Ridiculous or not, some atheists do emulate their religious brethren.
No doctrine? No dogma? No common text? No leader or worldview? We seem to be living in different worlds. It's special pleading if you don't count Darwin's Origin of Species as a common text. No leaders? What about Dawkins and his ilk? They don't count? They're the high priests of vocal atheism. To say atheism has no worldview is like a fish saying there is no water: it's so pervasive it's invisible. Society never tires of using and abusing the media as a weapon of propaganda to get its religiously anti-religion across. It teaches us that atheists are open-minded and reasonable people who believe in the scientific method and who reject superstition. They are writers, scholars and experts who never misrepresent the facts or misuse words, while religionists are retarded Neanderthals who refuse to be persuaded by the brilliance of atheistic arguments, which of course only reinforces how stupid those knuckle-dragging religious types are.
This narrative is repeated ad nauseam in our popular culture: atheists are smart, theists are stupid; atheists love science; theists hate science; atheism is clever, superstitious religion is foolish; atheism is open-minded and tolerant; religion is dogmatic and intolerant; atheism does not seek to impose its views on others; religion seeks to impose its views on others. Four legs good, two legs bad.
There is no technology atheists will not pervert to their cause. The lessons are pumped into our children in government classrooms (for that is what “public schools” are – government indoctrination camps where reading and math have been supplanted by cultural indoctrination to secular humanist ideology). Those lessons are repeated in our television programs. Those lessons are recited dutifully by our news anchors. The goal, apparently, is to bludgeon religionists, and Christians in particular, into silence with the supremacy of their “science” and “reason.”
Technically, one is quite correct to say atheism is not a religion, but it certainly has all the hallmarks of one.
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Darwin as a common text? Maybe.
Dawkins really isn't all he's cracked up to be, especially when you realize that most of his arguments aren't new and in fact occasionally go back to ancient times.
"The goal, apparently, is to bludgeon religionists, and Christians in particular, into silence with the supremacy of their “science” and “reason.” "
Sounds like a good idea to me. I don't see the problem here.
i've never even read "Origin of Species", though considering how few xians read the bible, that's neither here nor there.
more to the point are my reasons for never having read Darwin; to wit, (1) Darwin wrote about biology, and i'm not a biologist nor particularly interested in the subject; (2) Darwin wrote a century and a half ago, and as such a lot of his actual science is by now outdated --- if i were interested in biology, i'd find an up-to-date text to start with; and (3) ATHEISM DOES NOT REST UPON BIOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. nor on any of the natural sciences. atheism predated all the sciences by millennia.
The reason you're portrayed like that in the media is because that's the image that religion as a whole presents to the outside world. We're constantly seeing examples of religious people committing (in order of increasing severity):
1. Inexplicable stupidity/ignorance (e.g. Creationists, Ben Carson's infamous pyramid comments).
2. Bigotry (e.g. Gay marriage opponents, sexists, racists).
3. Violence (Abortion clinic shooters, Muslim terrorists).
If you want better representation in the media, the first step is to find something positive that outweighs the negative.
Yes Atheists do emulate their religious brothers. No one deny that and why not? They don't live in different worlds, it is the same world. Many Atheists grew up in religious families and don't want to give up the things they liked about the religion just because they no longer believe in God.
As for the "Worldview" thing I believe that everyone has an individual worldview and think the idea of a group worldview is silly. It's away to steiotype people.
"This narrative is repeated ad nauseam in our popular culture: atheists are smart, theists are stupid; atheists love science; theists hate science; atheism is clever, superstitious religion is foolish; atheism is open-minded and tolerant; religion is dogmatic and intolerant; atheism does not seek to impose its views on others; religion seeks to impose its views on others. Four legs good, two legs bad."
What popular culture are you viewing? Atheists are viewed as cold hearted emotionless jackasses with superiority complexes. They tend to try to force their beliefs on others and go to great lengths to prove they are right. They will dismiss any and all supernatural belief and even when right they are shown to be in the wrong, mainly because of how they are viewed. Even shows written or created by atheists have this problem. Popular culture is still very much on the side of the religious.
Dawkins and the other New Atheists are actually not that popular with many Atheists who think the likes of Dawkins are actually too critical.
Teddeck he's actually saying it's not a religion but it might as well be one. I don't agree but I see what he's getting at.
> It's special pleading if you don't count Darwin's Origin of Species as a common text.
Except that it's been added to since, and most atheists haven't read it.
After further thought, you're right; other than not claiming inerrancy, it is just like the Bible.
> What about Dawkins and his ilk? They don't count?
Their followers don't claim that they're inerrant, either, and plenty of atheists don't follow them. Me, for example.
> [the rest]
"Science can only tell you what we see, not how things should be." - my high school physics teacher, in a public school. I was younger at the time, and just starting to question my religious upbringing, when I asked him what the purpose behind it all is.
