The members of the atheist.ie website are holding the Inaugural Meeting of the proposed Atheist Ireland organisation in the Central Hotel on Exchequer Street in Dublin today.
I'm very impressed by both the initiative and the ideas listed for this organisation, and hope to be in attendance today for what should be a landmark day in the continuing striving for improvements of society.
Red: I eventually went for what was a stimulating day with like-minded people and I'm impressed with the activities and the news coverage the new organisation has created in the last two years. My one regret is that my running and work commitments simply don't currently allow more active support of this great and important organisation.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
ATHEISM: Not a Religion, Not a Replacement
A claim atheists are often faced with is that without religion the world would sink into depravity and the source of this depravity would be atheism which is, in their logic, just another religious belief (inferior to theirs) and that tyrannical and genocidal regimes such as Mao's China, Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler's German Reich are caused by the purported Atheism of these three political leaders (North Korea is less commonly used these days after many religious people realised that the president of the country is the dead father of the current ruler, basically making it a Death Cult to borrow the words of Christopher Hitchens).
The reason for this fallacious claim is simply a broad assumption among religious people that your religion defines your morality (science has widely disproved this, so I reject this assumption outright). Ergo, however, in the mind of many religious believers, atheism caused the morally deplorable behaviour of these "atheist leaders" in what they perceive as an absence of religiousity.
This ties in with the widespread notion among religious believers that Atheism forms a religion in its own right (Sam Harris puts this argument to rest in his book "End of Faith" which I won't repeat here, but I can sum it up with Sam's apt analogy that being an "atheist" carries just as much meaningfulness as a term as "non-astrologer" or "non-fascist").
Religion, by its original definition, is dogmatic in nature. A simple non-belief in the dogmatic claim of religion can therefore not be dogmatic in itself and cannot reasonable be called a religion (unless religions would like to term the insistence on rational inquiry and open debate "dogmatic" by which time the term would have diluted into meaninglessness).
THE SOURCE OF MORALITY
Going back to the original point, few atheists would claim that they gain their morality from atheism (indeed, they could not since atheism does not define any rules on ethics, a criticism often raised against it by religious people). Instead the general atheist will seek his morality somewhere else (in modern schools of thought such as humanism, or, as it regrettably happens, to religious and non-religious people alike, in other forms of dogmatism such as Nazism, Stalinism, capitalism and so on).
So when religious people claim that Atheism caused Mao, Stalin and Hitler, to behave in their morally reprehensible manner, they are making a faulty conjecture (that Hitler paid lipservice to his Roman Catholic faith would sidetrack the discussion, but is an interesting anecdote for gauging the claims of his "atheism").
When an atheist points out that witch burnings, anti-contraception laws, suicide bombings, and the blocking of stem cell research are caused by religions there is no flaw in their conjecture: the very religious books that are claimed to contain the word of the Creator (in which the religous professedly believe) either support or directly recommends all of the above practices. Is there any more logical or rational conclusion to reach than that religion causes people to carry out these acts?
If you examine the example of Stalin in a similar way, the flaws of the analogy become obvious. Take "ban on contraception is caused by religion" and compare it to "gulags and political inquisition was caused by Atheism". In the first case, you have a lot of evidence to support your claim (e.g. the Bible widely makes it clear that the creator of the Universe considers most of your sexual activities a Sin unless its with an eye on procreation, and then only if you've performed the ritual of marriage beforehand). In the second case, would most of us not accept the claim that "gulags and political inquisition was caused by Stalinism" as more valid? Certainly the dogmatic beliefs of the Soviet state and the blind obedience to Stalin (replace with "God" as you please) was the more likely cause?
Also, historically, is there any likelihood that atheism influenced Stalin in any way? I am yet to see evidence of this (in fact, it's quite clear he was not oppposed to dogmatism, unlike atheism. Stalinist Russia did not suffer because of an overabundance of rational inquiry and free discourse).
