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A New Commentary on Atheism

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Sandy

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Atheists! Who Are These People?

By Alan Caruba

If you are expecting me to launch into a diatribe about people who do not believe in God or religion, forget it. I don’t much care what anyone believes so long as they are not trying to convert me or kill me for what I believe. Unfortunately, history and our present times are a testament (no pun intended!) to the way religion has proven to be the justification for slaughters of every description.

“Atheists” is a groundbreaking study conducted by Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, recently published by Prometheus Books ($20.00) and a slim, paperback volume best read by people such as psychologists, sociologists, and those interested in religious studies. Hunsberger was a professor of psychology until his death in 2003 as is his collaborator, Altemeyer, who teaches at the University of Manitoba. They had previously collaborated on Amazing Conversion: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others Abandon Religion.

To my surprise, virtually no studies have been conducted to determine why people become atheists. Most of us are aware of atheists only when one of them institutes a lawsuit involving the separation of church and state. The notion that children cannot pray in school, as do lawsuits to remove “One Nation Under God” from our coinage or to remove a religious symbol from display tends to annoy a lot of people.

Religion in American life became a hot political issue when the Supreme Court permitted abortions under the penumbra of “privacy” rights. It flared up again as a right to die issue, but again the courts ruled this was a private matter to be determined by individuals, family and the advice of physicians. Despite the passion of the Religious Right, these issues appear to have been settled in the minds of most people.

While America’s Founding Fathers all believed that religion served a useful purpose for the maintenance of a civil, secular society, they all knew well of the evils that ensue from too much church involvement in the affairs of state. They took care to protect freedom of religion, but also to create a form of government in which religious values might inform legislation, but not be “established” as a requirement of citizenship.

For the Founding Fathers, you could be a good American even if you did not believe in God. This is a good idea considering that two out of three American adults do not go to church every week. At 32%, those Americans who do attend church outnumber the 20% in Canada and the 14% in England. By most definitions, America remains a nation in which religion plays a role in people’s lives, even if they are not active in either church or synagogue.

As the West either loses or ignores religious faith, the Middle East, the cradle of three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is a cauldron of religious fervor, pursuing an Islamic Jihad throughout its own region and exporting it in the form of terrorist attacks worldwide. Westerners are baffled and angered by a “religion” for which war and murder is a duty.

We have far less to concern ourselves when it comes to atheists. Indeed, one trait they tend to share in common is a saintly tolerance for all lifestyles including homosexuality, though “the rise in apostasy in the United states has occurred primarily among persons with weak ties to organized religion who have been driven from their faith by the behavior of the ‘religious right’” according to the study.

Atheists are people for whom the teachings of religion simply do not make any sense. Burning bushes, resurrection, the trinity, life after death, heaven and hell, are illogical by atheist standards. Science, however, is based on the logic of reproducible results and, not surprisingly, atheists have a great fondness for science, noting among other things that there are many more universes than the one in which we inhabit a tiny planet.

Almost always arriving at their rejection of religion on their own, atheists tend to keep their views to themselves. The study found that atheists are more self-aware and more resistant to conformity than others. They also tend to excel at critical thinking.

“Religion’s big enemy in losing the battle for these minds proved not to be Satan, but its own scriptures, its various teachings, and its history.”

As best as can be determined, only 3% of Americans are atheists. What matters most to them is their personal integrity. They are, almost by definition, the least authoritarian of groups you can find and the least likely to attempt to convert someone to their views.

The common perception is that Christian “fundamentalists” are growing by leaps and bounds, but those in America who identify themselves in this fashion peaked in 1987 and their numbers has since dropped to 30% of all Christians by 2004. Of any religious group, fundamentalists are those least liked by atheists.

Interestingly, American atheists are more likely to object to abuses of power by government than most people. A “Born again” President such as George W. Bush is viewed as a danger to our constitutional system, as are members of Congress for whom religion is a determining factor in law making.

Conservative and Libertarian political values, smaller and less intrusive government, fiscal prudence, laissez faire capitalism, and individualism would seem to suit most, but not all, atheists better than some form of socialism or one-world government philosophy.

Whether we want to or not, all Americans and other Westerners find themselves locked in a life and death struggle with the newest religion on the world scene, Islam, barely 1,400 years old and a strange conglomeration of things borrowed from both Judaism and Christianity, but mostly reflecting the warring society of Arab tribes. It, too, has devolved into more than twenty sects, all convinced they posses the “true” Islam as cobbled together by the self-proclaimed “last” prophet, Muhammad.

One can only imagine what atheists make of this insanity, but whether for God or nation, both or neither, we shall be fighting for our lives for decades to come.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. His book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy”, has recently been published by Merril Press.

[Mod's note: The poster informs me that this was posted with permission. - sN]

Edited by softwareNerd
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"Conservative and Libertarian political values, smaller and less intrusive government, fiscal prudence, laissez faire capitalism, and individualism would seem to suit most, but not all, atheists better than some form of socialism or one-world government philosophy."

I find this the most interesting piece of the whole article. Could it be that the primary philosophical cause of statist beliefs in America is theism? It makes good sense to hypothesize that the intellectual laziness and cowardice to accept what one has been fed is the same root of both modern theism and statism, and that root is what needs to be attacked in an intellectual war.

