May I suggest, with respect, Martin, that you think you know that matter is all there is? i'm not sure you can ever know it. For me, if not for you, there is always a place in my mind for Browning's 'the grand Perhaps'.
Excellent @mousethief. Yeeaah. This atheist, this unbeliever (JTB+'s notwithstanding), this unforgivable infidel, no longer goes as far as believing in God because he has no reason to. All the howling desire to, yes, like any honest atheist. I 100% certainly do not believe that there are no G/god/s. I know no such things; I know what I know and they aren't in it. There is nothing to disbelieve. Especially the fundamentalist atoning God of Christianity, you know, the one that bypasses being rationally necessary. I do not need my unbelief forgiving.
Non-atheists' descriptions of atheism as a religion strike me very much as a matter of reception -- a person imposing their own understanding of the world and people onto what they hear from someone else. This distorts what the other person communicates.
It can also lead to silly proposals -- as I have heard suggested since I was in high school in the 1980s -- that "humanism" (with no accurate or thorough definition) cannot be taught in schools, because "humanism" as the non-atheist describes it according to a definition of religion is a religion.
As I understand it atheism is similar to my relationship to the builder and owner of the house at the NW corner of Cass and Warren in Detroit. I am unaware that there is a house there, unaware that anyone owns it at all, if it is there, and do not orient my life in relation to the existence or non-existence of the house or its owner.
In some cases, if the atheism becomes one of conviction, maybe I felt there is or had been such a house and owner, research the property to find it has always been a warehouse, or that those streets don't intersect or even exist. Again, I do not orient my life in relation to the owner or property, but maybe for a time to the grief I might feel, or to figuring out how to reorient my life. But this is not a religious orientation.
When I have heard of atheism referred to as a religion or some kind of alternate "faith" it has been in the context of countering it, trying to redefine (strawman) it in order to argue against it. Without really understanding it or what the atheist has said.
May I suggest, with respect, Martin, that you think you know that matter is all there is? i'm not sure you can ever know it. For me, if not for you, there is always a place in my mind for Browning's 'the grand Perhaps'.
Suggest away @Eirenist. All I know is matter. All my unknowns are matters of matter.
May I suggest, with respect, Martin, that you think you know that matter is all there is? i'm not sure you can ever know it. For me, if not for you, there is always a place in my mind for Browning's 'the grand Perhaps'.
Suggest away @Eirenist. All I know is matter. All my unknowns are matters of matter.
I'm with Eirenist. Earlier you implied you knew QM? All is not 'matter'. What about fields? What we experience as 'matter' is a localised vibration in an energy field, for example an electron is a vibration in an electron field, its likely position derived from Schrodinger's equation.
Though what this has to do with the topic I have no idea.
On the poetry thing ... I have atheists in my poetry group who love poetry.
Their eyes glaze over when anything 'religious' comes up.
I've certainly met 'fundamentalist' atheists who can't abide poetry but equally I've come across religious people who don't 'get' poetry either.
I think there can be a 'fundamentalist' mindset that can occur anywhere - in political groups and special interest groups of any kind - as well as in religious ones.
Most professed atheists I know have very clear and coherent moral values of the 'Golden Rule' kind with love of neighbour very much to the fore - but no sense of there being a deity behind all that.
Other than lack of belief in God their values could map over onto a Judeo-Christian 'value-chart' very easily.
Replying to a comment made some time ago: science is not founded on experimentation but on observation. There are disciplines regarded as sciences in which experiments are not practical, e.g., vulcanology and the theory of star formation.
Replying to a comment made some time ago: science is not founded on experimentation but on observation. There are disciplines regarded as sciences in which experiments are not practical, e.g., vulcanology and the theory of star formation.
Someone could start a thread on such matters.
I would say that experimentation is a special case of observation.
May I suggest, with respect, Martin, that you think you know that matter is all there is? i'm not sure you can ever know it. For me, if not for you, there is always a place in my mind for Browning's 'the grand Perhaps'.
Suggest away @Eirenist. All I know is matter. All my unknowns are matters of matter.
