Sunday, June 2, 2013

Atheism As Religion

How exactly should a religion be defined? Religions have many characteristics in common, which do not necessarily include the belief in a deity (e.g. Buddhism) – although most do. And it cannot be said that religion is belief without reasoning – all though some are - or belief without rational backing – although some are - because there exist grounded arguments which support certain rational, probabilistic beliefs which are physically nonfalsifiable, empirically experimentally unapproachable, yet are rationally acceptable (e.g. Deism).

Nor can it be said that religion is ahistorical – although some definitely are – because some have historical credentials that exceed those of other historical events and figures (e.g. Abrahamic religions, including Islam and Judeo-Christianity).

The religion which is discounted by Atheists is, at its base, a cartoon attitude: blind belief without either rational evidence or physical evidence. While this does not apply all religions, it is the reductive caricature which Atheists believe constitutes religious belief. Yet as has been shown time and again, there is no basis for applying this to all and every religion. Still, it can be applied to other irrational belief systems and worldviews, which we shall now do below.

What of Atheism itself? Outside of maintaining a full set of overt characteristics which are exactly those of theist religions but without the theism, Atheism is exactly a blind belief without either rational or empirical support for its premise, which is that there is not and cannot exist a deity. How is that the case?

Atheism is nothing more than blind rejection without cause of all logical and physical evidence for a deity. That is the basis for the case that Atheism is a blind belief, a religious belief conforming to the definition of religion which is held by Atheists themselves.

Many (a great many) Atheists try to wipe away the need for empirical or logical proof for supporting their own position with the claim that they have no intellectual responsibility for their belief that there is no deity, and that they can reject logical arguments without giving any reasoning. They deny any burden for providing sound, reasoned reasons for their rejections of theist arguments. They ignore the absurdity of this position, because it seems (they think) to give them an effortless “win” for their Consequentialist tactic. This type of win is without any intellectual force because it has no intellectual content. When that attempted evasion fails them logically, as it must, they claim that they really have no “deity belief”, an absurd claim which also fails immediately under the slightest skeptical scrutiny.

They further attempt to obscure their own beliefs by trying to redefine the term, ”Atheism”, to include agnosticism, pure ignorance (all babies are Atheist they claim), apathy and inability to know anything (pond scum, minerals and dark matter).

But in actuality Atheism was and remains the out-of-hand rejection, without reasons which are based in logic or empiricism, of theism arguments and claims. So if the rejection is neither rational nor scientific, it is purely emotionally based. The rejection is pure Rejectionism for rejection’s-sake, or at least for the soothing of emotional neediness of the individual Atheist.

This is confirmed in the occurrence of Atheism as a worldview precursor. First Atheism occurs generally in the adolescent years, up to the young adult years. In some individuals the frontal cortex does not mature until nearly 30 years of age; whether this is applicable to late adoption of Atheism is debatable, but it is certainly the case that a large portion of Atheists acquire their Rejectionism in adolescence and early adulthood.

Second, it generally occurs in individuals who have not studied the discipline of logic, and are not beholden to logical discipline as a worldview.

Third, the existence of the Atheist VOID performs as both emotional carrot and stick in the addiction of the individual to himself as source, rather than to any external source of logic or moral precept. The VOID is the exuberant rejection of all rational and moral authority, which the Atheist sees enthusiastically as a wonderful new “freedom”: free thought and freedom from religious morality. His personal thought and his personal moral judgment overrides all others.

As the Atheist develops his own personal world of thought processing and moral determination, he becomes the equivalent of his own religion, albeit a very self-contained religion, wherein he is the determinant of all things “properly thought” and all things “properly moral”. This is possible only within a cloistered mind which considers itself the apogee of all evolution, and with few, if any, peers. In other words, elite.

And it allows, in fact requires, that any challengers to this new mental and moral elitist anarchy be dismissed, and with no reasons required for that dismissal other than that the challengers are non-congruent with what the cloistered mind believes to be true: that what the Atheist has is all that is of value in the universe. (In fact, after dismissing without cause all challengers to his personal Truth system, the Atheist comes to develop his own personal logic system and his own personal moral code which should, he believes, apply to all of the Other, too; he is, after all, elite).

That lets out both disciplined deduction and careful empiricism, if those do not correspond directly and completely with the Atheist’s conception of reality. And for the most part, they do not.

So the Atheist is caught up in a self-centered religion which blindly believes in its own personally derived Truths, concepts which are not based or grounded in logical reality or in empirical understandings of reality, a religious view which further has uneducated comprehension of what constitutes both rational, deductive conclusions and empirical contingent knowledge. Further, he believes that ungrounded Skepticism produces Truth, when in fact it produces only Rejection, without cause.

And yet the Atheist commonly believes himself to be both rational and scientific, and claims those pursuits as his personal high ground, as if he alone can comprehend them. This demonstrates the irrational, blindly religious characteristic of Atheism, especially when actual logic and the obvious limitations of empiricism are pointed out to him and he rejects that. Unable to reconcile actual disciplined logic with his own thought process, and unable to comprehend the limitations of science output as knowledge, the Atheist continues to live in his own cloistered mind, using his own thought process and his own concept of reality which is limited to his own thought processing.

If the Atheist were, in fact, rational and empirical, then he would demonstrate rational or empirical cause for having rejected theist arguments. But the Atheist cannot provide either empirical, experimental evidence for the non-existence of a deity, nor can he provide disciplined, deductive refuting reasoning which categorically proves the non-existence of a deity. The Atheist cannot prove the non-existence of the non-material. The Atheist cannot prove much of anything at all. What he has is just opinion. The Atheist has nothing to bring to the intellectual party – except rejection without cause. In fact, it is anti-intellectual: religious rejectionism without cause.

There can be no reason to believe Atheist rejections because Atheists can give no reasons and no reasoning for their rejections. They actually have no reasons other than their own emotional attachment to the Religion of Self to which they subscribed when they entered the Atheist VOID.

Atheism, we must conclude, is one of the least rational, most blind beliefs of any religion, because it cannot provide a case for its belief system; yet the Atheist is unable to shake the irrational belief system and its ultimate worldview because it gives him the emotional crutch he needs: false feelings of presumed elitism, and the false freedom of believing in irrational conclusions which have no premises except Rejectionism, much less grounded, rational premises.

2 comments:

Steven Satak said...

I remember reading an interview with C. S. Lewis.

In it, someone asked him "which of the world's religions is likely to make one happy?"

He answered: "The religion most likely to make one happy? I suppose, while it lasts, the worship of one's own self."

He went on to add that he didn't believe in Christianity because he thought it would make him happy - "I always knew a bottle of port would accomplish that" - he believed in it because it was true.

Unknown said...

“Until someone claims to see Christopher Hitchens’ face in a tree stump, idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion. There’s one little difference: Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, and atheism is — precisely not that. Got it? Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.”
— Bill Maher, Real Time With Bill Maher