Atheism Posted by Oaktown Girl, 24 Jun 2007 06:05 pm

Calling All Atheists!

No doubt all of you have enjoyed as much as I have the vomit-inducing sight of the
“no religious test clause” of our Constitution going up in flames as major corporate news organizations sponsoring the Presidential debates quiz the candidates about their religious bona fides. Good fun!

Indeed, we seem to be farther away than ever from having an atheist as a legitimate contender for the White House (or any higher office), but the WAAGNFNP is here to help. Atheists - today, the Minister of Justice gives you the stage. (It’s still a national stage, just a slightly smaller one than CNN’s).

So let’s talk about atheism. Not only does the word “atheism” have multiple definitions, it has multiple categories of definitions. And something that has been moving increasingly to the forefront of my mind lately is that even here in left blogistan, “atheism” seems to mean very different things to different people. Some definitions are broad enough to encompass probably everybody here reading this, including those who are active in the Progressive Faith Movement. Other definitions seem to adhere to a strict scientific empiricism model.

Praise be to Astaroth, this is not a “What is atheism?” post, and I’ve deliberately not copied or linked to any definitions of atheism.

What this post is about is opening the floor to people who not only define themselves as atheists, but consciously embrace it as a significant part of who they are. Please tell us what atheism means to you, and if possible, at least a little about how that is reflected in your life.

As always, everybody is welcome to comment, but I’d especially like to hear from you if atheism holds a prominent place in your life and is more than just one of the many things you happen to be and don’t give much thought to otherwise.

I invite everyone to try to refrain from criticizing other people’s definitions of how they as atheists define atheism for themselves. I also discourage folks from spending a lot of time talking about what atheism is not - everyone here is well aware that not all atheists are devil-worshiping baby-eaters. They’re just the most fun ones.

Praise Gojira!

atheists-east-bay.jpg

Photo thanks to basetree.

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Responses to “Calling All Atheists!”

  1. on 25 Jun 2007 at 10:31 am 1. christian h. said …

    Well, I’ll kick off the discussion, then. For me, being an atheist means that there is nothing god-given about human societies’ organization; we have to sort out what justice means for ourselves - no supernatural authority is going to do it for us; we have to work to bring about a just society (no waiting for Messiahs or hidden Imams or the end of days). Not everything that happens “happens for a reason”, evil isn’t always punished in the end, or good rewarded in some afterlife.

  2. on 25 Jun 2007 at 11:30 am 2. James Killus said …

    I believe that I will first give a nod to the esteemed Penn Jillette, from a “This I Believe” segment on NPR:

    But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”

    Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

    Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

    I will also add my own couple of cents (with perhaps more later), that agnosticism is for wussies, and if the “malign thug” (to quote Mark Twain) that rules most religions actually existed, I would take it as a moral imperative to oppose the bastard with my every breath.

  3. on 25 Jun 2007 at 12:49 pm 3. Seattle said …

    Ok, I’m the queen of tangental thinking, so nobody should take this seriously. I was reading the post, and Rowan Atkins popped into my head, so for those of you who haven’t seen his “A Warm Welcome” routine, here you go:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UbqZ_oN5do

  4. on 25 Jun 2007 at 12:53 pm 4. Seattle said …

    Rowan ATkinson, that is.

  5. on 25 Jun 2007 at 1:08 pm 5. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle -
    That Rowan Atkinson bit is classic. I was thrilled over a year ago when I first discovered I could get that particular sketch on YouTube. Problem is, YouTube keeps taking it down for copyright reasons. But some rebellious “souls” (heh,heh…like that?) keep putting it back up. So finding it on YouTube is hit and miss; that’s why I’m putting up this comment in case anyone goes back later and the link is no good. They should just go ahead and search again because they just might find it. But getting the DVD for one’s own library is best, of course.

  6. on 25 Jun 2007 at 4:01 pm 6. black dog barking said …

    Atheism here in the flat part of the country isn’t cuddly enough to be embraced by significant numbers. Whatever the whole word means the “theism” part refers to whichever Brand you happen to endorse and we’re open to pretty much anything that can be traced back to a time and place in a decent part of the world—Europe.

