Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
I Don't Believe You
The canard below is popping up more and more these days. I know you have all heard it before - probably so many times that you are getting sick of it.
As am I.
It usually goes something like this:
"I believe in God, but I'm not a real religious person. However, it strikes me that the atheists are every bit as strident and absolutist in their views as the fundamentalists! Both sides are faith positions! It takes just as much faith to not believe as it does to believe!"
Blah blah blah.
I see this same thought repeated over and over again every day in blog posts, comments, forum messages, emails, news articles, television programs, and in everyday conversation. I also hear this same "argument" being used by self-identified "agnostics" - those ignorant folks who seem to think that agnosticism is some sort of middle way between atheism and theism that is somehow more morally courageous than those disgusting extremist radicals on both sides of the spectrum. The theological equivalent to a political moderate. (Here's a tip, moron - it's not. If you're an agnostic, then you're still either a theist or an atheist - in addition to being an agnostic. The terms are not fucking replacements for one another.)
The problem that I see is that the atheists, secularists, and scientists that I know don't actually hold the absolutist, "fundamentalist" views that they are accused of holding by those who throw this canard out there all the time. They don't talk like fire and brimstone preachers, and they never, ever claim to be 100% certain that a god doesn't exist.
In other words, the whole damned argument is a big dishonest game of "I know you are, but what am I?" on the part of the folks on the creationist/theist side of the issue. It must be extremely frustrating. So, the theists and creationists are forced to create some sort of faux position for their perceived opponents to hold. They look around and grab onto the worst examples from their own camp - the evangelical fundamentalist wackjobs - then create a whole-cloth strawman "fundamentalist atheist" in their own fevered imaginations - and argue against that instead.
I sympathize, actually. It's tough to argue against someone who simply says "I don't believe you." I mean, what do you say to that? All your arguments boil down to either, "yes you do, darn it!" Or, all too often, "you have to - or my imaginary superfriend will punish you after you die!"
Even the two most commonly-pointed-out examples of this mythical "fundamentalist atheist" - Dr. Richard Dawkins and Dr. PZ Myers - don't come across like this when you really sit down and read through their stuff, or spend a few minutes in conversation with them, or listen to them speak. At their absolute worst, they are "snarky". That is to say, mildy sarcastic. It's all very academic. For a comparison, read anything at all by any of the best-selling conservative authors (you know who I'm talking about - don't pretend that you don't,) then compare their vitriolic screeds against "liberals" with PZ's mockery of creationists on his blog.
Not that this will convince anyone of anything. The atheists, scientists, and secularists already know this - and the theists, creationists, and ignorant masses don't fucking care. All they see and hear is the sound bite. Perception - however far off the mark it is, and in this case it is way off - becomes reality.
And there are just so many of them...
So, is there any hope? I think so, but I think it is going to take a whole lot longer than we'd like for it to take.
Just keep plugging along, saying "I don't believe you." This is all that's really necessary, when you get right down to it.
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Going back to my original question...
To be fair to Prof Dawkins, like the responses I read below, I think he's struggling with the implications of being a materialist hardliner (that's another word for fundy, just in case youre not comfortable with the term if it applies to materialists) like Ramachandran, Pinker, et al.. It seems to me that when he's with hardline materialists, he takes a hardline position, but when he's alone and more contemplative, he's more of a humanist, that is, he believes we control our own destiny. In a recent interview I read, he did admit to the inconsistency.
In the 30th anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene, he had to add a defense of what he wrote. He wrote, "We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators" for which he was criticized by hardliners. He had to assure them of his bona fides.
I hope he does assert his humanistic tendencies over his materialistic ones.
Materialists
I guess if I had to have any label attached to me, "hardline materialist" would be an acceptable one.
There's nothing, NOTHING other than the matter and energy of the real universe. The only thing that makes some of us think otherwise is a long cultural history of ghost stories (of all types), and the semantic trap created by the fact that we have quite a few words for which no real thing exists (bigfoot, ghost, leprechaun, angel, fairy, god, etc.)
But compassion is real. It's built into us by our evolutionary nature. Not only that, but when it comes to the capacity for compassion, we're off the scale of anything else alive.
Humanism/compassion and hardline materialism are totally compatible, in a way that science and religion will never be.
Agnostic atheist
I'm willing to admit that I can't really disprove god (and that you can't prove god). But I'm also certain that it doesn't really matter to me whether god/gods exist or whether, if they do, they give a shit about humans. That's because I know for certain I don't need a god's help to live my life, and since I rather dislike the thought of living forever afterlives have no draw for me.
