come. Victorian poet Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left
bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is
the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach.
· John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the
Death of Utopia will be out in paperback in April (Penguin)
TEXAS FAITH: Why do we pray for Christopher Hitchens?
TEXAS FAITH: Why do we pray for
Christopher Hitchens?
Sep 28, 2010 | Dallas Morning News
Wayne Slater/Reporter
Christopher Hitchens is dying. Hitchens is a terrific
writer, a bracing thinker and, in recent years, a famous and implacable
atheist. He has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which might have slowed
his debates with religious figures in support of his book God Is Not Great, but
it hasn't tempered his tart observations on life.
Hitchens has, of course, an irreverent take on all the
offers of prayer. Why, he asks, should God "be swayed by the entreaties of
other sinners?"
"The offer of prayer can only have two
implications: either a wish for my recovery or a wish for a reconsideration of
my atheism (or both). In the first instance, a get-well card - accompanied by a
good book or a fine bottle - would be just as bracing if not indeed more so.
(Also easier to check.) In the second one, a clear suggestion is present:
surely now, at last, Hitchens, your fears will begin to vanquish your reason.
What a thing to hope for! ... My provisional conclusion is that those who practice
incantations are doing so as much for their sake as mine: no harm in that to be
sure and likely to produce just as much of a result."
So why do we pray for Christopher Hitchens? So he'll
get better? So he'll see the light? Or for our own sake, not his? Why do
religious people pray for others, even those who don't want the prayers?
Our distinguished Texas Faith panel -- some of whom
have crossed paths directly with Hitchens, some of whom have watched him from
afar -- responded in a big way, after the jump:
MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for
Pluralism, Dallas:
Our altruistic nature nudges us to wish well for
others, and thus we pray for Christopher Hitchens for a speedy recovery.
Prayers and wishes are the words to express one's desire to include everyone to
be a part of the universal energy that we long for regardless of our race,
ethnicity, sex, belief or ability. We are simply wishing him well in our own
way that we know of, and I am sure he has the capacity to receive the good on
its face value.
A few generations ago most people were not aware of
the Wicca tradition, met a Maya or shook hands with an Atheist. It was a taboo
to talk with an Atheist, and no one dared call himself one. And now, we have
accommodated the atheists as a part of the fabric of our nation. Indeed about
10% of the population identifies themselves as Atheist, Agnostics or Humanists.
Even the Saint Mother Teresa doubted the existence of God.
Our belief in the creator arrogates us to believe that
our prayers "will make him see the light" and "feel good about
ourselves" that we have done our duty in praying without realizing that
there is not an element of consideration in a prayer transaction.
Prayer is an effortless way to overcome our own biases
and pat ourselves for being a Good Samaritan; it is also an expression of our
unselfishness. To save other's life, people have jumped into frozen lakes, on
the rail road tracks and have risked beatings by protecting the unprotected. It
is rare for an individual to not pray for the other, particularly a public
figure. However the exception was Rev. Pat Robertson when he justified Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's illness to deprivation of God's grace. Despite my
difference with his policies, I prayed for Sharon to get well and bring about a
positive change for all. My maternal grandfather gave the examples of Prophet
Muhammad, who stood up and paid respects to the Jewish and other funerals.
There is indeed an inclusive prayer that we recite at least once a day; May God
forgive our parents, our teachers, our community, the living and the dead. It
is part of bringing the whole humanity into the universal fold. We have come a
long way; our language reflects our inclusive attitudes and acceptance of the
otherness of other, indeed Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and
several others have paved the way for an inclusive tradition.
The pluralism prayers we wrote a decade ago has now
become even more embracive; we rephrased it as pluralistic wishes to be
inclusive of those who do not believe in the theist version of the creator.
Indeed, we redefined pluralism from "respecting the God given uniqueness
of each one of us" to "respecting the genetic uniqueness of each one
of us." We are one family and one world as the Hindu Scriptures call it
"Vasudeva Kutumbakam".
There is something very powerful about inclusiveness,
as the Jewish scriptures say Ve'ahavta la'ger,
you must love the stranger for that guaranteed happiness which comes from
falling the barriers, it feels home. Wishing well restores the positive energy
that gets drained with exclusiveness.
So, we cannot fathom excluding any one from leading a
good life and good wishes that are due every soul. The word prayer implies
invoking God whereas wishes reflect one's desire for the wellbeing of other.
Theists Questions to Atheists
My Notes precede the article:
The common approach we take for living our daily life
is the existence. Theist and atheist are bent on proving each other wrong or
prove that one’s fact is superior to the other. What is the need for it? Better
yet, what is the gain?
We exist with our differences and cannot be
annihilated because we think differently, we have a choice to co-exist as peacefully
as we can or live with varying degrees of peace or misery. Humans crave to
co-exist and insecurities in us want to divide us. It is a continuous battle
and in the interest of every one, we need to focus on co-existence; it protects
every one’s interest.
The difference between theists and atheist is fairly
simple, one set believe that God drives our day to day life where as the other
does not see the role of God in living our daily life.