I'm with Eirenist. Earlier you implied you knew QM? All is not 'matter'. What about fields? What we experience as 'matter' is a localised vibration in an energy field, for example an electron is a vibration in an electron field, its likely position derived from Schrodinger's equation.
Though what this has to do with the topic I have no idea.
So what field is not a function of matter? I know QM as a well read layman. Although my greatest mathematical moment, as a too late developer, was doing a proof of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. I don't have 10,000 hours left for maths. Calculus. Physics. And another for music. And one each for 10 languages. What's a proton? A photon? A local vibration an an electromagnetic field? Which is an energy field? What's the chicken? What's the egg? Energy purely being an attribute of matter of course.
All I know is nature. All my unknowns are in the nature of nature. Not as punchy is it?
Is religious belief (along with political belief, alt. truth, conspiracy theories, UFOlogy, magic, superstition, homeopathy and everything else that bubbles up from our at least Carboniferous limbic systems to ferment our minds(=brains)) reliable, justified true belief, i.e. propositional knowledge, not inferred from anything false, just necessary and sufficient conditions?
Humanism is obviously a belief, predicated very modernly on atheism. Jesus was obviously a humanist.
Any attempt to level the playing field, make a:theism 50:50, is dishonest. To pretend that Gettier cases achieve that. Anybody want to try? To make a Gettier case for science and rationality not being knowledge, like religion? And therefore they are equal?
(a) QM is the most tested, statistically sound model of reality by a country parsec, is it a religion?
(b) Atheism is a combination of an empirical belief (there are no numinous entities that reward worship) with a negative subset of existential beliefs (you don't believe in God).
(c) The meme that atheism is the absence of belief is misleading in a number of ways - beliefs aren't objects than can be present or absent. Also, it's like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens.
(d) More to the point, everyone has some sort of existential beliefs. By existential beliefs I mean beliefs about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are.
(e) Arnold's Dover Beach is the most explicit expression of a certain widespread atheist and humanist existential belief.
(f) A religion I think we can define for present purposes as a set of existential beliefs that have formal communally recognised practices that aim to strengthen the link in the practioners' lives between how things are believed to be and how it is believed they ought to live.
(But I gather that say Greek or Roman worship was not under that definition a religion. But the category "religion" isn't one that they had.)
There are atheist religious beliefs: Buddhism, obviously, Taoism. But most Western atheist existential beliefs do not have any formal practices associated with them.
(a)/' What? By whom? Where? How?
(b) Atheism does not have to be defined by any negative, by any belief. And it is not a belief to say that there are no numinous entities that reward worship. It is a fact. It is true. It is knowledge. So yeah, it's a JTB etc, but it's not a belief in the same ballpark as religion. It is not a fact, it is not true, it is not knowledge to say that there are. It is a mere (UF)B.
(c) My atheism is part of my absence of beliefs, (apart from JTB+'s). Aren't beliefs experience by subjects? How is my knowledge like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens?
(d) Again I have knowledge about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are. No beliefs about them whatsoever, apart from the ought of the golden rule, of the Rogerian.
(e) Superb.
(f) Where how things are believed to be involves supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Otherwise what you described is morality.
It's a belief about the existence of God. But religion implies rules for living based on belief and implies a community doing similar things based on a shared belief. I don't think atheism fits those boxes.
I don't agree. Religion really doesn't need to say anything about a deity.
The pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim would agree. His "functional" definition, written in 1912, says, "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them".
Quite. Is Buddhism a religion? Along with physics?
Well (and I throw this in for relevant light relief) - when one joins the freemasons, one has to profess a belief in a supreme being (however the individual themselves defines it), and take a series of oaths on whatever volume of sacred law fits with that. I can think of at least one mason who took the oaths on the Principia Mathematica, on the grounds that for them mathematics was their supreme being that ordered the universe... Others have done it with Newton and physics.
So, depends who you're asking, but at least some people - and these tend to be university academics IMO - definitely personally say yes.
Again , where are the supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements? It's colloquially fine to say that physics is my religion of course. Like the GI in Pacific when asked what his beliefs were, '...ammunition'.
Seems to me that "religion" implies something organized and/or codified in some way, while "atheism" is simply not believing in a deity. "Humanism" might qualify as a religion though.