    Most of us (flatlanders) recognize at some level that religion is useful for a certain class of problem but it’s not the only tool in the shed. Farmers pray for rain but they irrigate too.

    If “wuss” means “clear-eyed perceptive observer” then I’m with James, agnosticism is for wussies. The central force that animates the religions with which I’m familiar answers or is The Answer to questions that are textbook unknowable as far as I can tell—Life & Death &c. Not having to say “I don’t know” seems a major benefit of professing “I believe”. The agnostic wussy faces this shortcoming head-on, is free to respond with curiosity. And maybe someday, knowledge.

    Quench this!

    (Seattle, I found your tangent seriously humorously on point. Thanks for the link.)

  7. on 25 Jun 2007 at 9:42 pm 7. JP Stormcrow said …

    I have wavered on whether to describe myself as an atheist or agnostic, but currently favor pragmatic atheist. I will allow that there are various solipsistic or “deceptive all-powerful god” scenarios such as the Omphalos hypothesis that are logically possible, but in practice uninteresting. And that said I do support the “take no prisoners” approach of a guy like Richard Dawkins - one of my favorite pieces is this interview with him in Salon from several years ago. I myself might not put things so strongly, but folks like him at least help bring some balance to what is perceived as a “legitimate” position on the issue.

    I have arrived at my position by mostly a twofold process. The first was a somewhat early rejection of the relatively unexamined bland Protestantism of my upbringing. To some degree this was motivated by some experiences in high school where I was exposed directly to the “governance” of our local church. A dangerous thing for any young naive mind to see any type of institutional governance, and much of my initial rejection was unsurprisingly centered on my perception of rank hypocrisy. Since then my view towards the traditional Abrahamaic religions is that they are mere empty shells of what they once were, that they only really “work” as theistic systems which control state, society and personal belief. And of course, therein lies much of the conflict of the modern world. In some ways it is “the” conflict of our times, and has been since at least the Enlightenment - and had roots long before then. In the long run, the old religions will die, but it is gonna be long, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

    My second step has basically been the pragmatic one of not finding any value in a belief in God, and in fact noting that it serves as a convenient dodge for all kinds of self-interested and questionable behavior. I would write more on this interesting topic, but suddenly I am run over by a truck commanded by my God to go to sleep.

  8. on 25 Jun 2007 at 9:49 pm 8. JP Stormcrow said …

    One of the pet stories of Pragmatic atheists like myself is Laplace reputedly saying in response to questioning by Napoleon on where God was in his theory that I have no need of that hypothesis. Per the link, the story is not entirely apocryphal, but it is close. Still it makes a nice aphorism.

    In fact, in my experience apocrypha pwn reality.

  9. on 25 Jun 2007 at 11:03 pm 9. Zeus said …

    Okay, so we have a few stabs at atheism. I’ll take mine, but first a premise: It strikes me is how…. well, male, the whole debate is, and white male usually at that. The televangelists, Robertson, Falwell, Dawkins, Hithens (classical AND neo-atheism), the dudes touting so-called “intelligent design” and how similar they are. I can’t figue out if they are all idol-addled theists (believing that they themselves are God, or their egos [I’m not sure if they can tell the difference frankly]) or atheists [for they certainly all reject any notion of the God I believe in).

    Look around in the debate, hardly a female in sight (except perhaps Ayn Rand, and to borrow Austin Powers, “She’s a man, baby!”)! Why is that? Perhaps because women have better things to do with their lives than put up with these grandiose projections of machoism. It stands to reason that the male god is a supernatural one, a “doer”, a “designer”, the penetrator, the projector. “I am the world; the world is me.” Yes, that is the so-called “god” (and you thought souped-up cars were a compensatory phallic symbol) that has spawned a billion acts of abuse. Gee, some wonder. Why is that? A feminist might say, because they feel inferior that they cannot create life (as God would), so they seek to control it, with the ultimate control being the ability to destroy it (including you, Mr. Hitchens, whose acerbic wit only cuts; I rarely see it appreciate or praise in a non-aggrandizing way).