Personally, I've always shrugged at religion as an unimportant, impish trend in our society, but perhaps when people talk about their theism I ought to be more ostensibly and passionately opposed to the idea.

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The author only understands atheism from the outside in, which causes him to make such statements.

If he understood that atheism is not a causal philosophy, but indeed the consequence of recognizing immutable metaphysics, he wouldn't make such statements.

It's a little frustrating how non-atheists view those that don't believe.

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There's a cable access show I catch sometimes where a pair of guys from some atheist club have discussions, and take calls.

It's annoying to watch because they don't have a firm philosophical base for their non-belief, so they just use a technique of throwing a caller's rant back at them. Occam's Razor is about as intellectual as they get, and that's just not enough.

While they do occasionally deal with church/state separation issues, it's not really a politics show. Most of the time it's just negative ranting followed by rambling Christian callers, then more off-topic discussion.

Besides, how do you fill a half hour with just atheism?

"Hi. We don't believe in God. It's a bunch of make-believe silliness.

...

Okay ... let's take a phone call ..."

:D

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Sandy!

An Atheist (in the best sense of the word) is a person who denies the existence of God.

There are many ways to discover that there is no God. And there are many ways to reach a firm knowledge about this fact. And from the exact moment when a person has reached that knowledge, that person has become an Atheist.

Some years ago I wrote an article in Swedish, headed "God does not exist!". And here is the link:

http://members.chello.se/debattsidan/wa3%5B3%5D.html

That article contains my anti God-syllogism which points out the most essential metaphysical premises and the conclusion. Here it is:

All existents are limited

God is unlimited

God is a non-existent

Filip Björner

Edited by Filip Björner
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That article contains my anti God-syllogism which points out the most essential metaphysical premises and the conclusion. Here it is:

All existents are limited

God is unlimited

God is a non-existent

Well, I hate to pick nits when I basically agree, but still I gotta. The first premise is the one that I would attack, if I were one of those God people. I would say, "Except for God, all existents are limited". Then we need to defend the stronger conclusion that you advance as your first premise. So then it is important to first establish the universal premise, based on what evidence there is. The missing link in your argument, I think, is how valid universal generalizations are formed (I'd say it's too implicit, but not totally missing in action). Now compare the two competing premises: "All existents are limited", and "Except for God, all existents are limited". The first statement is well supported by all facts so it is "very very likely": the question is whether the alternative, the second statement, has support. But the second statement contains a logical fallacy, in asserting that God exists and that he is exempt from the broader generalization. The first fallacy is simply question begging, i.e. asserting that God exists and using that to deny a proof that God doesn't exist. The second is claiming, with no evidence, that God isn't finite, i.e. introducing an arbitrary claim (a true claim with an arbitrary rider) as a premise. In other words, I think the realist-epistemology part of your argument is more telling than the formal-logic part.

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Hei / Hej / Hi David !

The last five years I have very often debated the claimed existence of God with Swedish Christians. And yes, I have many times heard the saying: "Except for God, all existents are limited". And I like to hear it, because it means that the religious person I am debating with confirms the premise that the entity which his personal God-concept is referring to in one or more ways is constituted by one or more unlimited attribute/s.

I am always eager to get that premise on the table as fast as possible. So, even when I debate with a religious person who in the beginning defends his idea of an existing limited God, I do not stop this focus until that person admits: "Okey, God must be unlimited."

I can concretize this with several arguments until the religious person I am debating with admits it. They always admit it, sooner or later, just like a religious person sooner or later has to sell out reason by admitting that his believing is just a belief.

I also have a special interest in studying classical proofs of God's existence. And all of those proofs --- and there are NO exception from this -- rely on the premise that God is unlimited. (Often implicit, but also quite often explicit.)

As you know, one cannot prove a negative. So my syllogism is not a "proof" for the non-existence of God. But it is a certain way of establish a firm knowledge about the fact that God do not exist. Because it is a way to show that the concept "God" is invalid.

One cannot prove God's non-existence, but one can invalidate the concept "God", and the mental result of that invalidate process is a knowledge which actually is deeper than normal proof.

A normal proof is a chain of arguments consisting of step by step evidence which is referring to a fact in reality. But an invalidation is a demonstration of the lack of certain facts in reality. In this case, it means pointing out that there is no room for a "God" anywhere inside the realm of existence.

(And this is not only because every single existent inside existence is limited. It is also because existence as a whole is limited. This is so because even the total sum of existence is an existent.)

----------

The first premise in the syllogism is a crucial aspect of the law of identity. A thing is what it is. That means it is exactly what it is. That means it is limited. So, for an existent to exist it must be limited.

Now, this is the argument in principle. I can add many ways to concretize it, because that is what I often do when I discuss my syllogism with Christians.

Filip

(I am the editor of a little Swedish magazine, Botulf-bladet, wherein I have debated this question with a few christians, and my main concern with that magazine is missionizing for Atheism. But mostly I have debated this question with Christians and other religious people on different web forums and also in daily life.)

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It's no coincidence that religious people believe that without GOD, life would be meaningless and/or our society would soon descend into barbarism. People who embrace paternalism, big gov't, and socialism also believe that without the STATE our society would soon devolve into chaos. For thousands of years the KING was considered at least symbolically to be the embodiment of THE ALMIGHTY. It's the same myth in many incarnation. :worry:

If we can get rid of this one myth, the whole thing may fall down like a house of cards... :ninja:

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