(no subject)
Sep. 10th, 2003 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberI am a big fan of www.kuro5hin.org. I hardly ever go there, though, because I know that every visit is a commitment of at least a couple of hours because almost every article and ensuing discussion intrigues me. In any case, I went there today and came upon this article, written by a Christian outlining Christianity's concept of armageddon.
Many of the responses were interesting, but many more were very disrespectful-- the standard "wake up from your fairy tale" thing. That, and various attempts at punnery-- "Eschatology? Hehe.. he said scat..."
SIGH.
Anyway, that prompted me to write the following and I'm pretty happy with it, so I'm preserving it here. (Oh, and props to vrelis for the OMM quote. =:)
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Fundamentalist Atheism -- By Nermal
I was originally going to respond to particular posts, but there are so many that I'm just going to put my feelings here instead.
Am I the only who finds it funny how atheism is right up there with Christianity, Islam and everything else in terms of the closed-mindedness and arrogance of its fundamentalist adherants?
Here we have a Christian who is explaining his position in as non-confrontational and respectful a way as I've ever seen and half the responses amount to:
"No, you're wrong. You're suffering from infantile fairy-tale delusions".
How is this any different from:
"No, you're wrong. You've been decieved by the devil"
I know the first response many will have to that question is: "Well, the former is based on fact". But is it really? I'm reminded in particular of a post where someone explains at a biochemical level what happens to the grey matter of the brain when someone dies and uses that as an argument against the existance of a soul and the possibility of resurrection after death.
Did I miss the issue of scientific american where we created a fuly functional human being with thoughts and feelings from scratch? It seems to me that that is the _only_ scientifically rigorous means by which one could eliminate (or demonstrate) the nescessity/existance of a soul. Such things are currently far beyond our ability to demonstrate, measure or understand in any remotely scientific way and so any position, for or against, is theory at best. At least the Christain wasn't being so arrogant about his theories, though. Some of the people responding sound like atheism's answer to Jerry Fallwell!
I guess here's my point(s):
1) Atheism claims absolute knowlege of things so radically beyond the scope of human understanding (God, souls, etc) that it is no different, and no more provable, than any other religion.
2) Uncertainty is at the heart of science (it is, after all, science's reason for existence) despite the fact that nowadays science (or at least lay-science) has taken on a hubris that presumes omnicience in spiritual matters.
3) The true religion of the scientist is agnostacism: The constant admission of "I don't know" in the face of things beyond our ability to measure, prove, disprove or even concieve of.
There's a quote from Old Man Murray that I think is very relevant here:
It seems that people who deliberately deconstruct religion, then exorcise it from their lives, eventually realize that maybe they're not so much smarter than everyone who's ever lived after all. When they inevitably discover that faith has a purely utilitarian value as a way of mitigating the mounting existential dread that arises from simply being alive, they generally resort to creating some kind of half-assed religion substitute. This leads to spiritual philosophies that embarrass everybody, like aromatherapy and everything Jewel believes.
Or, my take on a translation: "uncertainty is uncomfortable". Confidently saying "There is no God" seems no more or less an unfounded comfort-belief to me than "We will all be rewarded in heaven". Other religions and religous people at least have profound, personal, transrational religious experiences to fall back on, leaving atheism in arguably the least tennable position of all religions.
So what do you think? Am I totally off base here or should we be listening more repectfully and being less ready to take the easy route of dismissing (or accepting) another's spiritual beliefs without first finding some real basis (scientific, spiritual or otherwise) upon which to form an opinion?
--------------------------------
/post
Many of the responses were interesting, but many more were very disrespectful-- the standard "wake up from your fairy tale" thing. That, and various attempts at punnery-- "Eschatology? Hehe.. he said scat..."
SIGH.
Anyway, that prompted me to write the following and I'm pretty happy with it, so I'm preserving it here. (Oh, and props to vrelis for the OMM quote. =:)
-----------------------------------
Fundamentalist Atheism -- By Nermal
I was originally going to respond to particular posts, but there are so many that I'm just going to put my feelings here instead.
