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 Confusion Regarding What It Means to Be an Atheist

By deludedgod

Several recent posts, and some articles that Kelly responded to, very well, have made me realize that there are some who enter this field of discourse  completely ignorant of what it means to say somebody is an atheist. This ignorance is largely due to a historical misunderstanding that stems from a demonization associated with a darker time in human history. It is associated with the continental power of the three large religions after the Renaissance and up to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason (the order of ages being Renaissance first, then Age of Reason, then Enlightenment). During this course of events was the first time that absolute atheism became open, to some degree, within these nation states. Baruch de Spinoza disguised it partially in his Theologico-Politico treatise, and in Ethics, masked it partially in the language of Pantheism (this did not stop the Orthodox Jewish community from declaring the Jewish equivalent of a fatwa on him). The first truly open atheist of the day was David Hume, and it was back then still an immense rarity, even among the educated elite, or at least, open expression of it was.

Precisely what relevance does this have? The example illustrates a key point oft-overlooked. Atheists face discrimination that is the product of a centuries-old deep vein of hatred that persists in particularly those nations which have the largest proportionality of deep observance to the monotheistic religions, hence the US, for example, as well as the Islamic countries. Nations that were most affected by the wave of secularization after 1945, such as in Europe, do not have such a problem.

The problem is thus: During the time period which I brought up, the definitions and understanding of what precisely the term atheist meant was largely indexed and compiled by Christian apologists, and the associated stigma and misunderstanding hence persists today. These apologists understood by the term atheism to mean what might pejoratively be called practical atheism. Such people, these apologists argued, knew that God existed, yet “acted in such a manner as if He did not”, in other words, they defined, in their eyes, atheism, as being equated with such a person who acted in a fashion that we would consider amoral, or sociopathic. The thought of speculative atheism, also called philosophical atheism, did not cross their mind, being that, to them, the existence of God was self-evident and necessary for the functioning of society. This definitional problem persists with us today, as aforementioned. After all, it is a common assertion, even by some who frequent this site, that atheists actually believe in God but pretend not to for the purpose of justifying lifestyle choices, or that “atheism” is responsible for a whole host of social ills, or other such rhetoric. All arguments are variations on the same theme in that they all make use of an obsolete definition of a word and attack connotations of that concept of “practical atheism” in order to attack the unrelated concept of philosophical atheism and hence commit a fallacy of equivocation with regard to careless employment of the term. Hence the title of this piece: Confusion Regarding What it Means to Be an Atheist.

So, it is necessary to clarify the matter, since it is so frequently employed in apologetics. Employment of rhetorical arguments against what might pejoratively be considered practical atheism are irrelevant to the discourse. Let me state with absolute clarity just so that this cannot escape the cognizance of even the most dim-witted individual that such a term as “practical atheism” is inherent nonsense. I do not, to use myself as an example, engage in any of the activities which such some apologists and others commonly and shamelessly equivocate with lack of belief in a deity. I am not alcoholic, or a drug abuser, or a gambler, or a dropout, and I most certainly did not have an abusive father.

Nor do I “disbelieve in God to justify lifestyle choices”. It would be utter nonsense for me to adhere to that position anyway, since it supports the false dichotomy that the word “God” can only describe a wholly anthropomorphic being who interests itself in human endeavors, the only sort of being from whence it would be sensible to derive ethical injunctions, yet I would consider such an idea an absurdity of high order. For this reason, I am puzzled when asked how I can adhere to an idea that suggests the universe is meaningless without sinking towards utter despair. Naturally, I reply that the idea of an intelligent force behind the universe would not give a smidgen of “meaning” to our lives, since that would require that this God entity would have any concern and providence for a particular breed of the inhabitants of a rock which rotates around a gas ball in a vastly larger collection of such systems consisting of other such rocks rotating around other such gas balls. The only way that one can accept the idea that humans have lives which have purpose innate and pre-conceived on the cosmic stage set up by an intelligent creator, is to entertain positions, which, given our knowledge about our scale in the universe, are destined to fall apart, propositions that go far, far beyond the atheism-theism debate. In other words, even if I did believe in God, it would in no way be rationally tenable to derive any ethical injunctions or argue for moral realism based on such a belief, and hence it would not act as a prophylaxis on any supposed propensity towards socially destructive action (tendencies which I do not have anyway).To put it another way, it would be impossible to reason moral realism from belief in God, being that, for it to be possible to derive ethical injunctions from such a belief, it would be necessary to believe in a wholly Anthropomorphic God, taking part in human interest. For there to be ethical injunctions that humanity could derive from this belief would necessitate a God concerned with our affairs. From the perspective of moral realism, merely believing in God is little different than believing in the "benign indifference of the universe" of Albert Camus' description. Given our knowledge about our position in the universe "benign indifference" is surely orders of magnitude more likely to describe the most probable, possible God. In order to believe in a God which apologists argued was necessary for the foundation of society and ethical injunction is to embrac propositions about the nature of the universe that have already collapsed.