Law, business, trade, international relations, education is something organized and/or codified in some way. "Religion" implies something organized and/or codified in some way with supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.
And @ChastMastr. It's fundamentally intellectually dishonest, with no moral implication whatsoever, apart from blowing morality out of the water and sinking it below the waterline. We all do it, all the time. It's a fundamental part of morality, as Hume 110% rightly declared "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." It's what makes us human more than anything else. Our triumph and our doom. To the point where belief utterly corrupts intellect.
It’s not fundamentally dishonest, and it is wrong and insulting to accuse strangers of intellectual dishonesty.
Is religious belief (along with political belief, alt. truth, conspiracy theories, UFOlogy, magic, superstition, homeopathy and everything else that bubbles up from our at least Carboniferous limbic systems to ferment our minds(=brains)) reliable, justified true belief, i.e. propositional knowledge, not inferred from anything false, just necessary and sufficient conditions?
Humanism is obviously a belief, predicated very modernly on atheism. Jesus was obviously a humanist.
Any attempt to level the playing field, make a:theism 50:50, is dishonest. To pretend that Gettier cases achieve that. Anybody want to try? To make a Gettier case for science and rationality not being knowledge, like religion? And therefore they are equal?
(a) QM is the most tested, statistically sound model of reality by a country parsec, is it a religion?
(b) Atheism is a combination of an empirical belief (there are no numinous entities that reward worship) with a negative subset of existential beliefs (you don't believe in God).
(c) The meme that atheism is the absence of belief is misleading in a number of ways - beliefs aren't objects than can be present or absent. Also, it's like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens.
(d) More to the point, everyone has some sort of existential beliefs. By existential beliefs I mean beliefs about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are.
(e) Arnold's Dover Beach is the most explicit expression of a certain widespread atheist and humanist existential belief.
(f) A religion I think we can define for present purposes as a set of existential beliefs that have formal communally recognised practices that aim to strengthen the link in the practioners' lives between how things are believed to be and how it is believed they ought to live.
(But I gather that say Greek or Roman worship was not under that definition a religion. But the category "religion" isn't one that they had.)
There are atheist religious beliefs: Buddhism, obviously, Taoism. But most Western atheist existential beliefs do not have any formal practices associated with them.
(a)/' What? By whom? Where? How?
(b) Atheism does not have to be defined by any negative, by any belief. And it is not a belief to say that there are no numinous entities that reward worship. It is a fact. It is true. It is knowledge. So yeah, it's a JTB etc, but it's not a belief in the same ballpark as religion. It is not a fact, it is not true, it is not knowledge to say that there are. It is a mere (UF)B.
(c) My atheism is part of my absence of beliefs, (apart from JTB+'s). Aren't beliefs experience by subjects? How is my knowledge like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens?
(d) Again I have knowledge about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are. No beliefs about them whatsoever, apart from the ought of the golden rule, of the Rogerian.
(e) Superb.
(f) Where how things are believed to be involves supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Otherwise what you described is morality.
It's a belief about the existence of God. But religion implies rules for living based on belief and implies a community doing similar things based on a shared belief. I don't think atheism fits those boxes.
I don't agree. Religion really doesn't need to say anything about a deity.
The pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim would agree. His "functional" definition, written in 1912, says, "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them".
Quite. Is Buddhism a religion? Along with physics?
Well (and I throw this in for relevant light relief) - when one joins the freemasons, one has to profess a belief in a supreme being (however the individual themselves defines it), and take a series of oaths on whatever volume of sacred law fits with that. I can think of at least one mason who took the oaths on the Principia Mathematica, on the grounds that for them mathematics was their supreme being that ordered the universe... Others have done it with Newton and physics.
So, depends who you're asking, but at least some people - and these tend to be university academics IMO - definitely personally say yes.
Again , where are the supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements? It's colloquially fine to say that physics is my religion of course. Like the GI in Pacific when asked what his beliefs were, '...ammunition'.
Seems to me that "religion" implies something organized and/or codified in some way, while "atheism" is simply not believing in a deity. "Humanism" might qualify as a religion though.
