Matthew Carlos: Atheism is an Ideology

It's rare to find someone who can come up with a new take on the old canard about atheism being an ideology. Unfortunately, being "new" isn't also the same as "good," and that certainly describes Matthew Carlos' understanding of atheism. The most charitable thing that I can say about his argument is that, with a little remedial work in English, he might yet manage to develop something interesting.

Matthew Carlos: Atheism = ideological belief in *non-existence* of God, etymologically a 'religion' (bounded belief system).

Matthew Carlos: atheism is an -ism (=ideology). etymological root of 'religion' means 'bounded belief/behaviour' (Oxford English Dictionary).

Matthew Carlos: isn't a 'non-belief', but a belief about non-existence of God. All belief/-ism provides teleologic bounds to thought.

People who limit themselves to online or abridged dictionaries and who refuse to think about the issue very deeply will, of course, agree that "ism" means "ideology, system, doctrine." Everyone else will quickly realize that while "ism" frequently refers to ideologies and systems, it can easily refer to other things as well. Pauperism, heroism, astigmatism, and metabolism are but a few of the many, many "ism" words that have nothing whatsoever to do with ideologies or systems.

Obviously the mere fact that there are non-ideological "isms" does not automatically mean that atheism isn't an ideology and that's not what I'm arguing. All I'm pointing out is how utterly ridiculous it is to argue that atheism has the suffix "ism" and therefore must be ideological. This is an argument that is decisively refuted by basic research and a few minutes of thought -- and there's no excuse for totally eschewing either. But it's hard to see how Matthew Carlos could offer the above argument if he has done any research or given it any thought.

Matthew Carlos: Ideology (in the generic) is an ontological structure of thought & action, not firstly a particular set of thoughts.

Matthew Carlos: The 'telos' (focus) of #atheism is 'no god', parallel to a telos 'god exists'. Each constrain thought equally tho opposite

Matthew Carlos: the shared structure of thought among all atheists is 'no god'. Obviously.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that Matthew Carlos gets the definition of atheism wrong -- an especially egregious error in his case since he's already demonstrated that he has and can use the Oxford English Dictionary.

Let's simply take his premises as given: First, atheism means "belief in no god" and theism means "belief in god exists." Second, such positions necessarily constrain thought because, at a bare minimum, they must exclude some possibility from being accepted. Finally, an ideology (in the generic) exists whenever one's thought and action are "structured" by something that limits them.

Where do those premises lead us? Well, if we accept them at face value then we must conclude that atheism and theism are ideologies. But that's not all -- strictly speaking, this reasoning forces us to conclude that every belief is, all by itself, an ideology. That's because every belief must necessarily exclude something or other, which means it creates limits and structures.

So the belief that sugar tastes sweet is an ideology and everyone who shares that belief shares that ideology -- they share the "structure of thought of 'sugar = sweet'." We can repeat this for every belief you hold We can probably do it too for every attitude, position, and perspective you hold because at the very least they can be formulated in some way to express some belief. So we all have thousands and thousands of overlapping ideologies.

And you probably imagined that an "ideology" had to be some sort of system or set of beliefs, not just any random, isolated, individual belief! Good thing we have Matthew Carlos around to set us straight.

But wait, there's more! Couldn't we also do the same for every disbelief, for every absence of a belief we have? I don't see why not -- in every case that you don't happen to believe the truth of some proposition, we can say that this entails some sort of limit and structure to your thought. This would be true even in cases where you're completely unaware of the proposition in question.

For example, you've probably never heard of Snarffagas and thus lack any belief in it. As a consequence, though, your thoughts are limited because you also can't believe in Nissillaz or Ulval. And, what's more, you'll never, ever, go yammumping in your life. So both thought and action acquire limits and structure, at least implicitly, from every proposition you don't believe. What's more, there are arguably an infinite number of propositions that you don't believe. Thus you have an infinite number of ideologies!

And you probably thought that whatever ideologies you held, they were limited to things like humanism, capitalism, humanitarianism, and that sort of thing. Once again, we're lucky to have Matthew Carlos around to set us straight!

Or maybe, just maybe, that entire line of "reasoning" is complete garbage. Maybe, just maybe, an ideology really does require some sort of system of beliefs and attitudes, however loosely connected, before it can be a genuine ideology. Maybe individual beliefs, no matter how fundamental they are to this or that ideology, can't be ideologies all by themselves.

That would be the sensible way to approach things. So why isn't it the Matthew Carlos way to approach things? Maybe it has something to do with why he deleted most of the messages he posted on this topic. It looks an awful lot like Carlos became embarrassed by what he wrote -- but not quite embarrassed enough to delete all the messages, much less admit to any errors and adjust his position.