THE VACUUM LEFT BY RELIGION
So with this argument laid to rest, I would like to turn to a more interesting argument that some of the more formidable religious thinkers have turned to when they had the above pointed out to them: That the absence of religion caused a vacuum of morality that allowed Stalinism to flourish. Now, ignoring the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church continued to survive within the Soviet state, this is at least a point that merits examination.
"Would people, with their religion removed, inevitable turn to other pseudo-religious dogmas, such as Stalinism?" Possibly, and this is just exchanging one dogma for another and clearly undesirable (sometimes worse, but how do we start to quantify when we list the crimes of Stalinism against those of religion over the years? Does it even really matter?).
The first question religious people should ask themselves is, who would be most likely to replace one dogma with another. The people who have been insisting one open debate and rational discourse all along (e.g. most atheists) or people who have been used to a more dogmatic worldview (e.g. many religious people). Should the obvious answer to this question not discredit the argument that atheism causes morally deficient societies such as Stalinist Russia, Hitler's Germany, or the necrocracy that is North Korea?
BEYOND RELIGION
Atheism does not offer any new solutions, it simply demands the removal of certain problems that exist in the world (those caused by dogmatism). Once that is out of the way its up to all of us to figure out together where to move from there. In Humanism we already have one solution that would offer an improvement on the existing status quo. And if we can move beyond our religious beliefs, this process of improvement could become an ongoing process leading us closer to that undefined point of "ultimate morality" (which may or may not exist, but in any case it would be possible to scientifically approximate it instead of staying stagnant).
Compare a situation in the future when our society has moved beyond Consumerism (that means putting your wants before your needs). Would you expect an outcry to keep Consumerism simply because of the "vacuum" it would create now that people don't drive themselves to distress because they focus their lives on wanting ever more things they don't need while at the same time losing the time to meet the actual needs that they have (a thrilling account of this can be found in Oliver James' "Affluenza").
You could build a case for Consumerism much like you could for religion e.g.:
1. It makes people "happy", that is, "it's useful" (this builds on a rather dubious definition of happiness that I will leave for a later philosophical discussion so as not to stray too far off point).
2. It gives people hope (in this case hope of becoming "rich" or "getting that new car" instead of "for life after death" or "some deeper meaning to my life")
3. It helps build communities (undoubtedly true, but what communities? Healthy communities?)
4. It creates shared values (true again, but shall we examine these values?)
In the face of such arguments, how many people would be opposed to doing something about Consumerism if it was seen to cause widespread propagation of sexual diseases, delay critical scientific research, cause Consumerist wars in many places in the world, and prompt fundamentalist consumers to fly planes into the buildings of anyone opposed to their particular branch of Consumerist views? Would we hesitate and demand an alternative be presented or insist that the world would plunge into chaos without the pacifier of Consumerism? Consider it, just for a moment!
So let us move beyond the argument that Atheism is a religion and start discussing the options for a new improved society beyond religion.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
LETTER: An Atheist’s Tale Part 1 – An open letter to Professor Dawkins
First, thank you for writing The God Delusion, after having considered myself a staunch atheist for most of my life, I had slipped into agnosticism for a number of years, and your book, along with Sam Harris’ equally excellent publications, finally confounded my own conviction in my atheism (or as I now prefer non-theism).
Since my earliest memory of childhood, I remember having a feeling towards religion that I can only describe today as ranging from outright aversion to uneasiness. Having grown up in generally secular Denmark (a country that has sadly not yet divided Church and State constitutionally), I still had the misfortune of being subjected to Old Testament reading throughout “Christianity Class” in Primary School (which gave way to Religion, a mandatory subject in Secondary and High School, atheism was not discussed).