Law, business, trade, international relations, education is something organized and/or codified in some way. "Religion" implies something organized and/or codified in some way with supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.
And @ChastMastr. It's fundamentally intellectually dishonest, with no moral implication whatsoever, apart from blowing morality out of the water and sinking it below the waterline. We all do it, all the time. It's a fundamental part of morality, as Hume 110% rightly declared "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." It's what makes us human more than anything else. Our triumph and our doom. To the point where belief utterly corrupts intellect.
It’s not fundamentally dishonest, and it is wrong and insulting to accuse strangers of intellectual dishonesty.
I’m just going to say this and try very hard to maintain a level tone. There is no, absolutely no, absolutely NO intellectual dishonesty without moral implication.
I’m going to respectfully request you do not accuse me or other people on this thread of the extremely serious moral failure of intellectual dishonesty. I have struggled to make this request in as polite a manner as possible. I’m really trying to hold it together on this issue.
However I do know that bandying about statements such as Morality is dishonest , especially when it appears to be aimed at one Shipmate, is jerkish behaviour.
@Martin54 hounding ChastMastr in this way is completely unacceptable - a violation of commandment 1 - and a violation of the host’s warning you were given on this specific issue. I am giving you four weeks shoreleave.
Could we get back on topic? Pace Martin, It has long been a recept of philosophy that 'reason is the handmaiden of the emotions'. It's how we sift through them and moderate them. A religion, with its precepts, practices wisdom (and shiboleths) can help us in that process. (and boy, do I need all the help I can get!).
I think a 'religion', by definition, needs 'precepts, practices wisdom (and shiboleths)'.
I of course, only know, from the inside, those of Christianity, but when I see followers of other religions or faiths show the 'Fruits of the Spirit,' I rejoice.
There is a dark side, of course, when beliefs, 'religious' or otherwise result in narrowness, cruelty, exclusion, hate ... well St Paul gives us a list. Alas, atheists can be as prone to the dark side as the rest of us ....
Sorry, I seem to be preaching (a bad habit, I know), but it is Sunday!
I'm curious to try to understand what @Martin54 was talking about. Is that allowed?
Presumably he was taking cues from Plato and the "divided soul" concept. So at a guess the point @Martin54 was making was that Plato/Socrates was wrong to use the famous chariot metaphor. In which Socrates implies that in the balanced soul the logos (reason) regulates eros (passion).
He (@Martin54) appears to think that it isn't possible to have dispassionate worked morality because it is always polluted by the eros.
Maybe that's not what Martin means (it's hard for me to say with any certainty because I don't understand) but it seems like an interesting point of discussion.
Can one think one is being dispassionate about a serious subject whilst actually being led by the passions? Is it that we are just pieces of stardust running to predermined ends by fate?
If that's really the case, and one really believes it, I don't see what possible advantage there is to further thought or discussion about it.
You might as well find something to do that you find fulfilling because nothing really matters anyway.
Also how is this relevant to a discussion about atheism? Some atheists think like that, most clearly don't. So..
I thought that these arguments often go back to Hume, reason is the slave of the passions. This is interpreted in different ways, but can be seen as meaning that reason does not inspire us to do things, for that, we must be moved in some way.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Ok I don't know Hume so I was illustrating my ignorance.
So is that point that one might believe that there is logic and reason to ones actions, the only real motivation is passion?
I find that too black and white. There may well be reason behind some actions, for example, filling in my tax return. I recall atheists arguing that you can't reason someone out of belief, as they didn't reason their way into it. Blah blah. I mean, this leaves me cold.
I recall atheists arguing that you can't reason someone out of belief, as they didn't reason their way into it. Blah blah. I mean, this leaves me cold.
Ok well this part I understand on some level. But the primers I've briefly read on Hume suggest that he's saying that there's no such thing as dispassionate and logical reason and that they're always passionate. Even when a person thinks they are in control of the passions.
One must tread carefully here, as @Martin isn't here to defend or explain himself. The traditional view as I understand it is that reason could, and should, inform, guide, control and check the passions. And that reason can weigh, 'tease out' assess differing moral arguments.
