The recent Gods and Politics conference in Copenhagen adopted the following Declaration on Religion in Public Life. The conference was the first European event of Atheist Alliance International, and was co-hosted by AAI and the Danish Atheist Society.
We, at the World Atheist Conference: “Gods and Politics”, held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:
1. We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to practice one’s religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.
2. We submit that public policy should be informed by evidence and reason, not by dogma.
3. We assert the need for a society based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. History has shown that the most successful societies are the most secular.
4. We assert that the only equitable system of government in a democratic society is based on secularism: state neutrality in matters of religion or belief, favoring none and discriminating against none.
5. We assert that private conduct, which respects the rights of others should not be the subject of legal sanction or government concern.
6. We affirm the right of believers and non-believers alike to participate in public life and their right to equality of treatment in the democratic process.
7. We affirm the right to freedom of expression for all, subject to limitations only as prescribed in international law – laws which all governments should respect and enforce. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion or nonreligious life stances.
8. We assert the principle of one law for all, with no special treatment for minority communities, and no jurisdiction for religious courts for the settlement of civil matters or family disputes.
9. We reject all discrimination in employment (other than for religious leaders) and the provision of social services on the grounds of race, religion or belief, gender, class, caste or sexual orientation.
10. We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status and state grants for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers and those of other faiths. We oppose state funding for faith schools.
11. We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs. We support the spirit of free inquiry and the teaching of science free from religious interference, and are opposed to indoctrination, religious or otherwise.
Adopted by the conference, Copenhagen, 20 June 2010.
[Statements have been numbered for reference].
What is most interesting is the lack of any statement about the underlying philosophy driving this position paper. For example, the source of the stated “rights”. Although not explicit, these are positive rights for the most part, to be allowed by the State. Exceptions to those rights which explicitly discriminate against religion are also called out in items 8, 9, 10. The State is the source and arbiter of these rights, as allowed by the Atheists, who are explicitly solely in charge under paragraph 9. State Atheist education is the only education that can receive taxpayer funding – called “state funding” in the text. Presumably then, the state owns your funds under solely Atheist auspices, for dispersal to solely Atheist enterprises.
These stated rights are those allowed under this particular group of Atheists. Who knows what the next group will allow. History, however, (not typically a favored subject for the Atheists, who call for science education, aka evolution, but are silent on other subjects) demonstrates that once Atheists are in power (Lenin for example), the rights statements change drastically to suit the needs of the Atheist state. The state has all the rights, first; it might or might not dole them to the public, depending on the Consequentialist needs of the moment.
The idea of submission to international law [item 7] on the one hand (One Worldism), and yet invoking these “rights” on the other, is self-defeating and internally inconsistent – unless these Atheists are in charge of international law, too. That implication is built into the unstated fundamentals underlying this paper. But if the international law is Sharia, this statement is without value. So in actuality the statement is without value regardless of the international law at the moment. The intent of the statement seems to be the levelling of all nations under Atheism.
The ever present Atheist call for critical thinking, evidence and reason, contra dogma, illuminates one of the most obvious self-contradictions of Atheist “reasoning”: The Philosophical Materialism underlying Atheism cannot be demonstrated with either evidence or with reason. The Atheistic definition (de facto, never explicit) of critical thinking is a) scientism; b) rigid Materialist dogma. Never does Atheist “critical thinking” subject itself to the rigor of the First Principles, nor does it reveal its axioms despite their blatant obviousness. So the type of thinking referred to as “critical” by Atheists is actually dogmatic adherence to a religious principle: there is no non-material reality available to hold a non-material deity, despite the total lack of empirical evidence to support that claim, or the ability to falsify it. For Atheist Materialists, it is critical to seek friendly premises in order to support the conclusion. Atheism is a religious metaphysic, not a scientific result based on empirical, scientific data.
The declaration of reason as the path to knowledge is valid (item 11); yet this is not congruent with Atheistic Materialism, which is not based on reason, but on emotional rejection of unwanted reality, and hubristic intellectual rebellion. The entire basis is non-coherent, a self-contradictory, non-rational, completely religious position. Again, this paper is a statement of intended domination by a religious group: Philosophical Materialist Atheists.
Moreover, the claim that material evidence is the only path to knowledge is unsupportable, empirically, and is on its face, not valid, in light of abstract knowledge which is deduced, but not mechanically provable with empirical, experimental evidence. In fact all of evolutionary claims seem to be so based, yet are not considered problematic for Atheist Materialists, yet another non-coherence of Atheism and Materialism.
Placing faith in a group of non-absolutists that they will, once in power, accord me with any rights is a complete abandonment of rationality. Non-absolutism speaks for itself: it deserves no respect, intellectually or morally. It has been shown historically to be a fearful master, never mind what their position papers declare.
The faith placed in such a document by PZ and others seems misplaced, given that historically, secularists feed off of other secularists just as much as they do dissenters.
ADDENDUM: I should have stated at the top that item 2 is an explicit position for relativism and Consequentialism, and against virtue-type absolutist morality. These are the choices of every elitist totalitarian. It sets the tone for the rest of the "rights" statements.
And in item 3, which successful "secular democracies" are they referring to? Perhaps ours, which is now suffering under secular seizure?
2 comments:
Might I make some constructive criticism?
In the past while reading your blog (when I was a materialist atheist), I never could understand what you meant when you said that atheists defined "critical thinking" as "materialist dogma." I just blinked a few times and figured you were wrong, somehow, and moved on.
Instead, it might be helpful to steer people towards a short history of logical positivism and its subsequent collapse, and the reasons for its collapse.
You could then frame modern scientism-ists as followers of a movement that was shown to be in error some fifty years ago.
Martin, excellent observation. I have written nearly 800 articles in the past 2 1/2 years and I admit to not remembering everything I have written. I now tend to discuss things like Philosophical Materialism and Scientism as if everyone knows what I'm talking about - it's old hat to me, but certainly it wasn't when I started my investigations (back in '03 I think it was).
The source you mention is a clear handling of the Logical Positivists, their fundamental error and the Scientism fallacy, thanks.
There is another source, one that I once called the "best book I've ever read": Reason and Analysis, by Brand Blanshard. It covers not only Positivism but the process of reason.
Here is one statement from the middle of the book, pg 251:
"After all, philosophy is an attempt to think logically about the world; and unless the logic tht governs our thinking answers to the way in which the world is put together, why attemmpt by any effort of thought to trace the lines of world order?"
In other words, non-contradiction rules, if thought is to be coherent and congruent with universal reality.
Logical Positivism, Philosophical Materialism and Scientism all fail at the most basic, foundational point: Science cannot prove that it is the only way to knowledge; and to quote your source:
"According to the verification principle, a non-tautological statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. However, the verification principle itself is non-tautological but cannot be empirically verified. Consequently, it renders itself meaningless."
True critical thinking would have revealed this to the philosophers, and to Atheists who now fall prey to the same fallacy. But "critical thinking" as terminology within the Skeptical, Atheist, Scientismist community now means only subscribing blindly to Philosophical Materialism (aka Logical Positivism).
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