First of all, the morality does not hinge on religion,
and the internalized values of the societies determine one’s moral conduct – in
terms of being truthful, honest and fair in one’s dealings in personal and
business matters.
Both have a certain time between the first and the
last breath, how is it spent is their choice. The theists look to religious
conformity to a given set of guidelines, whereas the atheist don’t see it that
way.
The author shot in the foot when he said “Jewish,
Islamic and even Christian scriptures actively promote violence.” As Atheists
are not immoral beings because they don’t believe in God, we cannot conclude
that religions promote violence, it is not true. Mistakes are made by
individuals and not religions and individuals should be held responsible and
not their religion.
There is another question that I am frequently asked
to explain, what is the difference between interfaith and Pluralism. Interfaith
is about theists coming together, whereas Pluralism is about co-existence of
all.
Mike Ghouse
Most
Common Theist Questions Answered in a Nutshell
by Neil Marr
When a theist of any religious persuasion enters into
debate with an atheist, it is often with misconceptions. So it’s maybe a good
idea get a few basic points cleared up from the start rather than go over old
ground in the atheists.com forums themselves.
Below are examples of the kind of questions frequently
asked by theists in their first encounter with atheists. Provided are only the
bare bones of likely atheist answers in the interest of brevity: even so, I’m
afraid this introduction necessarily runs to a good ten minutes of reading – so
save it for a coffee break.
Bear in mind that atheists are individuals with no
spokesperson qualified to represent them as a group and many fellow atheists
might not fully agree with the selection of questions or with the wording of my
replies.
Please don’t feel that this simple and hypothetical
Q&A session is meant as any more than a very, very basic introduction.
Theists are more than welcome to develop the anecdotal questions in forum
debate, ask new questions of their own, put forward their own views, and
solicit more detailed and profound answers from other members. Just remember
the rules of netiquette and everything will be friendly, civil and
constructive.
(I use he/him in its neutral sense below for
convenience only and it implies no sexist insult).
Q: Is atheism a religion in itself?
A: Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is merely the
non-acceptance of the existence of any divine entities and other supernatural
influences. It has been said that atheism is to religion what not playing golf
is to sport. That pretty well sums it up.
Q: What is the difference between an atheist and an
agnostic?
A: An atheist absolutely rejects the notion of deities
and supernatural intervention, an agnostic isn’t quite sure of the existence of
gods, though empirical evidence suggests non-existence, but will not deny the
possibility. There are several schools of atheist philosophy: positive atheist,
secular humanist, bright, free-thinker, non-theist. They’re pretty well interchangeable,
but fine differences will be explained in the forums during the course of
debate.
Q: What does an atheist believe?
A: You would have to ask him, and we hope you will.
Each and every atheist, like each and every theist, believes many things. The
only thought atheists share in common is an absolute non-belief in gods,
afterlife (in the form of heaven, hell or reincarnation) and supernatural
intervention in the cosmos and the affairs of man.
Q: What's to stop an atheist running riot if he has no
God-given moral code?
A: An atheist is bound by the same moral codes of
human decency and social responsibility as a theist. But he does not believe
these codes are heaven-sent. In fact, many atheists feel that the theist idea
of actions being rewarded or punished by a divine entity casts doubt on
inherent morality. An atheist’s motivation is conscience-driven rather than
imposed and influenced by ideas of divine reward and punishment. Evolutionary
theory, by the way, posits strong reasons for ethically behavior as a matter of
what has become ‘human nature’. And, of course, we follow even the lesser laws
of our lands and don’t double-park.
Q: An atheist can't prove there is no God, can he?
A: He does not feel obliged to. The burden of proof is
on the claimant. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary support. There is
no empirical evidence suggesting the existence of deities. What evidence is
offered is ‘circular’ in that it relies upon partisan literature and/or is
faith based. Faith is not admissible evidence. Earnestly believing something to
be true does not make it so.
Q: Surely religion is about love and peace. What's so
wrong with that?
A: Religion has, though the ages, proven to be
divisive and destructive and has given rise to many a bloody conflict. Jewish,
Islamic and even Christian scriptures actively promote violence. As for love,
the concept of eternal torment for temporal human sin seems to contradict the
ideals of love and forgiveness. This is such a broad subject that, again, it is
wide open for much broader discussion in the forums.
Q: Are atheists so arrogant that they think they're
above God?
A: As there are arrogant theists, there are arrogant
atheists. However, an atheist does not feel he is above God; because no god
exists. He knows mankind to be the pinnacle of currently known earthly
evolution and most feel great humility in the face of the majesty of time and
space and the richness of all that is a natural part of the world in which he
plays his tiny, temporary, but privileged part. Some atheists feel that theists
are ultimately arrogant in their belief that a godhead takes a personal
interest in their petty affairs.
Q: Why can’t religious people and atheists get along
together?
A: We can. And we hope these forums will provide ample
evidence that we often do. We do not necessarily accept that religion per se
should command respect, any more than non-belief commands respect. But people
can command respect. Hopefully atheism or theism doesn’t actually define us.
