The sole fundamental of atheism: no belief in deities.

[More Than A Feeling]

A fundamental is a necessary element; without it, whatever you are talking about is no longer itself, but has become something else.

Atheism has one fundamental, and it is cited in the title of my post: no belief in deities. If you have that, you're an atheist. You can be religious (Spong, Buddha, Mordechai Kaplan) or secular (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, etc.) You can be angry, or calm. Rational, or irrational. Dogmatic, or non-dogmatic. Anti-religious, or accomodationist. None of that stuff has anything to do with the fundamental of atheism.

Every atheist is a fundamentalist atheist.

[LakeSamish706]

1. And so how do you explain an agnostic? n/t

[More Than A Feeling]

2. Not my job. I leave it to agnostics to explain themselves.

[LakeSamish706]

7. You led with the OP... So yes it is your job... Why do some people believe...

in something unconditionally while others question that belief? I actually was brought up with a fathers side of the family having no faith and a mothers side having a very over abundance of faith.... I seriously have never been one to believe in something that I can't touch, put my hands on or simply put my head around... Obviously, something created our current existence, but I am not putting my faith in something that I don't understand.... The bible is not the answer, nor is the Koran... So that leaves me to believe in being an Agnostic.

[More Than A Feeling]

11. Then agnosticism is "atheism plus"

where the "plus" is "skepticism".

[bananas]

15. blah blah blah

is blah blah plus.

[PDJane]

3. fundamental laziness?

[izquierdista]

5. I wouldn't know about that

[trotsky]

6. (A)gnosticism and (A)theism are not mutually exclusive.

(A)gnosticism is a statement about knowledge.
(A)theism is a statement about belief.

One can be an gnostic theist, a gnostic atheist, an agnostic atheist, even an agnostic theist.

[rusty quoin]

4. That is Thom Hartmann's argument too.

I am agnostic and am not convinced of anything. It sure would be easier to be convinced. That said, I do look at evidence over faith.

[undeterred]

8. There is no content to atheism except anti-religion

So if religion disappeared, atheists would be out of business. I can understand why religious fundamentalism offends, but I cannot understand why some people have so much trouble distinguishing it from non-fundmentalist religion.

[Orrex]

9. I don't think that's true at all.

If religion disappeared (taking gods along with it), then we'd all be atheists.

It's reductionist (and infinitely regressive) to define a thing solely in terms of its opposite. Or its presumed opposite.

[uberllama42]

10. What business are atheists in, exactly?

There are plenty of people who don't believe in god who have nothing to do with religion. Their continued existence and that of their livelihood is not contingent on the existence of religion. Maybe Sam Harris would be out of business, but even Richard Dawkins would go back to being a biologist and Christopher Hitchens would resume being a professional asshole.

Furthermore, their epistemological view is not contingent on the existence of religion. Far from atheism being "out of business" in the absence of religion, I think by definition everyone would then be an atheist if religion disappeared.

On the question of fundamentalism versus liberal religion, just because we do not like or agree with liberal religion does not mean we cannot distinguish it from fundamentalism. Surely there are some who have only a strawman of religion in their heads, in which every believer is an avatar of Pat Roberston, but as H&E points out, atheists are not a cohesive group. Not all of us necessarily harbor such a misunderstanding about religion.

[bananas]

17. You don't like liberal religion?

Poor baby!

[uberllama42]

30. Thank you for a colossally unhelpful post

That may be the most inane thing I have ever read on DU.

Thanks for playing!

[undeterred]

19. It has been my experience on DU

that many atheists don't bother to differentiate between types of religion. They paint with a broad brush. And if no one posited a belief in God, it would be ridiculous to posit non-belief. Atheists believe against God. Take God away and the word has no meaning.

[cosmik debris]

20. Not so

Many of us atheists don't give a hoot in hell for the concept of god. It is no more relevant than ogres or unicorns.

Do you believe in unicorns or are you anti-unicorn?

[undeterred]

21. I told you what my experience here has been at DU

and your reply is "not so". How typical for an atheist to flat out deny someone else's experience.

[cosmik debris]

23. Not So II

You made an unequivocal statement: "Atheists believe against God."

