Athiests like to say things like “religion is the opiate of the masses” without realizing that they are subscribing to their own. Just because your religion lacks a deity doesn’t make it any less of a religion. There are certainly flavors of neo-paganism that don’t specifically have a deity and are undeniably religions.
If there is a non-religion, it’s either agnosticism, which says “we can’t know” or apatheism, which says “I don’t care enough to try to find out.” It is not Athiesm.
Why not? What constitutes a religion? A creation theory? Well Athiesm has Evolution. Churches? Athiesm is professed in the Universities. Its priests are the scientists who deny God’s existence and ridicule those who believe in Him as small-minded. Its evangelicals are the legions of devotees who ridicule believers of every faith saying things like “God is Santa Claus for adults.” Its apocalypse is Global Warming.
Evolution and Global Warming are based on as much blind faith as science (much to their believer’s chagrin, should one ever point it out),
Its holy books are Nature, Scientific American, and National Geographic who deny God. No, God isn’t “scientific,” and I understand that saying “God made it.” isn’t a scientific hypothesis, however science should be interested in the “how” whatever deity or non-deity made science work. When I look at the earth I think “look at the beauty of God’s work,” but any of these three would say “look at the beauty of Mother Nature,” which is an active denial of the majority religion of the intended audience.
Athiests work so hard to remove God from every facet of life that it would be absurd to think of them as anything other than evangelicals for their religion. They aren’t any more intellectual or intelligent because they have rejected God, and I for one, am tired of being ridiculed as simple-minded or stupid for having faith.
I’ve written on this before, and will probably do it again. It is an ongoing battle with those who are condescending with no right to be.
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July 12, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Steve
If athiesm is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby. Since you ask what constitutes a religion, it is a formalised belief in a supernatural being or beings, or force or forces. Universities are not churches, academics who point out the falseness of various religions are not priests, and magazines such as Scientific American are not ‘holy’ books.
Your argument is feeble. Evolution does not require faith, rather it welcomes and invites investigation and logical, reasoned enquiry. If any part of it is found to be mistaken or wrong, then it is re-examined and corrected. There is no dogma. No commandments. There are no restrictions. If someone challenges evolution, evolutionists do not state with blind faith and fury that they are destined to go to some kind of hell for eternal punishment.
Similarly, global warming is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of measurable, visible, experienced reality and fact.
Athiests do not ‘work so hard to remove God’ from every facet of life – that is purely your perception.
It is the tenets of religion are the very undoing of it.
You cannot overlay your particular simplistic construct of the world on those who do not accept it, and call it the very thing that they reject.
I would suggest that if you insist on writing like a simpleton, you will continue to be accused of being simple-minded.
July 12, 2009 at 5:08 pm
unknownmosquito
FWIW this is more of a rant than a real argument. This is an unoriginal argument and many authors do a better job at enumerating it than myself.
That being said, anyone who has attended any University and taken liberal arts classes (as all students are required to do) should understand that “There is no dogma. No commandments. There are no restrictions.” is purely false. They are just not as clearly stated because athiests and the State don’t wish to be recognized as a religion.
Also if you believe that “global warming is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of measurable, visible, experienced reality and fact” then you clearly don’t understand how much measured, visible evidence there is indicating that we are experience no abnormal climate change and also that we might be going into an ice age. http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/, as an example. (lol at Pravda, but it’s what comes to mind immediately).
Even the bleeding-heart-liberal Wikipedia (liberal because of the kind of people who edit it, largley) has a page that lists a small number of scientists who don’t think Al Gore’s got it right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming#Believe_global_warming_is_not_occurring_or_has_ceased
But I digress. It was a rant. Do your own damn research.
December 20, 2009 at 12:11 am
Ruben
Steve, I could not agree with you more. Your comments were ON SPOT! A simpleton indeed. I am always fascinated by individuals who cannot grasp reality and logical thinking. It sounds like this kid could use a bit of education about atheism. Like most out there, many do not understand what atheism is (versus theism). Nice post!
December 20, 2009 at 2:19 pm
unknownmosquito
It always fascinates me when people miss the point of a rant after they read it. This is obviously not a theism vs atheism rant. Strictly speaking, even the title is an exaggeration; this post has to do with the way atheists treat their beliefs, not necessarily the beliefs themselves. If you can’t see that, then why do I even bother responding?
Also, thanks for the name-calling. It drives home just how superior your intelligence is to mine.
July 15, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Steve
Thanks unknownmosq. – actually I thought you did a pretty good job of elucidating your point, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered replying!
