Atheists can be such uptight downers. And I say that completely seriously and non-sarcastically, despite being a card-carrying atheist myself.
The latest example appears at the Illinois State Capitol, where someone from Freedom From Religion Foundation had the genius idea of erecting this sign among the holiday displays (via PZ):
At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
Well now, there’s an uplifting and positive message. I’m sure that lots of religious folks came along to read that sign, and immediately thought “Gee, whoever wrote that sounds so much smarter and more correct than me! I will throw off my superstitious shackles and join them in the celebration of reason.”
There is a place to argue for one’s worldview — but not every single place. I happen to agree with all of the sentences on the sign above, but the decision to put in front and center in a holiday display merits a giant face-palm. (So does calling it “hate speech,” of course.) It’s like you’re introduced to someone at a party, and they immediately say “Wow, you’re ugly. And your clothes look like they were stolen off a homeless person. And you’re drinking a domestic beer, which shows a complete lack of sophistication.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be thinking — “Such taste and discernment! Here’s someone I need to get to know better.”
Until atheists learn that they don’t need to take every possible opportunity to proclaim their own rationality in the face of everyone else’s stupidity, they will have a reputation as tiresome bores. They could have put up a sign that just gave some sort of joyful, positive message. Or something light-hearted and amusing. Or they could have just left the display alone entirely, and restrained the urge to argue in favor of waiting for some more appropriate venue. (Maybe they could start a blog or something.)
Understanding how the real world works is an important skill. So is understanding human beings.
joel rice says:
“As a card carrying athiest I thank God every day that I did not grow up in the Soviet Union..”
A card carrying atheist should at least be able to spell “atheist.” Regardless, I understand your post, but I must reply that as an atheist who did grow up in the Soviet Union (1980s), I have fond memories and would not trade them for anything. Speaking of holidays, this time of the year in the former Soviet Union was wonderful and not very different. Everything that is associated with Christmas in the US was associated with New Year’s Day (minus Jesus and nativity scenes). Even after the collapse, people still put up decorations, trees, and give gifts for the New Year (which is by far the biggest holiday) and not Christmas. Really, it doesn’t matter what you call it or what day you celebrate it. It’s about family, celebration, and days off from work.
I have no problem with a worldivew that allows for acknowledgement of a spiritual perspective. I personally have such an orientation, as do a number of longtime personal freinds and colleagues. many of whom also share such an open mind to such concepts.
Where I part ways is in the context of rigid, inflexible religious edicts, enforced by so-called religious auhtorities who claim to be the voice of god on earth. and often use their piurported divine authority for self serving material and political agendas.
Though I am very open to spiritual awareness of our world and its occupants, and the universe at large. I tend to see most of organized religion as a highly toxic pathology, artifacts of a severe mental disorder in some, and as a platform for instigating the vast majority of wars, depravation, and hideous examples of man’s cruelty to man over the millennia of human history of which we are currently aware.
irt kevin
I think these discussions tend to devolve into very obtuse debates about definition. Unicorns are objects that someone has defined. I think what you mean is you don’t believe in a living, breathing animal that resembles a unicorn. However, all I need to do is go to the local retailer and I can find ample evidence that unicorns do indeed exist. What compounds the absurdity of your position is that with an understanding of DNA it is entirely possible to hypothesize that a living, breathing synthetic unicorn could in fact be manufactured. If that were to happen, would you still believe that unicorns don’t exist?
Two censts, what you don’t seem to understand is that the complete absence of proof of existence makes the concept of god as convincing as aliens, ghosts, time travelers, reptilian conspiracy to take over the world, self-conscious meteorites, talking toasters, black magic, immortality potions… you get the picture.
Proof of non-existence is never possible, that’s why a rational person does not require such proof to state that things mentioned above do not exist. Instead it is enough that there is no evidence of existence whatsoever. It is not a belief rather it is proper usage of the concept of existence.
Sorry, Sean, the party analogy does’nt hold, since we’re not talking about the aspects of an individual, but rather an insidious & malevolent force in America that kills physicians, perverts science, corrupts judges & lawmakers, usurps our constitutional rights, pollutes our language, & has programmed children for centuries to propagate religulousness to the next generation, ad eternum. Oh, & a while farther back, burning witches….