That is not a statement of your experience, that is an insult to most atheists.

But that's the way you Anti-Unicornists are. Intolerable!

[melody]

12. Non-belief that is fundamental IS belief

If you do not doubt the truth of everything, including your own truth (that there is no realm beyond matter), then you're not a skeptic.

I don't believe in anything ... especially in the ability for mortal humans to determine anything for certain about whatever (if anything) controls the universe. We don't have the answers -- we just don't. Therefore, the only accurate answer is a fuzzy, uncertain one ... if we're to be intellectually honest, that is.

[More Than A Feeling]

13. I feel obligated to say something in response, but given the position you have staked out

I don't think that productive criticism is possible. So I will wish you a very early good morning!

[melody]

22. It's not a position. It's simple reason.

You say god/gods/afterlife (what-have-you) does not exist. You embrace this without any conclusive proof.
Dawkins wrote an entire book trying to support his hypothesis as a belief. He interpreted selective evidence
without showing contrary evidence (or by interpreting it within his own bias). He left no room for doubt.
A system of information one accepts as absolutely true without conclusive evidence is not only unscientific
in the extreme, it IS a belief system.

To refute this, many fall back on personal attacks and intellectual elitism. There simply is no objective
proof that they can point to as conclusive. It comes down to wanting to believe one thing as a certainty.

I don't accept anything as certain. I'm not smart enough to interpret the truth of reality. No one is.

[Jim__]

24. Actually Dawkins does leave room for doubt.

On his scale of measurement from strong atheism to weak atheism (I'm speaking from memory here, so I may have the details wrong), I believe he graded himself as something like a 6.5 rather than a 7, because he said we can't know.

Dawkins said he bases his claims on a fortiori reasoning, rather than rigorous proof.

[melody]

25. That's just semantic dancing

Dawkins is famous for it. The evidence for his extremism is in his writing. He only gives lip service
to doubt. He disbelieves because he wants to disbelieve. I respect a lot of Dawkins work, but his is a
belief system as much as any other.

Universals are not open to determination yet. We don't know all the information to support so much as
fortiori reasoning except through a purely subjective lens. The only intellectually honest position is
uncertainty. Anything beyond that is belief.

[Silent3]

29. Uncertainty isn't binary

If you hold up a small box and ask me what's in the box, and I have absolutely no idea where you got the box or why you're asking me to guess it's contents, I'm still going to believe very, very strongly that the box does not contain a living, breathing, miniature pink unicorn.

I would, however, admit that it's possible for such a creature to be in the box, and that admission is more than just semantics. The world might be far stranger than I know. Miniature pink unicorns might be commonplace but some brain injury has blocked my ability to remember that. My life as I know it could just be a complex simulation that has run by more-or-less predictable rules for a long time, but now the moment in the simulation has come for me to get some big, shocking surprises.

Keeping that "might be" in mind has value for remembering the limitations of our knowledge, of our senses, and of our thought processes. But leaving the door open for the strange and unknowable, knowing that we don't know everything, doesn't grant every possible extraordinary claim an equal probability as doubting such claims would have.

Suppose that Alice claims that God is purple. Suppose that Bob claims that God is purple and likes to play golf. I consider both claims highly improbable, but Alice's claim is more likely than Bob's because Bob's is more specific. If Bob is right, Alice is automatically right too. But if Alice is right, Bob can still be wrong if God doesn't like playing golf. Various unknowns be ranked in terms of probability. I don't know what's the small box, but "something pink" is far, far more likely a living miniature pink unicorn.

If you want to talk about real semantic games, go down the path of "Well, we don't even know what God is, so we can't judge how likely God is". Even if you want the word God to be that vague you can still evaluate each specific idea of God on its specific merits.

[melody]

31. And that entire assertion is nothing but a formulation of subjective information

And as such, a belief system -- especially when taken to extremes, as in your case. Dawkins enthusiasts
are especially bad at this, but you've the right to believe whatever you like, if you choose
belief over uncertainty.

I learned long ago not to disagree with atheists or theists. Why I'm doing so now, I'm not sure.
I guess you Christians and/or atheists are just a whole lot smarter than I am. The world still
confuses me.

