I'd like to meet:
Skeptics, Critical Thinkers, and Scientists
ATHEISM - as defined in the Skeptic's Dictionary
I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. -- George Herbert Walker Bush
Article IX, Sec. 2, of the Tennessee constitution ("No Atheist shall hold a civil office") states: "No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments shall hold any office in the civil department of this state." Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas have similar laws.*
An Atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. --John Buchan
I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.--Stephen F. Roberts
Atheism is traditionally defined as disbelief in the existence of God. As such, atheism involves active rejection of belief in the existence of God. This definition does not capture the atheism of many atheists, which is based on an indifference to the issue of God's existence. There is a difference between disbelief in all gods and no belief in God. I'm not sure there is even any meaning to the former. Before one can disbelieve in something, that something must be intelligible and it must be understood. Since belief in new gods may appear in the future and it is impossible to know what will be meant by reference to those gods, it makes no sense to say one disbelieves in all gods. Likewise, some conceptions of God are so confusing as to be little more than gibberish. How can one disbelieve in the "ineffable ground of all being"? The expression has no meaning for me and I suspect that those who claim it is meaningful to them don't know what they're talking about.
However, since there are many concepts of god(s) and these concepts are usually rooted in some culture or tradition, atheism might be defined as the belief that a particular word used to refer to a particular god is a word that has no reference. Thus, there are as many different kinds of atheism as there are names of gods or groups of gods.
Some atheists may know of many gods and reject belief in the existence of all of them. Such a person might be called a polyatheist. All theists are atheists in the sense that they deny the existence of all other gods except theirs, but they don't consider themselves atheists. Most people today who consider themselves atheists probably mean that they do not believe in the existence of the local god. For example, most people who call themselves atheists in a culture where the Judeo-Christian or Islamic God (JCoIG or Jaycolgee) dominates would mean, at the very least, that they do not believe that there is an Omnipotent and Omniscient Providential Personal Creator of the universe. And, people who believe in the JCoIG would consider such disbelief tantamount to atheism.
Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), on the other hand, defined God as being identical to Nature and as a substance with infinite attributes. Many Jews and Christians considered him an atheist because he rejected both the traditional JCoIG and the belief in personal immortality. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was also considered an atheist because he believed that all substances are material and that God must therefore be material. Yet, neither Spinoza nor Hobbes called themselves atheists.
Epicurus did not call himself an atheist, either, but he rejected the concept of the gods popular in ancient Greece. The gods are perfect, he said. Therefore, they cannot be the imperfect beings depicted by Hesiod, Homer, and others. Their gods have human flaws, including jealousy. Perfect beings would not be troubled by anything, including the behavior of humans. Hence, the notion that the gods will reward or punish us is absurd. To be perfect is to be unperturbed. The concept of perfection, therefore, requires that the gods be indifferent to human behavior. Some have rejected belief in the Christian God for similar reasons. The idea of a perfect being creating the universe is self-contradictory. How can perfection be improved upon? At its best, to create is to bring into existence something that makes things better. At its worst, to create is to make things worse, which would be a blemish on perfection. If those objections can be answered, another arises: if God is All-Good and All-Powerful, evil should not exist. Therefore, either God is All-Good but can't stop evil because God is not All-Powerful, or God is All-Powerful but allows evil because God is not All-Good. Such an argument clearly does not deny the existence of all gods and is relevant only in disputes over the likely consequences of a god having a certain nature.
Others have rejected the JColG because they believe that the concept of worship, essential to most Christians, contradicts the concept of omnipotence (Rachels 1989). The concept of an all-powerful perfect being extorting worship from his creations seems absurd (worship me or I'll smite you a good one!). It also seems clearly anthropomorphic. The only motivation for worshipping Yahweh would be fear or the expectation of some sort of payoff if you do. How could anyone love this brutal, malicious character? Still others reject a belief in the JCoIG because they consider the scriptures used to support that belief to be unbelievable. Some theologians have tried to prove through reason alone that this God exists. Rejection of such proofs, however, is not atheism.
Some Christians consider Buddhists to be atheists, apparently for the same reason they consider Spinoza or Plato to be atheists: Anyone who rejects the Omnipotent and All-Good Providential Personal Creator rejects God. Yet, rejecting the JCoIG is not to reject all gods. Nor is rejecting the JCoIG the same as rejecting belief in an ultimate ground or principle of being and goodness, a being that explains both why there is something rather than nothing and why everything is as it is. Nor is rejection of the JCoIG the same as rejecting belief in a realm of beings such as devas or spirits that are not limited by mortality and other human or animal frailties.
Atheists do not deny that people have mystical or religious experiences, where one feels what they believe is God’s presence or a sense of the oneness and significance of everything in the universe. Nor do atheists deny that many people experience what they interpret as God’s presence in their everyday lives. Atheists strongly disbelieve that the emotions or brain states or neurochemical changes that result in such feelings and experiences have supernatural causes.
MORALITY
Some theists believe that atheism is dangerous for society because if there is no God there is no reason to be moral. Bishop Stillingfleet (1635-1699) summed up this view nicely in his argument against the Stoic's notion that virtue is its own reward. If there weren't some other reward for being moral, he said, it would be foolish "for men to part with the conveniences of this present life" (Carroll 1975: 112). Furthermore, a reasonable God would not leave it up to mere philosophers to discover our moral duties. After all, they're "perpetually disputing among themselves about those things which were the most necessary foundations of all Virtue and Religion." The rational atheist must gag at such a remark, given the incessant disputes among the various religions as to what constitutes virtue and morality. Stillingfleet dismissed the views of other religions by referring to them as "foolish Notions...vain Superstitions...incoherent Fables..." The other views are debased, uncouth, impure, filled with horrible flaws. Only Anglicanism had it right. Of course, the other religions say the same about Anglicanism. And so it goes.
