Fundamental Atheism?
Today on reddit, someone asked the reddit community if there was "any race or religion you would never consider dating?" One person wrote (in part):
"The list of religions is a long one: Mormons, JW, 7th Day Adventists, Born Agains, Non-Denominational Christians (still born agains), Fundamental Muslims, Fundamental Christians, Fundamental Jews, Fundamental Atheists, etc
This prompted me to ask (and subsequently ponder) if there is such a thing as a Fundamental Atheist. Pedantically, the phrase would mean an atheist that "reduces [his own] religion to strict interpretation of core or original texts." Disregard for a moment that the reddit commenter (implicitly and explicitly) classified atheism as a religion. That's a rant for another day. What the hell are the "core or original texts" of atheism?! I mean, sure, there are some notable works on the topic (The God Delusion springs to mind), but those aren't religious texts. No one, not even atheists regard the word of Richard Dawkins as sacred. I myself disagree with him on some of his finer points.
What about religions that don't have a sacred text then? If atheism is to be classified as a religion, surely it would be as one of these, yes? Then a fundamental atheist is one who holds to the core beliefs of atheism. Unfortunately, there is no such beast. Atheists don't have any core beliefs. The single assertion that makes atheists atheists is the idea that there is not enough evidence to assume the existence of a supreme being. That's it. So then a fundamental atheist is an atheist that doesn't believe in god? Doesn't that make the distinction somewhat worthless?
Of course, I'm being somewhat obtuse and pedantic here. The reddit commenter wanted to convey that he thinks some atheists are over-zealous in expounding their ideas and it annoys him to the point of not wanting to date such a zealous person. His comment goes on to explain that he's a "gray area guy" and would prefer if people stopped trying to suffocate him. Elsewhere in the thread, someone equates fundamentalism with being pushy. In my experience, atheists are only pushy because religious people (particularly the ones from organized religions) are pushy. I'm not pushy about the non-existence of Voltron because there aren't people out there being pushy about his existence.
As I thought more about this concept of being pushy, I devised an equation that describes religious arguments:
P * V - D = dB
Pushiness times validity minus dogma equals delta belief. In general, if someone is asserting something, the amount of impact it has on its listener is influenced positively by the speaker's pushiness and the validity of their arguments. This is counteracted by the listener's inherent dogma. This produces a rather interesting effect. Consider an argument where one side has an enormous amount of dogma and no valid points (*coughxianscough*) while the other side has very valid points but relatively little dogma (*sneezeatheistssneeze*). In this case, neither side will have an impact on the other. And interestingly, the dogmatic person will probably assume the reasoning person isn't changing due to dogma, when, in fact, it's just that the dogmatic person had a very low V value. Unfortunately, this leads to both sides ratcheting up their P value in an attempt to overcome the other's D value.
In short, people are pushy because they think it will help. But will it? Tune in next time to hear my thoughts on the matter.
"The list of religions is a long one: Mormons, JW, 7th Day Adventists, Born Agains, Non-Denominational Christians (still born agains), Fundamental Muslims, Fundamental Christians, Fundamental Jews, Fundamental Atheists, etc
This prompted me to ask (and subsequently ponder) if there is such a thing as a Fundamental Atheist. Pedantically, the phrase would mean an atheist that "reduces [his own] religion to strict interpretation of core or original texts." Disregard for a moment that the reddit commenter (implicitly and explicitly) classified atheism as a religion. That's a rant for another day. What the hell are the "core or original texts" of atheism?! I mean, sure, there are some notable works on the topic (The God Delusion springs to mind), but those aren't religious texts. No one, not even atheists regard the word of Richard Dawkins as sacred. I myself disagree with him on some of his finer points.
What about religions that don't have a sacred text then? If atheism is to be classified as a religion, surely it would be as one of these, yes? Then a fundamental atheist is one who holds to the core beliefs of atheism. Unfortunately, there is no such beast. Atheists don't have any core beliefs. The single assertion that makes atheists atheists is the idea that there is not enough evidence to assume the existence of a supreme being. That's it. So then a fundamental atheist is an atheist that doesn't believe in god? Doesn't that make the distinction somewhat worthless?
Of course, I'm being somewhat obtuse and pedantic here. The reddit commenter wanted to convey that he thinks some atheists are over-zealous in expounding their ideas and it annoys him to the point of not wanting to date such a zealous person. His comment goes on to explain that he's a "gray area guy" and would prefer if people stopped trying to suffocate him. Elsewhere in the thread, someone equates fundamentalism with being pushy. In my experience, atheists are only pushy because religious people (particularly the ones from organized religions) are pushy. I'm not pushy about the non-existence of Voltron because there aren't people out there being pushy about his existence.
As I thought more about this concept of being pushy, I devised an equation that describes religious arguments:
P * V - D = dB
Pushiness times validity minus dogma equals delta belief. In general, if someone is asserting something, the amount of impact it has on its listener is influenced positively by the speaker's pushiness and the validity of their arguments. This is counteracted by the listener's inherent dogma. This produces a rather interesting effect. Consider an argument where one side has an enormous amount of dogma and no valid points (*coughxianscough*) while the other side has very valid points but relatively little dogma (*sneezeatheistssneeze*). In this case, neither side will have an impact on the other. And interestingly, the dogmatic person will probably assume the reasoning person isn't changing due to dogma, when, in fact, it's just that the dogmatic person had a very low V value. Unfortunately, this leads to both sides ratcheting up their P value in an attempt to overcome the other's D value.
In short, people are pushy because they think it will help. But will it? Tune in next time to hear my thoughts on the matter.