This will be my last post on this subject -- namaste (if you'll pardon the expression).

[Silent3]

34. Which assertion is "nothing but a formulation of subjective information"?

But I guess you have to run off now and don't have the time to make yourself clear.

You didn't clearly address one single point I made, you simply repeated bland generalities you've already said before.

[trotsky]

53. Why such an attitude?

Honestly - your post drips with contempt for both atheists and theists, you state their positions incorrectly, and then go all passive-aggressive. Yeah, no wonder you don't like to disagree with others - you can't argue your way out of a paper bag.

[heidler1]

47. You opened a door for me. On the purple plus golf point I now see that the reason

the Bible self destructs for me is there are so many versions of what this God is like that my mind rejects it as completely impossible for this or any God to be all of those, to me conflicting, things at the same time. If they had said, "There is a God" and let it go at that, it would be a lot harder to be skeptical.

[More Than A Feeling]

26. I don't think you've ever read my explanation of why deities do not exist.

Can you be agnostic about whether I have good reasons for saying that deities do not exist?

[melody]

27. They are your reasons, interpreted from your perspective, deduced by your own mind

I've read them. I respect them, but they are your suppositions, nothing more.

I occasionally accompany friends on ghost hunting. I have pictures of what the field calls "apparitions".
I took a picture of patterns in a mist that, without much pattern projection, look like my dead dogs. The
detail is so clear that my grandson recognized the dogs. My friend Peter (an atheist) even admits the patterns
are too specific to be matrixing.

Does that mean that there's life after death? Of course not. This could be caused by any number of things.
But the fact that such things exist, suggests there's a good possibility that this is not the blind clockmaker's
universe that Dawkins insists. These events often happen in graveyards. They seem to group around the dead. I'm
not smart enough, I suppose, to dismiss all possibilities for this without embracing a belief system.

The only things that speak against such things are gradually louder amounts of primate vocalization, wishing to
defend a belief system one requires to feel "safe". We don't know anything about gods. We don't know anything about
anything beyond suppositions of shadows in our own minds.

I respect your beliefs. There's certainly nothing wrong with them. I think atheism is a more sane position than
fundamentalist Christianity, but that's my own opinion. But I am constantly confused by everything around me. The
only position I can take and be honest is agnosticism.

[More Than A Feeling]

32. Do you believe that your own reasoning is not based on necessary presuppositions?

[melody]

33. I'm not making absolute assertions based on it. You are.

Or the Dawkins folk do an end run around it with "there MAY be gods in my garden but it's more useful to think there
aren't". A Christian would use the opposite argument and suggest it's more useful to *them* that there are. They're
both arguing for religion of a different sort.

I'm saying I don't know. I can posit my way through a hundred different perspectives in a single day.

Like I said, you theists and atheists are just a whole lot smarter than me. I see stuff that potentially contradicts "truth" all
the time.

And with that, as I said to the other person, I'm out of this. I make a habit of not discussing philosophy of any sort (believers
or non-believers alike). It never comes to any good purpose.

[More Than A Feeling]

35. Alright then, since I won't see you around here, fare thee well!

[Silent3]

36. One reason it never "comes to any good purpose" for you...

...is frankly that you don't handle these kinds of conversations very well. You avoid dealing with direct questions and specific points, and you use sarcasm like "you theists and atheists are just a whole lot smarter than me" to duck out of representing your own position better.

[Occam Bandage]

14. Pedantry doesn't serve to advance the conversation.

The label "fundamentalist atheist" is meant to invoke the same negative traits progressives often associate with religious fundamentalists--closed-mindedness, irrational self-assurance, vilification of opposing viewpoints, and a nigh-pathological obsession with ferreting out and confronting those who hold differing doctrines. As a pejorative label, it is both potent and clear in meaning.

That said, your pedantry isn't even accurate. By your definition, anyone holding any belief X is a 'fundamentalist X-ist,' since as you yourself put it, A fundamental is a necessary element; without it, whatever you are talking about is no longer itself, but has become something else. Anyone who does not believe in the fundamentals of a creed does not hold that creed to a meaningful extent. A Christian who does not believe in the fundamentals of Christianity is not a Christian, but is something else. A Muslim who does not believe in the fundamentals of Islam is not a Muslim, but is something else. You've posited a definition of the term "fundamentalist" that is wholly and completely meaningless.

