are you an out of the closet atheist?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My current identification is "none," not atheist.  Atheist is so constraining, leaving atheism was like taking off a straitjacket.

I would be interested in "hearing" more about your personal story as to the bolded part, if you are willing Mikado.

Atheists tend to be impossible to talk to regarding everything I'm interested in and passionate about.  I love to debate theology, but (afleitch and Dibble are good examples) tend to always go "that never happened," which is totally a nonstarter and besides the point of what I'm trying to talk about (I always approach works from an in-universe analytical point of view, and "God doesn't exist" is frustrating in the same way as "Raskolnikov doesn't exist").  If I want to discuss whether Krishna's argument with Arjuna that he is a divine, all-seeing entity is an appropriate backing-up for his claim that Arjuna, as a Kshatriya, has to follow his Dharma to go into battle (is "I'm Vishnu and you're not" an argument with legitimate moral force?), I'd always get a response of "Krishna/Vishnu and Arjuna never existed."  If I'd try to talk about the ethics of Jesus' pronouncements on divorce, I'd get some "Jesus never existed/didn't say that" response, which is basically the reason I stopped going into the Religion and Philosophy board.  It's intellectual sophistry of the first order on the part of the atheists to dismiss arguments from Sacred Texts as illegitimate because they weren't authentic: that doesn't address the actual meanings of the words at all.  I've read the Bible (Old and New Testaments), Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada, as well as extensive works by Augustine, Aquinas, some Schleiermacher, some Kierkegaard, etc. and anytime I try to talk about them I get a "God doesn't exist," followed by the person going to talk about the new Batman movie.  I've refrained from posting "Batman doesn't exist" over and over again. 

The existence/nonexistence of God is utterly irrelevant to the validity of religion and its study and the contemptuous dismissal of it leads to social diseases like positivism, the utter contempt for the past, and the slavish worship of the new God Science that are endemic in certain well-educated parts of modern society.  Michel Foucault writes in The Birth of the Clinic in specific and throughout his works in general how the medical and other scientific institutions have assumed the language and rhetoric of Truth from religion and have attempted to invalidate all truths other than the materialist, physical "reality" they peddle in order to enhance their own power, and its worked stupendously.  Foucault's "biopower," the power that physicians and scientists have gained through their obsessive categorization, classification, and prying into the most private and intimate aspects of human life down to our cells, nay, down to our DNA, has led them to have an amazing degree of control over all aspects of our lives, and the destruction of the substitution of religious truth and power with theirs is one of the key aspects of that rise.  His History of Sexuality Part I, Civilization and Madness, and The Birth of the Clinic in specific and his entire works in general have shown the huge disadvantages of accepting scientific truth as a cultural replacement for religious truth, and is one of the big reasons why he ended up fanatically supporting Ayatollah Khoemeini in his last days despite clearly not believing in God himself.  In many ways, Science is a far more dangerous master than Religion ever was, and the twentieth century has already clearly demonstrated that the road to Progress leads straight into the gates of Auschwitz.  "Modernity" and "Civilization" are orders of magnitude more gruesome and morally repugnant values than anything "Savagery" ever offered.

TL/DR I have no problem with the disbelief of God, I have a problem with the summary dismissal and rejection of religion and the blind worship of the false gods of Science and Progress, and that's what modern atheism entails.

I'm reminded of my Japanese language instructor, who's from a Zen priestly family from a very rural part of western Japan. Japan is what we'd call a religious society in a lot of ways but being given to much explicit religious thought isn't one of them. At some point between the Tokugawa era and the post-war (there's a lot of debate over this) most of the religious institutions in Japan stopped being taken really seriously in terms of truth-value, but what happened here is that many Japanese people stopped caring very much about the truth-value of their metaphysical and cultural narratives. Obviously this has led to problems. We can probably think of a really obvious one right off the top of our heads. But what this has meant is that aesthetically and culturally elements of this society have stayed more or less constant despite surface-level extreme secularization (and I do think that secularization is a process that admits of getting extreme or going way too far). This isn't in all ways a good thing but the last attempt to reverse or redirect the set of processes going on here led to State Shinto, which was at its core an attempt to rationalize--and, not to put too fine a point on it, contextualize within Modern ideas of the nation and the state and what constitutes 'reasonable' public reliogisity (this was of course a fascist context but fascism is still a type of modern context)--a religion that originally...well, the Atlantic recently ran a surprisingly good article on the subject of the De Beers cartel and I couldn't take it as seriously as I would have liked because it used the phrase 'Shinto law'. That's what Shinto is. It doesn't use that language. Christianity and Buddhism do, but that's not really what they should be about either.

