Rise in atheistic fundamentalism

[directhex]

I don't unstand what's with the $dollar signs but again, what is this thread about? Oh that's right, [atheist] fundamentalism. You do agree that fundamentalism is ridiculous, and that it is purely the reserve of the religious, don't you? And you do understand that this does not imply that all religious people are fundamentalists, something which I therefore never argued?

blindly repeating a dogmatic position, to the extent of forcing it on others, is foolish. absolutely.

Of course there are 'weak believers', vicar of dibley types, church only at easter and xmas, the Earth is not 6,000 years old, women are not made of ribs, etc. If anything, I have even less respect for this tier of belief - it's pure hypocrisy. They are explicitly told to believe absolutely every part of their texts and yet instead they try to adopt the mask of rationality and say "Oh but of course I don't believe that part about a man surviving 30 days in the belly of a big fish, that's silly....but I believe this bit about walking on water for no particular reason other than for laughs....and this bit about catering for more people than would reasonably be expected with limited supply of fish and bread is perfectly sensible, isn't it? OK, so the bit about Moses (an almost certainly fictional character of whom there is no evidence other the bible) parting the red sea to lead the jews out of slavery (again, although lots is known about egypt there is absolutely no archaelogical evidence of such slavery or exodus) didn't actually happen but it's a useful metaphor that we can learn from....somehow....".

so following a text blindly is foolish, but applying rationality to it is more foolish? sounds like a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. whoops, i mean "just die and rot in the ground", not "damned"

Once you start to reject bits of the bible as being false - which obviously is the correct thing to do - then you can't rely on the rest of it as being definitely true. In any case the bits that vicar of dibley xtians still believe are still largely absurd. Let them make their 'objective case', why don't you?

i await it. however, aggressive rudeness means they may well not bother, and i wouldn't blame them.

Actually I mean 'atheism' when I say 'atheism' and 'science' when I say 'science'. And science actually is incompatible with religion - a scientist can only produce worthwhile results if he completely isolates his religious beliefs from his work. Form a hypothesis, make predictions, test them....then just assert something patently ridiculous as truth on pure 'faith', which as someone said here is just ignorance made virtue. What sort of chemist would demand a theory be consistent with the 'fact' that the communion wafer literally turns to the body of jesus, just because the infallible pope has said that all catholics must believe this to be literally true? How productive would he be?

as long as he wasn't studying wafer composition, what difference would it make?

If religion is an attempt to answer 'why', it does this in an entirely feeble manner. Why are there earthquakes? Why is there disease? Didn't we burn enough goats? Tell me o lord! Religion just provides the illusion of agency to people who don't know any better.

religion offers people a belief in a higher authority. the belief that you CAN exert influence over an otherwise hopeless situation, by appealing to a higher power, a referee type character. quote time!

When you hit your thumb with an 8 pound hammer, its nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very strong, special minded atheist to jump up and down, With their their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout "Oh random fluctuations in the space time continuum."

That's 'not even wrong'. I don't say bush and falwell are typical believers (they are/were exceptionally influential believers), I just said that Tony Blair is a similar sort of believer - i.e. irrational and dangerous - isn't he? Your 'argument' about Einstein would not be valid even if it were true - which it is not:

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

ahem?

(do even the most rudimentary research - Einstein was most definitely not a theist, at worst he was perhaps a deist - and to pre-empt what would probably otherwise be your next point, Hitler most assuredly was catholic, and not atheist)

not quite catholic, but close enough. i wasn't going to mention it. why do you feel the need to? and as for einstein, he most definitely DID believe in a higher power. does that make him an idiot, his science flawed? would you assert yourself smarter than einstein because he believed in a higher power?

...but again, any such arguments are nonsense. I can always just point to Prof Richard Dawkins, who as one of the world's premier intellectuals is most certainly more intelligent and knowledgeable than you or anyone else who disagrees with me here, and claim that this therefore means that I must be right, end of story. Is that valid then? Because I did not think it was.

dawkins should stick to evolutionary biology, and stop claiming that all war would cease and the world would be fluffy without religion. because he's flat-out wrong. and if i bump into him on campus, i'll tell him so.