There are many more points on which the atheist and theist would agree than
there are those upon which they would disagree. Bearing this in mind, we have a
platform here for open discussion of differences and for showing that we all
share human decency and love of our fellows, irrespective of gender, race,
nationality, colour, social standing … and creed.
Q: Do I risk conversion to atheism by visiting these
forums?
A: Atheism is a non-belief, a non-establishment, a
non-institution; it is not a club where we head-count membership. The purpose
of these boards is not to evangelize but to openly discuss matters of mutual
interest. A knowledge-questing theist might well question some of his beliefs
after careful consideration of other ideas, or he might – as many admirable
theist friends do – stick to his guns and give the atheists food for thought. We’re
not on a conversion kick … but we do try to promote common sense and education.
Q: Is the material universe the atheist’s God?
A: The atheist is, like any thinking person, in awe of
the cosmos – what is known and what is yet to be discovered. But the universe
is not his god. He has no god. The universe is innocent of its own existence,
let alone of ours. Such acceptance is the basis of atheistic humility and the
reason most atheists support scientific and scholarly quest for answers that
will enrich humankind.
Q: Why are atheists so hung up about a dividing line
between church and state?
A: All past and present incarnations of theocracy have
resulted in untold misery, warfare, poverty of spirit and ignorance. What
atheists feel is that – especially in the USA – the west is seeing the thin
edge of a worryingly broad wedge that threatens educational, scientific and
scholarly progress and discriminates against the non-theist (in some cases even
non-Christian) through governmental, commercial and social interference. This
is another point that will be discussed more fully in forum.
Q: Science can't account for everything; ergo there
must be a God, no?
A: No. Already the disciplines of science and
scholarship have answered many complex questions and solved many hitherto
insurmountable problems, opening up a magnificent vista of possibility. Science
and Scholarship is ever-questing and self-critical. Where there might currently
be a gap in scientific knowledge (and they’re working on it), to suggest that
the gap be automatically filled by supernatural means is hardly realistic. We
feel that, whereas science and scholarship strives to offer answers to
questions, religions merely offer answers that must not be questioned.
Q: God created everything; the universe and all that's
in it is part of His plan. It says so in the scriptures, doesn't it?
A: This is an example of ‘circular’ argument, where
support for a supposition comes from a source that is itself part of that very
supposition. The scriptures of all religions are fatally flawed. They are
riddled with inaccuracy and contradiction. Creation stories, from the sublime
to the ridiculous, abound. None match and none offer the satisfaction and staggering
beauty of scientific evidence in support of the beginning and development of
the universe and evolution of life on earth.
Q: But evolution, for example, is just a theory, isn’t
it?
A: It is important to understand clearly the
definition of scientific theory. In this formal usage, the word theory has
little in common with its casual everyday use to describe an unproven
supposition. Evolution is a tried-and-tested scientific theory just like
gravity is a tried-and-tested theory. Please don’t jump out of a window to
prove that the theory of gravity is the figment of scientific imagination. Do
not French kiss Typhoid Mary to test the germ theory. Much, much more will be
available to you on such subjects when you start to take part in the forums.
There are scientists and scholars among atheists.com membership with the generosity
and patience to share their knowledge.
Q: So atheism is based upon the findings of science,
evolution and the revelations of scholarly scriptural criticism?
A: Not at all. Science and scholarship lend support to
the atheist viewpoint, and doubtless, some who held faith have lost it in the
face of overwhelming evidence; but an atheist may well know nothing at all
about scientific and scholarly matters. Most atheists are natural non-believers
because they discover – at whatever stage of life – that belief in deities is
irrational and irrelevant.
Q: If there is no afterlife, where does an atheist
turn to for purpose?
A: Ask him. Each of us has his own justification for
living life as he does. Most atheists – more than content with their tiny spec
of existence – try to make the very most of their time on earth and to make
their lives productive and useful to those around them. An atheist must fulfil
his perceived purpose in the here-and-now, or fail. He yearns for no heaven and
fears no hell. There are no second chances through reincarnation. Death and
birth bracket an atheist’s existence. He faces this fact and is comfortable
with it.
Q: Why do so many atheists research religion when they
are so sure there are no gods?
A: Firstly, religion and history are fascinating
subjects for academic research to anyone with an enquiring mind. Secondly, even
though there is no divine basis to religion, one true reality of religion is
its influence upon the world in which we live. We have a vested interest in
knowing as much about it as we can. And it often surprises us that so very few
of those professing a faith have actually read and study the literature upon
which it’s based and know anything about their particular religion’s history
and structure. But please don’t think that most atheists are avid students of
religion; the vast majority are merely apathetic toward it (apatheists?) and
dismiss the entire subject as having no relevance to their lives. Those you
will meet here are the exception rather than the rule.
Q: What about Pascal's Wager?
A: The French philosopher Blaise Pascal is popularly
quoted by Christian theists when they argue against atheism. In a nutshell,
Pascal said: Believe in God and you stand to gain everything. If you’re wrong
in that belief, you lose nothing. Heads you win, tails you don’t lose.