[bananas]

16. It's not "invoking" anything

it's descriptive, not invocational.

[hyphenate]

18. And yet Chris Hedges in his book, American Fascists

considers the far religious right as Fascists, he also supposedly considers most fundamentalist atheists as fascists, too. (I haven't gotten to that point yet.)

And while I am annoyed at that kind of "observation" I can say that some atheists do have as much of an extremism to their viewpoints, and are as rigid in those areas as the christian right is. Even here at DU, I try to explain my own interpretation of some things, only to be ridiculed on occasion.

God and religion in general should be personal, and no one should tell another what they can or cannot do. What we choose to believe is a private matter, as are many of the things which the religious right is trying to suppress. A woman's right to her own body and choices she makes in respect to that, birth control, abortion, gay marriage, ad infinitum. How can we hope to look to a new future when there are so many unwilling to give up traditions "values"--traditions that are at best repressive, and at worst are reminiscent of World War II and the horrors being perpetrated there.

[Goblinmonger]

28. Chirs Hedges is a dick like that

But, here on DU, I would expect that the progressives that are told that the label "fundamental atheist" is insulting and are asked to avoid using it would do so. But what do I know.

[hyphenate]

38. I have seen much

and experienced much for which there is no logical, explanatory resolution. I have recounted some of those experiences on occasion, and expressed that while I doubt the existence of a supreme being, I very much believe we don't know all of "it" yet, and might never know. It doesn't have anything to do with a "faith", but with the idea that science hasn't come up with all the answers yet.

Some things which were once thought of as "supernatural" might just be proven to be aspects of the mind which are open in some people and not in others. Remote viewing, for example, has been shown to have some plausibility to it, and I know in my own life that funny "things" happen all the time. Am I benefiting from some "gift" because I am more open-minded? I have no idea, only to accept what happens and experience wonder when it does.

[More Than A Feeling]

49. Hedges expanded his thoughts on atheists in another book

He called it "I don't believe in atheists". I recommend it as an example of how even smart people can confuse their own projections with reality. Seriously, most of the book is him pontificating, using quote mines in the places where he actually bothers to quote the "New Atheists" at all. He all but ignores Dawkins and Dennett, preferring to mistake Harris and Hitchens for the sum and totality of "New Atheism".

It's a complete train-wreck.

[agent46]

37. Was Aeschylus a Fundie?

This discussion on atheism is interesting. It seems to me, we can tend to make certain limited and even culture-bound assumptions about the nature of deity and belief. Is a deity or god always necessarily an object/person toward or about which some class of religious action may be taken, e.g. supplication, praise, love, worship, belief? Or can it have a different sense of existence, and remain viable as an idea? For example, are we to understand Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound as a childish religious story depicting relationships between actual gods and men equivalent in the literal sense to the christian story of Adam and Eve? Did the playwright simply reinterpret a story he believed to be literally true? Or did he understand the gods of his people more in the sense of human tendencies writ large? Was Aeschylus a fundie, an atheist, an agnostic, or a rockstar? (Just kidding!)

Percy Bysshe Shelly, the early 19th century Romantic poet, freethinker and atheist, wrote his dramatic poem "Prometheus Unbound" as an answer to the "lost" chapter of the Aeschylus trilogy. In his essays on atheism, Shelly argues his position that God (or the gods) are in fact projections of human powers. Nevertheless his work depicts "the gods" vividly. In the Romantic tradition the depiction and "belief" in gods remains in service to a natural human sense of reality and historically accurate patterns of human endeavor. In this sense then, would it be fair to say that the gods of Shelly's poems were sufficiently real to him to evoke a transcendental human sensibility? If so, would this constitute in some way a belief in the gods? I'd say yes, though Shelly denied all "revealed religion" and believed that atheism was a necessity.

So, was Aeschylus a fundie? Was Shelly a back-peddler?