Similarly w/the military, there is a general reluctance to confront the christers on their sacrosanct `days’, which is precisely WHEN & WHY it must be done. If `business as usual’ is allowed to go unchallenged, its tacitly assumed: “Jesus is just alright with me” for all; by the media, the merchants, & the mainstream. It’s not.
This is particularly apparent in Nov-Dec, when the country wallows in a multi-billion $$ orgy of materialism, the REAL reason for which is the sustenance of our economy thru the weak winter qtr.
A mere multi-million $$ version repeats in April. Santa Claus & Easter Bunny hold hostage our national secularity, free thought/speech, and cultural freedoms 2X/year, sustaining the madness for 7 months more, until they repeat.
Regardless of PC & holiday spirit, we atheists should not just `be mellow’ this time of year, but remind the `moral majority’ we have their number, & no more free passes.
irt arrow
although its perfectly within your prerogative to define a low threshold for the non-existence of something; it is also equally within the prerogative of others to maintain a higher standard.
By your logic I could argue that quarks (or any elementary particle) do not exist because I have never seen one (nor will I ever see one in any “real” sense); I have satisfied your threshold. The only evidence I have for there existence is that I can represent them as eigenvectors of the cartan generators of SU(3), and by representing force carrying particles as the generators of the group, and through some clever math I can make predictions of the type of signals I’ll get out of some boxes I call detectors. That I can do this in a logically consistent fashion does provide strong evidence for the entities we call quarks; but I also know that whenever I step inside a place of worship I’ll find a very large number of people telling me god exists as well…so what makes you so special that I should listen to you over all of them?
two cents: Genetically engineering a horse with a horn on its head would not really qualify as a “true” unicorn, because they are typically presented to have other characteristics, such as only allowing the touch of virgins. However, all of that is beside the point. My point is that holding a belief is an active process, and not holding a belief is not simply another form of this process. (You misstate my position as “believing that x does not exist,” which is not equivalent to what I said.) To make a concrete analogy, calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
Also, your reply to Arrow is simply nonsensical. You’ve never seen air either, but you know that it’s there. Reducing the concept of empirical proof to the human sense of sight is completely unsupportable. Furthermore, there is nothing logically consistent in what people of faith say about God inside a place of worship; even internal logical consistency is quite lacking in major religions. The comparison of this to the existence of quarks does not hold up.
@49. two cents
You just don’t get it do you. Atheism is just absence of belief in a personal god. Nothing more nothing less.
I don’t have a belief in absence of belief, absence of belief is an existential state. The concept of god is the same as Russell’s celestial teapot. I have an absence of belief in the existence of the said teapot and think it improbable but I am willing to re-evaluate my view on the basis of evidence. I have no creed and proofs are for mathematics while in science we have to make do with evidence.
Two cents, I am not sure what you are trying to say. If you redefine existence to mean only things you can see then yes, to you quarks won’t “exist” but what’s the point?
As for the second part you can listen to whomever you want but the fact there are believers is of course not a proof of god’s existence.
irt kevin and scum
I suppose I’ve never seen water either by your logic. You can not escape the reality that all information we can gather about the universe must ultimately be transformed into some form that can be interpreted by our senses. If it can not…e.g. there is no way to cause some interaction, then we tend to say that an object doesn’t exist.
I think the second definition of belief is sufficient that underlying any “absence of belief” is a structure of beliefs. It is “absence of belief” itself that is an oxymoron. You can’t resort to an abstract concept such as an existential state without suggesting that you believe that such states are legitimate. Just look at the definition of philosophy
phi·los·o·phy (f-ls-f)
n. pl. phi·los·o·phies
1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
3. A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
5. The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
7. A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory: an original philosophy of advertising.
8. A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.
That you choose to create distortions in order to avoid saying that you don’t believe in a personal god (which is a perfectly fine statement) demonstrates a tendency towards tautology and doctrine that atheists typically claim to abhor (yet another contradiction).
If a person does good, and tells me that what motivates them to do good is a personal belief in god; should I do them a service and tell them that their belief structure is wrong? Although I would agree that many bad things have happened in the name of some religion or another, do I have a scale by which to weigh good and evil? Do you?