There are two problems with this gambit. Firstly, you
cannot with honesty choose to believe. You either do or you don’t. Secondly,
which god is Pascal talking about? Who’s to say the theist (insert a religion
here) has chosen to believe in the real one?
Think on this: If you are a monotheist (say a Jew, a
Christian, a Moslem), you believe in one god. You disbelieve in the hundreds
and thousands of other gods worshipped in the world today and in the past. The atheist
merely believes in one god less.
Another philosopher, Epicurus, writing 300 years
before the alleged birth of the Christian's Jesus Christ, composed what is
known as the ‘Epicurean Paradox’. It is more likely to be quoted by atheists
than the flawed Pascal’s Wager:
Is God all-powerful but unable to stop evil?
Then God is not omnipotent.
Is God all-powerful but not willing to stop evil?
Then God is malevolent.
Is God all-powerful and all-good?
Then whence enter evil?
Is God weak and unable to stop evil?
Then why call him God?
I hope you’ve found this simple Q&A helpful and
that you’ll join us here to exchange thoughtful and friendly debate on a
subject of mutual and heartfelt interest.
End
Neil Marr
- Consider the following statements; The Christians,
Muslims and Jews believe that there is one God. The Hindus, Shinto’s and pagans
believe that there are many gods. Some religions believe that we are all God.
The bible says that we are all descended from Adam and Eve. Every other
religion has a creation myth that is just as silly as Adam‘s rib, including the
story where the Japanese islands were formed from the brine dripping off of a
god’s spear. If one of the above viewpoints is true then the others are false.
These various beliefs are not compatible. Even if the Christian says to the
pagan, “I accept that God may have come to other people in other forms and
therefore you are worshiping my God in a different form.” he is really just
patronizing him. If one god presents himself in multiple forms, why bother with
religion at all? If one ritual is interchangeable with another then why not
make up your own? If the pagan says to the Christian, “I accept that the divine
has many aspects and therefore you are worshiping my goddess in a different
form” then why not just go to church? If every religion contains a seed of
divinity then why not just stay at home and be content knowing that the divine
exists? If all belief systems are valid then why not an arbitrary one you
created by yourself? Consider that scientology is based on the off-hand
thoughts of a science fiction writer.
It works like this, if someone tells you he just had a
conversation with God, he’s a lunatic. If someone convinces a dozen people that
he talks to God then he’s a cult leader. If someone convinces a million people
that he talks to God then he’s a prophet. Religions are founded by lunatics who
become cult leaders who become prophets. If someone attempts to answer the
question of which religion is right by saying that his religion will eventually
convert all others and essentially cover the world, we start getting into scary
territory. If you believe that those who do not worship as you do are wrong,
how can you be sure that you have really chosen the correct religion?
Do you pick your religion solely by what others have
told you and then insist that you have exclusive access of divine truth? If a
Hindu knows in his heart that his beliefs are true, and a Christian feels the
same, how do you judge which experience is more valid? If one religious viewpoint
is right and all others are wrong, then how do you distinguish between them?
Heaven, Reincarnation and Nirvana are very different concepts. If Heaven is
real then the other two concepts are mere bunk. How could anyone in good
conscience watch as hundreds of millions of people devote their lives, energy
and finances to a religion that is wholly false? On the other hand, what kind
of arrogance motivates someone to travel to another country to “save” the
ignorant and superstitious of the world? What justification can you have for
telling someone that your superstition is superior to his or her own?
http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2008/06/theists-questions-to-atheists.html
Atheism isn't the final word
Mike Ghouse comments: It is very assumptive on part of
Don Feder's claim that, "A universe that isn't God-centered becomes
ego-centered.
Ego is a human trait, religions no doubt have worked
on getting humans to be less egotistic, it is obvious that we are. Belief or
non-belief in God does not make a big dent in one becoming a egomaniac.
Morality is common social values internalized, some derive from religion, as it
is a source, but morality does not necessarily hinge on being God-centric.
He further states "Why the sudden outpouring of
atheist advocacy? " My friend, atheism has been around as long as theism -
Mike Ghouse
Atheism Isn't The Final Word
By Don Feder
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/04/post_47.html#uslPageReturn
Books making the case against God seem to be
multiplying, becoming more strident and absolute with each turned page. Though
no one can prove or disprove God’s existence, our history reveals the
unmistakable footprints of something greater than man.
Oh, for the days when one could safely stroll into a
bookstore without tripping over the latest atheist title. Ironically, by writing
their tracts, in the long run atheists might boost belief.
(Illustration by Sam Ward, USA TODAY)
My local Barnes & Noble has the following titles
on display — Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam ; The Quotable Atheist; Letter To A Christian Nation; God: The Failed
Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; and The God Delusion,
which is a New York Times best-seller.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has become the first member
of Congress to announce that he doesn't believe in God. He's probably just
looking for a book deal.
