Has Atheism Become Fundamentalist_ - DAMIEL the Backbencher

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Has Atheism become Fundamentalist?BACKBENCHER AUGUST 10, 2013 5

It seems that every time an article about religion is posted online or a comment is made on twitter or even

when somebody professes to having faith or a religious inclination, a torrent of abusive messages follow

from people who claim allegiance to the new atheist movement. Of course if you read through these

comments you see the same arguments rehashed over and over again.

They consist of accusing the religious of having about as much logic for their faith as they would for a

teapot orbiting the sun or a flying spaghetti monster or in fact fairies at the bottom of the garden. This

argument is called Russells teapot after Bertrand Russell the philosopher who first postulated this

thought. The argument is solid in a GCSE level philosophy paper but attempting to disprove something as

complex as God with a simple logical absurdity is a sign of intellectual weakness.

As you know when you make the c laim that the thing you are arguing is not true, it is very easy to disprove

and therefore is not a comparable argument. It is an attempt to shake the faith of a believer by postulating

that their faith is as ridiculous as fairies at the bottom of the garden.

It is a tactic used by Richard Dawkins in his famous God Delusion. It is a widely read piece and it viciously

attacks faith and religion as well as the notion of God. Those who appreciate the book use its arguments to

attack those with religious faith with the ferocity of a rabid Rottweiler imagining that they are instrumental in

the movement towards a non religious utopia, a materialistic paradise where there would be no war or c ivil

strife as society would have rid itself of the one key divider that destroys all good, religion. Dawkins has

also told his supporters that the burden of proof is on the religious and it is they not the non-believers who

have to justify their position in a debate.

When they do come up with scientific facts such as the finely tuned universe, the problems we have with

explaining creation, why life exists at all and the advancements that are being made by quantum physicists

that support the possibility of God, atheists deride it as merely a simplistic God-of-the-gaps answer.

You might quote Occams razor that demands that the simplest theory be assumed to be correct until a

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greater one be

discovered.

However, if humanity

used this as a core

principal, explorers

would never have sailed

from Europe as they

believed the earth was

flat; the sun would still

be thought to evolve

around the earth and we

almost certainly would

not have experienced

anywhere near the

scientific discoveries that mankind has produced in the last few millennia. It is also a dud theory because

God is often the simple answer to the great questions of creation. Quite the double-edged razor it

seems. However, as most credible scientists will admit, we are a long way from being able to answer some

of the key questions about our existence and therefore to rule out any possibility of divinity is in itself an act

of faith.

It is like a religious belief, a belief that does not have the evidence required yet to support it fully.

This is why people say atheism is a religion (and please dont reply with the tired atheism is a religion as

abstinence is a sex position argument): it is a set of universal principals defined by the belief that there is

no God. It is the promotion of that position of faith and the desire to convert all others to that position of faith

that makes new-atheism like religion in its nature.

I read on one forum once someone saying I dont believe in Santa any more: does that make me a

fundamental non-Santa follower? I would reply: No it doesnt. However, if you walked around demanding

that no-one should believe in Santa and that all children who did were imbeciles and the fact that you have

to be made aware that others do believe in Santa was an affront to your human rights, then I would respond

with: Yes, you are a fundamental non-Santa follower.

If you actively campaigned against sexuality in all forms I would say you were fundamentally abstinent.

So it is the charge against this breed of very vocal atheism in its firm belief that all others are living in

ignorance and that their beliefs are harmful to themselves and the world around them, that faiths and beliefs

that have existed for thousands years and whose followers have been some of the most intelligent men who

have ever lived (and please: intellectuals did not all suddenly turn atheist after Darwin, who himself did not

profess himself an atheist but an agnostic), are sordid and evil and are threatening to mankind.

Now, before we damn all religion as evil and squalid, let us cast our eyes back on humanities least religious

period the 20th century.

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The greatest

evils committed

my mankind

including the

holocaust, the

Stalinist purges,

the atrocities of

Mao, the killing

fields of

Cambodia and

the invention of

the nuclear

weapon, were

perpetrated in

overtly secular

societies where

the notion of being accountable to something greater than ourselves has become redundant.

They were not conducted by the Vatican, the Church of England, the Supreme Leader of Iran, any other

Muslims or Jews they were mans and mans alone, committed without a thought to the divine.

These atrocities were not committed in the name of atheism and any religious theorist who says otherwise

is mistaken. However, they were committed in overtly secular states where religion was either relegated to

background status or was actively discouraged.

Without God, mankind is no longer sacred and without that status we are free to do to others what our own

consciences tell us is permissible and there is nothing more subjective than the human conscience. Any

sort of fundamentalism is dangerous, especially when it concerns something as complex and as wonderful

as life and its potential meaning.

There is a chance one party is right and the other wrong there is a real chance that we all are wrong and we

not understand our existence in the way we thought we did. Such debates should be considered and

should not be relegated to the realm of the keyboard warrior recycling old philosophical ideas in parrot

fashion be you theist or atheist.

Let us be civil and open to new ideas for surely that is the truest form of enlightenment to be open to all

debate even if you at heart disagree. Any closed-mindedness is a form of ignorance and is, at it s heart,

fundamentalist.

Samuel Kerr

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Colin Morrison

[multiple atrocities of 20th century] were perpetrated in overtly secular societies

where the notion of being accountable to something greater than ourselves has

become redundant.

Quite untrue. The Third Reich promoted the ideal of the Arayan state and race, andStalinist Russia promoted the ideal of the state also. Both would most certainly meetthe definition "the notion of being accountable to something greater than ourselves"

Today, we see North Korea trying to construct similar a ideology around theirleadership dynasty.

The dangeris indeed that of fundamentalist ideology. There is nothing of new atheismthat it can be fundamental towards, save naturalism. Occasionally I would see anatheist make a stupid, bigoted or ill-informed point, and the first people to slap themdown will be other atheists.

'

Stephanie

>

Guess Atheists have to find some greater goal for mankind too. In the French

Revolution they killed in the name of Reason, destroyed art, beautiful buildings

and sculptures. Hitler tried to fill the God void with his mixture of German myths

and made himself the great redeemer of the German nation. Mao was just in

love with himself and constructed a Myth with his Bible, the little Red Book. It

proves the point that atheism also needs its own kind of faith function. So

atheists shouldn't think that reason will banish human cruelty and evil.

Sam Woolfe >

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the

Almighty Creator" - Hitler. Not to mention the fact that the SS had belt

buckles with the inscription "God With Us".

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Death of NC Levels

Exaggerated?
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5/5



There are more similarities between fascist ideology (reverence and

subservience towards a god-like figure) and religion, than there is

between atheism and religion. Most atheists and secularists look up to

the values of humanism, a philosophy which is not fundamentalist.

Sure, some atheists (Dawkins especially) come across as arrogant

and intolerant. But atheism, by definition, cannot be fundamentalist

because as an absence of belief it has no 'fundamentals' to hold as

dogmas. To say that atheism has its own kind of faith sets up a straw

man argument, in which you give a misconception of atheism in order

to make it easier to attack.

Colin Morrison >

Those examples prove no such thing - some of those individuals were

not even atheists (Hitler was Catholic, at least of a sort) and none were

humanists, the preferred philosophical worldview of most modern

atheists.

If reason promotes cruelty and evil-doing, then it's being done badly or

has been corrupted.

Stephanie

Thanks Sam , great article!!

r

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Has Atheism Become Fundamentalist_ - DAMIEL the Backbencher