Activist atheism

[tayla]

WTF?

Do quotes such as these qualify as activism, meaning, wishing for change in society? (Argumentation is a tool of activism, an action.)

All these quotes assume it's better if there were no religion, with the assumption that certain intuitions promote religion.

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I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.
--Richard Dawkins

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.
--Richard Dawkins

How dare you force your dopey unsubstantiated superstitions on innocent children too young to resist? How DARE you?
--Richard Dawkins

Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you’ll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it’s a good bet.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.
--Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Even if religion did no other harm in itself, its wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness – its deliberate and cultivated pandering to humanity’s natural tendency to favour in-groups and shun out-groups – would be enough to make it a significant force for evil in the world.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
--Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead.
--Christopher Hitchens

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy....
--Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

Those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being—the well-being of all of us on the planet—depends on the education of our descendants.
--Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Atheism which is actively hostile to religion I would call militant. To be hostile in this sense requires more than just strong disagreement with religion -- it requires something verging on hatred and is characterized by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious belief.
--Roy W. Brown, "Europe Supports Secular Education", in the book "Religion", by Diane Andrews Henningfeld.

On every political issue I’ve ever tried lobbying for, from environmentalism to peacekeeping to fighting poverty to women’s rights to stem cell research to abolishing vice laws to death-with-dignity legislation to improvements in tax and social welfare policy—literally everything—one group was always in my way: conservative Christians. Always. Their opposition to human betterment and social progress is extensive, multi-faceted, well-documented, and shameless. Faith. Belief. They create and feed that monster. And that’s why they must go.
--Richard Carrier, What's the Harm? Why Religious Belief Is Always Bad • Richard Carrier

 

[Dan From Smithville]

These quotes express hatred of certain beliefs:

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.
--Richard Dawkins

How dare you force your dopey unsubstantiated superstitions on innocent children too young to resist? How DARE you?
--Richard Dawkins

Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Dawkins has some strong opinions regarding his views. I am not sure if they represent hatred, but they are definitely express a strong dislike of organized religion. While he has every right to express his views, I am more interested in his defense of science and I have often thought that his personal views about religion have made his support of science more difficult. He is an excellent teacher and his lectures on evolution are very inclusive and understandable.

 

[Revoltingest]

Do quotes such as these qualify as activism, meaning, wishing for change in society? (Argumentation is a tool of activism, an action.)

All these quotes assume it's better if there were no religion, with the assumption that certain intuitions promote religion.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.
--Richard Dawkins

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.
--Richard Dawkins

How dare you force your dopey unsubstantiated superstitions on innocent children too young to resist? How DARE you?
--Richard Dawkins

Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you’ll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it’s a good bet.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.
--Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Even if religion did no other harm in itself, its wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness – its deliberate and cultivated pandering to humanity’s natural tendency to favour in-groups and shun out-groups – would be enough to make it a significant force for evil in the world.
--Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
--Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead.
--Christopher Hitchens

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy....
--Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

Those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being—the well-being of all of us on the planet—depends on the education of our descendants.
--Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Atheism which is actively hostile to religion I would call militant. To be hostile in this sense requires more than just strong disagreement with religion -- it requires something verging on hatred and is characterized by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious belief.
--Roy W. Brown, "Europe Supports Secular Education", in the book "Religion", by Diane Andrews Henningfeld.

On every political issue I’ve ever tried lobbying for, from environmentalism to peacekeeping to fighting poverty to women’s rights to stem cell research to abolishing vice laws to death-with-dignity legislation to improvements in tax and social welfare policy—literally everything—one group was always in my way: conservative Christians. Always. Their opposition to human betterment and social progress is extensive, multi-faceted, well-documented, and shameless. Faith. Belief. They create and feed that monster. And that’s why they must go.
--Richard Carrier, What's the Harm? Why Religious Belief Is Always Bad • Richard Carrier

Picking one....
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
--Richard Dawkins

That's opinion, hardly activism.
Moreover, it's reasonable.
I'll wager that many believers agree, albeit about other people's religions.

 

[tayla]

If you're going to start a thread about how you feel about atheism, I suggest that you actually do some research so you will know something about atheism.

I did some research and I know something about atheism.