I always had an intuitive feeling that “something was wrong”. We can still only speculate on the precise nature of intuition, but if you believe the theory that it is a manifestation of knowledge from your subconscious making itself heard in the conscious mind. As a bookish child, I had read much about dinosaurs, the solar systems etc. at a relatively early age, and perhaps the feeling of inherent wrongness in the teachings of Christianity was created by a subconscious conflict between the facts I had learned from science and the facts presented to me in Christianity Class.
My background was not religious, both my parents had been confirmed, because, as they would both explain to me later: “That was just something you did.” While my mother could be described as a spiritualist and still finds some comfort in the Church, my father had left the Church early and has never given any thought to either religion nor to atheism since (at least not actively).
By the time my own communion came up, I had grown into a staunch atheist, but also sadly somewhat of a polarising figure as I still had a very vehement mechanistic scientific worldview, utterly disquieting to religious people around me (what I today find my more mature worldview seems to cause less consternation, if just as little actual impact).
In a class of 27, 5 opted not to be confirmed (one was a Jehova’s Witness), myself among them. It was not a decision that was met with universal understanding, and despite my parent’s being atheist, it did mean waving farewell to a big party, and more importantly for a 13-year-old, a lot of money from well-wishing relatives.
Today, I am glad I held firm, and stayed to my convictions. It caused many social confrontations, as I took an aggressive stance and would cordially accept invitations to celebrations, but only under the condition that I would not attend the Church part. This meant missing parts of events like my sister’s confirmation, and the baptism of a good friend’s first child. Again, this raised eye-brows, but Denmark being relatively secular, nothing more.
Years of discussion with religious friends followed and often I would find my arguments trumped by the arguments Sam Harris’ presents to so well in the beginning of his book. I don’t know if it was this, or a slight temporary conviction in relativism, that had me fade into agnosticism, but once I picked up the God Delusion and “End of Faith”, I finally saw the arguments supporting what I had always believed to be true, and, more importantly, solid logical and rational refutations of the standard religious apologist points.
It’s ironic that another book of more spiritual nature (I would belong in the camp of atheists in which Sam Harris has often placed himself in his talks: the atheists who have a keen interest in spiritualism), convinced me further of the demonising effect religion has upon human culture.
I read with great interest the “Power of Now” and “A New Earth – Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose” by Ulrich Tolle, a graduate in languages, philosophy and literature from University of London (he is more commonly known under his alias “Eckhart Tolle”, a name no doubt chosen in honour of “Meister Eckhart” the 13th century German theologian, philosopher, and mystic, who was tried for heresy by the Franciscan-led Inquisition but died before his verdict could be announced.
While the neo-spiritual nature of Ulrich Tolle’s works may be off-putting to some rational thinkers, the core principle’s championed in his books is sound: true happiness is achieved through a disidentification from your thoughts and emotions helping you to transcend “your ego”, that is the false identification with forms and labels (such as body, mind, social roles, material possessions, religion, dislikes, nationality and so on).
He goes on in “A New Earth” to outline the issues that a lack of this disidentification with our egos causes in the world today, and when I read this, I was struck by the irony that a deeply spiritual work like this so clearly highlights that religion is currently the strongest identifier we have, and thus the most powerful barrier to a world in which people have reached a new level of self-awareness, broken down the wall of separation between individuals, and transcended petty superficial differences in favour of our deeper interconnectivity (that we are all connected, even at the quantum-physical level is a theory now proposed with great conviction by visionary thinker “Ervin Laszlo” in “Science and the Akashic Field” and “The Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos” and is not an idea unique to spirituality).
Indeed with Eckhart Tolle, Ervin Laszlo, and the great scientific minds of the 21st century, an amalgamation of spirituality and science is at hand that fills me with some hope that religion will be eradicated in the process and replaced by a new non-dogmatic worldview.
Thus convinced that my earliest instincts had been right, I once again abandoned any pretense of agnosticism and became a fully fledged atheist, if not an ardent anti-theist.
To be continued...
