Debating Religion Doesn't Require Treating Atheists Like Equals
A self-described "know it all" with a "god complex" exemplifies this problem by writing:
Atheists and Agnostics typically don’t know anything about any other religion besides Christianity. They all read the Bible apparently and know more about it than Christians. They dissected it and took the words as literal meanings while the Christians take the words as something more symbolic. Stories if you will.
Most of the people that claim they are Atheists online tend to have no idea what an Atheist actually is. So basically you just call them Agnostic because they have no real bsis for believing there is no God, but simply hate religion and heard the term Atheist before and think it is cool.
Refutations of some of the errors made here can be found in the links in the above text. Rather than focus on them, I simply wanted to point out here just how dismissive this is, taken as a whole, of atheists and atheistic critiques of religion. Atheists don't know anything about religions other than Christianity, and even in the case of Christianity their knowledge is just so unsophisticated. Atheists don't even know what atheism is, so they don't have to be granted the courtesy of calling them atheists — we'll just call them something else we deem more fitting and then point out that they only call themselves atheists out of some deluded desire to be cool.
With an attitude like that, what's the point of having a discussion with atheists in the first place? Indeed, why even call it a "discussion"? Granted, some atheists will call theism a "delusion," but how many atheists go so far as to deny that self-professed theists are "really" theists or understand what "theism" is? How many say that people are only theists because they hate atheism and chose the term "Christian" because they think it's cool? This is far more dismissive and condescending than anything that can normally be ascribed to atheists, yet it's atheists who are continually accused of being intolerant and arrogant. How does that work, again?
Comments
Good post. I have a very intelligent in-law (High School Teacher, Masters Degree in Math) who I am very close to who told me in a very matter of fact voice that he didn’t believe that there was such a thing as an Atheist. I guess I need to ask him what his definition of an Atheist is.
Just wanted to thank you for using my post as a basis for this. I just did a response to your article on my blog with some links to you.
The Religious Debate Revisited
Keep up the good work.
I’d like to say that I am an atheist and I know a whole lot about religion. I have a master’s in Religion and 3/4s of a PhD. My area of study was Hinduism. I also know a lot about Buddhism and a fair amount about Biblical Judaism and Islam. Christianity may be the religion I know least about although I have read the New Testament.
I was born Jewish.
I don’t hate religion generally and I love Hinduism. And I certainly didn’t take the name atheist because I think it’s cool. That’s so patronizing a comment it makes me sick.
I don’t understand what your education level has to do with any of this, but good luck on finishing the rest of the PhD. I quit after a Masters so I can certainly respect your ongoing education.
What exactly are you missing in there that said I was talking about all Atheists? The entire point of anything I wrote was to tell you about the majority of people I run accrossed online and how a religious debate typically goes.
As an Atheist I think you would be well aware that many who claim they are tend to be Agnostic and don’t understand the term at all. If you are so educated in the subject then you would certainly fit into the “knows their stuff” category, which was mentioned. From personal experience this is a minority.
Defend your beliefs by all means, but don’t accuse me of saying that all Atheists are uneducated and think it is cool. You ARE an Atheist. You know why you have that philosophy. Unfortunately there are many that say they are Atheist although they have serious doubts that no higher power exists. That is simply all I was pointing out.
I’m closer to being an Atheist than you know actually. I haven’t taken an oath to say that I denounce all powers greater than I and that the possibility of no god existing is what i believe, but I’m not far from it. I believe many of the same things you probably do, but I don’t call myself Atheist becasue based on definition I am not. I’m talking about people that believe similarly to me that DO say they are Atheist when clearly they aren’t.
I’m all open for this subject though. That post I made initially was intended to spark debate. Already it has proven prophetic as this debate never goes anywhere and no one really comes out of it other than offended. Again, the point of the original post.
He didn’t exactly quote me in context either so if you actually went to where he got it from you might have a better idea as to what I actually said and why by reading the About page on my blog. Pure satire people. Pure satire.
Mr. Troll,
You can be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time.