Proof and Disproof
I always say "I can prove gods don't exist. But only to reasonable people."
Regarding that, the real question isn't whether "God" exists, it's whether "gods" exist. If you start arguing with a godder, you have to take the argumentative ground right away by defining the question as applying to ALL supernatural superbeings, rather than their explicitly Christian god.
If you let them define the terms, you're on their ground immediately, which places you at a disadvantage.
I say this not as some sort of debating trick, but as a simple way to step outside the bounds THEY will want to argue within. If you accept their terms, you've allowed a very basic premise to sneak into the discussion -- "Assume my God is the one and only God that exists, the only one worth talking about" -- and after that you can't even get them to listen.
...
Contrary to the old argument "You can't prove a negative," I think you absolutely can prove that some things don't exist. For instance, I can prove that Wonder Woman doesn't exist, never existed, and probably even that she CAN'T exist.
The argument starts by explicitly listing Wonder Woman's attributes: Amazon woman who comes from the island of Themyscira, flies in an invisible jet, has a magic lasso, etc. Every one of those attributes is a place to attack the existence of the Wonder Woman character. If those ARE the stated attributes of Wonder Woman, disproving any one of them disproves the existence of THAT specifically defined character.
Of course it's harder when you're talking about the specifically Christian God, because the discussion from the believers' end has evolved to the point that "God" possesses NO specifically definable characteristics at all. You're punching not just at fog, but at invisible, intangible fog.
Another "of course" is that both sides of the argument have to accept some sort of explicit definition of the word "proof." You can talk about it in everyday colloquial terms -- for instance, if you say there's a rabbit in the box you're holding, and I say there's not, and we open the box and neither of us can see, smell, feel or hear a rabbit, you're not allowed to say "Well, but you haven't PROVEN there's no rabbit in the box, only that we can't detect one." In other words, you can't start with a colloquial definition of "proof" and then move to some kind of more-demanding technical definition when you sense yourself losing the argument.
In the end, there is only supportive or non-supportive evidence. You can only "prove" something between reasonable people willing to argue reasonably.
...
Regarding that last, there's an interesting side-effect of arguing with godders. Most of them I've tried to talk to have an uncannily acute ability to sense what is to them a trap. For instance, if the discussion starts with "Evolution is just a theory," the last thing they'll admit, or even, apparently, hear, is that "theory" has at least two definitions, a colloquial one and a technical one. You simply cannot get them to accept that basic fact ... because any recognition of it instantly destroys their argument.
"I know you are, but what am I?"
I agree with that interpretation completely.
As far as I'm concerned, they've already conceded that religion is untrustworthy if they feel the need to bring atheists down to religion's level.
Whenever I hear this nonsensical argument that atheism is a faith or a religion, I immediately go to the heart of what they're saying about their opinion of faith. I've discussed this in It takes a lot of faith to believe that!!!
Their opinion of faith
I joke about that often. Anyone who says atheism is a religion, or requires just as much faith as a religion, I believe they're basically saying (cue dopey Southern accent) "The stuff you believe is every bit as stupid as what I believe."
Funny how they don't notice they're saying that.
I think that most christians
I think that most christians know that god can't be proven or disproven, and freely admit that its faith-based without an ounce of reasoning behind it. So to them, choosing not to believe is like choosing to be evil. When really, I think its choosing to take an honest look around you to realize that you are responsible for your own life and there is no mystical being to love you and know you inside out. The choice an atheist makes is to look at reality and deal with it. Atheism requires quite a bit more responsibility than selfish, lazy prayers for a better world. We know the political and social world we live in is the one we created, not the one doled out to us by a creator.
exactly!
;)
I dont believe you
Just kidding. I keep thinking the climate over there is so different from over here. We just dont meet a whole lot of atheists. (On an average day, I meet about, maybe... none.) And yes, your definition of atheist as 'someone in whom god belief is absent' does make 'fundamentalist atheist' a bit of a stretch. But how about this? Fundamentalist philosophical materialist. Would that make more sense? As in those who absolutely believe that matter is all there is. That's a belief in something so one can get all 'fundamentalist' about it, dont you think? Would Dr. Dawkins qualify?
But, if you're talking about materialists
Than the Vatican and a bunch of these mega-church preachers are also very materialistic. See, that's the problem with co-opting a word that can have different meanings.