    I don’t believe in a supernatural God. I believe in a natural one. I do not believe in a designing God. I believe God is the design. I don’t believe in a “doing”-unto God. I believe God is the great relator of all things; I believe in a relational God. I don’t believe in the vengeful, destroyer God. I experience a God that creates, and lays waste to the delusions that prevent the fuller knowledge standing in the way of creation. My god is not male or female, certainly not a Rambo. My church, if I have a true church, is the temple called nature (and I’m not even pagan or animist, I’m Christian). Why? Because there the flow of the self-organized design called God is most palpable. I don’t believe in A God. I simply experience God in life, in a worship community, in the sharpened presence of awareness, of existent interconnectedness. So what does that make me vis a vis them? Really it makes me a supernatural atheist, and yet I call myself with steady matter-of-fact confidence, a theist.

    The debate does not allow for my god, or Thich Nhat Hanh’s, or feminist conception. It’s one big-ass penis matching contest between a bunch of guys who think they are the second coming (evolved or beknighted, it doesn’t matter). The so-called atheists in the bunch are more honest about their egoistic will-to-power. They wear their master morality on their sleeve. They need no intermediary. They don’t need others to believe as they do, but the arrogance for those who do not believe as they do… “The God Delusion” (nuff, said) or “God is Not Great”).

    Hey I think I’ll write another bestseller in this genre myself, I’ll call it “If God Existed, He’d Suck”.

    The other yahoos, the religious manipulators of the Robertson ilk, are more passive-aggressive. You’re simply damned if you don’t believe in a God that answers directly to them.

    Belief in God is the wrong starting point as far as I’m concerned. It starts from an alienated space. I sincerely see no value in BELIEVING in God any more than I see a value in believing in Santa Claus. But, yes Virginia there is a God. He ain’t a He, ain’t that God don’t have flowing robes and a beard and he’s not Ronald Reagan either, or a kindly grandpa, or an angry drill sargeant. Most people cannot even imagine a God who is not a parent or an authority figure. We are infantile, and perhaps religion as Hitchens claims was born in the infantile, but is male intellectual adolescence really any better? Hoo boy what a choice:

    Page 64 from Hitchens “God is Not Great: “One must state it plainly. Religion comes … from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs).”

    Where is the wonder, the God that informs rather than directs, the God the nurtures rather than comforts, the God that evokes rather than punishes. That is the God I experience and I have great gratitude for. Am I not a neo-pagan-new-age-pseudo-Christian-I-don’t-think-faith-means-what-you-think-it- means-woman-loving-androgyny-approving-heathen? No I am a theist. And I dare say, so are those others. Everyone has their God. It ain’t whose God is better or whose God is right (again the male adolescent concept and posturing), but what kind of God leads us deeper in to the fuller, more connected, more examined, and more experienced good life?

    Citizen Zeus

  10. on 26 Jun 2007 at 8:32 am 10. black dog barking said …

    JP, of late I’ve noticed a certain je ne sais quoi in the endings of your comments. Have you been practicing?

  11. on 26 Jun 2007 at 11:21 am 11. James Killus said …

    Well now there’s a pleasant argument. Atheists are male, and any example of female atheism must therefore be due to the masculinization of that particular female.

    I wonder, does this mean that all female Marxists are lying, closeted theists, or masculinized? Ah, it doesn’t matter; I’m sure they’re all thoroughly stereotyped.

    And, no, black dog, you know full well I don’t mean “clear-eyed perceptive observer.” I mean that an agnostic is someone who lacks the steel to bare Occam’s Razor, look someone in the eye and say, “I do not believe in the very thing that you say is in charge of your life and morals. I feel the same way about your God that you feel about Zeus and Ba’al, only more so.”

