The atheist delusion

Okay...go on...what's your point?

That's kinda cool how the whole quote box is a link.

I liked that, too.

Interesting article. I like a lot of what he says, although I think he paints "evangelical atheism" as more widespread that it really is. While Atheist-driven literature is certainly more visible now than in the past, I'd hardly call it a wave of evangelism, as you won't find the new Dennett or Dawkins books at Costco.

Hitchens is an annoying douche, though. The article felt more like a hit on Hitchens and Dawkins than anything else.

To me, this is just a case of the rest of us finally getting our say. I'm sure to the christian culture, this looks like some of dangerous movement taking over the nation. But atheistic proselytizing is never going to be as widespread as the traditional kind. The christians are just upset because they no longer corner the market on judgmental dickery.

People who compare atheism to religion so they can stick adjectives like "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" on to it remind me of people who ask gay couples, "Which one of you is the man and which one is the woman?" They don't really understand something that exists outside of their paradigm so they try to shoehorn it into one they already know and it's all square pegs and round holes from there.

I let myself get sucked into this every single damn time. I don't even know why I bother. But -

Out of idle and masochistic curiosity, who's "they"/"their"?

Aye, PMR has a good point.

Atheism is an absence of belief. I don't see any of 'us' (hesitate to use that word; atheists have nothing in common but an absence of belief - do you make connections with people because they also don't believe in the tooth fairy?) physically attacking others for their beliefs. Also, I wouldn't state that all wars are caused by religion.

I wouldn't label Hitchens or Dawkins evangelical about their beliefs - there are no doctrines to follow to follow in their books, they're merely expressing thoughts and opinions. No more militant than John Gray's own article, he just strongly disagrees with them as much as atheists differ with the religious - so I guess, by Gray's own reasoning, his views are shaped by the atheists and are one and the same! Just like a religious militant to open his mouth!

People who compare atheism to religion.

Did people even read the article? Unless I seriously missed something, it is in no way written from a "Christian" perspective.

Mixed metaphors all round! Good point all the same.

Gray does challenge serious atheists on their faiths - but it has nothing to do with their "belief" that there is no God (or lack of belief, as dreary put it). He rather questions their beliefs that the world would be a better place without religion and that religion is slowly dying out. I found it to be a pretty enlightening article.

Atheism is dichotomous with theism, not religion. Atheism and theism are individual beliefs. Religion is a set of beliefs. On these grounds I would also counter that atheism can hardly be said to affect the actions of its adherents in the same way that religion does. Religions contain systems of values, religions give people self-worth and purpose (atheism does none of these things). That gives religion a much larger, and often much different swath of activity with which to influence.

Hope you don't mind that I've taken this one bit out of context, but I'm not sure that it holds up. Religions don't always give people self-worth, but often quite the opposite. This is probably an oversimplification, but Calvinism, for instance, proposes that humans are quite small and our fates predetermined. I'm not sure how that's pro-self-worth or purpose.

Actually, if we're real sticklers about this, religion doesn't "do" anything. Any religion is simply a set of beliefs with no autonomy of its own. Anything that religion "does" is really just a matter of people doing things and ascribing them to a cause.

Similarly, atheism, as a mode of thought, doesn't really suggest anything one way or the other. But as these conversations often demonstrate, one's atheism (just as one's religious beliefs) can become a rationale for haughty, superior behavior. If the attitude that one is better, smarter, or more moral due to a lack of belief in God isn't an indication of (misplaced) self-worth, I'm not sure what is.

He cherry picks weak arguments from various atheists and then pools them together as if they all share the same intellectual doctrines. Then he makes loaded comments like: In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.

(in case you didn't catch it, to allow that religion had a part in creating liberal values you would first have to allow that liberal values are "created" rather than discovered or codified, something an astute philosopher like Dennett wouldn't accept)

I'm not going to get into everything I find wrong with the essay but I also noticed he refers to an article in which Dennett claims that in 25 years religion will lose its mystique, so to speak, and yet he discusses the piece as if the only part of it he read were the first few sentences (coincidentally those he quotes). He makes a straw-man attack that a cursory glance at the article shows to be entirely unfair. (He also seems to miss the point of Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell, which I defend here though I didn't particularly like it)

I'm not saying that the article doesn't bring up interesting points, I find it reasonable enough to suspect that the energy expended on religious activity will at least have to be co-opted by something similar, but the whole endeavor (the article) strikes me as lazy.