Fundies
It's the fundamentalist mimes that bother me most. Well, and the model train fundamentalists. The physical fitness and nutrition fundamentalists. The iPod fundamentalists. The Starbucks fundamentalists. The Chevy vs. Ford fundamentalists. The dark chocolate fundamentalists. The cheeseburger fundamentalists. The drink-liquids-and-get-plenty-of-rest fundamentalists.
There. Now fundamentalist means "anybody who likes something, or does something, or talks in positive terms about anything at all."
...
You don't have to "absolutely believe" that matter is all there is. You just have to fail to absorb the mystical bullshit that gets shoved down your throat all your life by liars and idiots.
If you sit at home thinking, and everybody else runs off to some distant land and takes up all manner of mystical BS, why is it you who suddenly looks foreign?
meeting atheists
"We just don't meet a whole lot of atheists"
How do you know? Is that a question you ask of everyone you meet? (You should also be aware there are a lot of atheists hiding in "the closet" due to the very real fear of the very real (many times dangerous) consequences of "coming out"!)
Yeah, I think there are a
Yeah, I think there are a lot more atheists out there than we realize. I've gotten a lot more vocal about my atheism, especially when I meet new people now. I'm not trying to be controversial, but it makes me feel like crap to sit there and go along with the christian perspective just for the sake of being polite. I think its easier to set people straight about how I feel about religion at the outset of a relationship, rather than announce to a long-time friend that is a christian that I think everything they believe is BS.
The concept of a
The concept of a "fundamentalist philosophical materialist" means what exactly? We live in a world in which cosmologists think there could be a virtually infinite number of alternative universes we can't perceive, and I doubt Dr. Dawkins would pronounce them heretics.
'Fundy materialist' means...
Heya, KB. Fundamentalist materialist, "as in those who absolutely believe that matter is all there is." It leads to some interesting ideas such as "free will is an illusion" which goes against everything your country's (and my country's) founders believed in: Freedom, Rights, and all that. Dirk Diggler and Rick Ulrey, who were in the military, were even willing to give their lives to defend freedom, and someone comes along and says it's just an illusion because they believe that materialism is true. That's sounds pretty fundy to me. 'Atheism isnt true because God exists' is as question begging as 'God doesnt exist because materialism is true.' If Im misunderstanding something please let me know. That's one of the reasons why I come here.
Of course Dr. Dawkins hasnt suppressed the rights of believers to believe what they do, but that's because he isnt in a position of power like the pope, or the ayatollah, or the president is.
I dont know what this has to do with infinite number of universes quite honestly.
(Come to think of it, with infinite universes, there could theoretically be invisible pink unicorns or that a monkey at a typrewriter could produce the works of Shakespeare in at least one of those universes. That's very interesting, to say the least. For the record, I dont think it's science though. But that's not why Im here for now. :-) )
Free will as an illusion
I've thought about this as a thought experiment and the only answer I've come up with is that Free Will is both an illusion and a reality, which really just sounds weird.
Basically, it's an illusion because for many scenarios you will only ever act in one way. For any given person such scenarios will have a preferable path, and one or more paths that are ultimately discarded. This is something that has been chosen, to some degree, before you even run into the scenario. I used the word chosen because you might make the choice (a choice between whether to spend money on books or DVDs) or it might be an instinctive reaction (the choice to run up and help someone that is in imminent mortal peril or just stand there watching in shock). Now some scenarios do not have this feature, simply because any given result seems so unimportant that preference doesn't enter into it. If a scenario were replayed indefinitely, and in each reiteration you made the same choice over and over again, would this be free will or a point that's essentially predetermined? Again, I think it would be both. However, you could also call such scenarios a "false choice", because although there appear to be multiple paths only one is acceptable.
However it is reality because for whatever scenario you are the one making the choice, whether consciously or unconsciously. In this way it doesn't matter whether the "choice" one runs into is really a choice or not, because ultimately you are responsible for your own destiny.
It is important to note that free will and freedom are not the same thing. Free will is making your own choices (whether or not it is an illusion or reality), whereas freedom is being allowed to live your life as you wish to. Although these may seem similar they are, in fact, not, as they can be shown to exist independently of each other. America is a country that values freedom, but some of the people that live within it hand over their choices to somebody else (most likely, some church or other), of course, this is also their choice. Conversely, throughout time in societies that did not allow freedom there have been people who sacrificed their lives in order to defy the system, this is their choice, but it is also the only thing they could do to remain alive.