Since my earliest memory of childhood, I remember having a feeling towards religion that I can only describe today as ranging from outright aversion to uneasiness. Having grown up in generally secular Denmark (a country that has sadly not yet divided Church and State constitutionally), I still had the misfortune of being subjected to Old Testament reading throughout “Christianity Class” in Primary School (which gave way to Religion, a mandatory subject in Secondary and High School, atheism was not discussed).
I always had an intuitive feeling that “something was wrong”. We can still only speculate on the precise nature of intuition, but if you believe the theory that it is a manifestation of knowledge from your subconscious making itself heard in the conscious mind. As a bookish child, I had read much about dinosaurs, the solar systems etc. at a relatively early age, and perhaps the feeling of inherent wrongness in the teachings of Christianity was created by a subconscious conflict between the facts I had learned from science and the facts presented to me in Christianity Class.
My background was not religious, both my parents had been confirmed, because, as they would both explain to me later: “That was just something you did.” While my mother could be described as a spiritualist and still finds some comfort in the Church, my father had left the Church early and has never given any thought to either religion nor to atheism since (at least not actively).
By the time my own communion came up, I had grown into a staunch atheist, but also sadly somewhat of a polarising figure as I still had a very vehement mechanistic scientific worldview, utterly disquieting to religious people around me (what I today find my more mature worldview seems to cause less consternation, if just as little actual impact).
In a class of 27, 5 opted not to be confirmed (one was a Jehova’s Witness), myself among them. It was not a decision that was met with universal understanding, and despite my parent’s being atheist, it did mean waving farewell to a big party, and more importantly for a 13-year-old, a lot of money from well-wishing relatives.
Today, I am glad I held firm, and stayed to my convictions. It caused many social confrontations, as I took an aggressive stance and would cordially accept invitations to celebrations, but only under the condition that I would not attend the Church part. This meant missing parts of events like my sister’s confirmation, and the baptism of a good friend’s first child. Again, this raised eye-brows, but Denmark being relatively secular, nothing more.
Years of discussion with religious friends followed and often I would find my arguments trumped by the arguments Sam Harris’ presents to so well in the beginning of his book. I don’t know if it was this, or a slight temporary conviction in relativism, that had me fade into agnosticism, but once I picked up the God Delusion and “End of Faith”, I finally saw the arguments supporting what I had always believed to be true, and, more importantly, solid logical and rational refutations of the standard religious apologist points.
It’s ironic that another book of more spiritual nature (I would belong in the camp of atheists in which Sam Harris has often placed himself in his talks: the atheists who have a keen interest in spiritualism), convinced me further of the demonising effect religion has upon human culture.
I read with great interest the “Power of Now” and “A New Earth – Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose” by Ulrich Tolle, a graduate in languages, philosophy and literature from University of London (he is more commonly known under his alias “Eckhart Tolle”, a name no doubt chosen in honour of “Meister Eckhart” the 13th century German theologian, philosopher, and mystic, who was tried for heresy by the Franciscan-led Inquisition but died before his verdict could be announced.
While the neo-spiritual nature of Ulrich Tolle’s works may be off-putting to some rational thinkers, the core principle’s championed in his books is sound: true happiness is achieved through a disidentification from your thoughts and emotions helping you to transcend “your ego”, that is the false identification with forms and labels (such as body, mind, social roles, material possessions, religion, dislikes, nationality and so on).
He goes on in “A New Earth” to outline the issues that a lack of this disidentification with our egos causes in the world today, and when I read this, I was struck by the irony that a deeply spiritual work like this so clearly highlights that religion is currently the strongest identifier we have, and thus the most powerful barrier to a world in which people have reached a new level of self-awareness, broken down the wall of separation between individuals, and transcended petty superficial differences in favour of our deeper interconnectivity (that we are all connected, even at the quantum-physical level is a theory now proposed with great conviction by visionary thinker “Ervin Laszlo” in “Science and the Akashic Field” and “The Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos” and is not an idea unique to spirituality).