Whether or not you agree with someone’s stated motives, in our day to day lives we do experience interactions with others who claim that much of what motivates them is an adherence to some belief structure. Are those interactions real? Did they happen? Did the belief system change the probabilities of the outcome?
In the end, we all see our set of beliefs through rose-colored glasses, and atheists are no exception.
If there is no interaction, then it doesn’t matter whether it exists or not, because it has no effect on the universe.
Good call james, of course that doesn’t account for how the person came up with the idea in the first place, but that thought isn’t nearly as obvious
One thing about Religions … they have leaders.
One thing about Physics … currently there are only leader wannabes, mostly from Mathematicians who have faith in unprovable higher dimensions.
Where is Niels Bohr when you need him?
Instead, we get Kaku. Whom I give thanks to, otherwise I’d have never known Edgar Allen Poe was a Physicist.
One thing about Religions … they have leaders.
One thing about Physics … currently there are only leader wannabes, mostly Mathematicians posing as Physicicts who have faith in unprovable higher dimensions.
Where is Niels Bohr when you need him?
Instead, we get Kaku. Whom I give thanks to, otherwise I’d have never known Edgar Allen Poe was a Physicist.
Most appropriate song for people too comfortable with their own beliefs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIcWxFR4uh0
lyrics for words by missing persons:
Do you hear me
Do you care
Do you hear me
Do you care
My lips are moving and the sound’s coming out
The words are audible but I have my doubts
That you realize what has been said
You look at me as if you’re in a daze
It’s like the feeling at the end of the page
When you realize you don’t know what you just read
What are words for when no one listens anymore
What are words for when no one listens
What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all
I might as well go up and talk to a wall
’cause all the words are having no effect at all
It’s a funny thing am I all alone
Something has to happen to change the direction
What little filters through is giving you the wrong impression
It’s a sorry state I say to myself
What are words for when no one listens anymore
What are words for when no one listens
What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all
Do you hear me
Do you care
Do you hear me
Do you care
Let me get by
Over your dead body
Hope to see you soon
When will I know
Doors three feet wide with no locks open
Walking always backwards in the faces of strangers
Time could be my friend
But it’s less than nowhere now
Less than nowhere now
Less than nowhere now
Now
Ow ow ow
Pursue it further and another thing you’ll find
Not only are they deaf and dumb they could be going blind and no one notices
I think I’ll dye my hair blue
Media overload bombarding you with action
It’s getting near impossible to cause distraction
Someone answer me before I pull out the plug
What are words for when no one listens anymore
What are words for when no one listens
What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all
What are words for when no one listens anymore
What are words for when no one listens
What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all
Do you hear me
Do you care
Do you hear me
Do you care
Tell me what are words for
Do you hear me
Tell me what are words for
Do you care
Tell me what are words for
Do you hear me
So tell me what are words for
Do you care
So tell me what are words for
Do you hear me
Tell me what are words for
So tell me what are words for
Do you care
So tell me what are words for
Do you hear me
Tell me what are words for
So tell me what are words for
Do you care
So tell me what are words for
No two cents, the absence of belief is not an oxymoron in any sense. Imagine a child who has never been told about god and the concept never materialized in his/her brain. This child clearly has an absence of belief in god.
In the case of an atheist the concept of god is present but there is still the absence of belief in god. Since there is no proof of god’s existence to an atheist it follows that god does not exist. This is not a belief held rather it is a consequence of the way existence is defined and follows from evaluating the evidence, the main difference to a belief is that if evidence were to change the outcome would change without the person having to change his stance in any way.
When I die, if I then discover that there is an afterlife, I may consider switching from being an athiest to being an agnostic.
#51 – sorry – my spell checker runneth over. Glad to hear those were happy days.
But since I got sent home on the first day of sunday school for asking embarassing
questions it is likely that the KGB would take a dim view of my utterances. After
reading The Unknown Lenin by Richard Pipes – about when Lenin ordered 5000
priests to be rounded up and shot in public to make a big impression, that says it all.
The same crap happened in Spain in the 30s. So much for atheists being nice guys.
Does anyone in Russia read about what happened after 1917 – the secret archives ?