I'm a little inarticulate right now both because I'm more tired than I am at this time of the evening and because my Internet is slow as sh**t right now and I don't know why, but I think it's worth considering the idea that the mechanisms for self-validation that modernist metanarratives claim are somewhat crueler than religious ones, because they don't validate themselves on their own terms but in terms of so-called positivist or rational ideals that everybody is supposed to hold or something. Which puts those of us who partially agree with those ideas but aren't willing to make them the absolute acme of values in an odd situation. Religious ideas may be more flagrant in their lack of immediately obvious resemblance to the level of reality that most people perceive most of the time but at least, except in particularly toxic examples of theocratic academia or government, they at least have that benefit. Since they're self-referential, as Mikado said, even if you don't believe in them, using your unbelief to shut down conversations about them is a dick move. Not even Paul of Tarsus did that, and he used other dick moves relatively frequently.

Beet: I think that we as a people privilege the idea of personal belief a little too strongly in some of these types of conversations.

[Beet]

Maybe, but I'm just mostly responding to the question in the thread, 'are you an out of the closet atheist?', which is a personal question. But maybe that's just another example of your point.

[The Mikado]

One short question Mikado before we go further. Are you conflating philosophy with religion? One can discuss  ideas (whatever their provenance, say about the ideas of Jesus, even if some of them may have been put in his mouth later to meets the imperatives of those that did it at the time, or even if Jesus did not exist at all, although the historical consensus is that he certainly did) from a philosophical perspective, sometimes productively, without having to argue about leaps of faith, no?

We need to get past this point, to go much further. As a functional atheist, what you say does not ring true at least for me. I am happy to discuss ideas, even those that emanate from a religious provenance. The provenance is less interesting than the ideas themselves.

And yes there is more to life than science and "progress," whatever the latter means, which for purposes of exploring ideas is probably counterproductive. I think you may be stereotyping atheists. Is that possible?  And do you think one needs religion to have a moral compass? As you got passionate there, you may have got close to implying that. If so, in my opinion, that is just wrong. But then I am biased. The most admirable man I have ever known from the standpoint of simply good character and courage, was my Dad, and he was an atheist. He is long dead, but he sets the standard for myself - and will until my final exit.

I absolutely do not think that religion is necessary for a moral compass.  What I do think is that too often people dismiss "religion" as old, musty, and not for them, then promptly embrace a different set of ideas with the same sort of religious fervor that are often far more dangerous and problematic than the religious ones, all while patting themselves on the shoulder about getting rid of God.  My problem's not with the irreligious: I'm one, as is my father (and I think my mother's moving in that direction).  My problem is with secularism as a value with inherent worth, of people thinking that opposed to religion=good any more than other people think divinely ordered=good.

Atheism and atheists tend to have this real "No, f**k you, Dad!" vibe to them in their vehement rejection of what has gone before as tainted by the Invisible Sky Wizard.  As someone trained as a historian, that dismissive attitude towards the past and towards the many, many aspects of "pre-modern" (I hate that word so much) civilizations' moral codes that are in my view superior to our own.  It also leads to a teleological view of history as uncivilized brutes who didn't know better worshipping "God," while we moderns can be smug and condescending.  This is A. a vicious crime against history in a vain attempt to make contemporary civilization feel better about itself, and B. baldly inaccurate.

It chills my blood when I hear atheists campaigning to end the teaching of the Bible or of comparative religion.  There are very few books that have aided my academic career more than my backwards and forwards knowledge of the Bible, and I can't imagine having gotten where I am without a solid academic classroom-setting background in it.  This attitude that knowledge of the Bible or other holy books is somehow poisonous actually seems to reflect more the attitude of the Scopes Trial to evolution than to the sort of open pursuit of knowledge atheist education activists usually claim to advocate.

In short, Torie, maybe I am stereotyping atheists, but I've had enough annoying encounters with atheists who find my entire field (history) an unwanted obstruction to their propagandistic teleological tale of progress from superstition to wisdom and who advocate against any sort of religious instruction at all to not view them with skepticism and distrust.  Advocates for Secularism as an inherent good that should be mandated on society are one of the most pernicious and anti-thought forces out there today, and I tend to associate the word "atheist" with militant opponents of religion rather than the simply nonreligious.

