Showing posts with label new atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new atheism. Show all posts

Saturday, January 26, 2008

New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

"What is strange is that, when one actually reads them, one gets the feeling that the real target of the "new atheists" isn't religion at all.
Indeed, they all explicitly say they have little or no problem with deism, or Spinozian pantheism or what Dawkins calls "Einstein-ian religion". Harris, Dennett and Hitchens (and possibly Dawkins) have indicated that they wouldn't necessarily want to see the synagogues, churches and mosques emptied, though they would want to see them abandon their “metaphysical bullshit” (see this video towards the end).
It seems that the new atheists’ real problem is with dogma, and specifically with the dogma of religious faith - with the belief that it is acceptable, even admirable, to believe propositions without logically sound reasons based on good evidence. They aren't really the “new atheists” at all, but the “new anti-dogmatists”."

Benjamin O'Donnell, Onlineopinion.com.au, 25 January 2008
I think this is a good observation. But it still needs some comments. Why is deism less of a problem than Christianity? Simply, because you can't buy yourself favours from God. There's no reason to act in irrational ways to achieve a special place in Heaven or to avoid Hell. And when you can't explain something, it's kind of pointless to say that a non-interfering god had been interfering. So Deism in itself is not much of a problem.
My only gripe with it is that when you actually accept that some god exists, then the next person can say: "Well, then what's stopping God from interfering in our lives?" And then Deism has fueled religion again, because no Deist would be able to prove to other believers that God never interfers. The best thing is therefore if we somehow can rid the world of this superstition.
"Thankfully, Fascist, Nazi and Communist dogmas have been so discredited that almost no one believes them any more. This is a development to be celebrated."
This is true, but he unfortunately he didn't explain why they are discredited. Now they had their obvious flaws, but so do religions and they're still alive. But imagine for a second that Marx didn't simply write books. Imagine that the idea about a Communist paradise was apparently given to him by prophecy. (An angel came down to Marx and gave him the Heimlich Maneuver while telling him weird stories.) This would have made Marxism and Communism religions, and therefore not testable. As it were, communism collapsed due to being a crap system, which it was not supposed to be and the superior nazis lost the war. So they failed the tests. Islam and Christianity are also crap, but they're not testable on earth. You have to die to know if they're wrong or not.

So, if Communism and Nazism were religions that people believed in, and which were "outside" the reach of science, then they most likely wouldn't be gone. All sorts of morons would say: "Oh, we have to respect Nazism. It's their faith that they are superior. Hitler gave them faith.". And so on. (Which reminds my of the brilliant parody on Terry Eagleton: The Fascism Delusion.)

So they were indeed testable and lost the fight with democracy. Thanks to not being religions.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Strong atheists prepare for battle against religion


"Strong atheists prepare for battle against religion
Atheism is an increasingly stronger and well organized participant in the political debate in the Western world. This in particular, is due to that Atheists generally have better education and are more involved in politics.


By Morten Rasmussen and Sidsel Nyholm

With conferences, professional debaters and political backing Atheism has in few years become a professional participant in the discussion about science, religion and politics. In Denmark, Ateistisk Selskab experienced an annual doubling of its membership, so the organisation now has 750 members. In Sweden, Riksdagen [the parliament] is discussing a bill about state funding of the Swedish atheists in Humanisterna, that today amounts to 4200 persons and every day get another 10 nye members. In Norway the non-religious Human-Etisk Forbund already state funded and with its 67.000 members [72.000 as of 2008] it is only to be surpassed by the Norwegian [state]church.

In the book "Gudløs"["Godless"], that will soon be out, the religion sociologist Peter Lüchau, at the University of Copenhagen, has taken a closer look at how the atheists scored in a large European value survey. According to him it is in particular the profile of the atheists, that has gained them a lot of ground in the debate in the western world.
– Atheists are not ordinary people. Statistics show that they have a higher level of education, are more left oriented and are clearly more poltically active than the average European. They are used to act when they are not satisfied, and in particular, they have the resources and ability to get in the media, says Peter Lüchau.
Outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have additionally put their mark on the bestseller lists with their books, that with titles like "The God Delusion" and "The End of Faith" directly attack religion. And with increasing media coverage follows a growing interest, says Morten Warmind, religion sociologist at the University of Copenhagen.
– If you send a TV programme about making candles, more people will start to make candles. And as religion generally fills more debate, it's a natural consequence that atheism also appear in the media and thereby creates more interest, says Morten Warmind and stresses that the increasingly professional atheism corresponds with a growing religiosity.