Am I the only who finds it funny how atheism is right up there with Christianity, Islam and everything else in terms of the closed-mindedness and arrogance of its fundamentalist adherants?
Here we have a Christian who is explaining his position in as non-confrontational and respectful a way as I've ever seen and half the responses amount to:
"No, you're wrong. You're suffering from infantile fairy-tale delusions".
How is this any different from:
"No, you're wrong. You've been decieved by the devil"
I know the first response many will have to that question is: "Well, the former is based on fact". But is it really? I'm reminded in particular of a post where someone explains at a biochemical level what happens to the grey matter of the brain when someone dies and uses that as an argument against the existance of a soul and the possibility of resurrection after death.
Did I miss the issue of scientific american where we created a fuly functional human being with thoughts and feelings from scratch? It seems to me that that is the _only_ scientifically rigorous means by which one could eliminate (or demonstrate) the nescessity/existance of a soul. Such things are currently far beyond our ability to demonstrate, measure or understand in any remotely scientific way and so any position, for or against, is theory at best. At least the Christain wasn't being so arrogant about his theories, though. Some of the people responding sound like atheism's answer to Jerry Fallwell!
I guess here's my point(s):
1) Atheism claims absolute knowlege of things so radically beyond the scope of human understanding (God, souls, etc) that it is no different, and no more provable, than any other religion.
2) Uncertainty is at the heart of science (it is, after all, science's reason for existence) despite the fact that nowadays science (or at least lay-science) has taken on a hubris that presumes omnicience in spiritual matters.
3) The true religion of the scientist is agnostacism: The constant admission of "I don't know" in the face of things beyond our ability to measure, prove, disprove or even concieve of.
There's a quote from Old Man Murray that I think is very relevant here:
It seems that people who deliberately deconstruct religion, then exorcise it from their lives, eventually realize that maybe they're not so much smarter than everyone who's ever lived after all. When they inevitably discover that faith has a purely utilitarian value as a way of mitigating the mounting existential dread that arises from simply being alive, they generally resort to creating some kind of half-assed religion substitute. This leads to spiritual philosophies that embarrass everybody, like aromatherapy and everything Jewel believes.
Or, my take on a translation: "uncertainty is uncomfortable". Confidently saying "There is no God" seems no more or less an unfounded comfort-belief to me than "We will all be rewarded in heaven". Other religions and religous people at least have profound, personal, transrational religious experiences to fall back on, leaving atheism in arguably the least tennable position of all religions.
So what do you think? Am I totally off base here or should we be listening more repectfully and being less ready to take the easy route of dismissing (or accepting) another's spiritual beliefs without first finding some real basis (scientific, spiritual or otherwise) upon which to form an opinion?
--------------------------------
/post
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
don't assume that i'm actually attempting to express anything meaningful
Date: 2003-09-10 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-10 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 02:28 pm (UTC)To quote 'epepke':
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Common terminology, at least as practiced in alt.atheism.moderated, is like this:
Weak atheism: Atheism, lack of belief in a god or gods.
Strong atheism: A belief in the nonexistence of gods in general.
Weak agnosticism: An admitted lack of knowledge of the existence of a god or gods.
Strong agnosticism: A belief a la Huxley in the unknowability of gods in general.
It is clear that strong atheism implies weak atheism and strong agnosticism implies weak agnosticism.
Unlike the term "atheist," which has been in use in English for hundreds of years, "agnostic" was coined by a particular individual in modern times. I don't have a problem with other people using "agnostic" to mean "weak agnostic," which is probably the most common meaning today. However, I'm a bit of a traditionalist and so I attach more weight to Huxley's "ownership" of the term and am therefore reluctant to apply it to myself. I'll still understand what you mean when you say it, though.
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So I guess my criticisms were leveled more at 'strong atheists', or just arrogant atheists, than at atheism in general. It's unfortunate that the condescending, arrogant atheists always seem to be the most vocal (not unlike other religions) and thus, for me, set the standards that I expected from the whole group (again, like Fallwell etc have set negative expectations of Christians for many people).
An educational experience, no doubt.