To deny them the disproportionate influence that they currently enjoy, despite being dangerous nutcases? If you think this is like shooting slow, ignorant fish in a barrel then why are you so insistent on trying to defend them?

because there's no sport in it? i'm all for educating the ignorance out of people, but doing so with tools like ridicule and mockery is ineffective at best. i agree entirely that frequently, staunchly religious individuals hold significant and concerning levels of influence over several populations. george "god personally told me to do it" bush is frankly terrifying. but what do you think you're achieving?

does your anti-religious zeal extend to, say, not doing anything for christmas (don't start with "winterval" crap, that's a word stolen from high-street store marketing companies)? are you the guy writing to councils to demand they don't put up any lights, because it offends your non-religion? will you be working on the 25th?

[iranu]

@Saracen

The absence of a 'yet' is important in the definition of supernatural. Something which is supernatural is not only something which we don't have an explanation for, but something we can't ever have an explanation for. The object of science is to find a set of natural laws to explain and define the world around us. If something occurs which doesn't fit our laws it doesn't mean it's supernatural, just that our laws aren't good enough, and we need to find new ones. From Newtonian physics to Relativity, it's all about explaining things as best we can. Any phenomena has an explanation, even if we have to adapt our perception to understand it. The supernatural are the things which occur outside these natural laws. Not just things which can't be defined by our best theory, but things which can never be defined by any law, no matter how hard we try.

As I said before, if gods were aliens with special creation-rays, that's fine, as an explanation for how the ray's work exists regardless of if it fits within our current laws or not. But gods which exist outside any law - and with the ability to change the laws of nature at will - are supernatural by definition.

You are on the right lines. You as well as others may find this essay interesting - it deals with why supernatural is a poor concept.

'Supernatural' (and 'immaterial&#039 are broken concepts | Rational Responders

Whilst their I also remembered another good essay with regards to the term "atheist fundamentalist" and why it's epistemologically incorrect.

On the Phrase "Militant Atheist" and Its Variants | Rational Responders

[malfunction]

Appreciate these were not directed at me but I felt the need to quote anyway...

so following a text blindly is foolish, but applying rationality to it is more foolish? sounds like a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. whoops, i mean "just die and rot in the ground", not "damned"

Personally I would rate the literal interpretation as being far worse - to believe anything at face value which has (AFAIK at least in Christian terms) been proven to have been re-written over the years is rather suspect. Picking and choosing, well, it feels odd that you get to choose but at the same time as an atheist I guess that's all I've done too.

religion offers people a belief in a higher authority. the belief that you CAN exert influence over an otherwise hopeless situation, by appealing to a higher power, a referee type character.

I hesitate to enter into these discussions most of the time because the main problem for me is just because you'd like something to be true it doesn't mean it is. It is also, as an atheist, very hard not to mock religious views as they are so very irrational to me / other atheists. Reminds me very much of the episode of Red Dwarf when they talk about silicon heaven (I guess that should be Silicon Heaven)... "But where do all the little calculators go?". Just because the alternative is unpalatable doesn't make it any more likely.

does your anti-religious zeal extend to, say, not doing anything for christmas (don't start with "winterval" crap, that's a word stolen from high-street store marketing companies)? are you the guy writing to councils to demand they don't put up any lights, because it offends your non-religion? will you be working on the 25th?

As per Zak's thread I don't associate Christmas with Christianity and I know that I'm far from alone in this. Christmas is a family time, a great break in the middle of winter (well, here in the UK at least) and a time to take stock, think of others and all that. None of those things are exclusively Christian.

[JPreston]

so following a text blindly is foolish, but applying rationality to it is more foolish?

If they did indeed apply rationality to it, they would throw it all out. Pretending to themselves and to you that they are being rational about any of it is indeed more foolish than taking the whole lot on blind faith. To do so defeats the whole object of their lame religion in the first place, look it up!

as long as he wasn't studying wafer composition, what difference would it make?

You don't get it. The point is that he has to first accept that his religious beliefs are not applicable to anything he sees in the real world before he can be a scientist. He is a scientist in spite of his religion and a poorer one because of it, he can only have both when he limits either his research or his religion in such a way so that they indeed do not overlap.

dawkins should stick to evolutionary biology, and stop claiming that all war would cease and the world would be fluffy without religion. because he's flat-out wrong. and if i bump into him on campus, i'll tell him so.

Yeah good luck with that, I'm sure you have an exciting new perspective that will not have been dismissed dozens of times before

does your anti-religious zeal extend to, say, not doing anything for christmas (don't start with "winterval" crap, that's a word stolen from high-street store marketing companies)?