Indeed with Eckhart Tolle, Ervin Laszlo, and the great scientific minds of the 21st century, an amalgamation of spirituality and science is at hand that fills me with some hope that religion will be eradicated in the process and replaced by a new non-dogmatic worldview.
Thus convinced that my earliest instincts had been right, I once again abandoned any pretense of agnosticism and became a fully fledged atheist, if not an ardent anti-theist.
To be continued...
Friday, September 19, 2008
ANNOUNCEMENT: Opening
This is my third blog, my first two being dedicated to my personal journey of being an expatriated Dane living in Ireland, while the first follows my favourite hobby: hill running.
This Blog, I hope will have a more serious slant, and will focus on the Edge of Reason, e.g. the latest development within our scientific community.
My main focus will be one my favourite author Ervin Laszlo and his postulated "Quantum Shift" (which I aptly named the Blog after to ensure I could get a name that was not already taken!), as well as the major threat to reason in our society today: religious and other superstitous beliefs.
At the vanguard of this threat stands men such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, as well as the active nontheists, often labelled "militant atheists" by religious apologists. A great deal of my focus here will be to simply promote their latest works, review their books, and keep people up to date with the latest developments on our continuing mission to secure a secularisation of society and attack on science that is now on-going throughout our societies.
Finally, I will also follow political developments that I find interesting or relevant, especially looking to sober commentators such as Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal.
It will take me some time to get this up and running, but if you want to debate any points made here, your comments are most welcome. The only thing I cannot guarentee is agreement.
I also owe it to readers to steal Sam Harris' usual opening apology and say that I do not mean to offend anyone's views in particular by the writings on this site. If I bring up political, anti-religious, or scientific views that you find offensive to yourself, I ask two things:
1. I am genuinely concerned about the future of the world unless we can establish a society where any kind of irrational belief (including religion) cannot be freely attacked without fear or repercussions and where people who hold this beliefs are not asked to explain them, and marginalised from positions of power because of them
2. Realise that you are not your beliefs, this is a delusion (and a self-destructive one at that). Nothing I say or do can take anything away from you, nor can it add to you. All you can say with absolute confidence is "I am", nothing more, so personal offensive is unnecessary and illogical.
So with this opening statement, welcome to the new Blog, and please allow me some time to get it up and running.
This Blog, I hope will have a more serious slant, and will focus on the Edge of Reason, e.g. the latest development within our scientific community.
My main focus will be one my favourite author Ervin Laszlo and his postulated "Quantum Shift" (which I aptly named the Blog after to ensure I could get a name that was not already taken!), as well as the major threat to reason in our society today: religious and other superstitous beliefs.
At the vanguard of this threat stands men such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, as well as the active nontheists, often labelled "militant atheists" by religious apologists. A great deal of my focus here will be to simply promote their latest works, review their books, and keep people up to date with the latest developments on our continuing mission to secure a secularisation of society and attack on science that is now on-going throughout our societies.
Finally, I will also follow political developments that I find interesting or relevant, especially looking to sober commentators such as Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal.
It will take me some time to get this up and running, but if you want to debate any points made here, your comments are most welcome. The only thing I cannot guarentee is agreement.
I also owe it to readers to steal Sam Harris' usual opening apology and say that I do not mean to offend anyone's views in particular by the writings on this site. If I bring up political, anti-religious, or scientific views that you find offensive to yourself, I ask two things:
1. I am genuinely concerned about the future of the world unless we can establish a society where any kind of irrational belief (including religion) cannot be freely attacked without fear or repercussions and where people who hold this beliefs are not asked to explain them, and marginalised from positions of power because of them
2. Realise that you are not your beliefs, this is a delusion (and a self-destructive one at that). Nothing I say or do can take anything away from you, nor can it add to you. All you can say with absolute confidence is "I am", nothing more, so personal offensive is unnecessary and illogical.
So with this opening statement, welcome to the new Blog, and please allow me some time to get it up and running.
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