    “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”
    “What’ve you got?”
    –The Wild One, Starring Marlon Brando

    All hail the great and bountiful Spam Filter; may He grant us Safe Passage.

  12. on 26 Jun 2007 at 1:44 pm 12. Oaktown Girl said …

    Well now there’s a pleasant argument. Atheists are male, and any example of female atheism must therefore be due to the masculinization of that particular female.

    That’s not the way I’m reading Zeus’ comment at all. The way I’m reading it is that arguments about atheism/theism historically have come from a distinctly male perspective, and largely continue to do so. I’m not interpreting that as saying there can be no female atheists, or slamming females who say they are atheist.

    “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”
    “What’ve you got?”

    In a Simpsons parody of that famous line, Lisa Simpson delivered it masterfully…perhaps even better than Brando!

  13. on 26 Jun 2007 at 3:03 pm 13. James Killus said …

    Look around in the debate, hardly a female in sight (except perhaps Ayn Rand, and to borrow Austin Powers, “She’s a man, baby!”)!

    Perhaps it would be wise to read Emma Goldman on why there are so few female radicals. Or we could adapt the above quote about Ayn Rand to Madalyn Murray O’Hair:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O‘Hair

    Or first Google on “female atheists” and then try it on “African American atheists.” Clearly, atheism is both sexist and racist.

    What I’d like to hear from the theists and agnostics here is how they feel about those gods that they really don’t believe in. Are you agnostic about the existence of Kali, Xibalba, Loki, Wunda, and Huitzilopochtli? Or how about the God of the Church of Christ from when I was a boy, who stated that if you weren’t a member of the Church of Christ, no matter what else you were or did, you were absolutely going to hell?

    Just, you know, curious.

  14. on 26 Jun 2007 at 3:22 pm 14. Oaktown Girl said …

    James, I think this link may work better or at least be a good addition to your above comment.

  15. on 26 Jun 2007 at 4:34 pm 15. James Killus said …

    Oaktown Girl,

    That was the page whose URL I copied. Apparently something was lost in translation.

  16. on 26 Jun 2007 at 5:50 pm 16. black dog barking said …

    What I’d like to hear from the theists and agnostics here is how they feel about those gods that they really don’t believe in. Are you agnostic about the existence of Kali, Xibalba, Loki, Wunda, and Huitzilopochtli?

    That is, I think, a fair and diagnostic question. I was raised Presbyterian, a member of the Elect for no apparent reason, and my best friend through 2nd grade went to the Church of Christ. I don’t remember their services being any more or less boring than what I was used to. Now that you mention it my approach to the a/theism/gnosticism question does have a distinct Presbyterian bias and my internal model of deity has strong overtones of a Saviour Shepherd who is not really Middle-Eastern-looking although born and raised within walking distance of the Dead Sea. Never thought about the impact of this experience on my perception of atheism until now.

    Yes, I’m agnostic about Loki, the only name I recognize on that list. If I were living in the times and places that nurtured stories of Loki and his confreres I think I could easily form the same kind of attachments that my 20th century Presbyterian-American upbringing left with me. No doubt I’d have had far less opportunity to find other explanations. And far more time to find a horrible way to die.

    Like any human activity, religion suffers from our bountiful capacity to fail. But I think that these supernatural stories all carry the same seed, that at some point they strive to articulate an observational experience much much bigger than the available words. Magic is where the “I don’t know” starts.

    (Your buddy Fred Hoyle gives the old myths an interesting twist in October the First Is Too Late when the future time-travelers use a temple to Apollo in ancient Athens to make contact with the protagonist. The Athenian audience was in the presence humans raised to the level of deity by demonstrable knowledge.)

  17. on 26 Jun 2007 at 9:33 pm 17. JP Stormcrow said …

    JP, of late I’ve noticed a certain je ne sais quoi in the endings of your comments. Have you been practicing?

    Practicing? why, no - isn’t that what we are talking about? … Ah do you mean practicing endings? Well, of course there are various endings one should be prepared for and a bit of practice can’t hurt, but how to actually end any particular thing? That I just don’t know.

