Fundamentalist? Moi?

Atheists are often accused – falsely – of being fundamentalists. Atheists usually hold their views strongly and do not easily change them, so you might well think them fundamentalist, but this would be an unfair assumption. A well made argument based on solid evidence would surely change an atheist's mind. The real reason atheists believe so strongly that they are right is that the arguments against them fall apart under scrutiny. It has nothing to do with dogma.

That said, surely everyone must hold some things to be fundamentally true. I started to think about what my fundamental truths would be.

We can rely on reality

We can pick apart, if you like, the nature of reality and the fact that our experience of the world is entirely subjective; the fact that we can never know the true, underlying nature of things. Bit of a waste of time, in my opinion.

For all practical purposes, we should assume that the things we know now are true, whilst keeping an open mind that we might know better later. If a thing is genuinely unknowable, genuinely beyond the reaches of scientific detection, then it is irrelevant to our lives and there is no point playing guessing games about it.

I confess, I am a fundamentalist about this point. If you start to base your judgements on things no-one can possibly know, or to claim nothing can ever truly be proven, I'll ask you to walk through the wall, claiming there is an undetectable door and that you cannot prove the wall is real in any case.

The simplest explanation is the most likely

Occam's razor is a beautiful principle. It basically says, when trying to explain something, the less you have to make up, the more likely you are right.

Note, this is not to say the simplest explanation is the right one. The distinction between right and most likely is very important. In fact, this is a key difference between a fundamentalist view and a rational one.

Nevertheless, I must accept that I hold the validity of Occam's razor as a fundamental truth. I don't think there is any way to prove a maxim like this. It is, like relying on reality, a thing which I accept without proof, for practical purposes.

More?...

I am sure there must be more things I am genuinely fundamentalist about, but it is hard to know what they are, as fundamentals are the things we take for granted, things we accept without thinking.

I think thinking is important. We should all have a good hard think, about the things we never think about.

Why are atheists always picking on Christians?

[Response to "....a face to meet the faces...." Religious Sensitivities?? (December 31, 2011)]

Tim Minchin's recently censored song about Jesus is far from the funniest or cleverest he has written, but it has a serious point to make (he highlights the absurdity of the supernatural qualities attributed to the man). Mr Minchin's songs express his view of the world; he didn't write the song deliberately to be mean to Christians. Nevertheless, in using humour to point out Christianity's flaws, he is mocking the beliefs of 44% of UK citizens.

With eloquent and strident atheist champions like Tim Minchin and Richard Dawkins at the forefront of our culture, and a population who are increasingly godless and likely to be rude about religion, it might well seem – although it is not true! – that atheists are simply bullies and Christians are their targets.

Sadly, we do have to accept that some people are not very nice. There are atheists who are not very nice and there are Christians who are not very nice. Atheists who are not very nice are unfortunately going to be rude to Christians and mock them. On the internet, I notice that not-so-nice Christians are just as likely to be rude back but are more likely to make death threats. Beyond encouraging these people to be nicer there's not much we can do to stop them.

Even excluding these not-so-nice people from consideration, there remains the question of how a nice atheist could possibly persuade others to their position without coming across as aggressive towards any particular religion. This is a tricky one to untangle, because the line between justified criticism and plain rudeness is so fine and different people draw it in different places. For example, many people (including some atheists) find Richard Dawkins aggressive, even nasty; many others consider his forthright criticism fully justified and necessary. Perhaps the necessity of criticism is particularly hard for a Christian to see.

Christians need to understand that many atheists not only think God is a myth but also see religion as actively harmful. It's nothing personal and it's no one religion in particular and it's not every aspect of every religion, but overall and in general we reckon religion as a whole makes the world worse: it would be better for the world if there were less religion. That must be hard to grasp when listening to sermons about peace, love and charity, but atheists do not accept that religion makes people more loving or more moral – atheists are every bit as loving and moral as Christians. Atheists do, however, attribute to religion the fundamentalism which defends and propagates all kinds of intolerant and oppressive behaviour around the world. Without religion, the thinking goes, we would be equally moral, equally social, but we would be guided by human empathy, reason and science, making the world a better place.