See: http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm
The Troll wrote, “I haven’t taken an oath to say that I denounce all powers greater than I and that the possibility of no god existing is what i believe, but I’m not far from it.”
Crap. I must have missed the whole taking an oath part of atheism. Does this mean I’m not “really” an atheist?
Yep. Without the oath and the anti-baptism you aren’t a “True Atheist.” You also need to know the secret handshake.
Generalizing about atheists over all based on personal experience is rather like generalizing about blacks or Jews based on personal experience. Anti-Semites and racists do it all the time, but their claims of “personal experience” don’t excuse them. Why do you think it’s OK for you? Would it be OK to say “Jews are typically greedy” or “Blacks are typically criminal”? Of course not — and it’s not OK to generalize about atheists, either.
1. Atheism and atheist are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized.
2. Atheism is not a philosophy.
There is nothing about being an atheist which requires that a person be absolutely convinced that no gods exist,
You obviously don’t know what atheism, yet you presume to judge atheists through broad, unfair generalizations. That’s what I am pointing out. When you generalize broadly about atheists in the way you did, you are telling reader not to take atheists seriously and not to treat them as equals or with consideration. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t say “all” atheists — using “typically” and “most” is more than enough.
Ecellent comments. I am going to read everything and respond accordingly later tonight when I get regular stuff done.
While tracking some searches on my site I came acrossed a great Atheist site that you are all probably pretty familiar with called ,Rank Atheism I found it fascinating with his writing style and it has Austin listed as one of his resources. IF you read his latest post I think you can pick me out of the debate style topic…lol
I promise when I come back I’ll throw out the stereotypes and just get to the guts of it. You all seem to be taking everything very literally when my site is simply written that way for pure dramatic effect. Sarchasm dripping from the entire thing. It is just the way I am. I am an instigator and this is fully apparent right now. You have called me out on it and I am grateful for the chance to continue this discussion more civil manner with you. I don’t have any issue with getting owned online. If I learn something I am better for it. Of course that isn’t going to happen all the time either so don’t think I am going to lay down.
Well…it was a bit longer than I had intended so I had to do a post instead of just leave a comment. Looking forward to being “corrected” on any mistakes
.
Trolling on the Internet with Atheists
Your biggest mistake is that you misdefine atheism. However, I already corrected you on that in the links above and at no point do you attempt any rebuttals to the explanations.
Even the dictionary you link doesn’t define atheism as you try to. Dictionary.com defines atheist as “a person who denies or disbelieves” in gods. If you look up “disbelieve” (did you do that?), you find “have no belief in; refuse or reject belief in.” Thus “atheist” is someone who denies gods, has no belief in gods, or refuses/rejects belief in gods. The broad concept of “has no belief in” actually covers all of this, because anyone who denies the existence of gods necessarily has no belief in their existence.
This was all covered in the links above which you could have read if you had wanted to. Persisting with misinformation even after being correct really is trolling - no satire, genuine trolling.
“have no belief in” and believes it is not true are the same thing. What exactly does this prove? I stated exactly waht you just said in this ridiculous explanation.
Disbelieves means that they believe it to not be true. They refuse to believe in gods. In this case they believe there are no gods. They disbelieve in gods. They refuse to believe there are gods. They believe there are no gods.
Mix the words up all you want. The same meaning exists. Disbelieve is the opposite of believe. Denying the existance of anything just says you believe it does not exist.
The whole point is meaningless anyways becasue the subject was about the addition of these new words that you made up. An atheist disbelieves (the oppostie of believes) in the existance of gods. If they don’t beleive that they aren’t atheists. There are no levels of atheists. You are or you aren’t.
No, they aren’t, as I explain in more detail here. One of the pages I linked to, by the way, takes you to this explanation of the difference between belief and disbelief.
No, it doesn’t. If “have no believe in” and “deny” meant the same, they wouldn’t both be listed and connected by an “or” in the definition of “atheist.” It’s thus obvious that they mean different things. It’s a simple matter of logic: “believe (not X)” and “not (believe X)” are entirely different operations. If I do not believe that you own a Honda, that doesn’t mean that I deny that you own a Honda.