  18. on 26 Jun 2007 at 10:12 pm 18. JP Stormcrow said …

    I mean that an agnostic is someone who lacks the steel to bare Occam’s Razor

    Agreed. And I do fit that description. Occam’s Razor - love it, try to use it, it has helped mankind immeasurably, I do invoke it in my personal rejection of belief in a deity, but not willing to grant it absolute status.

    In terms of what I personally find ineffable, I do believe that there are many aspects of the world about which a “legitimate sense of awe and wonder” is the proper response. And I distinguish between a “mundane” legitimate sense of awe and wonder such as one would have in regarding the workings of evolution - but which one still thinks can be described and understood by the practice of science - and a “super-ultimate” legitimate sense of awe and wonder about that which cannot be so understood. I am stealing the word and concept “super-ultimate” from the philosopher Paul Edwards, who used it in a great essay entitled “Why?”. His “super-ultimate why-question” was basically “Why is there something rather than nothing?” He pronounces it as basically a meaningless question. The super-ultimate why-question, which has been so widely regarded as profound, is meaningless. For me the only thing in the category of super-ultimate legitimate-sense-of-awe-and-wonder is basically the analog of Edwards’ question, awe and wonder at existence of the universe period. (That there is something rather than nothing). It may be a meaningless question, but to me its contemplation is a legitimate (and healthy) thing to feel humbled by.

    But as for “God/gods” (and I am an equal opportunity rejecter of gods of all genders, races, forms, manifestations and multitude) my final thought is that in the end they are simply in-effing unbelievable.

  19. on 26 Jun 2007 at 10:42 pm 19. Zeus said …

    Reading my fellow board member’s new book on the evolution debate, “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything”, he (Gordy Slack) recounts Spinoza’s conclusion that either God doesn’t exist or that God is everything. I fall squarely on the latter. I can recognize and gain great insight and knowledge from the gods of others and from the limitations of my own conceptions of God as brought forth by variety of people and life events, if they are able to engage me (and I them) in a sincere way. This is unfortunately either rare or simply undoable for many I guess, since we seem so wedded to our conceptions and influenced by our histories.

    I guess I was lucky. I was not raised in an organized religion. I did not need to accept nor reject it. I grew very curious about many religions and have significant reading, knowledge, even some, albeit, light practice in more than a few (through visits to zendos etc. I am not in the least threatened by other ‘gods’ and indeed I have a great deal of appreciation for them. This universe moving as God makes possible my belief and our diversity in belief. Why is that not good? Why is it not cause to listen and learn and divine a spark of relevance in the beliefs of others to my own faith life. I would be supremely brittle (and have much less to regard) if I clung to a static and prefabricated vision of God when God moves in the world and through me and between and among others (in a way that invites honoring and respect).

    If your God tells you to kill me, I won’t blame your God, I’ll blame you and your crackpot bloodlust. It is this connection to others spiritually and responsibility for one’s self I find oddly lacking in strident rejections of God (beyond delusion) as even possible. Why the need to rebel at all? Is this not simple reaction. I get people’s hackles far more raised by having a concept of God that doesn’t fit into any of the boxes, and it even has the benefit of being the truth for me, and some argument trope to throw others off.

    Citizen Zeus

  20. on 26 Jun 2007 at 11:30 pm 20. JP Stormcrow said …

    Reading my fellow board member’s new book on the evolution debate, “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything”, he (Gordy Slack)

    Thought that name sounded familiar. The Salon piece I mentioned upthread was Gordy Slack interviewing Richard Dawkins.

  21. on 27 Jun 2007 at 8:37 am 21. Oaktown Girl said …

    What I’d like to hear from the theists and agnostics here is how they feel about those gods that they really don’t believe in.