Martin seems to believe passion invariably pollutes both our reason and moral sensibilities. Hmm ... if this is the case, then the proposition, 'Reason is polluted (or at least compromised) by our passions is questionable as it is itself compromised by our passsion and emotions. Then why believe it? The image of a chap sawing away at the branch they are sitting on springs to mind.
I had no prolems with gracious and polite atheists ... (at the pub, said with a smile, "I'll have a pint of JC, please. You should be able to remember that.", but not all were like that and their logic in argument was indeed affected by their passionate disbelief.
(you can see I'm passionate about reason, emotions and logic ... sorry). Back to the topic .....
I'm not going to use Hume's terminology because I'm not an expert on Hume himself. If you find an expert on Hume trust them not me.
Hume's model of human psychology is what we call a belief-desire model. We have desires to achieve various goals; we have beliefs that if we do certain things we will probably achieve those goals; therefore, we do those things. There is no rational argument why we might desire one thing more than another, beyond the thought that trying to achieve one thing might stop us from getting other things we want more.
This contrasts with eg Plato for whom wanting something because we rationally believe it to be good is qualitatively different from wanting it because it looks or smells nice.
Interesting point there about the traditional view, as in therapy, I commonly met clients who had chaotic feelings, but couldn't think very well. The psychoanalytic view is that they lack containment for their feelings, and therapy could provide that. Of course, you get the reverse, people in their heads, with rudimentary feelings.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
I agree with all this especially the BIB. What exactly do they hope to achieve?
I’m late to this discussion, but I think the answer to the OP is that if you are a professor of religious studies or comparative religion, then yes, an atheist has a religion whether they think they do or not and their atheism is part of that religion.
However, most people do not talk about religion the way professors of religious studies and comparative religion do. Also, professors in those fields tend to start out as atheists or agnostics or become them at some point in their studies, but that’s a bit of a tangent .
The traditional view as I understand it is that reason could, and should, inform, guide, control and check the passions. And that reason can weigh, 'tease out' assess differing moral arguments.
Agreed. I've found Lewis (C.S.) very helpful in these matters, myself.
if you are a professor of religious studies or comparative religion, then yes, an atheist has a religion whether they think they do or not and their atheism is part of that religion.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
I agree with all this especially the BIB. What exactly do they hope to achieve?
From their viewpoint - a reduction of the negative effects of religion on society. Attacks on people's reproductive rights (abortion, contraception); abject pseudo-scientific bullshit being passed off as valid (creationism, flat earth, geocentrism); bigoted attacks on people's sexuality. People launching lethal attacks on places of worship because they're not quite the right type of worship.
I have a great deal of sympathy with their frustration in these areas. It's ironic they're being called "militant" when they're not the ones with the guns and bombs.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
I agree with all this especially the BIB. What exactly do they hope to achieve?
From their viewpoint - a reduction of the negative effects of religion on society. Attacks on people's reproductive rights (abortion, contraception); abject pseudo-scientific bullshit being passed off as valid (creationism, flat earth, geocentrism); bigoted attacks on people's sexuality. People launching lethal attacks on places of worship because they're not quite the right type of worship.
I have a great deal of sympathy with their frustration in these areas. It's ironic they're being called "militant" when they're not the ones with the guns and bombs.
But then atheists are not necessarily consistent on these topics. It's hard to argue that they are a uniform good, even if one agreed with all of these points.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
I agree with all this especially the BIB. What exactly do they hope to achieve?
From their viewpoint - a reduction of the negative effects of religion on society. Attacks on people's reproductive rights (abortion, contraception); abject pseudo-scientific bullshit being passed off as valid (creationism, flat earth, geocentrism); bigoted attacks on people's sexuality. People launching lethal attacks on places of worship because they're not quite the right type of worship.
I have a great deal of sympathy with their frustration in these areas. It's ironic they're being called "militant" when they're not the ones with the guns and bombs.
But then atheists are not necessarily consistent on these topics. It's hard to argue that they are a uniform good, even if one agreed with all of these points.
I'm not arguing they're a uniform good, but rather I can sympathise with a lot of what they say.