Having firmly established that even if I did believe in God, it would neither satisfy supposed human emotional needs nor would moral realism follow, that my lack of belief in such a being is in no way even remotely connected to emotional wishes for lack of such a being in order to justify otherwise immoral actions, being that I do not believe we could derive ethical injunctions from belief in God. Nor does it increase despair in such a way that a belief in God could rectify, again, as established. Hence, I am not a practical atheist, since to me, the term is meaningless. As astonishing as it may sound to those who hide behind virulent rhetoric about a group of people almost none of them have ever engaged in discourse with, I am a philosophical atheist. The existence of God is, to me, a philosophical issue on which I am in the camp that says the answer is no. In this regard, I am puzzled by the astonishing virulent and false-generalization based attacks on an entire group of millions simply by virtue of holding a different stance on this one simple issue. I am most certainly not an atheist because of “an abusive father”, nor do I engage in socially destructive behavior, or any other of the rhetorical suggestions that stain our discourse. Such virulence is unheard of in any other discipline of philosophy.

So, why do I not believe? In the various disciplines of philosophy in which I engage, there have been periods during which I have changed my position on matters on a virtually daily basis, positions regarding such things as induction, anomalous monism, epistemic skepticism, supervenience, emergent property, bundle theory, etc. etc. Throughout this, the existence or lack thereof of God has been a recurring fascination of mine, probably the single most consistent fascination of mine, to the point where, at the height of my ponderings, my obsession with philosophical argumentative discourse on the matter became borderline unhealthy. I was concocting all sorts of different arguments and propositions in relation to the existence of God, and at that point that I became firmly convinced the answer to the question was no, I narrowed those areas of interest in the matter to eight subsections which were prime areas of philosophical concern regarding the existence of God. Those eight areas were:

1. Supervenience (the necessity of certain beings and properties to generate higher-order beings and properties and the associated relationship, such as that, for example, atoms can exist without human society, but not human society without atoms). The conclusion which I still retain, to this day, is that such principles necessarily eviscerate the concept of a conscious, intelligent being with control over the physical world yet without constituting a physical being itself).

2. Monism (The concept in philosophy of mind and neuroscience that the mind, the source of a conscious, intelligent being, does not have a component of a non-physical ontology, so eviscerating the assertion that such a being could be intelligent)

3. Ex Nihilo (the coherency of the theistic suggestion that an eternally existing being is ontologically separate from the physical universe, such that because it was the entity that created the universe in the first place). My eventual resolution was that the theistic assertion pertaining to the creation of a separate ontology of physical beings and things, of which this being is not of the same substance with, is an impossible contradiction, and is an assertion that requires the propagation of ex nihilo creation by God, which is impossible. I also used this suggestion to propagate the idea within ontology that existence of some form, bare-order properties of being, are uncaused.

4. Infinity (the coherency or lack thereof of suggesting the actual infinite nature of this being while at the same time maintaining that it was an entity and being unto itself, with providence and control, hence ontologically discrete from other discrete beings such as the physical universe) (the conclusion which I still retain in this matter is that there is an internal contradiction between the two)

5. Bare-order property (the question of what substance or property describes a discrete conscious being and agent if it is asserted that such a being has no physical body, and what bundles of properties constituted this being). I eventually resolved that no description was being given, and that the theistic assertion was not giving any ontological properties describing precisely of what this entity is comprised, hence the theistic school of thought is overly vague regarding the assertion that some "intelligent agent" exists, and this is not acceptable in proper philosophical discourse. During this process, I also argued for the philosophical school called Reism, which I still hold to.

6. Universe of discourse (The necessity of descriptors of property of an ontology, ie, that the theistic assertion regarding "supernaturalism" was/is untenable because it is ruled from a universe of discourse, and is defined solely by virtue of negation to the physical. If I can prove this (and I did) it strengthens the idea of #5. My resolution is that I still hold to this today.

7. Causality (The coherency of arguing that God is an immutable, unchanging being with the suggestion that it is a conscious agent with a mind with thoughts that acts upon whims and has causal powers over the physical universe). I worked on this one for quite some time. I eventually argued there was an internal contradiction present in the doctrine.

8. Termination (Self-refuting arguments that rely on special pleading fallacies to bolster the thesis that existence of God is valid by the assignation of ad hoc special characteristics that refute the premise of the argument that establishes them. The Cosmological Argument is especially guilty). My current stand on this is that there is an internal contradiction present in arguments that operate in a similar fashion.

In other words, my positions relative to the existence of God are due to engagement in philosophical consideration of the various ideas associated with it. The apologists who first indexed the concept of atheism simply refused to believe such people existed, and the fact that their arguments are still employed today show a historical prejudice which is irrelevant to modern discourse. This view is outdated since it is quite clear today that formal atheism, real atheism, is thriving in modern times.