That's a large reason why I have little patience for lazy atheism/religion comparisons. People who have strong convictions in their worldviews resemble each other in that they'll argue tooth and nail for them. Okay, fine. But that alone is a far cry from a religion. At best, it's usually a weak (and cliched) attempt at painting the nonbeliever as someone turning into the very thing that he's arguing against. I guess that's true if not believing in God, not going to church, and not not praying is pretty much the same as believing in God, going to church, and praying.

And, yes, the previous post and this one are only tangentially related to the article in the OP, which admittedly commits more substantial sins during the preachy sermon the author delivers. (Har, har. See what I did there?)

I patently and energetically reject the notion that community, values, ethics, and morality are strictly religious virtues. In fact, I'm offended that this idea still refuses to die. These are human concerns, and have no need of eternal punishment in order to resonate.

Ya know between this, people still having trouble finding Wii's and that recent thread concerning time travel....

My point is that those roles don't need to be transferred anywhere. Honestly, if organized religion disappeared tomorrow, I don't think there would be much change in those matters. As I said, I think that they're the universal concerns of civilization, and they simply get wrapped in the convenient packaging of religion. The fact that many common notions of ethics and morality pop up in several disparate cultures with wildly different religious beliefs should tell us that those mores are not specific to any religion. A person who never attended church wouldn't just leap to the conclusion that rape, child molestation and cannibalism were fine ideas. It doesn't appear that they generally need to be taught.

Fear of sex, though; that's a religious teaching. That would go away pretty quick.

In context the word "creation" implies that ethic are created, and in turn that religion had a hand in their creation. This further implicates atheists as taking their own, religion generated, ethics for granted. Neither I nor several of the atheists he implicates would accept that ethics are created or generated in such a way at all, ethics are much more akin to logic in this regard (emergent, normative rules not "created").

They're statements in support of my conclusion that this was a lazy piece of work. The straw man refers to the author's framing of Dennett's article whereby he implies that Dennett thinks that communication technologies will spell the imminent doom of religion and then makes some comment to the effect of "Dennett must be unaware of Al Qaeda's use of the internet to recruit and disseminate information" in order to show just how ridiculous Dennett's position is. This is a straw man since Dennett's article, upon inspection, is far more nuanced than Gray admits (Dennett himself mentions that despite his predictions, in 25 years many if not most religious individuals will still cling to their beliefs).

And there is some evidence that they are not specific even to just our species.

This is an excerpt from an article in the New York Times
The rest of the article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/sc...prod=permalink

I think I know who performed this experiment.

Hardly as egregious an error as cherry picking weak arguments from various widely-held belief systems and pooling them together as if they all share the same religious doctrines, I'd say.

This is a single, short essay on a group of authors who, while not identical in thinking, probably share a lot more in common on the merits of an end to religion than, say, a Catholic and a Lutheran, much less a Jew and a Hindu, share on the nature of this religion that so offends those authors. It's very rare I hear about Dawkins, Harris, etc. making significant distinctions between religions, despite some of them having published multiple entire books on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok2oJgsGR6c

Skip to the 13:11 mark. The next seven or so minutes are pretty good on this topic, though Harris is a bit jokey at first.

Color me surprised. Still, the main divisions he makes are: moderate Christians and the Amish, who are dumb, but harmless; fundamenalist Christians who are dumber and a little more harmful; fundamentalist Muslims who are super-duper harmful; and Mormons who are possibly the dumbest of all, but not that harmful.

That's not a particularly insightful view on any of these things, and he doesn't even seem to acknowledge the idea that religion is not meant to function as an alternative to science in terms of providing the hows of the universe. Condescension = preaching to the choir. None of these guys will have any impact on religious thinking so long as there's an assumption that religious belief requires idiocy.

Umm, they already have made an impact on religious thinking regardless of what assumptions they make. I'm not a fan of Sam Harris because of his snarkiness, but I have read ALL of Dawkins' work and I feel that you might be underestimating the impact of his rhetoric in regards to his "pen-to-paper" ideas.