[Torie]

It seems to me that you come close to viewing non-theists, and anti-theists, as co-extensive, and I think that is very wrong. Do you think I as an atheist act the way that you describe as atheists acting? Have you ever noticed that I put down religion qua religion at all?  I think you probably are stereotyping us. There are religious aholes, and non religious aholes, and estimable examples of both as well. That is my opinion.

I am reading the Bible right now, the Bible as literature. I think the Bible is part of our culture, and of course it should be taught, from a cultural perspective - and a philosophical one. But the ones that would most object to that, are those probably who view the Bible as inerrant, and would not be receptive to putting the Bible in a different box, when it comes to public education.

[The Mikado]

It seems to me that you come close to viewing non-theists, and anti-theists, as co-extensive, and I think that is very wrong. Do you think I as an atheist act the way that you describe as atheists acting? Have you ever noticed that I put down religion qua religion at all?  I think you probably are stereotyping us. There are religious aholes, and non religious aholes, and estimable examples of both as well. That is my opinion.

That's sort of my point, though.  I don't view "non-theists" as "atheists."

[Torie]

It seems to me that you come close to viewing non-theists, and anti-theists, as co-extensive, and I think that is very wrong. Do you think I as an atheist act the way that you describe as atheists acting? Have you ever noticed that I put down religion qua religion at all?  I think you probably are stereotyping us. There are religious aholes, and non religious aholes, and estimable examples of both as well. That is my opinion.

That's sort of my point, though.  I don't view "non-theists" as "atheists."

Why? You can believe that there probably is no God, without holding an animus to those that do surely.  Have we degraded down to arguing about semantics now?  That to me is an entropic exercise.

[Beet]

There's an actual atheist movement that pushes an agenda pretty hard.

[The Mikado]

It seems to me that you come close to viewing non-theists, and anti-theists, as co-extensive, and I think that is very wrong. Do you think I as an atheist act the way that you describe as atheists acting? Have you ever noticed that I put down religion qua religion at all?  I think you probably are stereotyping us. There are religious aholes, and non religious aholes, and estimable examples of both as well. That is my opinion.

That's sort of my point, though.  I don't view "non-theists" as "atheists."

Why? You can believe that there probably is no God, without holding an animus to those that do surely.  Have we degraded down to arguing about semantics now?  That to me is an entropic exercise.

I'm not trying to argue semantics, I just have a different view of what atheism is than you do and I think we're talking past each other.  I think that to identify as an atheist as opposed to identifying as a person without a religion carries an inherent implication of hostility towards or opposition to religion.

OK, Torie, one sentence summary: I have no qualms with irreligious people (and am one myself), but militant secularism is hostile to many of the principles I hold, and I associate that attitude with the social movement that has labeled itself "atheist."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No, as I recently recommitted myself to Christianity.

Did you get baptized or were you only baptized as a baby?

Also the percentage of self-described atheists in the US is far lower than those who state no belief in any deity, which is probably evidence that many don't like the term because they associate with the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens even if it technically is accurate. The term is pretty stigmatized simply because it's pretty difficult to be an open and vocal atheist without being an asshole, as someone who doesn't believe in God but isn't too concerned with what other people believe or not believe in isn't going to be very "vocal".

[Beet]

I've never been baptized. I only made a psychological decision about what to believe. I suppose I should go do something about it.

[Torie]

It seems to me that you come close to viewing non-theists, and anti-theists, as co-extensive, and I think that is very wrong. Do you think I as an atheist act the way that you describe as atheists acting? Have you ever noticed that I put down religion qua religion at all?  I think you probably are stereotyping us. There are religious aholes, and non religious aholes, and estimable examples of both as well. That is my opinion.

That's sort of my point, though.  I don't view "non-theists" as "atheists."

Why? You can believe that there probably is no God, without holding an animus to those that do surely.  Have we degraded down to arguing about semantics now?  That to me is an entropic exercise.

I'm not trying to argue semantics, I just have a different view of what atheism is than you do and I think we're talking past each other.  I think that to identify as an atheist as opposed to identifying as a person without a religion carries an inherent implication of hostility towards or opposition to religion.

OK, Torie, one sentence summary: I have no qualms with irreligious people (and am one myself), but militant secularism is hostile to many of the principles I hold, and I associate that attitude with the social movement that has labeled itself "atheist."

