[MD] How is atheism a religion?

[Dallas Van Winkle]

religion is the relation of metaphysical concepts, that is, working concepts
within the mind. Each concept acts as a thing and affects other concepts,
etc. Thus, changing the name of a concept is only superficial, the concept
still exists and functions the same way.


On 6/25/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Matt and all Godless Heathens:
>
> Matt said:
> This all started when the Enlightenment started opposing "beliefs" to
> "knowledge".  ...Particularly with Galileo and Newton doing such fine
> work,
> they started asserting their supremacy over Christians by making invidious
> distinctions between tradition and reason, prejudice and rationality,
> superstition and facts, beliefs and knowledge, etc.
>
> dmb says:
> Invidious? Um, I think your tall tale might be a bit too tall on this
> point.
> The distinction between beliefs and knowledge looks like nothing but a
> power-play built on sheer fiction.
>
> Matt continued:
> Theologians ...noticed that for an argument to get off the ground, you
> need
> to take for granted certain things--you can't argue about everything all
> at
> once.  The Enlightenment notion of "presuppositionlessness", however,
> seemed
> to suppose that Enlightenment philosophers didn't have to take _anything_
> for granted--they had no assumptions.  But any argument that is made
> clearly
> shows that to be false--every argument has assumptions.
>
> dmb says:
> I don't see why the belief/knowledge distinction has to rest upon the
> notion
> of presuppositionlessness. I always thought it rested on whether or not a
> particular assertion has some empirical basis. Isn't that how we arrived
> at
> the present sceintific world view? While I'm quite happy to admit that
> this
> whole idea rests on an assumption. Its based on the "presupposition" that
> empirically based assertions are superior to non-empirically based
> assertions. But isn't that "assumption" really a judgement based on
> experience, a conclusion based on empirical evidence. I mean, how can such
> a
> thing be denied? Its one thing to say that every argument has assumptions.
> Its quite another to say that there is no difference between belief and
> knowledge....
>
> Matt said:
> ..One line of attack is this: if beliefs are opposed to knowledge based on
> the fact that you can't argue or prove beliefs and you can about
> knowledge,
> then your "knowledge" (for instance, "there is no God") has a background
> of
> belief that cannot be argued or proven.
>
> dmb says:
> I don't get the logic of this at all. I think it doesn't add up. If
> beliefs
> are different than knowledge because knowledge is based on "proof", then
> knowledge is based on belief cause is based on the "beleif" that proof
> matters? That strikes me as a rather transparent attempt to use a
> rhetorical
> slight of hand to defeat a truth that's sort of undeniable. I mean, it
> seems
> pretty obvious to me that the superiority of empirically based beliefs CAN
> be argued and proven. This attack by the theologians strikes me as
> exceptionally flimsy and silly. Kinda like...
>
> Mattt continued:
> ...ID defenders like Phillip Johnson, Ken Ham, and Michael Behe blend
> together things learned from evil post-modernism with wonderful Bible
> dogmatism in the weirdest possible way--and yet it is fairly coherent,
> just
> really stupid.  I take the recent "backlash" against Darwin to be the
> clearest signal, far more powerful than anything Rorty or anybody else has
> written, for us to finally and forever ditch Enlightenment philosophy and
> all of its remenants.  Adherence to Enlightenment philosophy and its
> rhetoric is what allows Johnson and his compatriots a foothold, or a
> "wedge"
> as they like to call it.  If we ditch Enlightenment, scientistic rhetoric,
> the wedge has no crack to enter.
>
> dmb says:
> Weird, stupid and yet coherent? That would be quite a trick. I disagree
> with
> your suggested remedy because I have made a slightly different diagnosis.
> If
> postmodernism and Bible dogmatism are working together in an attack on
> Modernism, the solution is not to join the attack. And using postmodern
> arguments to bolster a pre-Modern view strikes me as intellectual
> dishonest
> as wall as incoherent too. The solution is not to "forever ditch
> Enlightenment philosophy and all of it remenatnts". That would be a
> disaster, is a disaster. I think the idea is to use postmodern
> perspectives
> to resolve the conflicts between faith and reason. Use broader
> perspectives
> in sorting out what's good about Modernity and what's bad about it. You
> know, we gotta keep telling tall tales about the conflict until things get
> sorted out.
>
> Matt said:...atheism is a pretty weak system of belief because "system"
> seems to imply more than one belief: God doesn't exist.  Atheism becomes
> the
> call for the abandonment of a particular kind of system of belief.
>
> dmb says:
> Exactly. It makes little sense to say that atheism is a belief system
> since
> an atheist can believe in anything at all except God. It seems silly to
> define a belief system by the one belief it excludes. But its one of those
> words that makes sense in our culture and in our time. Its a negative term
> for a reason, you know. Death of God and all that. When people tell me
> that
> they are an atheist I always gotta ask them to be more specific. Which God
> don't you believe in, I ask. I realize that they are rejecting
> supernaturalism in general, but what's really going on in the rejection of
> a
> certain belief system, namely Western monotheism, usually one kind of
> Christianity or another. Of course.
>
> Finally, Matt said:
> So the next time somebody brings up the "fact" that atheism is a religion
> for polemical purposes, just counter by saying, "Yeah, okay, if you
> stretch
> religion so far as to include atheism, then its a religion.  But it's
> still
> the religion that says that all this God-talk is pretty pointless."  I've
> found that switching the grounds of debate from "belief" to "stuff we talk
> about" is fairly effective.
>
> Finally, dmb replies:
> I agree with the general point, but I still have to object to your point
> about the pointlessness of God-talk. I think we ought to ditch the idea of
> a
> supernatural creator being and re-examine a lot of that God-talk. You
> know,
> if you don't take the low-grade yelping about God too literally and all
> that. I think that we gotta ditch the idea that there is some intelligent
> entity seperate from us and/or beyond human experience and look at that
> material as if it refered to a certain kind of human experience, an aspect
> of our reality instead. Theism is what you get when this stuff is taken
> too
> literally, see? I think one of the main reasons that believers have
> trouble
> coming up with any kind of proof, trouble coming up with some basis in
> experience for the existence of the theistic God is because the whole
> notion
> is based on a profound misreading of God-talk. I think its not quite
> enough
> to simply deny the existence of this supernatural entity, although I agree
> with that as far as it goes. But the trick is to avoid throwing the baby
> out
> with the bathwater. The God-talk that goes on the the world's Great
> religions may have drawn up some pretty confused and misleading maps, but
> that doesn't mean there's no territory there worth charting properly. I've
> become quite convinced that this stuff points to some of the most
> interesting of human experiences. I mean, this baby is well worth saving.
> Again, dusting off and sorting out rather than total abandonment.
>
> Thanks.
> dmb
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
>
>
> moq_discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>
>