Pretty much, yeah. Do you do anything for divali or eid? What's the difference?

are you the guy writing to councils to demand they don't put up any lights, because it offends your non-religion?

Do you put up lights on your strawmen? You clearly don't understand what atheism is, how do you offend a non-religion? Are you offended by vintage steam rallies because (I assume) you aren't a traction engine enthusiast?

will you be working on the 25th?

No, but I think I have in the past - like I've worked on sundays.

Do you have a point to any of this? Are you trying to suggest that because my place of work is closed on public holidays I will be secretly singing carols? There's another thread on 'Are we hypocrites', I suggest you express your boring christian cultural bigotry over there instead, at least it would be on-topic.

[Whalefish]

Oh how the religious whine. 2000 years of bloody murder, rape, theft, oppression and a populace kept in ignorance. Then a couple of atheists write books and they start to bleet. Just goes to show how securely and firmly they must hold their beliefs.
They know that their mumbo jumbo fairy stories are based on the most fragile of foundations and fall into a panic the moment anybody has the audacity to point out that the emporer really does have no clothes on.
Atheistic fundamentalism, what utter piffle.

[Lucio]

Oh how the religious whine. 2000 years of bloody murder, rape, theft, oppression and a populace kept in ignorance. Then a couple of atheists write books and they start to bleet. Just goes to show how securely and firmly they must hold their beliefs.
They know that their mumbo jumbo fairy stories are based on the most fragile of foundations and fall into a panic the moment anybody has the audacity to point out that the emporer really does have no clothes on.
Atheistic fundamentalism, what utter piffle.

Virtually that entire post proves the concept of "Atheistic fundamentalism", because you yourself will tolerate no concept that Christianity is a valid religion.

[JPreston]

Virtually that entire post proves the concept of "Atheistic fundamentalism", because you yourself will tolerate no concept that Christianity is a valid religion.

Lucio, I'm not in the habit of posting personal information about myself because I don't like the idea of being indentifable in real life but at this point I think it is relevant to reveal that I am composed entirely of swiss cheese.

I'm not going to offer any evidence of the fact that I am a large mound of dairy product, I'm just going to state it as fact, because that is honestly exactly what it is. The burden of proof rests entirely upon anyone who doubts the truth of this statement to prove it false, because I say it does. If there is one thing religion has taught us it is that apparently ridiculous claims must be accepted as having equal claim to be fact by everyone else by simple virtue of them having been stated, until such time as they be undisputably falsified.

Maybe your experience leads you to believe that beings capable of posting to internet forums must be made up of various chemical compounds of which swiss cheese is not one. That is just your theory, it is not fact.

You are intolerant. You are inherently prejudiced against me and are just rudely pushing your anti-swiss cheese agenda. In fact, inspired by the OP I am going to lecture everyone on the undoubtable fact that all the ills of society are the fault of carbon-based beings and if only more people were made of swiss cheese then this country would have far fewer problems. I'm going to demand that schools give equal weight to swiss cheese theories of biology. Anyone who disagrees with this is a rabid fundamentalist, because I say they are. I reserve the right to refuse to offer any justification for my claims, I'll just make them, deny anyone who is not also made of swiss cheese right of reply, and then whine about how noone respects my swiss cheese based perspective.

It is time you all gave swiss cheese based organisms due respect. Just not those cheddar based people. Those pigs must be stoned to death.

[Whalefish]

Virtually that entire post proves the concept of "Atheistic fundamentalism", because you yourself will tolerate no concept that Christianity is a valid religion.

Nonsense. Where have I mentioned once the Christianity is not a 'valid' religion? In fact, where have I mentioned Christianity at all? I was referring to all religions of any stripe. Stating the facts of history does no constitute an invalidation of any religion.
People are free to believe what they want, as long as it does not hurt others. But unfortunately it is the religious themselves who have a problem with that and go around killing others who they see as holding 'invalid' beliefs.
Why the defence of Christianity? Perhaps because they are the ones who have more to be ashamed of?

[Rosaline]

I find myself completely at a loss to the point of this thread, tbh.

By being separate from the other similar thread on this matter, it manages to avoid existing constructive posts on similar matters. Cunning, that was.

Anyone who has worked in science and engineering should be well familiar with the expression "An absence of data/evidence/results is in itself data/evidence/results". As such, atheism is in itself clearly a belief system. Atheists are spiritual, their spirituality is that of science being all there is and the absence of anything more than that.

