No one is free from criticism. Harmful ideas should be condemned, when they are demonstrably harmful. But theist beliefs are such a vast range and diversity of ideas, some harmful, some useful, some healing, some vivifying, and still others having served as potent drivers of movements for justice; that to lump all theist religious belief into one category and attack the whole of it, only demonstrates your ignorance of theology, and is in fact bigotry.
By saying that religious and superstitious beliefs should be disrespected, or otherwise belittling, or stigmatizing religion and supernatural beliefs as a whole, you have already established the first level on the “Pyramid of Hate”, as well as the first of the “10 Stages of Genocide.”
If your religion is atheism, that’s perfectly valid. If someone is doing something harmful with a religious belief as justification, that specific belief should be challenged. But if you’re crossing the line into bigotry, you’re as bad as the very people you’re condemning.
Antitheism is a form of supremacy in and of itself.
"In other words, it is quite clear from the writings of the “four horsemen” that “new atheism” has little to do with atheism or any serious intellectual examination of the belief in God and everything to do with hatred and power.
Indeed, “new atheism” is the ideological foregrounding of liberal imperialism whose fanatical secularism extends the racist logic of white supremacy. It purports to be areligious, but it is not. It is, in fact, the twin brother of the rabid Christian conservatism which currently feeds the Trump administration’s destructive policies at home and abroad – minus all the biblical references."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/5/4/the-resurrection-of-new-atheism/
If you distinguish between agnosticism and atheism then this is false. If you’re an atheist in the sense of effectively replacing religious ideology/beliefs with scientific ones, then this is also more or less false.
I’ve always found the idea that you are replacing religious faith with science to be ridiculous, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. Science does not ask for faith, it plainly lays out the facts and frameworks to be scrutinized. The scrutiny is the point.
Many atheists don’t actually apply the scrutiny you’re talking about. The issue isn’t the science here. It’s the blind faith.
… no.
That is a straw man made up by religious people - thus, pretty irrelevant.
If you have no convincing argument against my points that is fine, but you don’t need to post and tell me.
Nope, this is wrong, because science doesn’t have “beliefs” it has theories, which change based on evidence, peer review, and experiments. How often do you see atheists congregate in a laboratory, with a scientist leading a sermon from “On the Origin of Species”? Darwin got things wrong too, but you don’t see different sects of atheism who argue over whether individual traits are passed down to Offspring via genes or gemmules. Because one has evidence and peer review to back it up, and one lacks evidence because it was peer reviewed.
My point is not about science. Science is great. My point is about the people and their beliefs.
You absolutely see atheists circlejerk online propagating the same stupid antitheistic arguments repeatedly online.
Argument, interpretation, disagreement and so on are all essential parts of doing science. People across all sciences argue about all sorts of different topics within their respective fields. There’s plenty of topics where scientific thought hasn’t actually reached a consensus. The scientific method itself isn’t really intended to confirm beliefs but to falsify.
My actual issue here isn’t with the scientific method or doing science. My issue here is replacing blind faith in one dogma for another and pretending like that is preferable when it really isn’t.
Is this a typo? Peer review does not make a thing lack evidence?
Dogma is something that is “incontrovertibly” true. Science doesn’t work that way, you can’t just believe gravity doesn’t exist and then the Earth stops orbiting the sun. You can’t just decide water only freezes at 0°C regardless of pressure. But you can believe that abortion is a grave sin and murder a doctor for it.
What you’re saying is when people attempt to twist data to support their preconceived beliefs. For instance Belgians used phrenology to confirm their belief that Tutsis were superior to Hutus and fuel the Rwandan genocide. They already believed their racist dogma and attempted to use “science” to prove it. But science doesn’t have a bias, and it has no dogma.
And no, it’s not a typo. Darwin purported the idea that offspring of sexual organisms received their traits through gemmules shed by each organ of the body. Another scientist reviewed this theory by analyzing rabbit blood and found no gemmules, because those only exist in asexual reproduction, sponges specifically. The lack of evidence of gemmules essentially proves the theory of pangenesis wrong.
I think I’m just misunderstanding what you mean, but that’s not what dogma means at all. Dogma does not have to be true (incontrovertibly or not).
People can believe scientific things dogmatically. Attempts at scientific work can lead you to wrong conclusions in certain senses. Small sample sizes, biased samples etc. Science as a whole is not a foolproof thing. People make mistakes, false conclusions and so on. Ideally we work things out well enough that these issues are rectified over time but mistakes happen.
My issue isn’t with the science itself but the people who fail to interpret scientific results in sane ways or that twist and abuse scientific works (like you mention).
My apologies, my confusion is this: “because one has evidence and peer review to back it up, and one lacks evidence because it was peer reviewed”. Peer review doesn’t remove evidence. At best it adds confidence or allows people a chance to say “Hey! This work is not correct because …” Your point is that a work by Darwin was peer reviewed and later found to be lacking right?
That would imply atheists worship science. Which is not true.
No, that’s not what I said, nor is it really implied by anything I said.
The original comment said: “Atheism isn’t a religion. It’s the lack of a religion.”