Why the sudden outpouring of atheist advocacy? Perhaps it's a way for the
cultural left to assert itself in the face of the religious right. Or maybe
it's meant to show that the anti-God argument can be framed more intelligently
than in a Bill Maher monologue. Whatever the impetus, as a believer, I welcome
the phenomenon. After all, the great enemy of belief isn't disbelief but
indifference.
Let the godless write their books and the faithful answer
them. The disillusionment with religion that dominated British intellectual
circles after World War I helped to shape the great Christian apologist C.S.
Lewis. The surviving son of atheist icon Madalyn Murray O'Hair is an
evangelical Christian.
The books referenced above assert that the debate is
over and that atheism has won, but atheists have been saying that for more than
200 years. Since the French Enlightenment, the death of God has been
confidently proclaimed. Religion has been made obsolete by egalitarian
revolution, industrialism, or science, they insisted. Yet, early in the 21st
century, faith endures.
Outlasting the Soviet Union
For 70-plus years, the Soviets tried everything
imaginable to kill religion: show trials, mass murder of clerics, confiscations,
indoctrination and even attempts to co-opt religious symbols and ceremonies.
But belief survived, while scientific socialism is now defunct.
In China, where communism's war on God continues, the
home-church movement thrives. Half a world away, America has the highest weekly
church attendance in the industrialized world, notwithstanding attacks on faith
from Hollywood, academia and a judiciary seemingly intent on purging religious
symbols from public spaces.
In the USA — the most science-oriented society in
history — Christian bookstores, radio stations and TV programming proliferate.
It seems as though a hunger for the Creator is imprinted on the human heart.
What would a world without God look like? Well, for
one, morality becomes, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. "Thou
shalt not kill" loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a
suggestion. How inspiring can it be to wake in the morning, look in the mirror,
and see an accident of evolutionary history — the end product of the random
collision of molecules?
A universe that isn't God-centered
becomes ego-centered. People come to see choices through the prism of self: what
promotes the individual's well-being and happiness. Such a worldview does not
naturally lead to benevolence or self-sacrifice.
An affirmation of God can lead to the Ten Commandments,
the Sermon on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence. In terms of
morality, a denial of God leads nowhere.
There are no secularist counterparts to Pope John Paul
II, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce (the evangelical responsible for abolition
of the British slave trade), Martin Luther King Jr., or the Christians — from
France to Poland — who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
True, terrible things have been done in the name of
religion. Terrible things have been done in the name of every noble concept,
including love, charity, loyalty and kinship. Yet, the worst horrors of the
modern era were perpetrated by godless political creeds. The death toll from
sectarian conflict over the ages is dwarfed by ideological violence, from the
Jacobinism of Revolutionary France to the charnel houses of communism and
fascism.
This is not to say that atheism leads naturally to
guillotines and gulags, but, just as "love your fellow man as yourself"
can be corrupted, so too can liberty, equality and fraternity.
Signs throughout history
There is no irrefutable evidence for God's existence
or non-existence. But, if you look closely, his footprints can be discerned in
the sands of time.
Jews introduced the world to monotheism. They also
were the first people to perceive history as linear— an unfolding story moving
toward a conclusion. Is it a coincidence that this tiny, originally nomadic
people generated the ideas that shaped the Western world, including equality,
human rights and a responsibility to our fellow man? Jews are the only people
to maintain their identity during two millennia of exile, and then return to
their homeland and re-establish their nation.
Mark Twain wrote: "The Egyptian, the Babylonian,
and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to
dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast
noise and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high
for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished.
All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces
pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" Had Twain
been a believer, he might have answered his own question.
America's survival and rise to global pre-eminence are
equally improbable. Challenging the greatest empire of the 18th century,
America should never have won its independence or should have self-destructed
during the Civil War.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the genius of our
infant republic lay not in its farms and workshops but in its churches who’s
"pulpits flame with righteousness."
Atheists are free to disbelieve and to try to
propagate their disbelief in books and other intellectual forums. But saying the debate is over doesn't make it so.
A bit of humility might make their case more convincing. Then again, humility
is itself a religious concept.
Don Feder is a former syndicated columnist and author
of Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?
http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2007/04/atheism-isnt-final-word.html
Evangelical Atheists?
I agree with
Reza in the article below that the few Atheists give a bad name to others,
perhaps it is the same percentage as in other religious groups; 1/10th of 1%.
As a society, we may want to learn to accept that every group, religious or
otherwise has a mix of ultra-liberals to hard core evangelists. Every possible
category in one group is also in the other, and we must resist the temptations
to brand any group with a singular label.
As a
Pluralist Muslim, I have done radio shows called wisdom of religions, all the
beautiful religions. Indeed, the programs were from A to Z, Atheism to
Zoroastrianism and every one in between.
My audience
surged for the shows on Atheism and same goes with the workshops, the most
attendance was for Atheism; that was three years ago. It is changing
dramatically every day, there is a survey that indicates that ten percent of
the Americans are Atheist or Humanists.
