Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?

maff

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May 5, 2006, 5:17:16 AM5/5/06

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Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?
AC Grayling
May 3, 2006 11:06 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2006/05/can_an_atheist_be_a_fundamenta.html

It is time to put to rest the mistakes and assumptions that lie behind
a phrase used by some religious people when talking of those who are
plain-spoken about their disbelief in any religious claims: the phrase
"fundamentalist atheist". What would a non-fundamentalist atheist be?
Would he be someone who believed only somewhat that there are no
supernatural entities in the universe - perhaps that there is only part
of a god (a divine foot, say, or buttock)? Or that gods exist only some
of the time - say, Wednesdays and Saturdays? (That would not be so
strange: for many unthinking quasi-theists, a god exists only on
Sundays.) Or might it be that a non-fundamentalist atheist is one who
does not mind that other people hold profoundly false and primitive
beliefs about the universe, on the basis of which they have spent
centuries mass-murdering other people who do not hold exactly the same
false and primitive beliefs as themselves - and still do?

Christians, among other things, mean by "fundamentalist atheists" those
who would deny people the comforts of faith (the old and lonely
especially) and the companionship of a benign invisible protector in
the dark night of the soul - and who (allegedly) fail to see the
staggering beauty in art prompted by the inspirations of belief. Yet,
in its bleeding-heart modern form, Christianity is a recent and highly
modified version of what, for most of its history, has been an often
violent and always oppressive ideology - think Crusades, torture,
burnings at the stake, the enslavement of women to constantly repeated
childbirth and undivorceable husbands, the warping of human sexuality,
the use of fear (of hell's torments) as an instrument of control, and
the horrific results of calumny against Judaism. Nowadays, by contrast,
Christianity specialises in soft-focus mood music; its threats of hell,
its demand for poverty and chastity, its doctrine that only the few
will be saved and the many damned, have been shed, replaced by strummed
guitars and saccharine smiles. It has reinvented itself so often, and
with such breathtaking hypocrisy, in the interests of retaining its
hold on the gullible, that a medieval monk who woke today, like Woody
Allen's Sleeper, would not be able to recognise the faith that bears
the same name as his own.

AC Grayling
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/b6dd88126c5a8939

http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=Grayling

stoney

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May 8, 2006, 5:31:34 PM5/8/06

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On 5 May 2006 02:17:16 -0700, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote in
alt.atheism

>Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?
>AC Grayling
>May 3, 2006 11:06 AM

AC Grayling said it well.

For example: vast Nigerian congregations are told that believing will
ensure a high income - indeed they are told by Reverend X that they will
be luckier and richer if they join his congregation than if they join
that of Reverend Y. What happened to the eye of the needle? Oh well,
granted: that tiny loophole was closed long ago. What then of "my
kingdom is not of this world"? What of the blessedness of poverty and
humility? The Church of England officially abolished Hell by an Act of
Synod in the 1920s and St Paul's strictures on the place of women in
church (which was that they are to sit at the back in silence, with
heads covered) are now so far ignored that there are now women vicars,
and there will soon be women bishops.

One does not have to venture as far as Nigeria to see the hypocrisies of
reinvention at work. Rome will do, where the latest eternal verity to be
abandoned is the doctrine of limbo - the place where the souls of
unbaptised babies go. Meanwhile, some cardinals are floating the idea
that condoms are acceptable, within marital relationships only of
course, in countries with high incidences of HIV infection. This latter,
which to anyone but an observant Catholic is not merely a plain piece of
common sense but a humanitarian imperative, is an amazing development in
its context. Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the
views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but
alas, since it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their
votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep
absurdities seeming credible?), insufficient numbers of Catholics have
been able to be sensible. Look at Ireland until very recent times for an
example of the misery Catholicism inflicts when it can.

"Intellectual infancy": the phrase reminds one that religions survive
mainly because they brainwash the young. Three-quarters of Church of
England schools are primary schools; all the faiths currently jostling
for our tax money to run their "faith-based" schools know that if they
do not proselytise intellectually defenceless three and four-year-olds,
their grip will eventually loosen. Inculcating the various competing -
competing, note - falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is
a form of child abuse, and a scandal. Let us challenge religion to leave
children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented
with the essentials of religion for mature consideration. For example:
tell an averagely intelligent adult hitherto free of religious
brainwashing that somewhere, invisibly, there is a being somewhat like
us, with desires, interests, purposes, memories, and emotions of anger,
love, vengefulness and jealousy, yet with the negation of such other of
our failings as mortality, weakness, corporeality, visibility, limited
knowledge and insight; and that this god magically impregnates a mortal
woman, who then gives birth to a special being who performs various
prodigious feats before departing for heaven. Take your pick of which
version of this story to tell: let a King of Heaven impregnate - let's
see - Danae or Io or Leda or the Virgin Mary (etc, etc) and let there be
resulting heaven-destined progeny (Heracles, Castor and Pollux, Jesus,
etc, etc) - or any of the other forms of exactly such tales in
Babylonian, Egyptian and other mythologies - then ask which of them he
wishes to believe. One can guarantee that such a person would say: none
of them.

So, in order not to be a "fundamentalist" atheist, which of the
absurdities connoted in the foregoing should an atheist temporise over?
Should a "moderate atheist" be one who does not mind how many hundreds
of millions of people have been deeply harmed by religion throughout
history? Should he or she be one who chuckles indulgently at the
antipathy of Sunni for Shia, Christian for Jew, Muslim for Hindu, and
all of them for anyone who does not think the universe is controlled by
invisible powers? Is an acceptable (to the faithful) atheist one who
thinks it is reasonable for people to believe that the gods suspend the
laws of nature occasionally in answer to personal prayers, or that to
save someone's soul from further sin (especially the sin of heresy) it
is in his own interests to be murdered?

As it happens, no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term
already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their
ground. A more appropriate term is "naturalist", denoting one who takes
it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws. This
properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe - no
fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses. Such might as
well call themselves "a-fairyists" or "a-goblinists" as "atheists"; it
would be every bit as meaningful or meaningless to do so. (Most people,
though, forget that belief in fairies was widespread until the beginning
of the 20th century; the church fought a long hard battle against this
competitor superstition, and won, largely because - you guessed it - of
the infant and primary church schools founded in the second half of the
nineteenth century.)

By the same token, therefore, people with theistic beliefs should be
called supernaturalists, and it can be left to them to attempt to refute
the findings of physics, chemistry and the biological sciences in an
effort to justify their alternative claim that the universe was created,
and is run, by supernatural beings. Supernaturalists are fond of
claiming that some irreligious people turn to prayer when in mortal
danger, but naturalists can reply that supernaturalists typically repose
great faith in science when they find themselves in (say) a hospital or
an aeroplane - and with far greater frequency. But of course, as
votaries of the view that everything is consistent with their beliefs -
even apparent refutations of them - supernaturalists can claim that
science itself is a gift of god, and thus justify doing so. But they
should then remember Popper: "A theory that explains everything explains
nothing."

In conclusion, it is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit
of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe
naturalism (atheism) as itself a "religion". But, by definition, a
religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of
supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely in
their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet;
and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest
in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or
see, what they treat as clean and unclean, who they have sex with and
how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women
invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to
their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five times a day, and so
endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong.

But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any
view of the world that does not premise the existence of something
supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If
it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it
accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it,
and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is
the essence of science. It comes as no surprise that no wars have been
fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over
rival theories in biology or astrophysics.

And one can grant that the word "fundamental" does after all apply to
this: in the phrase "fundamentally sensible".

/end

--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.