I've long told people I'm an agnostic. When asked if I believed in god(s), I'd usually quip, "Not so you'd notice." That isn't to say I relegate the entire pantheon of human imagination to the level of childish stories. It's true I have no use for literal belief in any theist dogmas and yet I recognize the consistent power of transcendence in literature down through the ages that depictions of the gods have allowed. The language of religion gives artists a rich pallet from which to communicate very large ideas indeed. That is a real effect. Arguably, it's one of the organizing principles of civilization.

Great minds through history have written and portrayed the gods with power and beauty, and thereby managed to communicate some basic human truth that is timeless. In that sense alone it's sufficient to say the gods are real. And yet I can also say quite comfortably with Shelly, I'm not a believer.

The nature of knowing and belief are good things to come back to occasionally, I think. Some people can look you in the eye with conviction and say they "know" there is a god because they have direct experience of it. When pressed, they will usually explain that their knowing is a state of cultivated certainty accompanying experiences they regard as religious or spiritual in nature. I would call this cultivated state of certainty "knowingness", and put it more in a class with "truthiness".

Nevertheless, I try to be tolerant of people's beliefs - until they try to coerce others with the force of their cultivated certainty. At that point it becomes politics and my rules change.

mick

[More Than A Feeling]

48. If you are going to say "the gods are real," for clarity's sake you should add

"as ideas" at the end. That would be consistent with your thought on the matter, and avoid the appearance of equivocation.

[agent46]

56. Yes that's right

Thanks for pointing it out.

[HamdenRice]

39. If you don't believe in god, aren't you also likely to not believe in fairies?

God is an invisible, supernatural being. Fairies are invisible, supernatural beings.

What about "river spirits"? Is an atheist unlikely to believe in "river spirits"?

If atheism is the non-belief in deities (ie not just disbelief in the Abrahamic God), then I assume atheists also don't believe in Zeus. But many religions, like ancient Greece's, have pantheons that have a most powerful god, lesser gods, heroes and spirits. But if atheism means disbelief in Zeus, but there is no correlation (in one's view) between disbelief in Zeus and disbelief in other supernatural beings, doesn't one have to start drawing lines between deities on the one hand, and fairies, spirits and ghosts on the other?

Are you saying that a disbelief in god has no correlation or logical connection to a disbelief in other supernatural, invisible or magical beings?

[Occam Bandage]

40. What do likelihood and correlation have to do with anything?

[HamdenRice]

41. Some ideas are logically deduced from other ideas

Disbelief in gods leads, deductively, to disbelief in other beings -- although not everyone will have worked through that deduction.

So atheism is highly correlated with other beliefs -- but not just statistically, but because they are logically related.

At least that's what Sam Harris says in listing myths about atheism:

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1/

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.

[Occam Bandage]

42. Many ideas are correlated, but it does not necessarily hold that a believer

in one creed must hold belief in a related creed, even if most observers believe the two are logically related. Since the discussion is of the fundamentals of atheism, bringing in peripheral and/or culturally-dependent correlations to atheism is somewhat puzzling.

[HamdenRice]

43. That's not what deduction means

In formal logic there are certain times when, if one statement is true then another statement must also be true.

So one interesting question is: are there any statements that a person must acknowledge to be true if they believe disbelief in god is true -- not just logically related, but deductively inevitable.

Whether these other statements are peripheral is your opinion and the opinion of the OPer, but is not necessarily correct.

[Occam Bandage]

44. And formal logic has little, if anything, to do with human cognition.

However, let's set that aside and play theological prescriptivist. Now, formal logic is practically useless in matters of theology, despite millennia of earnest attempts to prove or disprove myriad theories. Since there does not exist a deductive proof for or against the existence of divinity (though induction may be abused for either perspective), I would be extremely interested in what, if any, statements you believe are necessary to believe if one does not believe in God.

You seem to be claiming that the fundamental (non-)belief of atheism leads inexorably to one or more other beliefs. Since that one statement of disbelief could mean many different particular things (from a denial of the existence of God/gods, to a denial of certain aspects of a particular claim of divinity, to a denial of all forms of divinity/spirituality, to a denial of the supernatural), and since it could be prompted by many different lines of reasoning, I find your claim to be suspect.