For the
annual Unity day programs we present in Dallas in commemoration of 9/11, I
joined in two Atheist groups to invite them to be represented on the stage with
every tradition, as it is a non-exclusive event. I was kicked out of the groups
because I believed in God; I know that is not all Atheists, but it is the
fundamental evangelical atheists among them who gave me the shaft. However, I
am connected with many Atheist/Humanist and I see the value of their beliefs
without subscribing to it and I must state that they are as legitimate to the
believer as my belief is to me or your belief is to you.
I was an
Atheist myself for a very long time and found the resistance among interfaith
groups to keep the Atheists out, that led me to establish the foundation for
pluralism to be inclusive of those who believe in no God, one God and multiple
representations of God. We exist and that is a fact, we might as well make our
existence enjoyable, after all belief should not be the source of conflict, the
only real conflicts are one’s space, sustenance and nurturance, all else is
intangible and don’t have to be in the category of conflict.
Mike Ghouse
is a speaker, thinker, writer and an activist of Pluralism, Islam, and Civil
Societies. He is mitigater of conflicts and offers pluralistic solutions on
issues of the day. http://www.mikeghouse.net/
Harris,
Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett: Evangelical atheists?
By: Reza
Aslan
One cold
spring day in London, as I crossed the bustling square at Piccadilly Circus, I
looked left instead of right (a typical American tourist) and was nearly run
down by a careening double-decker bus with a flash of letters emblazoned along
its side:
THERE'S
PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
The slogan
is now ubiquitous and not only in London. When I first saw it I laughed, amused
that atheists in the UK were miming propaganda techniques perfected by
evangelical groups in the US, whose billboards dot the American landscape
("Having truth decay? Brush up on your Bible!"). I likely would have
thought no more of it had not a friend informed me that the driving force
behind the London bus ads was none other than the dean of the so-called
"new atheists"--Darwin's Rottweiler, himself--Richard Dawkins. If you
are wondering what an esteemed evolutionary biologist and respected Oxford
University professor is doing placing billboards around London proselytizing
atheism, you are not alone.
There is, as
has often been noted, something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been
termed the new atheist movement. The new atheists have their own special
interest groups and ad campaigns. They even have their own holiday
(International Blasphemy Day). It is no exaggeration to describe the movement
popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and
Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of
fundamentalism--an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious
fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole
possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance
for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust
deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist,
in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic
reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their
overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and
marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.
This is not the philosophical atheism of Feuerbach or Marx, Schopenhauer or
Nietzsche (I am not the first to think that the new atheists give atheism a bad
name). Neither is it the scientific agnosticism of Thomas Huxley or Herbert
Spencer. This is, rather, a caricature of atheism: shallow scholarship mixed
with evangelical fervor.
The
principle error of the new atheists lies in their inability to understand
religion outside of its simplistic, exoteric, and absolutist connotations.
Indeed, the most prominent characteristic of the new atheism--and what most
differentiates it from traditional atheism--is its utter lack of literacy in
the subject (religion) it is so desperate to refute. After all, religion is as
much a discipline to be studied as it is an expression of faith. (I do not
write books about, say, biology because I am not a biologist.) Religion,
however it is defined, is occupied with transcendence--by which I mean that
which lies beyond the manifest world and towards which consciousness is
oriented--and transcendence necessarily encompasses certain theological
connotations with which one ought to be familiar to properly critique belief in
a god. One should, for example, be cognizant of how the human experience of
transcendence has been expressed in the material world through historically
dependent symbols and metaphors.
One should
be able to recognize the diverse ways in which the universal recognition of
human contingency, finitude, and material existence has become formalized
through ecclesiastical institutions and dogmatic formulae. One should become
acquainted with the unmistakable patterns--call them modalities (Rudolph Otto),
paradigmatic gestures (Mircea Eliade), spiritual dimensions (Ninian Smart), or
archetypes (Carl Jung)--that recur in the myths and rituals of nearly all
religious traditions and throughout all of recorded history. Even if one
insists on reducing humanity's enduring religious impulse to causal
definitions, dismissing the experience of transcendence as nothing more than an
anthropological (e.g. Edward Tylor or Max Muller), sociological (think
Robertson Smith or Emile Durkheim), or even psychological phenomenon (ala
Sigmund Freud, who attempted to locate the religious impulse deep within the
individual psyche, as though it were a mental disorder that could be cured
through proper psychoanalysis), one should at the very least have a sense of
what the term "God" means.
Of course,
positing the existence of a transcendent reality that exists beyond our
material experiences does not necessarily imply the existence of a Divine
Personality, or God. (In some ways, the idea of God is merely the personal
affirmation of the transcendent experience.) But what if did? What if one
viewed the recurring patterns of religious phenomena that so many diverse
cultures and civilizations--separated by immeasurable time and distance--seem
to have shared as evidence of an active, engaging, transcendent presence (what
Muslims call the Universal Spirit, Hindus call prana, Taoists call chi'i, Jews
call ruach, and Christians call the Holy Spirit) that underlies creation, that,
in fact, impels creation? Is such a possibility any more hypothetical than say,
superstring theory or the notion of the multiverse? Then again, maybe the
patterns of religious phenomenon signify nothing. Maybe they indicate little
more than a common desire among all peoples to answer similar questions of
"Ultimate Concern," to use the Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich's
famous phrase. The point is that, like any researcher or critic, like any
scientist, I'm open to possibilities.