There is a difference between some atheists who are very vocal about their non belief and the majority who never try to ' convert' others. It's not a religion though.
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
I agree with all this especially the BIB. What exactly do they hope to achieve?
From their viewpoint - a reduction of the negative effects of religion on society. Attacks on people's reproductive rights (abortion, contraception); abject pseudo-scientific bullshit being passed off as valid (creationism, flat earth, geocentrism); bigoted attacks on people's sexuality. People launching lethal attacks on places of worship because they're not quite the right type of worship.
I have a great deal of sympathy with their frustration in these areas. It's ironic they're being called "militant" when they're not the ones with the guns and bombs.
This is good, and something I need to remember as I'm with the atheists here!
Forgive my ignorance @Telford, but what does BIB stand for in this context?
I had Soviet style militant atheism in mind. There are other forms of course.
I can certainly understand a backlash against religious fundamentalism or theocratic regimes, but full-on atheism isn't known for its tolerance either.
I can certainly understand a backlash against religious fundamentalism or theocratic regimes, but full-on atheism isn't known for its tolerance either.
Depends what you mean by "full-on". The more militant atheism isn't typical of most atheists (although they tend to get more publicity). In fact, I suspect that a majority of atheists don''t even think about themselves that way. I mean, they might so describe themselves if you specifically asked them, but otherwise it's about as significant in their every day life as their great-grandmother's middle name.
I'm generally in accord with Clifford Geertz's definition of religion (from his essay "Religion as a Cultural System," worth reading in it's entirety):
“[Religion is] [1] a system of symbols which acts to [2] establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by [3] formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and [4] clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that [5] the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (3).
In this framework, some atheisms would qualify as religion--those that aim to " establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations" (Dawkins comes to mind). Others that are less concerned with with convincing people of the nonexistence of gods than simply indifferent to the idea of gods (Taoism, for example) may be religions in other respects, but not specifically in their atheism.
It sounds as if Geertz (whose work I quoted, many moons ago, in my MA dissertation) is veering towards Durkheim's "functionalist" approach but adding something "substantive" as well.
“[Religion is] [1] a system of symbols which acts to [2] establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by [3] formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and [4] clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that [5] the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (3).
@Timothy the Obscure something to work with!
Atheism
1) is NOT a system; has NO symbols; ain't [even] got no songs.
Without point one, none of the rest of the definition can be achieved religiously. By the sometimes resulting nihilism, atheism can affect mood, motivation, and one's concept of the general order of existance, but that will occur as a matter of conclusion from sensed evidence, not via a system of symbols. And so through the rest of the definition.
As you mentioned Taoism and similar systems can be called religions, but that is related to other features of the system, independent from indifference to god.
Dawkins' "evangelism" against belief in theism does not fit point One in your definition either, so cannot be a religion by this definition -- in spite of his resemblence to a well-mannered street preacher.
Comments
It can also lead to silly proposals -- as I have heard suggested since I was in high school in the 1980s -- that "humanism" (with no accurate or thorough definition) cannot be taught in schools, because "humanism" as the non-atheist describes it according to a definition of religion is a religion.
As I understand it atheism is similar to my relationship to the builder and owner of the house at the NW corner of Cass and Warren in Detroit. I am unaware that there is a house there, unaware that anyone owns it at all, if it is there, and do not orient my life in relation to the existence or non-existence of the house or its owner.
In some cases, if the atheism becomes one of conviction, maybe I felt there is or had been such a house and owner, research the property to find it has always been a warehouse, or that those streets don't intersect or even exist. Again, I do not orient my life in relation to the owner or property, but maybe for a time to the grief I might feel, or to figuring out how to reorient my life. But this is not a religious orientation.
When I have heard of atheism referred to as a religion or some kind of alternate "faith" it has been in the context of countering it, trying to redefine (strawman) it in order to argue against it. Without really understanding it or what the atheist has said.
Suggest away @Eirenist. All I know is matter. All my unknowns are matters of matter.
I'm with Eirenist. Earlier you implied you knew QM? All is not 'matter'. What about fields? What we experience as 'matter' is a localised vibration in an energy field, for example an electron is a vibration in an electron field, its likely position derived from Schrodinger's equation.