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) didn't agree with Stillingfleet. He denied knowing any immoral atheists and asked readers of his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697) to send him any evidence of immoral atheists (Popkin 2003: 293-294). The Dictionary went through several editions in Bayle's lifetime but no examples of immoral atheists were ever produced. In fact, the longest article in the Dictionary is the one on Spinoza, who is identified as an atheist and depicted as one of the most moral men who ever lived. Bayle claimed that a society of atheists could be more moral than a society of Christians. He pointed out that, historically,
Christian societies from ancient times to the present were full of evildoers, corrupt persons, sex maniacs, liars, and cheats....His picture of the religious society of ancient Israel was, in some way, even worse, as depicted in his article on King David. (Popkin 2003: 297)
Of course, there are many modern theists who are sex maniacs, liars, cheats, mass murderers, rapists, sexual abusers of children, robbers of pension funds, and the like. It seems obvious from the factual evidence of more than two millennia that belief in God is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being moral. And, despite the fact that philosophers perpetually dispute just about every thesis on every topic, the great moral thinkers of the world have been secular philosophers such as Confucius, Aristotle, Hume, Bentham/Mill, and Kant, rather than the god-based who seem incapable of producing anything more elegant than a divine command theory.
God-based ethics have contributed little to moral progress. Nor have they advanced our understanding of our moral nature. Most god-based ethical systems have been little more than dogmatic lists of prohibitions, many of which have been irrational. Their main effect has been to bind members of various groups around a set of values, beliefs, and rituals, while identifying other groups as evil enemies. Of course, many of these systems have provided other benefits, such as the false hope for immortality and the allegedly comforting notion that all suffering is intentional and for some higher purpose. But these alleged benefits have been so uncertain that most god-based groups have had to use force and violence of the most inhumane and ugliest sort to keep the group together. (I grant that while engaging in these murders and tortures, the god-based ethical groups often produced some beautiful music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. And the fear these actions induced kept the group together for many fine social functions.) Some of these god-based ethical systems have even proposed that each of their members should embark on a lifelong quest of murdering and pillaging all non-believers.* My point is not that atheists can't do the horrible and the inhumane. They can and they have. (Think Stalin, though he did have a religious upbringing I am told, little good that it did him.) My point is that belief in a god is not a sufficient condition for a moral life and this is due partly to the fact that god-based systems of thought are concerned with much more than morality. For the god-based group, ultimately, morality is just a means to an end.
On the other hand, secular ethical thought, though no more uniform than the conflicting rules of the various religions on the planet, has advanced both our moral progress and our understanding of the nature of morality. There have been no Kantian jihads, Utilitarian inquisitions, or Confucian crusades. It is true, however, that atheists whose main concern has been political power rather than ethical insight—again, think Stalin—have not advanced human rights or freedom, but have hindered our progress. More to the point, there is no reason to think that a society of atheists wouldn't be at least as moral as the existing societies of theists. The only way we'll know for sure is if theism goes the way of the dodo.
GROWTH OF ATHEISM
How widespread is atheism? It is difficult to say with precision, since many people are afraid of admitting they are atheists. (Think of the terms that have been used at various times in various places to convey disapproval of atheists: heretic, infidel, non-believer, unbeliever, disbeliever, pagan, blasphemer, nonconformist, dissenter, apostate, defector, and fallen-away Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc. The bright movement attempts to counter this hostility by focusing on a positive term for those who are not supers.) There are indications, however, that atheism is growing and is more widespread than the media and religious leaders would have us believe. A worldwide survey in 2000 by the Gallup polling agency found that 8% do not think there is any spirit, personal God, or life force. Another 17% were not sure. The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 found growth in that segment of the adult population "identifying with no religion." In 1990, 14.3 million or roughly 8% identified with this category. Ten years later the non-believer population had grown to 29.4 million, roughly 14.1% of the American community.* This may be due in large part to the fact that in the 1990 survey the question asked was loaded: What religion do you identify with? In 2001, if any was added to the question.*
The fact is that more than half the world’s population, and more than 90% of the world’s scientists,* do not believe in a personal God, and hence would be considered atheists by many Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Worldwide, there are about 1.1 billion nonreligious people; only two religions have more numbers: Christianity has about 2.1 billion adherents and Islam has about 1.3 billion.* Apparently, many millions of people around the world accept the existence of some sort of supernatural being or force, but it makes no difference at all in their lives. If I had to sum up my own atheism, I think I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural. I also have no interest in what others believe about the supernatural as long as their belief does not involve intolerance of those who disagree with them. Such people are a menace to society, a hindrance to social progress, and are unworthy of our respect. If we care about humanity, we have a duty to stand up to the intolerant of the world, no matter what god they claim commands them to behave inhumanely. We also have a duty to oppose those who claim immunity from the prohibition of abusing children because of their belief in some god. To claim that children should not be educated in science or in the religious beliefs of others—or that they should not receive proper medical care—because their parents believe God forbids it, is unacceptable.
