Indeed, the charge of atheism became a convenient means of discrediting nontheological beliefs, including anarchism, radicalism, socialism, and feminism. That presumption became both more popular and more potent during the Cold War. The Founders had already chosen a motto, of course, but E pluribus unum proved too secular for the times. Even as courts were striking down blasphemy laws and recognizing the rights of nontheists to conscientious-objector status, legislators around the country were trying to promote Christianity in a way that did not violate the establishment clause.
They succeeded, albeit at a price: the courts upheld references to God in pledges, oaths, prayers, and anthems on the ground that they were not actually religious. Not surprisingly, neither believers nor nonbelievers believe this. Every such ruling is a Pyrrhic victory for the devout, for whom invocations of God are sacred, and no victory at all for atheists, for whom invocations of God, when sponsored by the state, are obvious attempts to promote religion.
Legal challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance, in particular, persist, because nonbelievers are concerned about its prominence in the daily lives of schoolchildren.
David Niose, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, is one of many who have suggested that atheists might even be a suspect class, the sort of minority who deserve special protections from the courts. But are atheists a suspect class, or just a skeptical one?
Unlike racial minorities, their condition is not immutable, but, like many religious minorities, they are subject to hostility and prejudice. Yet that capaciousness is appropriate, because it suggests, correctly, that there is no single atheistic world view.
Much of the animosity and opprobrium directed at nonbelievers in America comes from the suspicion that those who do not believe in God could not possibly believe in anything else, moral or otherwise. The reason that atheists were not allowed to testify in court for so long was the certainty that witnesses who were unwilling to swear an oath to God had no reason to be truthful, since they did not fear divine judgment.
Not all monotheists are literalists, and, for many of us, both now and throughout history, the Garden of Eden is not a faulty hypothesis about evolution but a rich symbolic story about good and evil. The strategy they champion, scientific ethics, has been tried before, with a notable lack of success. Auguste Comte and his fellow nineteenth-century positivists envisioned a Grand Pontiff of Humanity who would preside alongside scientist-priests; unfortunately, scientists at the time were practicing phrenology.
Today, the voguish version of science as religion is transhumanism, which claims that technology will overcome human limitations both physical and mental, perhaps through bioengineering or artificial intelligence or cyborgs that can carry around the contents of our brains.
On the whole, Gray is a glass-half-empty kind of guy, and what others regard as novel or promising he often sees as derivative or just plain dumb. He argues, for instance, that secular humanism is really monotheism in disguise, where humankind is God and salvation can be achieved through our own efforts rather than through divine intervention.
Human ingenuity rests on a lot more than rational thinking. The ability to make quick decisions, follow our passions and act on intuition are also important human qualities and crucial for our success. It is helpful that we have invented something that, unlike our minds, is rational and evidence-based: science.
When we need proper evidence, science can very often provide it — as long as the topic is testable. Importantly, the scientific evidence does not tend to support the view that atheism is about rational thought and theism is about existential fulfilments.
The truth is that humans are not like science — none of us get by without irrational action, nor without sources of existential meaning and comfort.
Fortunately, though, nobody has to. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. In this sense, one might be a positive atheist with respect to some god, e.
So, Roman polytheists considered Christians atheists because Christians denied the existence of all gods but theirs. In fact, since human beings have fervently believed in many gods a theist is likely to be an atheist, in this sense, with respect to most of them.
The link is to a witty essay by Menken. Here are a few misconceptions often religious students have about atheism:. However, there is no satisfactory evidence for this as there is no decent evidence that atheists are immoral, or even less moral than theists. And yet it really sticks: imagine a prominent US politician claiming to be an atheist instead of invoking God every 5 minutes when giving a political speech.
Still, an atheist may consider the god of Joshua or 1 Samuel genocidal and therefore think that a world without such god, or a god who demands human sacrifice, or a god that gives sexist or racist commands, is better than a world with such god in it. The link to Samuel is through a site that is critical of scripture and religion.
Alternatively, some atheist may believe that it would be better if some benevolent god existed, and bemoan the fact that no such being exists. However, atheism is not a philosophical system any more than theism is; like theism, atheism is very old, and two atheists may have very different philosophical views, moral views, lifestyles, political affiliations, much in the same way in which two theists or even two Christians might.
This is a charge that can be answered empirically. Of the 25 top ranking societies according to the Human Development Report from the UN all but one are the nations with the highest levels of atheism. Conversely, of the 50 bottom ranked, all have high percentages of theism. Other studies show high positive correlation between low infant mortality, literacy, low poverty rates, low homicide rates, high gender equality and high percentages of atheism.
Of course, these are just statistical correlations, but are enough to show that the charge is unjustified. However, there is no atheist philosophy and therefore there is no atheist position about religion, Christianity, homosexuality, or whatever.
What is certainly true is that Communist societies declared themselves officially atheist and engaged in policies that were and are inimical to religion. First, you will understand where they are coming from, so you are not responding to a straw man version of their beliefs; second, you will force them to clarify exactly what they believe, which can lead them to detect holes in their view that will cause them to question their atheist beliefs.
Along these lines, there are two questions I love to raise with an atheist. In my experience, few atheists have actually read books defending God or have studied the issue at length. But science is increasingly closing all of those gaps of knowledge, pushing God to the margins. I can think of several better reasons to believe in God than that. For example, maybe the skeptic was just hallucinating when he encountered someone claiming to be God, or maybe what looked like writing in the stars was actually a light projection from some prankster or government experiment.
Experiences like these can always be explained away through natural causes. So, if these are the sort of answers you get, push back a little and suggest we really need a higher and more convincing reason to believe in God, something like a philosophical argument.
And then again, present such an argument. Not enough evidence! People are open to believing in God, if only there were enough evidence! When your friend or family member asserts that there is no evidence for God, do not panic. Believe it or not, they have already taken an important first step. It means they are not willing to believe something without support.
We should, however, clarify: what do they mean by evidence? Oftentimes what people really want is scientific evidence. In the realm of science, evidence refers to data you can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell—things that directly confirm or undermine a hypothesis. And in the context of science, such evidence has led to remarkable results.
Just look at the advancements in technology and medicine. Many truths that exist we cannot prove through physical evidence. Of course, we understand these statements to be true, but not because we have found physical evidence to support them. We believe these truths on the basis of another sort of evidence.
The same holds for the existence of God. Whether you believe God exists or not, He is, by definition, immaterial and transcendent. He is immaterial because He is not composed of physical matter, not made of material stuff like you and me. And God is transcendent because He exists beyond space and time. This fact is important: it is not just that we have not yet found such evidence, though it may exist, it is that such evidence is impossible , even in principle.
Does that mean it is impossible to demonstrate that God exists? It simply means that science is not the right means, just as a metal detector is not the right tool to find a wooden cup. We need other tools when exploring nonscientific questions. What other tools are there, besides science? One such tool is philosophy. Philosophy typically offers evidence in the form of arguments.
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