–The debate on religion has become more polarized during the last few years. It means that there's suddenly an involvement among people whom earlier only had an interest for the subject, but wasn't organized according to their values and outlook. And this goes for both camps, says Morten Warmind.
In an interview with Kristeligt Dagblad today, one of the world's most prominent atheists, Richard Dawkins, is still bent on a direct confrontation with religion.
– I don't care about the non-believers who try to play around with liberal clergy and say that "It doesn't matter all that much, if we believe in God or not, as long as we're all happy and jolly together", he says and urges the world's "closet atheists" to stand up and be counted.

Kristeligt Dagblad, 05. jan 2008

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

I'm too intellectual for Atheism

"One reason that I am passionate about exposing the new atheism as a stealth religion is because it distracts attention from something far more important and interesting--the proper study of religion and all forms of human mentality from an evolutionary perspective."

David Sloan Wilson, December 14, 2007
I tend to shun these "I'm too intellectual for Atheism"-articles, but after having read through his Objectivism strawman (better than the Communism strawman, but still a strawman) that he created I got interested in the above quote.
David Sloan Wilson thinks New Atheism distracts from "the proper study of religion and all forms of human mentality from an evolutionary perspective." Oh dear.
I can already hear cries from other scientists who say that politics distracts from the proper study of political science. And how about sociologists who decry feminists for distracting everyones attention from the proper study of male chauvinist patriarchy?
Religion affects our lives, and the world we live in, and we have a right to do something with it. Should people stop washing their hands so that virologists could be able to study outbreaks of interesting viruses?

Monday, December 24, 2007

The Triumph of Reason

"Moderate believers simply compound the problem by providing respectability and cover for the extremists of their ilk. Do I appreciate the more accepting people among the faithful? Sure. Ultimately, though, they are still responsible for perpetuating and propagating their worldview. If we could get to the point where the cafeteria Christians and Muslims are taken out of the equation, we could effectively stamp out the religious violence that occurs every day because it would be acceptable to excoriate faith-based belief systems. We could do exactly what Sam Harris talks about in his book, The End of Faith, which describes the effectiveness of ridicule as a tool for social change. As long as it is taboo to criticize religion, that will be impossible.

[...]

If Ms. Pollitt is looking for a one-track route to de-conversion, she'll likely be looking from now until the day that she dies. Every person is different and will respond to the arguments against religion in many ways."

Kelly O'Connor, OpEdNews.com, December 18, 2007
The first part is a familiar line for many that I agree wholeheartedly with. The last part is something that not many of the whiners realize. I keep hearing these funny solutions, like "Scandinavia has a good welfare system, so welfare will make people secular - not angry atheism". Or it may be some other solution (or most likely non-solution) that incorporates everything but honest arguments for Atheism and rational thinking.

To show how silly this is, let me dwell with the welfare state argument a bit: Scandinavia also has had protestant state churches, homogenous populations, was relieved of religious bigots when the religious bigots went to America in the 1800s, was christened so late we still call it Jul (as in Yule) instead of Christmas and we have cool languages.
I don't know, but it seems to me that welfare itself is not some magical formular for secularisation. I'm all for welfare though, but it won't be enough. (Yeah I know I said I was a Libertarian in my previous post but as it goes: "We're all social democrats". I think Post-Libertarian could be a good expression for me. )

Anyway. Most important: it so happens that religious bigotry many places blocks introduction of state welfare either directly or indirectly. What do you do then? I think it's an open question if USA becomes as secular as Norway first or starts using the same welfare state model first. I wouldn't bet that introducing the welfare state in USA is somehow the easier way to making it a godless satanic darwinian country.
Now as Kelly here points out, people are different. The God Delusion or the RRS for that matter does not work with irrational new age hippies who keep crystal pyramids under their beds. But it might work for a guy who just happened to grow up in a religious area without ever making a conscious choice to join the religion that he belongs to and who's generally a rational person.
In short, there are a few billion people in the world who are still not Atheists, and just as all these people have their particular tastes in sex, politics, interior decorating, music etc. - in the same way they will respond quite differently to Atheist arguments. So we need lots of different Atheist or secular arguments. What we don't need is that people shut up.
There's a lot of things that religious conservatives don't like: New Atheism, feminism, LGBT rights, welfare state, science and probably much more. Much, much, more. Think of these things as fronts, like in a war. The more fronts that surround them, the better. That's the perspective we need.
For instance: I'm not a feminist, but I appreciate wholeheartedly the efforts that feminists make to undermine religious conservatives to relieve women of these insane rules.

Religion is not an object with only one side. It can be attacked from many sides, and New Atheism attacks one side that is wide open.