Though what this has to do with the topic I have no idea.
Their eyes glaze over when anything 'religious' comes up.
I've certainly met 'fundamentalist' atheists who can't abide poetry but equally I've come across religious people who don't 'get' poetry either.
I think there can be a 'fundamentalist' mindset that can occur anywhere - in political groups and special interest groups of any kind - as well as in religious ones.
Most professed atheists I know have very clear and coherent moral values of the 'Golden Rule' kind with love of neighbour very much to the fore - but no sense of there being a deity behind all that.
Other than lack of belief in God their values could map over onto a Judeo-Christian 'value-chart' very easily.
Someone could start a thread on such matters.
I would say that experimentation is a special case of observation.
So what field is not a function of matter? I know QM as a well read layman. Although my greatest mathematical moment, as a too late developer, was doing a proof of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. I don't have 10,000 hours left for maths. Calculus. Physics. And another for music. And one each for 10 languages. What's a proton? A photon? A local vibration an an electromagnetic field? Which is an energy field? What's the chicken? What's the egg? Energy purely being an attribute of matter of course.
All I know is nature. All my unknowns are in the nature of nature. Not as punchy is it?
It’s not fundamentally dishonest, and it is wrong and insulting to accuse strangers of intellectual dishonesty.
“ And it is not a belief to say that there are no numinous entities that reward worship. It is a fact. It is true. It is knowledge. ”
No, that’s your belief.
I’m just going to say this and try very hard to maintain a level tone. There is no, absolutely no, absolutely NO intellectual dishonesty without moral implication.
I’m going to respectfully request you do not accuse me or other people on this thread of the extremely serious moral failure of intellectual dishonesty. I have struggled to make this request in as polite a manner as possible. I’m really trying to hold it together on this issue.
Thank you.
We disagree.
I have no idea what "as" means.
However I do know that bandying about statements such as Morality is dishonest , especially when it appears to be aimed at one Shipmate, is jerkish behaviour.
Stop it now.
Host hat off
North East Quine, Purgatory host
@Martin54 hounding ChastMastr in this way is completely unacceptable - a violation of commandment 1 - and a violation of the host’s warning you were given on this specific issue. I am giving you four weeks shoreleave.
Doublethink. Admin
[/Admin]
I think a 'religion', by definition, needs 'precepts, practices wisdom (and shiboleths)'.
I of course, only know, from the inside, those of Christianity, but when I see followers of other religions or faiths show the 'Fruits of the Spirit,' I rejoice.
There is a dark side, of course, when beliefs, 'religious' or otherwise result in narrowness, cruelty, exclusion, hate ... well St Paul gives us a list. Alas, atheists can be as prone to the dark side as the rest of us ....
Sorry, I seem to be preaching (a bad habit, I know), but it is Sunday!
Presumably he was taking cues from Plato and the "divided soul" concept. So at a guess the point @Martin54 was making was that Plato/Socrates was wrong to use the famous chariot metaphor. In which Socrates implies that in the balanced soul the logos (reason) regulates eros (passion).
He (@Martin54) appears to think that it isn't possible to have dispassionate worked morality because it is always polluted by the eros.
Maybe that's not what Martin means (it's hard for me to say with any certainty because I don't understand) but it seems like an interesting point of discussion.
Can one think one is being dispassionate about a serious subject whilst actually being led by the passions? Is it that we are just pieces of stardust running to predermined ends by fate?
If that's really the case, and one really believes it, I don't see what possible advantage there is to further thought or discussion about it.
You might as well find something to do that you find fulfilling because nothing really matters anyway.
Also how is this relevant to a discussion about atheism? Some atheists think like that, most clearly don't. So..
So is that point that one might believe that there is logic and reason to ones actions, the only real motivation is passion?
(Sorry, I may be setting too many hares running.)
A few years ago, I went to the funeral of a chap I had played cricket with for a few years. I only learnt of his atheism at his funeral.
I find that too black and white. There may well be reason behind some actions, for example, filling in my tax return. I recall atheists arguing that you can't reason someone out of belief, as they didn't reason their way into it. Blah blah. I mean, this leaves me cold.