    For anyone (like myself) who acknowledges or “believes in” (or whatever) the existence or presence of something that cannot be proved or measured by means of strict scientific empiricism, AND who has also matured beyond a parent-child relationship with that “something”, this question does not really work. I think people who fit the bill I’ve just described don’t recognize or believe in a God or Gods and Goddesses as such, but accept the absolute unity of that “something”, and various gods/goddess/The God/The Goddess are merely aspects of that unity as they are expressed in different cultures.

  22. on 27 Jun 2007 at 12:37 pm 22. Zeus said …

    Well described and summarized Oaktown Girl,

    That certainly covers me. I can even state that I experience and develop my experience of this larger unity through a tradition– in my case, primarily the Christian tradition. But this does not exclude, and ought not exclude, learning, even transformation of spiritual consciousness, through other traditions. Christianity is my home, not my citadel or my castle. I’m interested in inviting guests, whom I may not always agree with, or feel the same as, but in whom I have great gratitude for being true to their own roots and “homes.” It is this authenticity I prize. I feel like they are serving God better by expressing creatively and constructively from their natures, even if that involves an honest agnoticism or active atheism. This larger cosmos is the field of God, and if your part in creating awareness and growth is in denying God altogether, at least make that expression sincere, like Penn Jillette. I don’t believe as he does, but we agree that happiness is not conferred by some supernatural entity doing nice favors for his “children.” I simply believe it comes from the life force I call God coming through my being, expressed in my life and loves, and Jillette believes there is just life, no larger (unifying or not) force.

    This does not make me wishy-washy and wishing to erase all conflict through an amelioration of any meaning or different worth that attend various beliefs. Quite the opposite. I desire increased vividness and diversity of belief. But the truth of those beliefs, and the character of the person who holds certain beliefs, is far better evidenced in the way those beliefs are expressed. I will take a Buddhist like Mr. Hanh any day as a far better and more knowledgeable Christian (he even includes Jesus in his rituals as a spiritual ancestor) than an anti-Christian “Christian” like Pat Robertson. Again, if you claim Jesus is a Rambo and telling you to kill some Arab, that is a problem with you, not so much Christian example. The insitution of Christianity may have abused and even subverted the Christian example, but if one is to criticize the Christian tradition in terms of root theology, best to go back to the New Testament and tell me what about Jesus’ words and example you disagree with or find so objectionable. It is a radically progressive, inclusive, and compassionate gospel, that speaks to me very personally, very socially, and very spiritually.

    It is the atheists that make great fun of insulting other people’s gods that I have a problem with… the cynic that aspires to being right, by simply tearning down others’ belief or even the possibility of belief period. It’s too damn easy and useless. Delusions, if I or you have them, are far more effectively pricked by a positive, creative challenge coming from an earnestly held and expressed understanding of oneself and one’s world. I have the same problem with intolerant Christians. They do not know how close they are to the religion-baiting atheists. I’d rather people did their work with due justice and honor to the universe that supports their ability to live and choose at all. I also understand that the best way to do this is to create myself and to engage the possibilities of the spirit.

    Citizen Zeus

  23. on 27 Jun 2007 at 1:14 pm 23. spyder said …

    to push the quote a bit: What I’d like to hear from the theists and agnostics here is how they feel about those religions that they really accept exist at all.

    For me one of the critical problems has been how those that hold one particular set of a sectarian religious credo can so easily dismiss the complete existence of others. It isn’t only that they don’t believe, it is that they must create all sorts of convoluted constructs to negate the existence of those other faiths. Many fundamentalists of many religions scream that Scientology is a made-up fraud. Of course it is, but so is Mormonism, Judaism, Hinduism, and so forth. They are all human developed constructs, made-up to quench the appetite for organizing the mysteries of the universe.

    But how can one who holds one set of articles of their faith so easily suggest that someone elses is made-up while theirs is not? Or that all other deities are just other names for theirs??? Or that some fallen angel type demi-deity is responsible for creating fake stuff to confuse and challenge others to return to the “right” one???? If you have to go to such lengths to make shit up to believe, you might want to try to just experience the world for what it is….