The religion of atheism

[fpb]

There is one tremendous and widespread mistake about atheism: that is, that it is not a religion - that it somehow even opposes religion. Many of us, including many Christians, accept this claim implicitly, using the nouns "atheism" and "religion" as opposites.

Comments

[filialucis]

1. Bravo.

2. "...its first chapter has the Spirit of God hovering over a pre-existent primordial mass which it simply puts in order, ..."

Really? Interesting. I'd always read that to mean God first created the heaven and the earth and then put in order the primordial mass ("the earth without form, and void") that resulted from Genesis I:1.

3. "I regard all these neo-paganisms as religious masturbation."

Hee!

4. "...occasional Christian claims that all previous religions except Hebraism were ran by demons;"

On that subject: if not by demons, by what did (or do) Christians reckon that previous religions were run? I.e. do Christians (especially, for present purposes, Catholic Christians) believe that the pagan gods are real supernatural beings of some sort, or purely imaginary constructs?

5. If atheism (as I fully concur) is not the opposite of religion, what is?

[fpb]

2. That is certainly how Christians read it. However, scholars maintain that Genesis I and Genesis II are alternative accounts of the beginning of all things originally from different texts, and I think that, as compared with Genesis II, Genesis I strongly suggests the pre-existence of shapeless matter ("the waters"). I think this is a widespread scholarly theory.

4. I do not think there is any specific Catholic teaching on this matter. Many Fathers took the living and aggressive paganism of their day to be powered by demons; they were facing something present and powerful, and took reports of miracles at shrines and such very seriously, so they could not but suspect demonic activity behind it. ON the other hand, Eusebius argued that all previous religious ideas had at least important features that were Praeparatio Evangelica, and wrote a gigantic historical work on this theme. But it must not be forgotten that Eusebius, however zealous and hard-working, died in the Arian heresy, and that his views may have been affected by its

[headnoises]

On 4: I recall but can't find the explanation that basically people make the false faiths, and demons make the "miracles."

Hard to get more evil than what folks can come up with.

[fpb]

So you are disposed to ascribe everything that is not Christian to the Devil? The wisdom and nobility of Confucius? The beauty of Chinese or Indian art? Socrates? Virgil? Plato? I have a problem with that. I would rather say, with St.Justin Martyr (the first Christian philosopher), that "everything in the world that has been well done belongs to us Christians!"

[asakiyume]

I've always known atheism was a religion; I realized that in listening to Carl Sagan, who was evangelical about his faith in atheism and devout in his belief in a materialist universe. Somehow though, I loved him, while I really can't stand Richard Dawkins and his ilk. I guess the thing is, Carl Sagan was practically spiritual in his atheism; he reminds me of the good Calormene in The Last Battle; I get the feeling that in fact he did/does know God and just, while with us on Earth, didn't understand to name God God. But perhaps I'm being sentimental, or swayed by my own feelings.

I really enjoyed this essay; thanks.

[fpb]

I agree. Because Sagan's view was of something positive, one learned something from him even where one disagreed. He was passionately keen to transmit scientific ideas and results. Dawkins, by contrast, is a reductionist even within his own field; his best known theory is that of the "selfish gene", which manages to make Darwinism look even meaner and more cruel than it had ever seemed before. And where we get beyond Dawkins' own speciality, then the fact that he is essentially preaching out of hate and fear is as evident as the stars in the sky at night.

(Incidentally, a beautiful sentence from the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini - who was not Catholic: "He who denies God in the sight of a starry sky... must be either a greatly unhappy person, or a greatly guilty one.")

[superversive]

It helps that the modern atheist is almost entirely an urban animal, and likes to live in environments with so much light-pollution that the stars have been permanently banished from view. If you cannot deny God in the sight of a starry sky, you can achieve the same result by denying the starry sky.

[fpb]

I would not go so far. I can assure you that even from London, where I live, it is possible to see stars on a clear night. It is my own pleasure, in summer, to go out and sit under them and look at them. And when Mazzini wrote that sentence (in direct polemic with nineteenth-century atheists), Italian cities were much smaller and less industrialized than they are now. It is perhaps more to the point that such people do not try. And that is another reason why Carl Sagan is different from the ruck - it was not that he would not see the stars, as much as that his eyes were so full of stars that they could not, like Beethoven, see "above the stars".

[theswordmaiden]

To me, religion means believing that God(s), spirits, higher power, etc., or anything that can't be proven scientifically, do or do not exist. I think it cannot be proven either way, whether God exists or whether you reincarnate after death, so if you believe one way or the other then that's your religious belief. Atheists believe something they couldn't prove, just as I do, so to me atheism is a religion.

[cerebresque]

I would reply that this privileges not believing in the existence of deity over not believing in anything else

A few questions

[fpb]

Do you admit that no decently intelligent human being can be without a picture/idea/concept/philosophy of existence

Re: A few questions

[cerebresque]

Do you admit that no decently intelligent human being can be without a picture/idea/concept/philosophy of existence?

I suspect that even less intelligent human beings have a philosophy of existence, even if they remain mostly unaware of it, but essentially, yes.

Do you admit that, unlike purple galaxies, any entity defineable as God is certainly a part of such a picture? (Purple galaxies may or may not exist without great alteration to the picture of existence as such; the existence and qualities of God, on the other hand, are surely inevitably and immediately relevant to it.)

With qualification; inasmuch as any reasonably complete philosophy of existence has to include a physics as well as a metaphysics, the existence of something so very contradictory to physics as we know it should be part of such a picture, but that's quibbling, really, especially over a throwaway example. Your underlying point here I certainly admit.

Do you admit that the motivating principle behind all honest religious practice is the idea the religion has

[headnoises]

Religion: system of belief, no matter how loosely defined.

One of the few really, really good rulings that the US judicial system has come up with.

[fpb]

Actually, that does not quite work. The laughing factory inmate who is convinced he is Napoleon has a system of belief. A definition of reality has to be a part of even an insane religion.

[headnoises]

Sadly, no matter how insane the religion, if you have enough folks believing it....

Mostly because of the question: who gets to define reality?

Hm...maybe "A system of belief about the nature of reality"?

[fpb]

Come to think of it, you may have something there. The assumption at the heart of neo-paganism - that religion has nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with subjective thins such as emotional fit and/or ethnic belonging - is, to say the least, compatible with a monistic materialist view of existence. And on the other hand, monistic materialism can have no possible exception to "religions" whose sole stated goal is to "heal" the psychic problems of individuals, and that make no claim to having an objective reality.

[johncwright]

"(In a sense, incomplete as a religion, atheism is complimentary with neopaganism: neopagans have ritual and community, but no metaphysical doctrine, whereas atheists have a metaphysical doctrine but no ritual or community

[nicked_metal]

I would not use that word, unless you include skepticism as a sacrament.

Why exclude scepticism as a sacrament? If it is partaken of frequently and with fervour, is it not equivalent to prayer?