My reply was: “If you distinguish between agnosticism and atheism then this is false. If you’re an atheist in the sense of effectively replacing religious ideology/beliefs with scientific ones, then this is also more or less false.”
For the second point: This has nothing to do with worship. This is about religious beliefs. For example, believing that the universe came into being by some mysterious god in the sky is a religious belief. Believing there is a man in Montana who willed all of us into existence is a religious belief. Believing some force of nature that we can analyze scientifically is also a religious belief. There’s no worship required for this and I am not claiming atheists worship science or scientific beliefs. My actual point here is that atheists can and do often have religious beliefs, whether they actually realize it and are willing to admit it or not.
For my first point: There’s no implication of worshiping scientific beliefs here either. My point is that agnosticism and atheism are two different things. One explicitly does not commit to a set of religious beliefs, one explicitly denies the existence of deities. These are not the same thing and claiming atheism is simply the lack of religion is at best an oversimplification and at worst stupidly wrong.
Ok fine, science is not a religious belief. Better?
I’m not intending to claim science is a religious belief. Did you read what I said? I don’t think this is the gotcha against my actual point that you think it is.
If you have a better term for the types of beliefs I’m talking about feel free to let me know and we can use that instead. Better?
Religion is when people believe things? Reductio ad absurdum.
Beliefs that are founded in non-falsifiable reproducible objective evidence are not generally religious beliefs, they are scientific ones. Science seeks to accurately describe our world and beliefs that don’t are discarded. Religion seeks to make people believe absurdities and people who don’t are discarded.
Are you claiming that this is what I’m saying? It’s definitely not what I’m saying.
I don’t think there’s any necessity to distinguish between religious and scientific beliefs in this specific way. To me this comes across as you choosing to define scientific beliefs in the usual way, and then to explicitly exclude scientific beliefs from your definition to further your own point. Do you think religions can’t be willing to accept evidence about certain facts or to consider the possible falsifiability of certain propositions? If so then you are wrong. There’s no shortage of backpedaling, twisting and turning in the history of apologetics.
This is absolutely a mischaracterization of the position/intent of religious people/religions. If you want to have good arguments against them you should argue against what they actually say and not things you make up in your head.
It seems like that’s what you’re saying when you state that religious and scientific beliefs are interchangeable, and that Atheism is more or less a religion because of this. Belief system != religion.
Yes I do. There is willful suspension of disbelief, and belief in absurdities is inherent to religion. Catholics believe the sacrament literally becomes flesh and blood, for example. This is easily disproven yet remains a cornerstone of the religion. Believing absurdities is the price of admission, a litmus test showing that one will uncritically obey those who claim to speak for god(s) without compelling objective evidence. Many religions consider this willful ignorance a virtue, which they call faith.
Were these belief systems evidence-based they wouldn’t be in the domain of religion, they would be incorporated into science.
I can’t speak for their intent, but it absolutely is the position of most religions. If I showed up to services and started arguing with the preacher I would likely not be invited back. At very least one must show reverence for their absurd claims to be accepted into the fold, (with a few exceptions like unitarianism, various reform denominations, omnism, atheistic satanism, etc.,) Many/most claim that the supernatural rewards like access to the afterlife are dependent upon belief and behavior.
Having attended many religious services by many religions I feel quite confident asserting that they are all bullshit. They make contradicting and overlapping claims, most claim to have a monopoly on the afterlife, they all rely on manipulative psychology, and they all propagate and persist through indoctrination of children.
I’m not claiming religion and scientific beliefs are wholly interchangeable and I’m not claiming all belief systems are effectively religious belief systems.
Here is the original comment I’m replying to: “Atheism isn’t a religion. It’s the lack of a religion.”
Here is my second point: “If you’re an atheist in the sense of effectively replacing religious ideology/beliefs with scientific ones, then this is also more or less false.”
What I do think is that there are inherently religious questions that both theists and (at least some) atheists answer via religious means. In the case of atheists I think they often refuse to admit to themselves that they do it. For example, a theist believes some mysterious god being created the universe, an atheist believes some mysterious force of nature created the universe (though maybe this force is something different from a god). I would call these kinds of beliefs religious whether it’s an atheist doing it or a theist.
I’m not saying all atheists do this. I’m not saying it’s bad to answer these kinds of questions in this way either. If nobody is hurt and the question is just answerable, then who even cares? But the idea that atheism is just totally a lack of religion seems untrue in some cases. Rejection of theistic deities does not mean rejection of all religion, all religious beliefs and all religious thought whatsoever.
Claims about the Catholic religion in particular aren’t claims that are applicable to all religions. There are many other religions besides western Christianity that have been practiced throughout human history. Christianity does not represent all religious beliefs and one should be careful not to take the shitty things many do in the name of their flavor of Christianity as a rule that ought to apply to all religions or all religious belief systems.
The original point they made was: “Science seeks to accurately describe our world and beliefs that don’t are discarded. Religion seeks to make people believe absurdities and people who don’t are discarded.”
This part here: “Religion seeks to make people believe absurdities and people who don’t are discarded.” is not a correct interpretation of the intent of religious people. You can believe their views are absurd, but they don’t believe that, and arguing that their views are absurd just because you think so just begs the question.