Ok well this part I understand on some level. But the primers I've briefly read on Hume suggest that he's saying that there's no such thing as dispassionate and logical reason and that they're always passionate. Even when a person thinks they are in control of the passions.
Martin seems to believe passion invariably pollutes both our reason and moral sensibilities. Hmm ... if this is the case, then the proposition, 'Reason is polluted (or at least compromised) by our passions is questionable as it is itself compromised by our passsion and emotions. Then why believe it? The image of a chap sawing away at the branch they are sitting on springs to mind.
I had no prolems with gracious and polite atheists ... (at the pub, said with a smile, "I'll have a pint of JC, please. You should be able to remember that.", but not all were like that and their logic in argument was indeed affected by their passionate disbelief.
(you can see I'm passionate about reason, emotions and logic ... sorry). Back to the topic .....
Hume's model of human psychology is what we call a belief-desire model. We have desires to achieve various goals; we have beliefs that if we do certain things we will probably achieve those goals; therefore, we do those things. There is no rational argument why we might desire one thing more than another, beyond the thought that trying to achieve one thing might stop us from getting other things we want more.
This contrasts with eg Plato for whom wanting something because we rationally believe it to be good is qualitatively different from wanting it because it looks or smells nice.
Yes, and most atheists would be like your late cricketing companion, I think.
Militant atheism can be highly destructive but most atheists I know seem happy to live and let live.
However, most people do not talk about religion the way professors of religious studies and comparative religion do. Also, professors in those fields tend to start out as atheists or agnostics or become them at some point in their studies, but that’s a bit of a tangent
Agreed. I've found Lewis (C.S.) very helpful in these matters, myself.
What is a religion in this context?
From their viewpoint - a reduction of the negative effects of religion on society. Attacks on people's reproductive rights (abortion, contraception); abject pseudo-scientific bullshit being passed off as valid (creationism, flat earth, geocentrism); bigoted attacks on people's sexuality. People launching lethal attacks on places of worship because they're not quite the right type of worship.
I have a great deal of sympathy with their frustration in these areas. It's ironic they're being called "militant" when they're not the ones with the guns and bombs.
But then atheists are not necessarily consistent on these topics. It's hard to argue that they are a uniform good, even if one agreed with all of these points.
I'm not arguing they're a uniform good, but rather I can sympathise with a lot of what they say.
This is good, and something I need to remember as I'm with the atheists here!
I had Soviet style militant atheism in mind. There are other forms of course.
I can certainly understand a backlash against religious fundamentalism or theocratic regimes, but full-on atheism isn't known for its tolerance either.
There was me thinking it must be an organisation of some kind.
Depends what you mean by "full-on". The more militant atheism isn't typical of most atheists (although they tend to get more publicity). In fact, I suspect that a majority of atheists don''t even think about themselves that way. I mean, they might so describe themselves if you specifically asked them, but otherwise it's about as significant in their every day life as their great-grandmother's middle name.
“[Religion is] [1] a system of symbols which acts to [2] establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by [3] formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and [4] clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that [5] the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (3).
In this framework, some atheisms would qualify as religion--those that aim to " establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations" (Dawkins comes to mind). Others that are less concerned with with convincing people of the nonexistence of gods than simply indifferent to the idea of gods (Taoism, for example) may be religions in other respects, but not specifically in their atheism.
@Timothy the Obscure something to work with!
Atheism
1) is NOT a system; has NO symbols; ain't [even] got no songs.
Without point one, none of the rest of the definition can be achieved religiously. By the sometimes resulting nihilism, atheism can affect mood, motivation, and one's concept of the general order of existance, but that will occur as a matter of conclusion from sensed evidence, not via a system of symbols. And so through the rest of the definition.
As you mentioned Taoism and similar systems can be called religions, but that is related to other features of the system, independent from indifference to god.
Dawkins' "evangelism" against belief in theism does not fit point One in your definition either, so cannot be a religion by this definition -- in spite of his resemblence to a well-mannered street preacher.
ain't [even] got no songs.
Ahem ... 'Imagine', by John Lennon?