I have been getting some (appreciated) heat by the atheist ‘community’ for my why-i-am-not-an-atheist post, especially from one mojoey who thinks i’m a nutcase (and whom i thank for the referrals đ ) . So i thought i should try to clear things up, if only a bit.
One of the comments on mojoey’s post by one RG sums up exactly my intentions:
You guys crack me up. Just as defensive as any other fundie. He makes a sound, and to me a compelling point about the image that Atheists themselves are projecting. Telling him that “his thinking is flawed, what a shame” is annoyingly similar to the way Xian fundies argue in circles from the source. And you know how effective that is “The Bible is God’s word and it says God exists therefore God exists.” (Head explodes) Your position appears to be “Atheism is logical and you aren’t an atheist therefore you aren’t logical.” SWEET! Sign me up. You make his point for him.
Some of the comments to my post are quite virulent in complaining that i get atheism all wrong, others think i’m a closet atheist and some just want me to bash religion (which i have already done here, here, here, here, here, and here and have gotten bashed in return for it too). I feel caught between a rock and a hard place, not able to please the religious or the atheists. I believe this is primarily due to the fact that Americans (the USA ones) have a horrible tendency to polarize many discussions beyond any semblance of reason. Americans will never stay in the middle: you are either a democrat or a republican, either conservative or liberal, either pro-life or pro-choice, either religious or atheist. And anyone trying to walk a fine line between the two warring camps gets lambasted by both. Moreover, each discussion – especially here in the freewheeling blogosphere – tends to degenerate into a raving carnage that accomplishes absolutely nothing except to divide the two camps even further.
All that being said, i will try once more to explain what i believe atheism to be, and also to explain not so much why i am not an atheist (i actually don’t believe god exists) as why i do not wish to call myself one. So here goes: all i ask for is a charitable reading!
Atheism is, like theism and agnosticism an epistemic position: it makes a propositional claim about the way the world is. Theism asserts that there exists at least one god. Atheism makes the contrary claim that there exists not one god and certainly not many gods. Agnosticism (from gnosis, knowledge) asserts that there is no knowledge available as to whether or not one or more gods exist. Those who passively do-not-bother-to-believe that there is a god are not, properly speaking, atheists, but are simply non-religious.
The great atheists of our western culture: Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre and now Dennett (i only name philosophers because they are the people i know best) were and are most certainly active atheists, going out of their way to criticize and belittle religion. These and the newer crop of atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor J. Stenger, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, just to cull the most recent NYT Bestseller List) have placed themselves squarely against religion, and it is precisely this squareness to which i object. Atheism, in flat-out denying gods and religion in general, is not helping to solve the problem (of religious stupidity and violence) but is only throwing oil on the fire. It is concocting an alternative to religion that looks suspiciously like its mirror image. And trash talking religion will only infuriate the religious and cause them to dig in their heels a bit deeper still.
I want to advocate a position that does not immediately say “yes” or “no” to the ideas of religion, nor one that lazily stoops to the “i don’t know” retort. We must be careful, patient and thorough, and maintain, though it is quite clear that neither Zeus nor YHWH exist in any scientific – ie verifiable – sense of the term, that religion (a human practice that has survived and reproduced through millenia of cultural evolution) might have some practical use and that, moreover, its far-fetched dogmas, as silly as they might be, could well be very flawed attempts to express something important and true. Jettisoning the baby ‘religion’ with the bathwater of our ‘historical religions’ is rash, but it is what atheism has always done and continues to do.
I am just as scientifically-minded as any good atheist, and i spit upon the graves of every creationist since Darwin! I do not believe we should build ships based on Noah’s blueprint in Genesis and i do not believe that states, and esp. heads of states, should spout or pay for religious nonsense from their white or otherwise-colored houses. Yet, i do not think atheism is true anymore than religion is true. Both are mostly wrong because they are either too complicated or too simple; we need to keep on searching with an open mind and lots of good, hard-core science.
May atheists be charitable and theists reasonable!
Onwards and Forwards 