part 2:
Why would you think that of me? I identified as an atheist for 10 years as I was deconstructing my religion, trying to sort out what I really feel on a spiritual level. The issue I have with it, is that of the trap of it becoming a replacement religion for fundamentalists, which I have personally seen countless times. I was a moderator on a site dedicated to Ex-Christians for over 10 years. And it got frankly unmanageable.
Any former believer who ventured into exploring other avenues for reclaiming spirituality for themselves, of which we see plenty of that here on RF with its membership, the atheists of the site, which were the majority, would dogpile them. "Woo! Woo!" they would attack, branding it as irrational, or still having one foot in the church, and such. Ridicule and scorn and derision was commonplace.
Members who wanted to just be able to talk about spirituality needed a safe place where the "pitchforks and woo crowd" as I called them were not allowed to dogpile others with their self-aggrandizing anti-theism, anti-faith rhetoric at members at will. We had to create a subforum, a "DIR" as it were, to keep them at bay. Much like here, I suppose.They just couldn't see to keep it in their pants, so to speak.
I became a bit of a champion for the maligned, as a "spiritual atheist". I tried to define myself in such a way that honored atheism, yet was able to honor and respect faith as well. My "holy grail" quest back then was to find a way to bridge that divide between faith and reason. It took a long while, but where I am now has comfortably done that for myself. I try my best to try to explain that here, but like over there, we have our pitchforks and woo crowd as well, and no matter what intelligent thing I may share I cite, it too gets maligned as "woo" or "deepity" or some other such anti-intellectual drivel.
So if I have issues, it's not with atheism. It's will that transitional stage of neo-atheism, where like you can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy, the 'believerism', "I've got the real truth now", follows right along. That's where "Scientism" comes in here. And it has nothing to do with empiricism, which I espouse fully myself. Like I say all the time, it's not
what one believes, but
how one believes it that is at issue.
I more than understand what antitheism is about. As I said, I do get the idea of standing up to aggressive religion, especial the prerational, anti-intellectual kind like Creationism in school and such. This is a pluralistic society, and these right wing premodern crusaders need someone to put them in their place. And furthermore, I understand how it can be empowering to those leaving that dysfunctional system to have some ammo, to be armed with some knowledge in order to do so.
My issues again, is when that's where it stops. What's next? Where is Atheism 2.0? Are we stuck at
iconoclasm? What's that, but just another form of religious zealotry?
Here's a big problem with it you may not have considered. While it can be useful to those leaving, and frankly as ammunition for those who are bitter about the abuse they received from fundamentalists to strike back (I'll acknowledge that pleasure for myself), it also creates a certain negative problem for those who doubt fundamentalism, but still have faith. It says to them, "If you embrace reason, you have to reject faith".
Even you appear to say that, as in our discussions you always come back to equating faith with bad beliefs, something I do not accept as a valid understanding. What this does for those wanting to grow beyond literalism in religion, is that it says, that's all that faith is: prerational, mythic-literalism, and God is a fiction. So those who feel in their hearts that there is a 'higher power' end up with this choice. Accept Noah's boat wasn't actually real, and reject God. Or embrace God, and lobotomize themselves for the sake of faith! That is tragic!
So you see, Antitheism from the likes of Dawkins and Harris, honestly is not all that terribly helpful to the cause of getting people to grown beyond mythic-literalism. It's saying you have to abandon faith to embrace reason. And that is hogwash! I can attest to that, as well as many, many others who manage to have faith without self-lobotomies, or adopting anti-theistic views and attitudes.
The fact that many of the anti-theists don't seem to be able to allow for that, seems to speak volumes about this. Like I say, seemingly to no avail with many, if not most of those, "The god you don't believe in I don't believe in either". But that's not good enough.
I'm going to leave it here for the time being, as this is a lot of typing.
One thing I do want to add that I didn't get to, I would consider myself as the easiest label, as a SBNR (spiritual but not religious). I was trained with Christian symbolism, and serves as a useful, and often quite meaningful spiritual language, metaphors to point to the deeper truths of the human spirit and existential questions (redeeming the Baby from the bathwater, that is). But as an SBNR, I do NOT consider Deepak Chopra as the spokesperson for SBNR! I know you said that, but NO. Don't put that on us.
Footnote: I found that saying from him to be as trite and dismissive of atheism, as it was of religion, and as it was of spirituality as well. In that respect, he sort of mirrors Dawkins.