This thread is not about how I feel about atheism. Perhaps you didn't read the OP very carefully. I'm concerned about a very specific perspective I've encountered among atheists that troubles me.

 

[tayla]

A Catholic Priest in Tasmania found himself in court for handing our leaflets detailing the RCC position on homosexuality during the 2018 debate on gay marriage. This is what I mean by social engineering and the banning of religion.

I think you are providing evidence of a statement in the OP that so many have strongly objected to, claiming such a thing simply doesn't exist.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I think atheists in general care very much that religious people believe false ideas. After all, during the various atheist seminars and conferences, speeches against religion and against Christianity are very common. Some of these have a very mocking tone towards viewpoints they oppose. And the audience claps and cheers when religious people are exposed for being so stupid.

I would consider that behavior to be more of the activist type. My original points were to atheists that I know personally or that I have met on the internet. I find them open, knowledgeable, intelligent and willing to discuss, though I have to go through the usual surprise when I mention that I am Christian. On the internet, atheists do not appear to be used to meeting Christians that have an enlightened and educated understanding of science. They are more used to the fundamentalist lack of understand and knowledge of science, coupled with erroneous views that do not make much sense and are not based on logic or evidence. The funny thing is, that there are probably more enlightened Christians that accept science and are not afraid of it, than there are fundamentalists. Fundamentalists just happen to make a lot of noise.

 

[tayla]

Activists focus upon their issue in the narrowest of terms - the broader implications of their cause pushing are either beyond their mentality, of no concern or a potential threat to The Cause. Freedom of religion is a fundamental and foundational right. With it is freedom of association, which is being attacked also.

Yes, I agree. People should be allowed to be stupid as long as they don't hurt anyone else.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yes, this is my objection. I agree that things provably true should be believed as true.

But I question whether the subjective experience of consciousness (for example) is explainable by materialism/physicalism.

I honestly have not given it much thought. What is true for me now is that I do not know of ways to reveal subjective claims about experience with the supernatural or any evidence that would not render the supernatural, material. If there is a material explanation, then there are plausible alternatives that must be ruled out.

If I think that I have been talked to by God or an agent of God, how do I, myself, even know that it was real, even if it is only to me? How do I rule out any of the many possibilities of what it could be? Then apply that to another and there is even more distance to an answer.

I do not know an answer to that.

 

[Jim]

Lately I've been studying viewpoints of various atheists, and am disturbed at many of their radical agendas for society. They want to abolish religions, including home school and religious schools. Basically, they consider non-atheists as people not deserving of participation in society, because of viewpoints so obviously incorrect and untrue.

But considering that atheism merely assumes materialism and physicalism, explaining everything in terms of these, their hatred of spiritual beliefs seems unwarranted.

Ignoring atrocities by both atheists and religious, I don't see evidence that improvements to our world are all the result of atheism, and that religion holds us back.

I do not see any hatred of spiritual beliefs,

Does that include religious beliefs? I’ve seen people denouncing and ridiculing religious beliefs, and people who believe them, sometimes in ways that looked hateful to me.

Yes, I've seen this too. That's kind of why I started this thread, to discuss this exact topic. So far the posts have been very instructive.

I see that as part of a larger problem of animosities across lines defined by what people believe or don’t believe. If you’re trying to help change that, maybe we could talk about our ideas and experiences some time.

Yes, your description of this phenomena is an improvement over mine in the OP. Thank you for it.

I am trying to contribute to improving things in this regard via my posts on ReligiousForums and my website.

Is this thread part of that? To raise awareness of the problem? Were you hoping that it might help change some attitudes and behavior, or be part of a solution in some other way?

 

[tayla]

Materialism holds that the content of thought (what we "know," the world "out there") is a material reality. In other words, first there is a material world, and then there is the thought of it. It treats thought like a radio receiver, having detected signals through the senses.

Idealism, by contrast, holds that the thought comes first. Thought is the information of an "out there" where "things" are; or, in some belief systems, the thought does not differ from what is "out there." (How thought is structured determines the structure of the world--a molecule or an atom are such as they are because we've come to them in a particular way, to see them in terms of mass and energy. We could well have come at them another way.)

Very interesting analysis.

In my view, certain things reside in the spiritual realm (consciousness, soul, self, ideas, emotions, memories, etc). But I accept also that the physical world exists, containing quantum fields, human bodies,... all the physical stuff.