The new
atheists will say that religion is not just wrong but evil, as if religion has
a monopoly on radicalism and violence; if one is to blame religion for acts of
violence carried out in religion's name then one must also blame nationalism
for fascism, socialism for Nazism, communism for Stalinism, even science for
eugenics. The new atheists claim that people of faith are not just misguided
but stupid--the stock response of any absolutist. Some argue that the religious
impulse is merely the result of chemicals in the brain, as though understanding
the mechanism by which the body experiences transcendence delegitimizes the
experience (every experience is the result of chemical reactions). What the new
atheists do not do, and what makes them so much like the religious
fundamentalists they abhor, is admit that all metaphysical claims--be they
about the possibility of a transcendent presence in the universe or the birth
of the incarnate God on earth--are ultimately unknowable and, perhaps, beyond
the purview of science. That may not be a slogan easily pasted on the side of a
bus. But it is the hallmark of the scientific intellect.
Reza Aslan
is a columnist at the Daily Beast and author of two international bestsellers
No god but God and How to Win A Cosmic War. This essay is adapted from the book
Religion and the New Atheism.
SO WHAT IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD
Belief in God is not a requirement to live a normal
day to day life, it is not a requirement to be a good human being either. Whether
one believes in God or not, the creator loves his creation anyway, and every
human will spend the time he was charged up with whether one is a theist or an
atheist. Every life will end. We have created God in our own image.
http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2009/10/so-what-if-you-dont-believe-in-god.html
BAN ON ATHEISTS
Ban on Atheists
Council ban
on atheist websites
How insecure
is the council? Are they afraid that by looking at Atheists sites, one would
give up his or her faith? If so, let them.
If the
council can produce a letter from God, signed by God himself (herself or
itself) telling the council to ban the atheist, I would accept the letter. God
will not do such a thing, neither God will sign a letter behind any one's back.
Every one of
us is an atheist at one moments of the life or the other. Mother Teresa was the
courageous one to admit. Belief in God also produces disbelief, one has to
figure out what works for him or her.
If these
fascist believe that Atheism equates immorality, they are wrong. Morality is a
product of the society, either stamped by God through the religious texts or
simply the practice to survive.
God has
created every soul and we need to honor his space both spiritual and physical.
Being an Atheist is not a crime, as much as being a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Baha’i,
Buddhist, Jew, Wicca, Sikh, Shinto, Zoroastrian, Hope, Aztec, Toltec, Zulu is
not a crime. Crime is when one murders the other, invades the space of other,
robs the belongings of others and that must be punished by the civil
understandings of the society.
As a Muslim,
I protests this ruling. Everyone has the exact same right for space in this
cosmos.
Mike Ghouse
A city
council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.
Lawyers at
the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was
"discriminatory" and they would consider legal action.
The rules
also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and
criminal activity.
The city
council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new
system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.
'Very strong
case'
The
authority's Bluecoat WebFilter computer system allows staff to look at websites
relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites
to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices,
atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".
Under the
Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to
discriminate against workers because of their religion or belief, which
includes atheism.
National
Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said the city council's rules also
discriminated against people who practice witchcraft, which is also classed as
a legitimate belief.
We feel very
strongly that people who don't believe should not be denied the access that
people who do believe have got
Terry
Sanderson, National Secular Society
He said the
society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be
changed, and otherwise pursue legal action.
He said he
believed he would have a "very strong case".
Mr.
Sanderson said: "It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they
also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft.
"Witchcraft
these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognized
religion.
"We
feel very strongly that people who don't believe should not be denied the
access that people who do believe have got."
He added
that some opinion polls said that up to 25% of the UK population now considered
themselves atheist.
A city
council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage
policy for staff".
It added:
"We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make
the control of internet access easier to manage.
"The
aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to
monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and
child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business
reasons."
The rise of atheism in America
COMMENTARY -Mike offers pluralistic solutions on
issues of the day. This particular response to a comment from a Muslim to worry
about Atheism.
Let's be realistic, it's not the west that causes one
to be an Atheist, I chose to be one in India (raised in a secular but religious
family) when I was in my teens and remained so thru the last century. It's
human to be an atheist or have an atheist streak in one.
There is nothing evil being
an Atheist, and one should not look down on it, if we do that, it amounts to
arrogance of being righteous, to God, the righteous ones are the ones who care
about fellow beings.
And I'm a Muslim, perhaps a very strong one, without
negating other paths, but appreciating them all in creating societies that God
wanted- where people honored the otherness of others and accepted the God given
uniqueness of each one.
Deep down, a majority of Muslims are this way. Are you
not?
Mike Ghouse
The rise of atheism in America
By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – 14 hrs. ago
The number of disbelievers is growing, but they remain
America's least trusted minority. Why?
