Sharpe's Opinion

Imagine A Puddle.

Friday 29th August, 2008 at 1:50 pm

I was going to follow up Stewart Cowan’s comment on my last post with another comment, but getting into a philosophical argument really deserves its own post. There were a couple of things in there that I think warrant a deeper discussion, and comments on an unrelated post are not the right place for that sort of thing.

Cowan brings up an old suggestion that atheism is a religion in itself. Ignoring the fact that the very word means ‘the opposite of theism’ or a lack of belief in deities, I contest this idea solely on the basis that there are atheistic religions – such as Buddhism – which demand of their followers no belief in God or Gods. Atheism is not a belief structure in any meaningful sense of the word, and so cannot be a religion in and of itself. What’s more, making an argument based on some quote somewhere from some guy is the opposite of thinking about the issue: it’s letting somebody else do your thinking for you, which is sloppy.

The other thing I just can’t let slide is the comment ‘Douglas Adams? The Hitchhiker bloke?’

Douglas Adams did indeed write Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, but he was also a very deep thinker who wrote a number of fantastic essays and speeches on the subject of religion and its place in the world (I’d also say he provided considerable inspiration to his close friend Richard Dawkins, who you’ve probably heard of…) Have a read of (or listen to) his ‘Is There An Artificial God’ speech for a perfect example¹. I think reading Douglas Adams when I was younger was the first time I realised that I wasn’t alone in thinking religion was a bit strange. The thing is, in comparison to Adams, Dawkins comes off as arrogant and unwilling to understand religious points of view. Perhaps because of his Catholic upbringing, or maybe his exceptional grasp of satire, Adams just exposes the fallacies of religious ‘argument’ while never stooping into insulting the religious. Dawkins, unfortunately, doesn’t understand that there are people out there who are both intelligent and religious – they don’t agree with him for their own reasons.

Douglas Adams did, sadly, pass away in 2001. If we discount the opinions of the expired, though, we’d have to throw out Socrates, Aristotle, Newton, Thomas Aquinas and even Jesus, so I don’t think I’ll be holding his death against him.

Incidentally, I don’t have any wish to ‘convert’ people away from their beliefs, nor to suppress religious institutions. Such aims fly directly in the face of freedom and liberty. I do, however, feel that the only way to allow true freedom of religious belief is to have a secular society. If no religion has predominance, all are equal.

I started writing a blog post a few months ago which became too long to actually put up, explaining why I was not religious, and what aspects of religious life a secularist world should seek to emulate and recreate (it was called What Have the Christians Ever Done for Us). What I think I might do is refine each section of it and publish it as a series over time. Watch this space: I’ll get there in the end…

The title of this post comes from that speech, by the way [↩]

⇐ The Undercover Economist.

Subtle Divides ⇒

Comments

Stu, the Oxford University Press Philosophy Dictionary defines atheism as:

“Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none.”

http://www.answers.com/atheism&r=67

So they agree with me that it is a belief system.

‘Douglas Adams? The Hitchhiker bloke?’

This was a combination of primitive humour and trying to get the comment written speedily so I could get on with my work.

Dawkins gets away with all his chicanery because he is an Oxford professor who talks posh and of course there are plenty of Guardian-reader-types who imagine themselves being part of the intelligentsia. They rely on Dawkins’ enthusiasm for attacking religion, despite his gross errors and disregarding of evidence.

What I meant by Adams’ passing is that he is no longer an atheist because, being in the spirit realm, he is now aware of life after death.

“If no religion has predominance, all are equal.”

Oh dear! Some of the secular humanists want to ban all “religions” apart from their own of course.

There is no such thing as equality, just a hierarchy of ideologies. It’s as true now as it’s ever been.

I’ll try and tune in for “What Have the Christians Ever Done for Us”.

I know what it’s like trying to get those unfinished articles in a state suitable for publication.

Stewart Cowan

August 30, 2008 at 11:44 pm

I’ll agree with you that atheism is a form of religion (or even a ‘belief system’, though that phrase appears to have no specific meaning) if you could direct me to an organised body of ‘official’ atheists to whom one must join before calling themselves ‘atheists’ (in the manner of the Church, for instance), or some form of doctrine of faith or codification of the beliefs and practices of atheists to which all atheists ascribe.

Some people do try and codify ‘secular beliefs’ as things like ‘equal rights and treatment for all’ or ‘liberty’, but that’s really their own personal beliefs, not something to which all atheists must ascribe. Since Christians believe in divine morality, they have to reconcile a changing world to their supposedly ‘unchanging’ moral code. There’s no such problem when you take religion out of the equation – all these ‘beliefs’ like freedom, liberty and equality can be viewed as trends in the morality of the population at large, not in any particular belief structure of the time. 200 years ago, atheists would have been denouncing gay people just as vociferously as the Christians were. Nowadays they aren’t. It’s not because they’ve changed any code of faith (like the Church are having to), it’s because they never had one in the first place. What people are trying to suggest are ‘atheist beliefs’ are their own individual beliefs, not those of any specific large group of people. They may be statistically valid (as is ‘most atheists do believe that slavery is wrong’) but that doesn’t reflect any specific group of opinions one must ascribe to in order to call themselves atheist

Describing atheism as a religion is, as far as I see, a cheap trick which allows Christians to score intellectual points over atheists who don’t think too carefully about it. It’s also still a lazy argument to ascribe the point of view to somebody else – but who was it that wrote your quote? What did they believe? Who were they trying to accommodate and what pressures were on them? Dictionaries (even philosophical ones) are for the meaning of words, not for the ideas behind them. There’s also a simple response to this lazy argument – I’ll simply recategorise myself as nontheist or irreligious.

I’d be interested to know where in the Christian spirit realm Adams has gone – I always found it to be one of the cruelest things about Christianity that, following the scripture, a person who has led an essentially good life without sin, but who doesn’t belief in God, is punished for eternity with hell and damnation.

By ‘all are equal’ I actually meant all religions are equal – equal since no one religious body dominates over the others. Equality of individual people is a pipe-dream, but of a limited group of organisations? No problm. In the modern world religions are nothing more than glorified political pressure groups anyway, and I’d be quite happy with a large-scale reduction of their influence as groups.

Incidentally, apologies that your comment did not appear for several hours. Akismet decided it was spam and hid it away. Make of that what you will.

Stu

August 31, 2008 at 9:45 am

I disagree with Stewart’s simplistic search of atheism and suggest he does a bit more than look up one source that only half agrees with his viewpoint.

If atheism is a belief system, why does he condemn it along with advocates such as Dawkins?