The body and brain does the physical stuff, then hands the info to the spiritual where the soul processes the info, then hands back commands for action back to the body.

My objection to materialism/physicalism is the need to claim that the mind is merely the brain functioning. But it is clearly so much more than merely that.

And yes, there is a way for the immaterial mind to communicate both ways with the brain.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yikes! Should I be afraid?

No. That was a quip to someone that has made some pretty extreme statements. I would consider that person an activist, bordering on zealotry.

That person is someone that gives me the impression that the rules do not apply to them, but his rules apply to you. Though, I am not too concerned about him starting a revolution. He seems more of the type that would join in, but not have the stones to get the ball rolling.

 

[tayla]

I think activism-reformism is an attribute of ego, irrespective of ‘ism’.

If you are saying that the human mind is such that it wishes to improve (or at least change) things, then I agree.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I actually would prefer being ruled by atheists. As long as they didn't burn me at the stake for rejecting materialism/physicalism. Weird that atheists think I'm opposed to them.

You never know how something is going to turn out even if it is set up with the best intentions, but given what I have experienced personally, I would definitely choose atheists over fundamentalists evangelicals. The latter want a theocracy and if they had it, heads would roll. Atheists just want to argue about things. That would actually be fun.

 

[tayla]

I do believe in objective reality. I just don't have any evidence for it. Nor can I prove it with reason and logic.

I agree there is an objective reality and that we can't experience it directly. Immanuel Kant makes a lot of this view.

Things in the spiritual realm (love, soul, emotion, mind, etc) can't be proved via the scientific method; they can only be experienced by the consciousness (also in the spiritual realm).

 

[tayla]

Apparently, you and I see these comments differently. I would be glad to discuss the relative merits of any of them with you.

I agree with them all. My only worry is whether in the future an atheistic totalitarianism might take over under the influence of the ideas I mention in the OP.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Thanks for your honesty.

Often my interactions with atheists has been limited to them saying, "prove it", or some such short phrase. Usually they don't bother to understand my point. If I try to share more to help them understand, they merely say, "prove it", again. Kind of a dull interaction in the realm of ideas.

Why is being called an activist a bad thing? Don't all of us wish to share and persuade others of our great viewpoints and perspectives? And don't we all wish to improve our societies by ridding them of bad ideas? Such is the work of activists.

You seem to consider zealots as less extreme than activists. I think of it the other way around; zealots scare me. Fundamentalist evangelist Christians are zealots.

Where I have seen atheists become very enthusiastic, robust and vocal on this forum is usually in association to claims against science made by creationists. Though, this is not a good test, since science subjects and the associated threads are those that I most often reading and participating in. That would bias my observation. Perhaps a lot.

It has been my experience that creationists on the internet do not understand science or the specific areas of science that they wish to deny. They also tend to make arguments that consist of only assertions or those that are replete with various logical fallacies. Within that scope, anybody that understands science finds it difficult to take such irrational positions lightly and atheists are no exception.

 

[tayla]

How does that quote express hatred toward anyone?

Definition of hatred from Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

1 : extreme dislike or disgust : hate
2 : ill will or resentment that is usually mutual : prejudiced hostility or animosity​

Definition (partial) of hate from Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

1b : extreme dislike or disgust : antipathy, loathing
1c : a systematic and especially politically exploited expression of hatred

// a crime motivated by bigotry and hate​

I think you are using the most extreme aspect of the word hatred; I'm just using it to indicate extreme dislike or aversion or disgust.

 

[tayla]

Do you always equate truth with hatred?

What? Is this a serious question?

 

[tayla]

They are trolls trying to sell books like Anne Coulter and her ilk, of course they are going to say outrageous and "controversial" things . It's a game.

I'm worried that their easily misunderstood comments might form the philosophical foundation for a future atheist totalitarian society.

 

[The Reverend Bob]

I'm worried that their easily misunderstood comments might form the philosophical foundation for a future atheist totalitarian society.

I don't think those nerds have the cojones to get out of their houses to start some atheist revolution, it is all just a bunch of talk but still there is a little danger to it like all prejudicial hyperbole out there. Some nerd with a gun might go crazy and think he has a mission