While I acknowledge that it’s a two-way road, I tend to think the causality prevails the other way. People come up with or take on or bend ontologies to rationalize their behavior or the behavior of their tribe. On the one hand, logic would suggest that an ontological outlook grounded in reality would be an inoculate against this sort of thing. But I suspect belief in supernatural ontologies to be a consequence of humanity’s capacity for wishful thinking, not the cause of it. It can’t be done away with because it’s a symptom, and the irrationality remains. Hence some atheists and skeptics being quite capable of irrational behavior.
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Or are you dancer?
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There are obviously a variety of less-desirable causes of decline that are possible; but my impression was always that obsolescence was the objective.
Gods probably not existing doesn’t imply much of a social program(not that the various gods actually imply as much of the social program as their followers are wont to claim, but so it goes); and isn’t a terribly interesting topic to go on about at length. When the thesis is ‘nothing to see here’ there really isn’t much incentive to stick around.
It only becomes worth mentioning if somebody else is getting threateningly territorial. “Atheism” as an identifiable ‘movement’ only really makes any sense under a comparatively narrow range of threat levels. If ambient hostility is low enough, it’d be simply boorish to keep harping on the subject(and it’s not as though the pope of atheism has decreed a set of taboos to prevent mixing with local heathens, so as long as the theists in question don’t consider it a problem, atheism presents no obstacle to participation in assorted religious ritual and cultural activities); while if ambient hostility is high enough; the survival of a visible ‘movement’ is unlikely.
There are always a few (often literally) sophomoric blowhards looking for a cause to noisily align themselves with; and some of them choose ‘Atheism’; but aside from the people for whom conflict is its own reward, having ‘movement atheism’ recede into the noise floor of apathy because my disbelief in the various incumbent deities isn’t a problem is the victory condition; not the failure condition. The point isn’t an eternity of righteous struggle, it’s to obviate applicable threats and get on with your life.
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More the hoary, uncritical repition of lazy or outright false claims or arguements derived from the same. The children’s crusade, an event that likely never happened, as an example of religious wrong. Hitler was Catholic! The more recent adoption of the “Jesus myth” theory, which is not well supported by actual historians or consistent with extant historical records. Etc. Repeated as nauseum and without the same level of critical assessment demanded of others claims. They linger and avoid fact checking because they make an easy way to bolster anti-religious arguments. Hence bad faith.
Many of the specifically anti-catholic lines of attack, And more recent anti Muslim ones have their root more so in racialist literature and thought than specifically athiest/theology sources. Or reality. I remember being deeply depressed to see the same claims and approaches in my pop-athiest books as I was learning about in highschool classes when we covered Al Smith, JFK, the know nothings and 2nd clan anti-immigrant wave.
Like wise Dawkins and his “Dear Muslima” shit. Using the issue of women’s treatment and lack of rights in certain Muslim countries to justify his extreme disdain for Arabs and Muslims. Creating a pseudo-feminist posture. Only to turn around and use the same arguments to dismiss and silence actual women and attack feminism. Hitchens was even worse. Same posture for the same attack on the browns. But his hate was more explicit. And his Slim writings on women are out and out vile. Bad faith because these guys clearly dislike women, and know nothing about feminism, or women’s movements in the mid-east. But they ape the language and arguments of those who do. Because it’s a fertile avenue of attack against Something they despise.
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It was the dipshit YouTube atheists and their screaming hatred of women that made me scale the noisiness of my atheism way back. I didn’t want to be mistaken for one of them
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But how does he feel about something important, like werewolves?
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It refers to a rather specific suite of more recent atheist ideas. Particularly those drawing from or associated the “four horsemen” particularly Dawkins and Hitchens.
But even among the New Atheists the approach that largely defines them wasn’t the rule. And certainly never represented all atheists. PZ Meyers for example is often counted among their number and he’s resolutely not on board with Dawkin’s crew. Always meant to be one particular type of modern atheist thought. “New” to distinguish from older models bound in academic philosophy and early political groups narrowly focused on defending rights of members.
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no, i know. i get it, being almost 50 now myself, haha. but still – you could have a different world view in your 30s compared to your 20s.
This is finally proof that using Facebook rots your brain
OK, I read the article and I’m not sure I read that he changed. There are typically 2 definitions of atheist. The first one is that an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in god. The second definition is that an atheist is someone who believes that there is no god.