So, for me, what does it mean to be an atheist? Precisely the same as it does in any position in any other arm or endeavor in philosophy. The statement “I am an atheist” is not much different to saying “I am an epistemological idealist” or “I am an anomalous monist” or “I am a scientific realist” or “I am an ontological bundle theorist” etc. It is my philosophical position pertaining to a certain facet of the nature of the universe, and although this one has been a recurring continual interest of mine, it is not much different to any of my other philosophical positions in how I derive them. This position has nothing whatsoever to do with pejorative insult “practical atheism” as apologists and propagandists mean by that term, as already outlined, because as I already outlined, my position on that particular matter has absolutely no relevance to how I derive my ethical and moral positions, since my examination of the existence of God pertains to the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology, whereas how I derive my ethical and moral positions relates to a completely different arm of philosophy: Moral philosophy. And never the ‘twain shall meet. They are separate arms, by far and large. When certain propagandists and other apologists attempt to link “atheism” to a variety of social horrors from a continuum that ranges from school shooting to the Holocaust itself, I iterate again that, being that they are using a naïve and outdated conception of the word “atheist”, based on centuries of hated and social stigma, with no relevance to modern atheism, such rhetoric is worthless.

I wrote this piece out of exasperation of the irritating statements I have witnessed being spewed forth from the mouths of those whose ignorance is virtually unforgivable, and the rhetoric they employ reflects a social hatred that dates back centuries in Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East. The arguments built upon such premises hence constitute nothing less than hate speech. Now, as them, many of those people deny the existence of philosophical atheism and choose instead, in the face of all that stands contrary and on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, to believe that all atheists are, as pejoratively called, “practical atheists” who secretly believe in God, or perhaps act as if he did not exist to justify amoral behavior.  Why? I am unsure, but is troubling to see what percentage of our discourse is wasted by discussing useless issues that could be resolved by pointing out that some of our theistic interlocutors are employing rhetoric against “practical atheism”, reflecting a view that is at least 300 years out of date. Such arguments as arguing that atheism contributes to a variety of aforementioned socially destructive tendencies and other conditions or states of misery or amoralism, from arguing that it is responsible for everything from drug use to Nazism (and everything in between is put forth) reflect the prevalence of the misunderstanding already described, and must be cut out from the discourse, since it reflects astonishing naivety on part of the apologists who originally indexed and influenced even our current understanding of what precisely it means to be an atheist.

 The only people on whom such claims reflect shame are those individuals who make them, nobody else, and hence their own words expose them for what they are, the bane of sane discourse. For example,  to reverse the situation, being that “theism” encompasses an utterly vast set of beliefs and utterly vast assortment of people, it would be utterly absurd to make such generalizations. Regarding theism, hence, from my perspective, the only thing I can say is that I consider it to be simply incorrect, a word which contains no irrelevant emotional language. It is the sort of cold, emotionless, rhetoric-free statement “X is incorrect” that should reign supreme in proper discourse, as opposed to statements like “X is responsible for Nazism”.

Much of the problem therefore stems from an utter misunderstanding associated with a false stigma that has propagated through the ages. This is largely stemming from an utterly false definition of a word and those associated with it, by those who had a strong interest in demonizing atheism. It is troubling to see the remnants of this today. I will therefore repeat, in a single sentence, what I have argued over the course of this piece, just to hammer home what the original apologists refused to acknowledge. I do not believe in the existence of God, and this lack of belief is in no way  derived, or even remotely relevant to, any ethical injunctions we might associate with God belief. “Practical atheism” is a meaningless term, since there is no sequential link whatsoever between the possible existence of God and man’s ethical injunctions, and hence “acting as if God did not exist” is a meaningless statement.

It is worth noting that no such vitriol is directed towards those who label themselves as agnostic, although the rhetoric could just as easily apply. This suggests the rhetoric, and the stigma, is associated with the word, just the word. In such societies, the word agnostic is not taken as a stigma, but the word atheist functions almost as an insult, again this derives from the same historical stigma. The word agnostic is often also misunderstood. It does not mean “I am sitting on the fence in relation to the existence of God”. It most certainly does not mean “There is a 50/50 chance in the matter”. Rather, agnosticism is an epistemological position which states that it is impossible to gain any knowledge on the matter and that such questions are beyond the possible realm of human cognizance. In this regard, my position, for example, is incompatible with formal agnosticism, since I reject that principle. But it illustrates how popular definitions can diffuse without any respect to their genuine meaning. The word agnostic has no stigma attached to it. It was coined much later than the word atheist, by TH Huxley in the late 19^th century, at a time when atheism was much more accepted (relative, of course, to the previous centuries). As a result, apologists have not mangled the word to the degree they have the word atheist, and this mangling still permeates our discourse, since much of the rhetoric and hatred is directed against “practical atheism”, which, as I have already established, is meaningless as apologists define it. In order for our discourse to move forward, such rhetoric needs to be abandoned.