In any event the free will thought experiment is a philosophy thing, not really an atheist or materialist thing (don't mind me, I dabble in philosophy because it contains some truly amusing thought experiments). When it comes right down to it, it really doesn't matter to the average Joe whether their free will is real or a predisposed response to stimuli.
Dawkins and Free Will
I doubt if Richard Dawkins, even if he had the power, would be interested in suppressing people's right to believe whatever they want to believe in. The world is too interesting to spend time riding herd on idiots.
As to Free Will, the answer I've figured out is that we definitely have it IN POTENTIAL. We also have the capacity to reason, and to be physically fit, and to learn calculus, or juggling.
The problem, in each case, is that they all take work, and lots of it. A lot of people choose not to make the effort. It's so much easier to not use free will. Easier to blindly follow someone who claims to know what's good for you -- evangelists, advertisers, right-wing talk show hosts, etc.
That "free will is an
That "free will is an illusion" thing is just silly. I can make a much better argument that if there was an omniscient God, and everything happens in accordance to his plan (a mainstream christian belief), then we couldn't possibly have free will, we are just puppets in his show. In contrast, assuming that there is no master plan devised by an omniscient entity, it seems obvious to me that free will is a result of consciousness, an emergent property of highly complex brains. It greatly increases the variation of human behavior which makes each individuals actions highly unpredictable, and allows us to discover novel survival strategies. If our behavior were strictly limited to biologically preprogrammed actions, we would never have started painting hunting scenes in caves, much less developed the incredibly complex technological civilization we have now.
Ooooh.... a new book to
Ooooh.... a new book to read! :-) I'm definitely a materialist, and can't really relate to someone who isn't, anymore. How can you believe that there's something more to a person than their physical being without completely suspending your disbelief? And if there is something more to who we are than just the physical molecules making up our brain and body, how can drugs and injuries cause such a drastic change in personality.
But where I really have problems is with the concept of not having a free will. I'm a very independent person - stubborn, forceful, confident. I am 100% offended by the idea of determinism..... but I haven't made up my mind on the subject yet, and always read discussions, without really coming to a conclusion. I guess my thoughts are that we have developed the ability to have a free will, but circumstances and illness can take that away. So that puts me somewhere between free will and determinism??
It's really a good book
I haven't picked it up in a while, so I'm not going to try to summarize his argument concerning free-will and determinism. I'll re-read that section tonight and see if I can make sense of it. Heck, I'd scan it in for you except that's probably illegal.
If you can find it at the library, or actually want to purchase it, it's well worth the time/effort/money. Then, just for grits and shins, you can read David Wood's laughable attempt at a rebuttal. You should really read Carrier's book first, so that you'll see just how gloriously bad Wood's counter-arguments are, but even if you don't he's a hoot.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'll give it a shot and let
I'll give it a shot and let you know what I think. But I will warn you, I don't have a lot of spare time to read things of my choosing, so it will probably be a while before I make much progress. The joys of being a grad student......
It doesn't have to follow...
Even if matter is all there is (and there's no evidence that it isn't), that doesn't necessarily mean that "free will is an illusion." Richard Carrier had a good chapter discussing that in "Sense and Goodness Without God." I don't know if I can follow, or agree, with everything that he wrote, but the discussion of what happens at the quantum level, where things aren't as cut-and-dried, is very though-provoking.
I'm not really adding much here, especially if you don't care to read the book, but there you go. He also discusses the multi-verse theories, which are certainly science at its finest.
It's way over my head, but I like the pretty pictures.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm an Atheist
I can't "prove" that there isn't a god, but I'm personally certain enough that no god exists that I consider myself an Atheist without reservation. I'm Agnostic about many areas of science and politics, where the details are still in question and the larger pictures aren't black and white. But about gods, I have no doubts: they don't exist.
I do, however, remain opened minded enough to be willing to change my mind should sufficient new evidence come to light.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm a fundamentalist aeaster bunnyist
I'd say that the likelihood of "god" (an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal entity) existing is about equal to the likelihood of the existence of a bunny who runs around laying brightly colored eggs in backyards once a year-about a planck length away from zero. Does that make me an atheist or agnostic? You decide, I don't care. Notice that nobody derides anyone for being a militant aeaster bunnyist.