OK, but I think the definition of an atheist (as opposed to "militant secularism") is one who does not believe in God, not one who holds animus against those that do, just as a Jew might not necessarily hold an animus against Christians, or visa versa. It is exactly the same thing. You have your own definition. You might want to make that clear when you go into this in the future, or switch out "atheist" for "militant secularism" when making your point, even if you believe that there is a correlation between the two, with the correlation far less than perfect. It will save time. We don't need to hate each other just because we believe different things. Who knew?

[afleitch]

Atheists tend to be impossible to talk to regarding everything I'm interested in and passionate about. I love to debate theology, but (afleitch and Dibble are good examples) tend to always go "that never happened," which is totally a nonstarter and besides the point of what I'm trying to talk about (I always approach works from an in-universe analytical point of view, and "God doesn't exist" is frustrating in the same way as "Raskolnikov doesn't exist"). 

Do we though? I mean is it unreasonable as someone who doesn't believe something happened to say so at the start of a debate? I think that's intellectually honest. If you think that 'that didn't happen' is all that me or Dibble contribute to the Religion and Philosophy Board then I suggest you go back and visit it!

On the recent subject of the soul of course my answer was

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Except it wasn't;

It seems to me that if any essense of one's being exists after death, then presumably it is under your command. My mind can already acheive things that my body cannot. My mind can 'play' every leap of Beethovens 9th, but my hands couldn't play it. It can deal with me doing what my body cannot especially in the dream state. Given how weak relatively, the physical body is it seems very strange in the Christian tradition that the soul can remain under your command as it will, in the confines of your body, but when it escapes that physical burden it suddenly becomes the plaything of another entity.

Surely the soul should be more free and less hindered and by extension more 'mobile' outside of the body? Surely it should be more vulnerable encased in flesh; yet it appears that it is out of reach of other god like entities while encased and is therefore more protected. Should that be the case however then would it not make more sense for the soul to be imparted onto another body to keep it both protected and independent? If that is what you seek of course.

Absolutely no philosophical discussion there. No. We just bark out 'it doesn't exist' at each turn while you impress us with regurgitated Foucault

[Free Palestine]

Not exactly an atheist -- agnostic-atheist-apatheist -- but yes, my parents know I don't give a crap about religion, at least to some extent.  Usually I tell people I know IRL if I know them well enough...meaning nobody except my parents know IRL. 

[The Mikado]

snip

Let's look at your response to the Life of Brian thread:

It is 'blasphemous', funny and satirical. That therefore makes it excellent.

Not only is that movie about the least blasphemous depiction of Jesus put to film in the last fifty years (he only says stuff that he is supposed to have said and comes off quite well compared to everyone else), liking something specifically because it's blasphemous is pretty incredibly juvenile and actually harmful.  Taboo-breaking for the sake of breaking a taboo actually reinforces the taboo because people are doing it for the thrill of doing the forbidden.  If people like you owned up to the fact that there is nothing particularly taboo or thrilling about the criticism of religion for the sake of criticizing it, maybe you'd realize that all you're doing is making the thing you've embraced for shock value more taboo by the expectation of shock value. 

I recommend the first chapter of Foucault's History of Sexuality Part I in which he lambasts the modern culture of open, frank discussion of sexuality as a backfiring attempt to break the taboo around the act because people do said discussion seeking the perverse thrill you feel about breaking the taboo in the first place, which only reinforces it.  Atheism is the same way: people love to say "God doesn't exist" or "the Bible is a collection of myths" over and over again because of the thrill they get for violating a taboo around what is actually a fairly bog-standard and dull, entry-level observation.

A better example is PioneerProgress' valiant attempts to describe the rituals, practices, and beliefs of the LDS church.  He specifically asks that there be no discussion about the truth value of Mormon doctrine (for good reason, that takes away from all of the discussion about the interesting ins and outs of the modern Mormon church).  What's Dibble's response?

One thing I will ask, however. Please do not dismiss my faith as "impossible"

Ok. It's implausible.

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You can't ask people to discuss your faith and then restrict the mention of facts that are in contradiction with the claims of that faith. Real discussion of an idea involves potential criticism.

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I can't speak for anyone else, but I will promise to treat your ideas on the same basis as I treat any other ideas - based on their merits.

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If someone has legitimate historical evidence for that claim then you have no basis on which to report them. In regards to the Mormon faith however it has little relevance as it doesn't reflect on the truth of the claims he made, so using it to demonstrate that the Mormon faith is false is merely an ad hominem fallacy. At worst such a claim just shows he had a poor moral character, though considering that the marriageable age for girls was much younger during his era it may be more of a reflection of the ethics of that time than on one man.