Now, what do you get when organisations appear for spiritual people to share their beliefs and meet like-minded people? When people begin to preach their beliefs and attempt to convert others to them? When people manage to make a personal profit from these acts? That is what I call religion.

All those who push 'atheism', 'christianity', 'insert belief here' on others are doing is belittling other people's spirituality, belittling their source of comfort. To do that, knowing that their approach to doing that will cause hurt and upset, yet also knowing that a softer, less offensive route can indeed be taken and would have the support of many (such as the encouragement of science, but the respect of those people's beliefs that do not harm others or themselves)... that can only be described in unkind words.

This applies to all beliefs, and no side is innocent.

We have already been over this in the other thread, and quite frankly I don't want to have to write a similar post all over again.

[JPreston]

atheism is in itself clearly a belief system. Atheists are spiritual, their spirituality is that of science being all there is and the absence of anything more than that.

No, atheism is the absence of belief. You don't need to know the first thing about science to be atheist, as long as you are happy to shrug and say "I don't know" when asked a lot of questions. Such an answer is a lot more truthful than 'goddidit' which is essentially all the religions ever amount to. I know enough about evolutionary biology, but really nothing about physics or cosmology, however this does not in any way mean that I have to accept the 'Let there be light' fable until I personally can prove how it really did happen. Not before Lucio accepts in his heart that I am made of swss cheese anyway.

I don't follow football. "So what team do you support, Man U or Everton?" Seriously, none, I have no interest. "But you must have an opinion on which is the superior team, Everton or Man U?" Seriously, no, I couldn't give a toss, really. "Ah so you are an Not-Everton supporter! Not-Everton is a team too. Why do you support Not-Everton? You can't prove that they are the best non-team to not be in the premiership...."

In exactly the same way that you are not a beleiver in catholicism, or hinduism, or whatever....I am also not a believer in whatever new-age clap-trap you care to profess. I don't claim to know everything. I don't have any interest in a lot of currently unanswered scientific issues. I'm not trying to convince you to my way of thinking, just so long as you keep it to yourself and don't demand special treatment - something religious people never do - go and get on with it.

[menthel]

You have completely missed the boat.

Beliefs are exactly that. They need no foundation in fact, so whatever you claim to know, or not know it should not be used to belittle others beliefs. However deluded they may seem. It is only when people act directly within their beliefs that will cause harm to other people that a line must be drawn.

Also, just remember that the fact are always changing and will do as long as we follow our human instincts to poke and prod around in everything and anything. Thats how we got here today!

[Saracen]

@Saracen

The absence of a 'yet' is important in the definition of supernatural.

Well, that depends on the definition, and there's various, including those that refer to the supernatural as being things that seem to be outside natural laws, etc. But even accepting your definition, you're reiterating the exact point I was making.

Something which is supernatural is not only something which we don't have an explanation for, but something we can't ever have an explanation for. The object of science is to find a set of natural laws to explain and define the world around us. If something occurs which doesn't fit our laws it doesn't mean it's supernatural, just that our laws aren't good enough, and we need to find new ones. From Newtonian physics to Relativity, it's all about explaining things as best we can. Any phenomena has an explanation, even if we have to adapt our perception to understand it. The supernatural are the things which occur outside these natural laws. Not just things which can't be defined by our best theory, but things which can never be defined by any law, no matter how hard we try.

As I said before, if gods were aliens with special creation-rays, that's fine, as an explanation for how the ray's work exists regardless of if it fits within our current laws or not. But gods which exist outside any law - and with the ability to change the laws of nature at will - are supernatural by definition.

Yes, precisely. If something exists that doesn't fit our laws, it doesn't make it supernatural, or doesn't necessarily make it so. It may be that our laws just don't cover it .... yet. We have no way to know.

If something appears to be supernatural, as per your definition of not being explainable by natural laws, does it appear to be supernatural because it is, or because we don't yet have a complete understanding of the laws of nature? If you stick by your more rigid definition of supernatural, including only that which cannot now and never will be explainable by the laws of nature or science, even if we have a complete and perfect understanding of them, then until we achieve that complete and perfect understanding, we can't be sure if that phenomenon is "supernatural", or if it just fits outside our understanding. Hence "yet".