In the most technical sense,
In the narrowest technical sense I am an agnostic, it's just that there are a lot of zeros to the right of the decimal point before you get to the probability I assign to there being a god. It isn't about "certainty" it's about probability and you could call me either an agnostic or an atheist but in my case it's a distinction without a difference.
I am sure it wouldn't be good enough for a philosophy class. But for practical purposes I'm an atheist, just like for practical purposes when a micrometer says 1 inch, it's one inch.
If the fundies ever burn us, you're next.
I used to call myself Agnostic, before I became comfortable with calling myself Atheist. But I tend to agree that the definition of atheism as "lack of a belief in god or gods" is the most elegant, and that definition would include agnostics, too. Nobody's arbitrarily "changing" anything here. If you're insistent on the point of saying "I haven't made my mind up if there is a god or isn't!!", and militantly cling to the Agnostic label, we Atheists can respond "We haven't either, but based on the paucity of evidence I CAN say it's not bloody likely; the probability of the existence of a Supreme Being is so low I don't feel it worth my time to even remotely consider the possibility of a supreme being's existence in my deliberations of negotiating and getting on with daily life.".
The most important point, though, is don't delude yourself into thinking that agnostic label is going to protect you if the dominionist Fundies ever really do take power. They may torch us first, but they'll be after you next, right alongside the wishy-washy deists and New Agey pantheists.
I once described myself as "agnostic" to my Guatemalan host family in 1999. I used the correct word in Spanish, "Agnostico", but they didn't understand it. It may have meaning as a concept in European Madrid, but Antigua, Guatemala, not so much. My German flatmate was more blunt "Soy Atheo". My host family understood then "Ay, los dos no creen in Dios".
(Those two don't believe in God).
Which was true. Not long after that conversation, I gave up on the label "Agnostic".
Pee Wee Herman
"I know you are, but what am I?"
Ahh Yesss. The old Pee Wee Herman retort.
Using the word "fundamentalist" in a sentence
Christian fundamentalism is a movement that occurred in the early part of the 20th Century to differentiate Christians from mainline denominations, which were increasingly moving away from the Biblical doctrines that were the basis for Protestant and Baptist beliefs. Using the word to describe atheists makes no sense, as atheists have never had a core doctrine. I have no beef with people who call me militant or strident or radical. But when I'm called a fundamentalist, I always ask which book of doctrine do I get my fundamentalist beliefs from.
Hint: a fundamentalist doesn't consider the word "fundamentalist" to be anything more than a description of what they believe.
Rubbish
Here's a tip, moron - it's not. If you're an agnostic, then you're still either a theist or an atheist - in addition to being an agnostic. The terms are not fucking replacements for one another.
Here's a tip, moron, they fucking are, and they have been for years until a group of atheists on the internet decided they'd try to redefine terms that had been in use in a different way for over a century.
Champions
Currently the champions of redefinition would have to be the Christians by saying with a straight face that you can either - A) believe exactly what we believe and be rewarded by becomming a deity's pet in Heaven or B) you can believe something else and burn forever in hell and saying that those two choice constitute 'Good news". We have some catching up to do there.
*sigh*
...
Eh.
I agree with Brent on this.
People who self-identify as agnostics are really atheists -- they just don't want to say so in public, or perhaps even to themselves.
Considering the pervasive, aggressive nature of religiosity in the US, it takes an act of conscious will to free yourself from it. That act of will is the engine of atheism. If a person doesn't want to go all the way and CALL himself an atheist, it's fine by me. But as a practical matter, he is anyway.
Considering the knee-jerk desire to attack anyone who identifies as an atheist, and the amount of hate and lies thrown their way, it's understandable.
I still boggle at the silly insistence of the religioneers that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are "militant," or "hate-spewing" or any of the other over-the-top attack-terms. Both are sedate, mild-spoken academics. Put them in a Hate Speech Contest with someone like Bill O'Reilly or the thankfully-obsolete Ann Coulter, and Dawkins and Myers would be lapped repeatedly.
Agree with whomever you like
... but I don't appreciate people telling me what I believe because they have arbitrarily redefined words in their favour. And don't presume that everyone who thinks they are agnostic thinks active atheists ought to shut up; that is just poisoning the well.
So, John, I was just
So, John, I was just wondering...
Do you believe in god?
Ewwwwww
Just the thought of being lapped by Coulter and O'Reilly ::shudder:: It makes me wand to sand blast the image from my brain.
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