How many atheists are there?
It depends on your definition of the term. Only
between 1.5 and 4 percent of Americans admit to so-called "hard
atheism," the conviction that no higher power exists. But a much larger
share of the American public (19 percent) spurns organized religion in favor of
a nondefined skepticism about faith. This
group, sometimes collectively labeled the "Nones," is growing faster
than any religious faith in the U.S. About
two thirds of Nones say they are former believers; 24 percent are lapsed
Catholics and 29 percent once identified with other Christian denominations. David Silverman,
president of American Atheists, claims these
Nones as members of his tribe. "If you don't have a belief in God, you're
an atheist," he said. "It doesn't matter what you call yourself."
Why are so many people leaving religion?
It's primarily a backlash against the religious Right,
say political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In their book, American
Grace, they argue that the religious Right's
politicization of faith in the 1990s turned younger, socially liberal
Christians away from churches, even as conservatives became more zealous. The
dropouts were turned off by churches' Old Testament condemnation of
homosexuals, premarital sex, contraception, and abortion. The Catholic Church's
sex scandals also prompted millions to equate religion with moralistic
hypocrisy. "While the Republican base has become ever more committed to
mixing religion and politics," Putnam and Campbell write, "the rest
of the country has been moving in the opposite direction." As society
becomes more secular, researchers say, doubters are more confident about
identifying themselves as nonbelievers. "The collapse of institutional
religion in the first 10 years of this century [has] freed so many people to
say they don't really care," said author Diana Butler Bass.
How are nonbelievers perceived?
Most polls suggest that atheists are among the most
disliked groups in the U.S. One study last year asked participants whether a
fictional hit-and-run driver was more likely to be an atheist or a rapist. A
majority chose atheist. In 2006, another study found that Americans rated
atheists as less likely to agree with their vision of America than Muslims,
Hispanics, or homosexuals. "Wherever there are religious majorities,
atheists are among the least trusted people," said University of British
Columbia sociologist Will M. Gervais. As a
result, avowed atheists are rare in nearly all areas of public life. Of the 535
legislators in Congress, for example, only one — Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) —
calls himself an atheist. Few sports stars or Hollywood celebrities own up to
having no religious faith.
Why so much distrust?
Many Americans raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition are convinced that
atheists can have no moral compass. Azim Shariff, a University of Oregon psychologist who
studies religious thinking, sums up how believers view nonbelievers: "They
don't fear God, so we should distrust them. They do not have the same moral
obligations as others." The antipathy may have actually grown with the
recent emergence of "New Atheist" writers such as Richard Dawkins
and the late Christopher Hitchens, who have
launched impassioned attacks on organized religion. Dawkins has encouraged his followers to
"ridicule" anyone who could believe in "an unforgiving control
freak" and "a capriciously malevolent bully" like the God
portrayed in the Old Testament. Dawkins's
harsh approach, said Barbara J. King, an anthropologist at the College of
William and Mary, has confirmed "some of the negative stereotypes
associated with the nonreligious — intolerance of the faithful, first and
foremost."
How have atheists responded to this negative image?
A coalition of nonbelievers is out to make atheism
more acceptable, starting with last month's "Reason Rally" on the
National Mall in Washington, D.C., where thousands stood up for their right to
not believe. Silverman of American
Atheists, who helped organize the rally, said it was intended to give heart to
young, "closet atheists" who fear the social stigma of being
"outed," in much the same way closeted gays do. "We will never
be closeted again," he said. Some within the movement advocate taking a
more conciliatory approach to believers, too. Alain de Botton,
the Anglo-Swiss writer of the new book Religion for Atheists, assails Dawkins as being "very narrow-minded,"
and praises religions as "the most successful educational and intellectual
movements the planet has ever witnessed."
Will atheism ever be accepted?
If growth continues at the current rate, one in four
Americans will profess no religious faith within 20 years. Silverman hopes that as nonbelief spreads, atheists can become a
"legitimate political segment of the American population," afforded
the same protections as religious groups and ethnic minorities. But he's not
advocating a complete secular takeover of the U.S. — nor would he be likely to
achieve one, given the abiding religious faith of most Americans. "We
don't want the obliteration of religion; we don't want religion wiped off the
face of the earth," Silverman said.
"All we demand is equality."
Atheists in foxholes
Atheists are barely visible in politics and
entertainment, but they are clamoring for recognition in another area of public
life — the military. The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
estimates that 40,000 soldiers identify as nonbelievers, and counts the most
famous casualty of the war in Afghanistan, former NFL star Pat Tillman, as one
of its own. In attempting to secure the same rights and support enjoyed by
religious soldiers, the association lobbies against the idea that "there
are no atheists in foxholes," and wants "atheist chaplains" made
available for the ranks of the armed nonbelievers. Jason Torpy, the association's president, says that
nonbelievers outnumber every religious group in the military except Christians,
yet receive no ethical and family counseling geared to their own nonbelief’s. "These are things that
chaplains do for everybody," he said, "except us."