I'd welcome an example of a non-redundant, non-tautological statement that must be held by any person who makes the claim, "I do not believe in deities."

[HamdenRice]

45. "The planets

are not kept in their orbits by the hand of God."

[Occam Bandage]

50. That's redundant. It's nothing that isn't wholly contained in the disbelief of God.

The initial statement of belief is (There does not exist) (God.)
The second statement of belief is (There does not exist) (God) (Such that) (God controls planets.)

Forgive the parentheses, I'm not sure how symbolic logic transfers to the forum environment. Anyway, I was hoping you'd have something more interesting than a restatement of the denial of God, shifted to the passive tense, and limited to a specific domain. That's hardly worth mentioning as an additional 'fundamental of atheism.' Taking a general rule and presenting it as applied to a specific case is not the same as presenting a new rule.

[HamdenRice]

57. No, this is exactly what deduction is -- one logical step at a time

"There is no god" is only a statement about god, not about the planets. "The hand of god does not control the movement of the planets" is a statement about an additional subject -- the planets -- that is derived entirely through formal logic. A next statement could be, "therefore, the motions of the planets is controlled by something other than god."

And so on.

The main point is that the OP's contention that "disbelief in god" is the only thing that atheists believe is patently false. Because of formal logic (which is like mathematics) each "truth statement" has necessary deductive corollaries. So if you don't believe in god, logically you must believe certain other things.

[cosmik debris]

58. You ran off the rails.

The original statement was "I do not believe in deities."

You changed that to "There is no god"

I guess you got that straight out of the Soviet Archives.

:rofl:

[HamdenRice]

59. So god is not a deity?

Everything you write is wrong! Everything!

I'm amazed. What is it like to live in your world where every single statement about the world is wrong?

How do you survive? How can you walk across the street, when the true/false value of even the street lights in your world is wrong?

Btw, did you ever consider that you weren't fired because of religion, but because you were manifestly incompetent? Just something to think about after reading some of your personal story posts.

[cosmik debris]

60. Basic English

The verb "believe" is not the same as the verb "is" (to be)

Apparently they didn't teach English in your school.

If you are going to resort to insults this early, you leave yourself no place to go.

Pace your self.

[cosmik debris]

61. I just got it! You've learned a new tactic!

Instead of changing the subject, (Tactic #1) you changed the verb.

We'll call that Tactic #1A.

Congratulations on your progress!

[More Than A Feeling]

46. Strictly speaking, there is no connection.

That is because the term originated as a term of abuse amongst religious persons for anyone who didn't believe in their particular god. Jews and Christians were originally considered atheists for not worshipping the Roman pantheon.

To be an atheist says nothing about why one is an atheist. That could be considered useful for purposes of debating, but I don't think its really helpful or necessary. I accept the label of atheist for myself in order to signal solidarity with those who use it, but it is terrible "framing" and doesn't really capture everything you'd want in a label. For example, above, you saw me call "agnosticism" "atheism plus" where the "plus" is an epistemology of skepticism. Secular Humanism, likewise, is "atheism plus" where the plus is "metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology."

If you want to talk about logical connections, you should use a term other than "atheism" to refer to whatever group you are talking about.

[skepticscott]

54. That begs the question

of what exactly qualifies something as a "god". Is it enough that someone, somewhere, sometime, considered he/she/it a god? Does a god have to be an entity capable of conscious thought and deliberate action? Can a concept be a god? Does being a god require a certain level of influence over the normal matter and energy of the universe? if so, what distinguishes a very powerful non-god from a very weak god?

BTW, conflating disbelief and non-belief only confuses the discussion.

[ulysses]

51. perhaps the problem is less with fundamentalists

and more with evangelists.

[More Than A Feeling]

52. I hope not.

If that were the case, then anyone raising that complaint has immediately contradicted themselves. Either promoting one's point of view is ok, or it isn't. If it isn't, then the complainer cannot complain without promoting their point of view, which is exactly what they are complaining about.

[ulysses]

55. there *is* always the possibility

that we should leave each other the hell alone about religion.