What is the reasoning behind the proposition that atheists are materialists?
I personally am an atheist an no materialist, so I'm curious why some seem to think that the two are necessarily related.
To me, atheism is primarily about rejecting theists' claims.
Rejecting doesn't require materialism.
Materialism represents a view that consciousness is a property of matter. Its relationship with atheism, is that as consciousness is a property of the brain, of a special organisation of matter, you cannot have a god as a form of dis-embodied consciousness. it means that there are only "natural" phenemeona; nature causes itself and there is no need for a "prime mover" or creator. God cannot exist and is therefore impossible.
[edit: there are forms of materialism which argue that consciousness is a special form of matter and this leads to mysticism because it means god, as a dis-embodied consciousness could exist, or that it would closely resemble pantheism. not all forms of materialism are
consistently athiest.]
The assocation is because there is a major difference between weak and strong atheism. Weak atheism ("lack of belief") is based on methodological naturalism, that is using science as a method to identify natural causes for phenemeona. this does not exclude the possibility of a god, and leaves room for a god of the gaps. Strong atheism involves a knowledge cliam that "god does not exist" or that "god is impossible" and is closely associated with materialism.
Based on my experiences on RF I'd say that the two are very different from one another to the point that they share almost nothing in common. Weak Atheism is based on scepticism of religious cliams, and attacking the plausability of religious belief. It therefore is compatable with tolerance and secularism based on the assumption that reason acts as a neutral abritator in the conflict between religion/science and religion/atheism.
Meanwhile, Strong Atheism asserts that atheism is a fact and so is significantly less tolerant of theism. it is often known as "scientific materialism" or can be presented as "scientific atheism" because it involves a knowledge cliam about the nature of reality. The extent to which materialists assert that atheism is true is debatable and does vary from one materialist to another. There is no single school of materialism.
The most extreme (to my knowledge) is eliminative materialism which denies the existence not only of god but also of consciousness. This is typically the form of materialism most theists are afriad of because it is it still essentially dualistic; that because the world is divided into consciousness and matter, you 'eliminate' consciousness and are left with matter. it is therefore deeply nihilistic and involves a passive nihilism (that as there is no consciousnes, there is no god, soul, meaning, ethics, etc.).
Dialectical materialism (the marxist one) is not this extreme but argues that matter is primary, and that matter
causes consciousness. it is atheist because if matter causes consciousness, there can be no consciousness which causes matter, i.e. no god 'creating' the universe. It is nihilistic, but in a much more limited sense of active nihilism in denying religious cliams as an illusion and arguing for a new understanding of objective reality. I'd underline that there are different forms of materialism but these are the two I most recognise.
The reason weak and strong atheism share almost nothing in common is to do with the nature of the knowledge cliams involved. Weak atheism is a form of scepticism and is in some ways agnostic in that it hesitates to close the debate and say that atheism can be established as a fact. As god cannot be said to be a 'real' phenemeona it cannot be dis-proven. This is why Communism- as a form of materialism- is dis-owned by many atheists as a "dogma" because the nature of the knowledge cliam made by materialists is incompatable with many of the traditions of free thought and sceptism on which it is based. The extent of "lack of belief" is to a point where stating atheism as a knowledge cliam is considered "religious" because it is dogmatic. Weak atheism therefore often dis-owns strong atheism because it does not recognise the legitimacy of the knowledge cliam.
Strong atheism, particuarly materialism, asserts that God can be related to a real pheneomena; consciousness. By understanding consciousness we can establish whether god exists or not. As materialism says consciousness can
only exist as the result of physical properties, god cannot therefore exist. As strong atheism is making a knowledge cliam about objective reality, it has a burden of proof (unlike weak atheism). To the best of my knowledge, a materialist/strong atheist would have to solve the Hard problem of consciousness to demonstrate that their cliam is true. "lack of belief" in god does not ential materialism, but the most common way to argue God cannot exist is by materialism.