Zuckerberg could simply be answering this question using the second definition. That way, he can preserve his non belief while at the same time deny being an atheist. And as a businessman in the age of the pussy grabber, not denying atheism is bad business.
And many atheists agree that religion can be a source of community and connection. This does not mean athiests using the first definition of the term cannot go to church. Indeed many do. In fact, some of those atheists are priests and Rabbis.
So again, I see nothing in this article that convinces me he is no longer an atheist. (Using the first definition of the term)
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I found religion as well, when I realised it could mean anything I want it to.
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It’s complicated, though. First, Buddhism teaches rebirth and not reincarnation and they harp on that distinction. There’s no soul and nothing to incarnate, let alone redo it, there’s just the karmic continuation of name/form in rebirth.
If you’re formally practicing at a Zen temple with a roshi and have taken refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, then it does effectively require a belief in karma and rebirth, since these are part of the Dharma one has vowed to take refuge in. Taking refuge in the Three Jewels is how one becomes a practicing Buddhist (Zen or otherwise). Taking refuge in the Dharma means accepting the teachings of karma and rebirth as central truths the Buddha taught as a result of his enlightenment.
There are people who have taken refuge but don’t believe in karma or rebirth (though they usually believe in enlightenment), and those who reinterpret karma and rebirth strictly metaphorically and not literally, but they’re in a really weird position. There also are Western teachers who call themselves Zen teachers but aren’t part of the traditional transmission of the lineage. So while you can reject central teachings of the Dharma and call yourself a Zen Buddhist, it’s a bit of a mess, and traditional Zen Buddhists would reject that claim’s validity. Buddhism’s central focus is practice, not belief, but there are a few beliefs that go part and parcel with traditional Buddhism.
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Or ultra-intelligent. That’s statistics.
I’m missing the difference between those two. Personally, I’m an agnostic atheist. If I had to lay odds, I’d say there isn’t god, but I don’t think it is provable that one doesn’t exist.
Mind you there are also agnostic theists - that is essentially what Deism was.
I imagine somewhere there is someone who thinks that the odds of a deity existing or not are are even who would just be an “agnostic,” but the agnostics I know are in the atheists bucket.
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All questions of religion aside, that would be a good thing. Give the addicts a fucking day of rest, and they might be a little less insane!
Bentham was also a big fan of the panopticon, so in essence he was just trading one god for another…
Sounds like he’s planning a political career, based on this and other things that have come out. He’s a clever guy, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that you can’t get elected to national office in this country without at least professing a religion.
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If you’re a Westerner, you have to be a little careful making blanket-ish statements about Buddhism, as “Buddhism” itself is largely a colonial/post-colonial reconstruction of a range of indigenous practices…
This is especially true in the Theravadan Buddhism of south-east Asia. For example, school children today in Sri Lanka are still taught what it means to be a Buddhist from a book written not by a Buddhist but by a Theosophist from New Jersey.
Zen as seen in the West is probably a bit more “true to its roots,” as Zen didn’t go though the same kind of colonization processes, but even there you have to be careful. Apparently Suzuki…adapted the teachings pretty heavily when he came to the West, a situation which still influences the West’s outlook today.
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The distinction is hard atheism vs soft atheism.
Hard: lack of belief in god and statement that god’s existence has been or can be disproven.
Soft: lack of belief in god but not the hard statement that god certainly does not exist. The soft atheist idea is kind of nebulous. A rock is a soft atheist, because it lacks the capacity to believe at all. Babies are soft atheists. Because brain development and need to be introduced to concepts… Blah blah blah.
That kind of lacks utility though. More typically you’ve got the popular misconception of agnosticism. These people lack a positive or active belief in god. But do not make a statement as to a deity’s existence or non existence. Often citing lack of data or willingness to reassess belief if provided with plausible evidence. Tyson describes it pretty well:
Unfortunately that’s not agnosticism. It’s atheism. And basically the rigorous skeptical position on god. “given current information no, but ask me again if anything changes”.
Agnostic atheism is likewise soft atheism. Lack of belief in god. But makes no statement on existence under the idea that existence is un-knowable. Neither falsifiable nor conformable.
There are Christian/theist true agnostics. But the Deists weren’t. Deists believed capital G Judeo-Christian God’s existence was easily verifiable by observing the natural world. They just believed that this creator set the world in motion then fucked right the hell off. Never to interfere, or involve itself again. Thus they didn’t generally accept the divinity of Jesus or most/all of the miraculous or supernatural stuff in the Bible.
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