So I would rather be a Bible Thumping Atheist – if people are going to believe weird
things anyway then at least believe weird stuff that works. You can tell whether it
works by how the society turns out. If you end up with a mass murdering totalitarian
police state then you are probably missing something important. Where were the
watchmen on the wall ?
You often read that our biology predisposes us to religious belief, but the anguish aroused by the occasional billboard with an atheistic message suggests that modern religions are actually very fragile or at least perceive themselves to be very fragile. The faithful apparently think that the mere mention of the possibility of disbelief, like a mote of dust thrown into a supercooled liquid, could change everything in a moment. The irony is that people brought up under theological thought control often get their first inkling of the possibility of apostasy by reading polemical attacks on the atheists. Which is why atheistic signs matter. Very few people may see them, but the reaction to them leverages their power. This is a kind of homeopathy that works.
In the 17th Century, rumors circulated about an evil book called “The Three Impostors” that denounced Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad as charlatans. Such a book eventually did surface, but it was apparently only written at the end of the Century and in response to the rumor about its own existence. Nevertheless, the book had a significant cultural effect before it came into being.
By your logic I could argue that quarks (or any elementary particle) do not exist because I have never seen one
No, that really is your own version of “logic” at work.
irt arrow
So who was the first person to have the thought of the existence of god? Surely since all people were children, absent of any belief, then what was the progenitor of such a pernicious myth? What occasion would allow the child to develop such a wonderful fantasy? What broke the perfectly godless symmetry of the world?
I suppose since no one knew of superman, batman or spiderman before the 20th century, then those characters have no power in the world either. What is the absence in the belief of superheros called again? I can’t imagine that anyone would dedicate their lives to collecting comic book character memorabilia…and I can’t imagine that such economic activity has an impact on other people.
Since atheists apparently live in bubbles and are immune to the activities of others, then it would appear that a true atheist doesn’t actually interact with the world they live in. Since others have wisely pointed out that non-interaction implies non-existence then I can reasonable assume that atheists don’t exist, and those who claim to be atheists are suffering from a delusion.
Of course I suppose animals are atheists, that much might be true. Animals exist, so I suppose atheists can exist as well. Of course, I have never had an intelligent conversation with an animal, so I can’t speak of what they may or may not believe.
I have no doubt that ignorance of god is perfectly natural state for a person to be in; all they have to do is remember to stay away from serpents bearing magic fruit.
irt DaveH
Please tell me by what spectacular logic would allow me to see such things in an unbound state? I’m all ears.
I am a student of Sean’s Teaching Company course on Dark Matter and Dark Energy. To me, every word he says in the course confirms the existence of an intelligence beyond the physical facts. That he does not agree is of no concern to me. He continually makes reference in the course to that which we know, that which we surmise, and that which we do not know or do not know yet. When scientists can tell me what existed “before” existence or exactly why there was slightly more matter than anti-matter, I will credit atheism as something more than another idea. Until then, the notion that it was just a lucky chance seems a bit naive.
I will say, though, that if I believed in the God you atheists seem to think I believe in, I wouldn’t believe in “Him” either.
Modern physics and cosmology, it weems to me and many others, is bringing us closer to ideas and “truths” that have been taught for centuries by those who have looked deeply into the nature of existance. I am not a trained scientist, so I can only accept the ideas of those, like Sean, who can explain to me what they have proven or deduced. However, when metaphysics is the topic, those who have not studied it have no real cause to deny the discoveries of others. Both science and metaphysics have long been burdened with the misleading and the misinformed. This is not the reason to reject without test the findings of either.
For those who are atheists I respect your position and believe that it should be respected at all times. To those who are offended by those who knock on your door to prosletyse. I agree with you. There is much nonsense and even evil promoted in the name of “God.” though as far as I know, “He” is the author of none of it.
You have a right to be an atheist. You have a right to be a Bhuddist, a Catholic, a Wiccan, a Zoroastrian or a student of Kaballah.
You also have the right to be a jackass. But as Sean points out, it makes you look like a fool.
Atheists are respectable when they make public claims to truth. Atheists are not respectable when they insist atheism flows from superior intelligence.
“Believe X because people who believe X are intelligent” is an argument from authority and a bad one at that. It’s arrogant and stupid, and people who are putatively intelligent should be able to provide something better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv2OyI0nXEE