Given that making the world a better place is generally considered a good thing to do, most atheists would see it as their duty to stand up for their point of view, to encourage people away from religion and (most likely) towards a rational humanist philosophy. However, there is no suggestion of trying to impose atheism on people by banning religion or anything like that – that would be the kind of intolerant, oppressive behaviour despised by any atheist worth his salt. Instead, atheists are patiently making reasoned arguments and using humour to put their point across.

To understand why UK atheists focus on Christianity more than other religions, Christians need to remember that their religion is dominant in our country. Christianity naturally attracts the most direct criticism, because it is the religion running most of our schools, embedded in our national holidays, and entrenched in our government. In fact, atheists are critical of all religion, but Christianity is around us every day.

The atheists' open criticism which seems aggressive is actually the most peaceful, tolerant and liberal way of encouraging the change we hope to see. How could a point be made any more gently or with better humour than Tim Minchin's cheeky little song about Jesus?

Atheists, let sleeping gods lie

In several books and numerous web comments, I have read atheists banging on about the non-existence of God. They show it is unlikely to impossible that God exists. They refute proofs of God's existence. They evidence that the world can be as it is without God. They explain why people might believe there is a God even though there isn't one. After a while, the obsessive harping on this theme becomes rather tiresome. It begs the question, who are we trying to convince?

If the answer is theists, we're completely missing the point. If the answer is atheists, we probably don't have to try that hard. Either way, there are more important things for atheists to do.

[Edit: an interesting counter to this argument can be found in The Pod Delusion ep. 103 (65m40s), Debating Religion (pt 2) by Richard Firth-Godbehere]

There is a stark asymmetry between theism and atheism. For the atheist, truth is a deal breaker. If you can't even rely on God being real, you can't rely on anything anybody says about God. If there is any possibility God is a fiction, it might seem the whole framework of religion collapses to a nonsense. Arguments about whether God exists are therefore essential to the construction of an atheist identity.

For the theist, this is not so. God's reality is taken on faith, and faith requires no proof. Obviously, many theists do make arguments for God, and most will at some time doubt their faith; nevertheless, the need for demonstrable truth is not a supporting pillar of religious identity, whereas for atheism it is the only pillar.

Richard Dawkins often points out that the term atheist is as laughable as the term a-fairy-ist. Were God in the same category as fairies, there would be no atheists. This highlights that atheism has meaning only whilst theism is so normal, and – crucially – atheism is predicated on one single idea: God is a myth.

Theism is not so simple. It comes entangled in the complex web of cultural values and practices which constitute a religion. Any individual may have a plethora of reasons for identifying with their faith, and chances are that evidence of God's existence is not one of them. Despite God being woven into every inch of religious fabric, I'd wager nobody signs up to a religion because they have actual proof God exists. God is a given. Theists either don't care about proof, or they suppress their desire for it; some perhaps kid themselves they have it.

Trying to prove God doesn't exist is tilting at windmills: atheists will obviously agree; theists will just get annoyed. Annoying theists is not helpful. It is that sort of behaviour which makes atheists come across as smug, reductive prigs.

There are many more useful things atheists can do with their time than make the same arguments again and again. Here are a few suggestions.

Let people know you are an atheist (just don't go on about the God thing)

It is harder to hold unfounded prejudices against a type of person if you are familiar with such people. The more common atheism is perceived to be, the more it will be valued and the less people will hold ignorant views like 'atheists are amoral'.

Stand up for science, freedom and equality

The main points of conflict between theists and atheists lie where religious values contradict scientific understanding or personal liberties. There are important battles which can be won, and increasingly are won, for these good causes.

Of course, a great many theists also consider science, freedom and equality to be important human ideals and do not hold with the authoritarian position of others (check out Ekklesia). When atheists share such values with them, it demonstrates that believers and non-believers alike can be passionately ethical people, and gives the lie to the notion that there is no morality without God (learn about Humanism.)

Campaign for secularism

Secularism means everyone having the freedom to practice any religion or none and to be treated equally by the law and public institutions. Governments should neither impose religious values, nor favour one religious group over another. Secularism is emphatically not about keeping religious viewpoints out of politics, but it is about ensuring those who hold a particular view are not given a privileged position because of it. (Support the National Secular Society.)