That was the first post on that thread and it cast a pall on the entire thing.  The truth value of whether or not Native Americans are descended from Nephi or whether Joseph Smith actually saw tablets is irrelevant to discussion of the rites and practices of the LDS Church as it now exists, yet Dibble insists on dragging that out as a way of delegitimizing the conversation before it even began!  How are we supposed to have reasonable discussion like this?

[Niemeyerite]

Yes, I am an atheist and everyone knows that

[Peeperkorn]

I'm an out of the closet agnostic, like the majority of my country, the most secular in Iberoamérica.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Addressing this debate on the nature of atheism, I consider myself an atheist, but I don't have any issue with discussing the Bible. My disbelief in the existence of God is an article of faith in much the same sense that a Christian's is. The difference is, I don't look to ancient books to guidance, or seek metaphysical truths. But those books still have historical value. I even took a Religious Studies course last year, because I wanted to find out about what the Bible was saying. It was an interesting experience overall and it greatly increased my opinion of the Bible, because I saw the ways in which it was a product of ancient Israelite society.

     Still, I find it a pretty horrifying book overall and cannot fathom Christianity, even though I used to call myself an adherent thereof. I don't find myself alone there, considering that there are anti-Christian musicians who draw upon Biblical sources for their lyrics due to the intensely violent content therein. Then I think about our notion of "modern civilization", and I wonder how we define ourselves as "civilized" while keeping a straight face. I wouldn't mind discussing the Bible, but I would mind discussing it with Christians, if that makes sense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

Genocides and wars in the twentieth century killed a comparable number of people to how many were alive on Earth at any given point during the Crusades.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

Genocides and wars in the twentieth century killed a comparable number of people to how many were alive on Earth at any given point during the Crusades.

But Progress! Forwards - to the Future!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

Genocides and wars in the twentieth century killed a comparable number of people to how many were alive on Earth at any given point during the Crusades.

But Progress! Forwards - to the Future!

And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards Freedom.

[Insula Dei]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

Genocides and wars in the twentieth century killed a comparable number of people to how many were alive on Earth at any given point during the Crusades.

But Progress! Forwards - to the Future!

You say that as if the idea of 'Progress' was always supposed to exclude pesky little necessities like the odd massacre.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

the modern world has actually been getting less violent overall, and that WWII was actually an exception to the rule.

This is the kind of 'thinking' that makes me despair.

Genocides and wars in the twentieth century killed a comparable number of people to how many were alive on Earth at any given point during the Crusades.

But Progress! Forwards - to the Future!

You say that as if the idea of 'Progress' was always supposed to exclude pesky little necessities like the odd massacre.

Can't make an omelette without wiping out a few small villages, I suppose.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Call me a naive, idealistic, young, deluded fool, but I still believe in progress as the driving force of humanity. Not progress as the steady advance of humanity toward a state of perfection, but as the long, sinuous, conflicted process that results in the world being, overall, a better place than it used to be. Yeah, I think the world is generally a better place than it was thousand years ago. And even better than it was 5000 years ago.

If I were to lose this belief, I would conclude that any action aimed at improving the world is pointless and insignificant in the big picture. So yeah, you can consider it a religious belief.

[Torie]

I've found that Mikado's term (irreligious) is the best way of describing myself. The distinction that Torie makes is useful, but recognized by few.

I was a Dibble/afleitch-style atheist for a few years. It was mostly a reaction to my parents, who had raised me as a Catholic. By my mid-teens, I'd had enough. At first, I wasn't an atheist, but I didn't want to attend mass, a preference that my parents refused to respect. Faced with threats and hysterics from my mother, I was confirmed a Catholic. I was also forced to attend Sunday-morning services weekly until I had left the house.

When I began college, I went through a resentful phase that lasted about three years. That attitude has dissipated, but so has my curiosity. There was a time when I'd seek out religious texts and theological debates because I wanted to understand religion better. Now? I find it dull.

Assuming that she is still alive, does your mother still chew on you about religion, or did she just give up, and no longer discusses it?  Were you ever tempted to tell the priest(s) that you did not accept the Catholic theology, and were being forced to do it by your parents, and that every word you mouthed during any formal ceremony would be a lie, and was he OK with that?  That is the gambit that I think I would have played.