The words I’m using appear in comprehensive, unabridged dictionaries and are used by most all atheists. You should familiarize yourself with a subject before accusing others of making up standard terminology.
That is true, but what you misunderstand is that no one is talking about “levels” of atheism. Monotheism and polytheism aren’t “levels” of theism, they are just different ways in which theism can occur. Theism is simply the belief in the existence of at least one sort of god. Some believe in just one. Some believe in more than one. Some believe but don’t claim to know for sure (agnostic theism). Soem believe and claim to know for sure. Those aren’t “levels,” those are just variations within what is a very broad and simple category.
The same is true for atheism. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods. Some atheists don’t go any further than this (weak or implicit atheism). Some don’t care about gods (apathetic atheism). Some go on to deny the existence of any and all gods (strong or explicit atheism). Some claim to know for sure that no gods can or do exist. Some don’t. None of this represents “levels” of atheism because all are equally atheists. What it is, rather, are different approaches or variations within a very broad and simple category.
Austin Cline said:
“It’s a simple matter of logic: “believe (not X)” and “not (believe X)” are entirely different operations. If I do not believe that you own a Honda, that doesn’t mean that I deny that you own a Honda.”
Austin is right to point out that disbelief is not a belief in a negative, as many people often believe.
I live in the United Kingdom, and late last year, I saw a documentary on Channel Four called “The Trouble With Atheism” presented by Rod Liddle. It was a terrible programme, full of sophomoric reasoning: people hear “two stories” about atheism, learn to rationalise them, and then pick a conclusion based on their own prejudices. “Criticism” of atheism usually entails name calling, such as “atheist fundamentalism”, rather than an examination of the actual arguments from atheists. Then, faced with the two “extreme positions” of atheism and theism, some people choose to rationalise the “options” and then adopt a false compromise of “reasonable” agnosticism, which of course not only manages to misrepresent atheism and theism, but agnosticism also, because people equate this position as more “respectful”, and not simply absence of knowledge. I find it irritating that people do this, especially when I hear things like “the more reasonable, opened-minded atheism of Michael Ruse contrasts with that of fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins”. They make the mistake of assuming that confidence in one’s atheism equates with confidence that God does not exist. Simply because one is sure of one’s a-theism, it does not logically follow that such a position denies the truth value of theism. Besides, who cares? I am confident that I don’t care about Gods.
If “The Trouble With Atheism” was not an accurate programme, at least it provided an adequate summary of how misrepresented and poorly understood atheism, and atheists are.
You can watch “The Trouble With Atheism” here:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=895149919647460806&q=the+trouble+with+atheism
Alan.
Sorry, been a bit busy. Read this the other day and it was to my eyes what Charlie Brown’s teacher is to my ears.
I’ll concede the grammar and logic lesson to fulfill the superiority complexes all around if you concede that we have established you can’t be an atheist and an agnostic.
Other than that I don’t see where this is going. I can ramble on with ridiculous claims forever if you would like me to for dramatic effect, but I don’t find this debate of any more use.
E-mail me Austin if you care to as I would like to chat with you a bit about some things unrelated to this debate. I’m getting kicked back when I try to go your way.
I’d be interested in some more chat about your beliefs though if anyone is up for it. There is certainly a decent intelligence level being displayed here so I’m sure there is quite a bit you all can teach me. Something of actual interest besides a Dictionary writing convention.
This is an interesting example of passive-aggressive behavior - you’ll only “concede” others’ argument if means their admitting that it’s only for the sake of their “superiority complexes.” This would allow you to pretend that you haven’t really conceded anything.
If you have a counter-argument, please offer it; if not, please acknowledge that.
No, I haven’t seen where you have established that one can’t be an atheist and an agnostic. Atheism and agnosticism, as I have explained, are about separate issues: belief and knowledge. The fact that someone does or does not believe in any gods cannot mean that the label “agnostic” cannot apply to them as well.
Perhaps you aren’t using the correct address: atheism.guide@about.com