If you stopped being stupid, science hating, foolish, dogmatic and intolerant and seeking to impose your views on others, then 'popular culture' would have to find a different narrative.
Just sayin'
It's special pleading if you don't count Darwin's Origin of Species as a common text.
Well, first of all, the Origin of Species is a good starting point to understanding evolution, but it's only a starting point. Much has been discovered since that book was written, including some things which show what Darwin got wrong. This is in marked contrast to religions, which typically regard their holy texts as being complete and correct, with the only concession to reality being that sometimes the text is 'reinterpreted' when some new fact is discovered about reality which contradicts the old 'interpretation'.
Secondly, evolution and atheism is not the same thing.
No leaders? What about Dawkins and his ilk? They don't count? They're the high priests of vocal atheism.
Then I must be a heretic. Dawkins usually gets it right, and manages to express himself well, when talking about evolution. However, in my opinion, he has shown himself to be an absolute, top tier, premium grade asshole of the highest order on several other subjects.
"Science" and "reason", which you scorn, have enabled you to post this nonsense to a worldwide electronic audience in the twinkling of an eye, and have allowed you to have everything from antibiotics to a smart phone to an air-conditioned Lexus to laser eye surgery to cucumbers in the dead of winter, all of that while christianity has been sitting on its hands and going nowhere for two millennia. I don't find that a difficult choice to make.
Honey, most religious people accept the scientific method too. Only literalist fundies refuse to accept reality.
Would you think adults who believe in Santa Claus a bit behind or uneducated? That's how many atheists see fundamentalist religious people.
Pervert with reality? You mix up secular with atheist. The goal is to prepare children for a life in the real world.
Never read Darwin, read the bible (7 years in a religious school, I had to. It did not pan out like they expected, though...).
As for the theists being retarded, well, you will be hard put finding atheists killing people in the name of their non-belief. If the shoe fits...
I am an atheist. Is Richard Dawkins my leader? No. He is an atheist who is famous. I do not follow him; I do not even like him. As far as I can tell, he is kind of a dick. Literally the only times I ever think of him are 1) When he's said some horrible thing that's made a big splash in the media or 2) When a religious person insists that my atheism is about him somehow.
On the Origin of Species is not a common text for atheists. As others have pointed out, plenty of atheists haven't read it. Also, evolution is not a part of atheism. Atheism is not believing in a god or gods. That's it. I think the reason certain religious people tie atheism and evolution together is because evolution (or "Darwinism" as they might call it) creates a problem with a literal reading of the Bible's creation story. It creates a problem for them , the religious people, and so they somehow conflate it with us, the atheists. Don't get me wrong, I believe evolution is real... I just find that Darwin, evolutionary biology, and the debate about the reality of evolution are infinitely more important to the lives of certain religious people than they are to me or to other atheists.
The difference is that we (most of us, anyway) don't blindly follow those "leaders" or accept their word as absolute law. In fact, I don't give a fuck about Dawkins or Darwin. I studied Darwin a little in school, but have never even read any of Dawkins work. When I left religion, it was for personal freedom, not to exchange one doctrine for another.
"Technically, one is quite correct to say atheism is not a religion, but it certainly has all the hallmarks of one."
Well, he got it half right. That's better than they usually do.
Origins of Species is not a holy book. I don't see Dawkins as a leader, just a well-known, outspoken atheist who many atheists disagree with. Hardly a leader.
FFS, religious idiots are so desperate to label atheism as a religion. Still not sure what the point is.
@Thomas: i never could figure out their point either. best i can guess, it seems to be a way to bring us down to their level, claim we're no better than them --- but then, they'd be implicitly admitting that they're currently somehow beneath our level, that solid scientific understanding is in fact better than religious make-believe. i'd want to give them more credit than that, but...
@Nomen Nescio
"@Thomas: i never could figure out their point either. best i can guess, it seems to be a way to bring us down to their level, claim we're no better than them"
The fundie leaders may be thinking that, but the gullible flock is so mentally limited they can't imagine anyone can think in any way other that religiously. They can't imagine atheists are thinking a completely different way from them, so they imagine atheism is another denomination, a false religion just like they follow a true religion.
Ehhh... the closest you could consider atheism is as a cult, really. And even then, that's only a minority of atheists who exhibit cult-like behavior. Particularly, New Atheists and Reactionary Atheists like NeoMatrix.
The majority of atheists simply hold the belief that a secular society is best. And that's not a belief that's exclusive to atheists, either.
Attend some Meetup skeptics' groups. You'll find that the atheists don't have much in common besides, perhaps, intelligence slightly above average. Apart from the Army, it's the most diverse group of people I've ever been associated with.
@Some Guy Passing Through
I would better equate technology to magic in that scenario. Magic born of the human heart*, invoking the power of physics, electromagnetic forces, mathematics, and logic, focused through copper wire, engine, and motor.
*Not the organ, but the core of one's self.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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