I’m sure we’d agree that there are literally dozens of definitions of religion, but what they have in common is a belief in a deity or deities. The word comes from the Middle English meaning to tie or to bind – so someone who practices religion in some form is someone who is bound to his or her faith in a god or gods.
Atheism is the absense of such beliefs, so athiesm cannot be a religion. If it were, then one could say that not playing baseball is a sport, or not building model boats is a hobby.
I also take your point that there are a number of scientists across a number of disciplines who reject climate change for a number of reasons. However they are a tiny minority, and many have been reveaqled as being funded by interested parties such as oil and gas companies.
The evidence for climate change is completely overwhelming, as is the scientific consensus.
I assure you that I have a very full understanding of the issue.
Fegel’s article in Pravda is fairly typical of the arguments against climate change, however in order to be taken seriously, it has to stand in the face of the evidence before us which
it clearly fails to do. Firstly, the term global warming means there is more heat energy in the atmosphere, so this will lead to more frequent and extreme weather events. This is precisely
what is happening. Fegel deploys the recents severe winters as proof against climate change, when in fact that precisely in line with climate change. He chooses the winters, but leaves out the hottest
years that we have had both in the northern hemisphere and globally since records began.
Climate change is about extremes brought about by atmospheric energy – cold as well as warm.
The facts are the facts, and unfortunately, they are inescapable. I wish it were otherwise.
Please don’t continue with the impression that climate change is some kind of article of faith for atheists – it simply isn’t the case.
Your own President is working to put America at the head of the fight against climate change, and the new President of the EU has done the same here. They are not doing this because of some theory, but because we have to address it – we meaning all of us, religious and atheist alike.
The last word has to go to your own MIT – I hesitate to get into swapping endless URLs, but please see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519134843.htm
This has no axe to grind, no agenda or interest to serve – this is impartial, factual research from
one of the world’s finest institutions, one of which you can be justly proud.
You refer to measured, visible evidence that we are experiencing no abnormal climate change.
I would be fascinated to see some of this evidence and would be grateful if you could direct me to it. I wish you well.
July 15, 2009 at 6:38 pm
unknownmosquito
Hehe, so I’m mostly just going to give you the last word here and let you have the opinion that Atheism isn’t a religion. Mostly I was positing that Atheism is specifically the belief in nothing (and thus a religion) and not a non-belief, which would be agnosticism or apatheism, and would better hold up to your baseball analogy. But frankly what draws the line for me is that I’ve met plenty of “Atheist evangelicals,” but never an “agnostic evangelical,” despite the large number of both Atheists and Agnostics that I’ve known.
The thing I’d like to point out (and I don’t want to go too much into detail here because admittedly I haven’t done my research, at least not yet, and because I said I’d give you the last word) is that many of these studies, even from esteemed schools like MIT, come through federal funding.
The professors’ livelihoods literally depend on convincing the government that there is a problem and they need to exist to keep studying the problem. So as it turns out, it’s not impartial, and they do have an agenda, unfortunately. And that’s not even touching on the generally liberal bias of faculty or why that exists. Now, this might be untrue of this particular study, I don’t know because I didn’t look, but this is certainly a topic that Federal funding needs to stay out of specifically because of the bias that such funding imposes, but with our current administration I’m almost certain that this is untrue because they view the topic as “vitally important” and thus should be federally funded.
And while there is a lot of evidence for climate change I think it’s interesting that the terminology has changed (to climate change from global warming) as startling lows have begun to appear (the last 5 or 7 years appear to show an overall downward trend, but we’re up over the last 15 years or so, as I recall).
Of course the issue is “are we making it change much faster?” But if we are… doesn’t the whole argument fall apart if it’s getting colder and we think it should be getting warmer? And isn’t “how?” the more important question, and even more debatable than all of the above?
But anyway this is pretty off-topic from Atheism, huh? :P I may at some point put up a real argument (I feel like it’s been awhile since someone has composed a lot of the “opposing” research) in a blog post., but I’d have to have some serious downtime and no one to go see :P And of course the issue of whether or not the government (specifically the American government) should be making policies based on this is another issue altogether, largely because there is the discourse in the scientific community about what is really happening, and what exactly is causing it.
Anyhow, thanks for commenting and for having a well-thought-out opinion. Also I think it’s kind of cool that you’re reading from an international point of view.
And I just realized I’ve been misspelling Atheism. Dammit. That’s embarrassing. Ah well.
February 10, 2010 at 8:56 pm
redeemedhippiesplace
You said it all in a nutshell, friend! Great!