Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Know your non-believer: Atheist vs. Anti-Religionist

This is the first in a series of posts I've been wanting to tackle for a little while.  While it's not necessarily going to be written to ignite debate, I wanted to address a few things that would help people of different beliefs better understand atheism from my perspective.

There is a relatively new movement within the atheist community called, "New Atheism".  This has been brought about by the work of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and several other rockstars of atheism.  It has spawned organized groups like The Brights, and aided to the numbers of Humanists. These are groups which I would go so far as to say fit within Cory's earlier definition of a religion. New Atheists have followers that are just as vocal and opinionated as any other fundamentalist.

The point of view of the New Atheist movement is very much the idea that religion is antiquated, and should be questioned. Many consider it harmful and are very vocal about it. Richard Dawkins has even gone so far as to call certain aspects of religion "child abuse". Christopher Hitchens has said that religion is, "the main source of hatred in the world".

What I want to address in this post, is that there is a significant difference between, "Atheism" and "Anti-Religionist". 

Atheism is a dis-belief in god.  That's it.  In and of itself, this does not force someone to have a philosophic belief about the morality of religions or people of other beliefs. One can be an atheist and be perfectly fine with people believing something other than what they believe. Not all atheists, including myself, believe that religion is evil.  Not all atheists are anti-religionists.

Anti-Religion is atheism with an agenda. Anti-Religionists feel that religion has a negative effect on our society, and are openly against it.  They are the ones that speak up, because they are the ones with an agenda themselves.  Unfortunately, because they are the ones that speak up, many people associate all atheists in this manner, and this is simply not true.

To take things to a personal level: at this point, I feel like I need to be honest and acknowledge that I most likely have anti-religion leanings now and then.  There are certainly agendas that religions push politically that I clearly don't agree with, and I may be vocal about them once in a while.  But I can't say that religion is inherently evil.  There have been terrible things done in the past in the name of atheism just like there are terrible things in the past done in the name of religion.  I don't think that touting one philosophy as being morally right or wrong over another is going to solve any problems.  This may be a blog specifically devoted to debating, but the point is to have open communication.  In communicating, we may actually learn from each other, and that can actually solve problems.

-Mike

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Mike,

    Thanks for posting about this. It is indeed critical to make the distinction between various forms of belief, even those within the larger movements themselves. Thanks for clarifying your perspective and helping us to understand the degrees of atheism.

    The comment that should follow this, then, is that the repsonsibility for evil in the world should more likely be laid at the feet of the individuals promiting the evil, however motivated they may have been. I don't think it is any more resonable to blame the cursades on chrisitanity than it is to blame Stalin's purge of religion on atheism. The ideologies may have informed the perpetrators, but that doesn't make the ideologies inherently bad. In a more simple scenario, I don't feel that blaming video games for violence is a reasonable accusation either. All of these conclusions take out the main factor - human agency. Regardless of the motivatingand contributing factors, the people involved have the choice to act or not. The repsonsiblity should end there, IMO.

    Thanks again Mike. School's out, so with any luck I'll have a good, deep post up in the coming days. We'll see how much brain mass I lost over the last semester.

    Cory

    (sorry I removed the first one because I typoed my own name. The evidence currently suggests a reduction in net brain function).

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