Were you religious before you read Dawkins?

This is absolutely beautiful

I guess that depends on what you mean by religious. To sort of answer your question, I started reading Dawkins because of my interest in science and evolutionary theory (specifically, Dawkins' equations versus those of S.J. Gould.)

I'm not sure if that addresses my question or not, honestly, since Gould and Dawkins had disagreements about evolutionary theory (which may not have anything at all to say about religion, except for the most literalist believers), but also about the idea of non-overlapping magisteria (which has a lot to say about religion, but doesn't necessarily require an advocate of the idea to actually be religious at all - Gould wasn't).

I guess what I'm asking you is has Dawkins' writing on atheism, specifically, had any impact on any spiritual beliefs you had prior to reading it, or were you more-or-less an agnostic or atheist already (or non-spiritual person, if we want to bring non-theistic religion into this)?

What I'm getting at is that these books and articles don't seem to be aimed at convincing anyone of anything that they're not already largely convinced of. They encourage an echo chamber effect.

That's true, but I think the main motive of these guys (besides making money) is to intensify and clarify the ideas in exactly those people who are already convinced, to make atheism more mainstream not by increasing its numbers but by increasing its presence, awareness, market share, etc.

What discussion doesn't encourage that line of thinking? People are naturally drawn towards comfortable and reassuring ideas, that is not the fault of the authors.

In regards to your question, I wouldn't call myself a religious person, but that does not mean that I'm hostile to religion. I can honestly say that reading Dawkins has had little effect on me as far as religion is concerned...but I don't think I'm a fair test-subject for that kind of experiment. Personally I consider myself more of a Buddhist (for purely Nietzsche-ian reasons) than any other sect. But even that designation is deeply suspect, I'm just a sucker for suffering.

I've seen Dawkins speak a number of times and the crowd he draws range from devout to non-believing. I take that to mean that he is doing much more then just "preaching to the choir." From what I've seen of the man, Dawkins is very collected and generous when dealing with a hostile crowd. His interest is not in theological division but in honest discussion and the furthering of human experience through science. Heresy for sure.

To what end, though (aside from the moneymaking)?

It seems to me that if you really want to effect a change in how society views religion in relation to science or to what extent fundamentalism is tolerated, the most effective way would be to get pro-science and non-fundamentalist religious people* on board. You can't do this by proclaiming that they're just slightly smarter versions of the fundamentalists and literalists who may share little in common with them aside from a fluid and multifaceted belief system.

Granted, I realize this is a strictly pragmatic take on it and that there are philosophical questions at the heart of this issue, but I'm basically sold on Gould's non-overlapping magisteria idea (though I have to admit I came to this idea through other means and haven't really read much of Gould's work).

* Not only are there a lot of people who fall under this dichotomous classification (which seems all-too-impossible if you listen to some atheists), they're the majority here. Most Americans are Christians who want evolution, not Intelligent Design, taught in science class.

Don't be a showoff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa'uld

Okay...

1. I'm not sure how that's relevant or funny.
2. You apparently just made a Stargate SG1 joke. This suggests some very dubious viewing habits on your part.

Bad thread derail.

In the future, just remember: there are no good Stargate derails.

But let it never be forgotten that there are umpteen good The Day After Tomorrow derails.

There aren't any distinctions to make - all religions are equal. That's what these writers are espousing. To believe otherwise will get you into a "which God is better?" debate. And once you accept these faiths are either all correct, or all wrong, you'll wonder how somebody could pick one over another, or slam an individual one (which would suggest there is a 'good' one).

Your Christian or Muslim friends believe you're going to Hell unless you join a sect. And either way, the other will condemn you. You see how religion actually fucks up communities of people?

As the religious of a same church come together, they form a shell over themselves from the outside world. When people are in small groups and disconnected from others, the most degraded belief systems and repression and degeneracy occur. Incest, fear of intercourse, the compulsion to hang black people...

There's nothing wrong with a "Which god is real?" or a "Who is most right about the nature of God or gods?" debate.

The current pope seems to be big on this, and it seems like a reasonable position to me. Respecting the right of another to believe as he chooses does not necessarily mean that one must accept the validity of that belief.