Will we EVER have a complete, total and perfect understanding of the laws of science and nature? I very much doubt it. So in the meantime, we have no way to know if a phenomenon that we don't understand is natural but outside our understanding, or if it exists outside the natural. Supernatural, therefore, is a term that we can use theoretically, as a concept, to define the unexplainable, but as soon as you apply it to an actual phenomenon, you are either saying that it appears to be unexplainable, or you're claiming a complete and perfect understanding of the laws of nature. Without that perfect understanding, you cannot know if the phenomenon exists outside those laws, or if you just think or believe it does, so classifying it as such represents at best a convenient classification for something we don't understand, and at worst, a belief that a phenomenon that exists outside nature with no proof that it does. There are certainly many things that we take for granted today that would no doubt have appeared to be supernatural 2,000 years ago, if unaccompanied by an explanation that would have been way beyond any technology or understanding that existed at that time. That, to my mind, is the supreme arrogance of religion - it ascribes to things we don't understand (and in many cases can't even prove exists at all) a supernatural personification called God(s).

So, is God supernatural? We can't know. If he (it) exists at all, it may be a natural phenomenon that we simply don't understand, or it may be a "supernatural" phenomenon. Or, of course, it may be a figment of our collective imaginations. I don't know which of those it is, and if I have a firm but unprovable belief in this field at all, it's that nobody else does either, never has and in all likelihood, never will.

[TeePee]

You are on the right lines. You as well as others may find this essay interesting - it deals with why supernatural is a poor concept.

'Supernatural' (and 'immaterial') are broken concepts | Rational Responders

I am on the correct lines. The article you cited has a broken argument. The argument is that since nothing exists outside of nature, the word 'supernatural' cannot refer to anything and is therefore meaningless.

Well, just because something doesn't exist, why can't we have a word for it? Let's substitute the word 'Magic' for supernatural, and have an example:

You put eye of newt and sandalwood into a cauldron, say an incantation and there's a big flash of light. It's magic, screams the audience!
Of course the rational argument is to say there was a chemical reaction between the components, activated by the sound waves of your voice. We could test the components in a lab, and determine exactly what caused it, and prove it wasn't magic at all, but has a real explanation.

That doesn't stop us using the word 'magic' and have a definition for what it is. We can even put it into sentences like: 'Magic isn't real'.

[TeePee]

That, to my mind, is the supreme arrogance of religion - it ascribes to things we don't understand (and in many cases can't even prove exists at all) a supernatural personification called God(s).

This is exactly my point!

Things we can't explain, which don't fit our laws, can happen all the time. We simply have to look harder. We'll probably never understand everything. But just because we don't understand something, doesn't mean it is supernatural, and that there's no point trying to understand it.

This is why I'd accept the alien 'gods', as an advanced race beyond our understanding, but not the religious gods, to whom no law (that we can define or not) applies.

[menthel]

Ascribing things that are not understood to 'God' or gods is not a supreme arrogance, it is a way that human beings have long coped with things that they cannot understand. Some people find it easier to put such things upon a diety or greater force rather than living with gaps in their knowledge and trying to fill those gaps. Religion is just a societal furthering of this.

I, personally, am happy with gaps and there are still many of those. Don't forget that science does not have the explaination for everything as yet and without a unifying theory (or theories), if we ever reach those, there is still amount of belief underlying our understanding of science.

Now my head hurts!

[yamangman]

In my view, all too often, such responses are sheer provocation. They show all the signs of being deliberately couched in language designed to irritate, annoy or anger, and are often little more than put-downs that are barely within the rules.

It appears to me that while true, the person most guilty of this is the original poster. I find it hard to believe that he has no knowledge his point of view stirs up such righteous indignation in those that he clearly belittles for the, I have to assume, same reason a Jehovahs Witness I know studies me with utter contempt and disgust after I once spoke to him about my view on sex before marriage. How can he possibly claim innocence if at every opportunity he asserts that atheists are religious, that God speaks to him and that there is no remote possibility that this is due to anything other than the divine. Is it not his intention to cause offence?

Is it not human nature to want to belong to a group? Is it not a progenies throwback to some tribal-based era in human civilization?

Atheists may have a different point of view to the above but what we all have in common is a willingness to fight and argue for the beliefs we hold and you see that as often in modern society than it has been catalogued in human history. It has evolved over the years, it may have become a petty and self-righteous fight between opposing groups but I believe it's still there. I would like to hear an atheist or theologian provide evidence to deny such an hypothesis.