Atheism. I've seen a few diaries about religion or the lack thereof crop up in this site from time to time. Very few ever make it to the rec list, but most have one thing in common: they get a lot of comments. Most of the more recent diaries I’ve seen on this subject address the concern from both sides of what seems to me to be a fundamental rift in this community. While many flame wars and pie fights have erupted sporadically on hot button issues here (FISA and the I/P conflict spring immediately to mind), there seems to be an undercurrent that boils over every time a diary on religion/atheism pops up on the list.
It is apparent that there is a disproportionately large (compared to the whole population of the US) amount of agnostic or atheist members of this community. It also seems that we are more emboldened by the knowledge that we are part of a rare group that is generally accepting of our opinions, with or without the theological component. There is also a large religious presence here that probably suffers under similar conditions experienced by us atheists and agnostics out in the wider world. That is, feeling pressured to remain silent on religious subjects for fear of being attacked and ridiculed.
I can’t say for certain that atheists and agnostics make up the majority of this community, but I know from personal experience that here and venganza.org are the only two groups I belong to in which I feel comfortable freely discussing this subject. That liberation sometimes has unintended consequences.
Though I am under no illusion that this will reach everyone, I wanted to try to explain my perspective for those of you who don’t agree with it, and try to provide some détente for religious discussion around here. The only way I know how to do this is to define atheism and agnosticism as I see them, and put my experience in a social context so you can understand why I, and some of those like me, act as we do in our Daily Kos exchanges.
First, let me get back to the title of the diary. There are three main points that Christians and agnostics make about atheism that I think need to be dispelled. I hear these all the time and they bug the shit out of me:
Atheism is just like its own religion, you just have faith that there is no God:
FALSE. Faith is the belief in a concept for which there is not supporting evidence or proof. In my opinion, faith is not something to be lauded and revered. Atheism is not the diametric opposite of faith in a supreme being; it is the absence of it. In scientific method there are no absolutes, and theories or hypotheses are discarded if they can not be tested or are contradicted by evidence. It is impossible to prove something which cannot be tested. It is not logical to believe in something that cannot be verified. To not believe an un-testable theory is not the same as having 'faith' that the theory is false.
Then you say: "But...but...but then you can’t disprove God either!"
It is very difficult or sometimes impossible to prove a negative, which leads me to my next pet peave:
There is no such thing as a true atheist, you are really an agnostic:
TRUE, BUT if you are to assume this standard and apply it to everything the waters get very murky, very quickly. Just because human beings are incapable of explicitly knowing anything for certain does not mean that we shouldn’t be allowed to make any assumptions about the validity of certain claims based on large bodies of evidence. For example: if you think about it, there could be some exception to the theory of gravity that occurs in some solar system billions of light years from here and we may never discover it, yet for all intents and purposes, we know how gravity works. If you were not allowed to be an atheist because the definition requires faith without proof of a negative, you would also have to acknowledge the possibility that any god ever imagined by human beings might also be real. You could not exclude any idea on the basis of lack of evidence. I cannot, nor can anyone else say that God or gods unequivocally don’t exist, but the chance of it being the case is so ridiculously small that it just makes sense to round it to zero and move on with our lives. Most Christians are atheist about every other god but their own, but it is arguably for the exact same reasons that I am atheist about their god as well. They have a blind spot that has been cultivated through social conditioning to ignore the same process for their god which leads them to disbelieve all others.
Why are atheists so obsessed with God?
GUILTY. I am admittedly fascinated with the religious doctrines of our planet. I am a person that enjoys healthy debate on any subject, and religion is one of my more favorite subjects. I don’t get to engage in it too often which leads to a bit of an overabundance of zeal when the chance arises. Let me elaborate on this phenomenon by way of an analogy if I may:
Let’s assume that you wake up tomorrow and 80 percent of the people in America were carrying with them a big pink stuffed bunny. They talked to the bunny, stroked it constantly, had entire conversations with others around them who also had had big pink bunnies about the bunnies and how great they were, and how wonderful it was having them around. Occasionally someone would ask you where your bunny was, or why you didn’t have one. They would assume that those carrying them were just a little better than those without them, and would declare mistrust for the bunnyless people. They would audible ridicule people in other countries with big stuffed purple gorillas and big stuffed orange wombats. Those people are "silly" for carrying those things around. In the past there have been wars, torture, and genocide between all of the stuffed animal wielding groups. People would stand up in large auditoriums and tell the people in them that their pink bunny told them to give money, hate gay people, and discriminate against others. Not all the people who carried these pink bunnies went to these places and listened to these people, but they all proclaimed their devotion to the bunnies, and had a sense that these bunnies somehow made them better people. Many people read books devoted to caring for the bunnies and loving them. Many people thanked the bunnies when good things happened to them, and asked for forgiveness from them when they did bad things.
Now sitting back and observing all this, would you be inclined to ignore these people’s obsession with their bunnies? Would you feel that the bunnies were harmless and did not pose any threat. Would you find it perfectly reasonable for people to be acting this way? Wouldn’t you be a little obsessed with trying to convince people that they were being idiots for believing all this stuff?
Seeing religion from an outside perspective I find it difficult to not want to try to expose the silliness of it. Sure there is some good that comes from religious institutions, but that is no reason to believe in a God. So while I am very aware of the reason religion is so pervasive in society (I was raised as a Christian myself), those of you who are religious must understand why this frustration with religion spills over so easily here. I so want to be tolerant of religious people, especially the more liberal variety, but it is hard for me to see religious faith as anything but a symptom of a fundamental lack of reason. It’s easy to come to this conclusion about people like Pat Robertson, but hurts my brain when people on Daily Kos subscribe to it as well. For me, it’s hard to differentiate the person who carries a pink bunny and hates us for everything I am, and the person who carries a pink bunny and believes the same way I do politically. I think: "then why do you carry that bunny?" It’s a distraction. I completely appreciate religious people’s tolerance of us here, and want you to know that I do respect you, but there is a cognitive dissonance that I have to try to quell when the people that I so wholeheartedly agree with on so many issues, and I therefore see as peers in rational thought, then show themselves to be what I see as irrational in another aspect of their lives.
I’m happy to have a good natured argument about any aspect of this diary. I’m sure I could go on for days, but I’ll have to open it up to comment and advance the dialogue. Anyone have anything to add/refute?