Definitions
In this segment we will consider the self-definition of Atheism, Brights, Freethinkers, Humanism, Naturalism, Rationalism, Skepticism, Philosophical, Skepticism and Universism.
Atheism:
“An Atheist has no religious belief. An Atheist does not believe in a god or gods, or other supernatural entities…We are not a ‘religion.’ The concept of an agency outside of nature with the ability to reach into natural law and control events is supernaturalism, the foundation of any religion. Belief in the existence of that agency is based on faith. An Atheist has no specific belief system. We accept only that which is scientifically verifiable. Since god concepts are unverifiable, we do not accept them.”1 [this quotation is from a group known as American Atheists]
Let us consider the statement, “An Atheist has no specific belief system.” Obviously, this is a very specific belief; if for no other reason than the negation of it would appear to disqualify one form American Atheists dogmatic definition of what it is to be an atheist.
For instance, American Atheist’s webmaster authoritatively declares:
“Atheists are NOT ‘secular humanists’, ‘freethinkers’, ‘rationalists’ or ‘ethical culturalists’…Often, people who are Atheists find it useful to masquerade behind such labels.”2
It appears that The Freedom From Religion Foundation (whom I wrote about here) is, at least in this case, more tolerant, in stating:
“Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.”3
The Glossary of Religion & Philosophy agrees:
“Most freethinkers are also atheists.”4
Let us consider the fallacy in the very statement in which we find out that “An Atheist has no specific belief system.” We are told that “An Atheist has no religious belief…We are not a ‘religion,’” also, “We accept only that which is scientifically verifiable,” and since supernatural concepts are unverifiable, “we do not accept them.” These are very specific and rigid beliefs for an organization that claims to hold “no specific belief system.”
It is interesting, and useful, to note that some atheists are more accepting of diversity than American Atheists in considering the various sects of atheism. Some point out “…the broad diversity which exists among atheists when it comes to their positions on the existence of gods.”5 This is also an important point to make, particularly in counter distinction to American Atheists fundamentalism, since there are atheists who claim that atheism is a religion. Such a claim was made by the famous anti-one nation under God atheist activist Michael Newdow on the television show The Pulse (July 12, 2002).
Brights:
Brights dogmatically hold to a naturalistic worldview and reject all others. A Brights is a person:
“possessing a worldview that is naturalistic…whose perspective, values, ethics, and conduct derive from a naturalistic worldview, free of any supernatural sorts of entities or forces.”6
Freethinkers:
A Freethinker:
“forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief…No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”7
“The concept of freethought refers to the process of making decisions and arriving at beliefs without relying solely upon tradition, dogma, or the opinions of authorities…In place of tradition or dogma, freethinkers insist upon using reason, logic, and evidence as the bases for forming reasonable and justified beliefs.”8
We must ask: what would happen if, as has often happened, it is precisely upon a basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief that a person comes to the conclusion that conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah are reasonable beliefs and that revelation and faith are credible? If they do not allow this they are suppressing the search for truth by which the evidence is followed to the logical conclusion. Or is it a case in which Freethinkers would instantly discredit a person who believed that following the evidence leads to the Bible, etc. This is strict authoritarianism and is not free-thought. It is as if they are saying, “A person ought to follow their reason so long as they do not end up believing anything with which we disagree.” Moreover, the definition of freethough appears to deny that a bible, creed, a messiah’s credentials, tradition, or dogma could be based upon reason and evidence. Perhaps 2+2=4 could be called a tradition, a dogma, or authoritarianism, but it is, nonetheless reasonable and evidentially substantiated. I have written on the Barkerian sect (named after Dan Barker) of Freethough here and here.
Humanism:
“…being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”9
Part of the given definition appears to be based on the fallacy which states that only atheists have pure motives (which is a concept based on a myriad of faulty assumptions):
“Humanists believe we must live this life on the basis that it is the only life we’ll have – that, therefore, we must make the most of it for ourselves, each other, and our world…living a happy and productive life based on reason and compassion.”10
This statement appears to be based on another fallacy, which is the concept that religious people do not live full, or fulfilled, lives because they believe in an afterlife. But the truth is that, in some ways, this is a subjective argument: you may say that I do not have any fun because I do not get drunk and I would say that I do not consider drunkenness to be fun. The fact is that religious people live this life on the basis that it is a gift – and that we, therefore, must make the most of it for ourselves, each other, and our world…living a happy and productive life based on reason and compassion. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither.” Secularists may be astonished to find out that it is God who urges reason, “‘Let us reason together,’ says the LORD” (Isaiah 1:18). Jesus taught that one of the first and greatest commandments is “Lord your God…with all your mind” (Matthew 22:35-37) (in this essay I seek to correct misconceptions of this nature).Moreover, it is another fallacy that religious people do not do anything and just sit there waiting for God to move them with His marionette strings.
“Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs…Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation.”11
Again, we find an authoritarian rejection of authoritarianism. If you cannot be a humanist unless you abide by their definition of what it means to be a humanist then you would be cast out of their authoritarian system-deemed a secular heretic.
Moreover, note that it is very popular to besmirch Judeo-Christianity for its belief in expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. However, with no such system in place the only justice to be had is at the hands of the temporal courts of earth. For one, this means that if the criminal can escape these, then there is no justice to be had. For another, if this anti-supernatural dogma is correct, then at the end of their lives Mother Theresa and Hitler ended up the same way-annihilated. In fact, it may be argued that Hitler lived a more fulfilling life than Mother Theresa since he lived his later years in luxury, enjoying his power and being adored by thousands. Mother Theresa lived a humble life amongst the outcast and disease ridden people that the Hindu system had simply discarded. No punishment for Hitler and no reward for Mother Theresa! When Hitler decided to, quite literally, end his life he did so. Is this justice? Is this moral? Is this reasonable? We will deal with the qualifier the greater good of humanity in part 3 in the ethics/morals section (I have written about the issue of reward, punishment and finite versus infinite life here and here).
Naturalism:
“Naturalism is a metaphysical theory which holds that all phenomena can be explained mechanistically in terms of natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes and laws. Naturalism posits that the universe is a vast machine or organism, devoid of general purpose and indifferent to human needs and desires.”12
It is very refreshing to have it openly admitted that naturalism is a metaphysical contention, a point that I will revisit in part 4 regarding science.Also, note something else that is being openly admitted, namely, naturalism leads to ultimate despair as it claims that the universe is devoid of general purpose and indifferent.Nobel Laureate, Dr. Steven Weinberg agrees:
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”13
TIME magazine states the following with regards to the universe’s final entropy:
“humanity, and perhaps even biology, will long since have vanished. Yet it’s conceivable that consciousness will survive, perhaps in the form of a disembodied digital intelligence. If so, then someone may still be around to note that the universe, once ablaze with the light of uncountable stars, has become an unimaginably vast, cold, dark and profoundly lonely place.”14
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA structure, wrote:
“The astonishing hypothesis is that you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it, ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’”15
Sam Harris (whom I wrote about here):
“We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss…Only the atheist realizes…how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all…many human beings suffer needlessly while alive.”16
Professor of philosophy Daniel Dennett wrote (whom I wrote about here):
“along comes Darwin, who simply shows how all of that design work, all of that creation, can be done by a process that has no purpose, no intelligence and no foresight. It is a very strange inversion of reasoning and it’s very upsetting to people to see that something that seems so obvious is being denied. Darwin does away with the reason for believing in a divine creator. This doesn’t prove there is no divine creator, but if there is one, it – he – need not have gone to all that trouble because natural selection on its own would have created all the biological diversity we see.”17
Professor Richard Dawkins (whom I wrote about here), Is Science a Religion?
“we know from the second law of thermodynamics that all complexity, all life, all laughter, all sorrow, is hell-bent on leveling itself out into cold nothingness in the end. They – and we – can never be more than temporary, local buckings of the great universal slide into the abyss of uniformity.”
Incidentally, a famous person once state, “When understanding of the universe has become widespread…Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity”-see my essay Cosmology, Part I to see who the famous person was.Lastly, we run across a fallacy in the form of a hypocritical argument:
“…belief in the supernatural has lead to a great deal of misery for humanity and needs to be rejected and replaced with critical inquiry, accountability, and science.”18
We may begin by asking precisely what critical inquiry has proved that naturalism is absolutely true. We may ask, as has already been stated above, what ultimate accountability is there if there is no supernatural? Yet, the hypocrisy is in isolating the supernatural as the cause of misery. After all, secularism of all sorts, especially atheism, have caused tremendous amounts of misery and have done so in the name of politics, territory, material goods/resources, racism, sexism, wealth and poverty, science, atheism, etc., etc., etc.
Rationalism:
“The mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions or authority.”19
“The doctrine of rationalism holds that the source of knowledge is reason and logic. This is usually contrasted with the idea that faith, revelation and religion are also valid sources of knowledge and verification.”20
It is fascinating to note that they give away the fallacy in their position. The first thing that comes to mind (pun intended) is what we conclude if we accept the premise that our minds are nothing but the product, or byproduct, of random evolution (or blind-non-chance-natural selection). In that case, there would be no reason to believe that a random mixture of chemicals in our brains could be trusted to produce any of the things that are sought by rationalists. Evolution is not interested in fact and truth but only in survival and reproduction. The giveaway is the use of the term mental attitude, which would be precisely what it is if their view is correct. But then we would not know if our conclusions are correct. Moreover, since a person with a differing chemical makeup may disagree, we could not condemn them for their particular bio-chemical makeup.
Skepticism:
It is refreshing to note that skepticism is skeptical of skepticism in stating that their knowledge is tentative, at best:
“A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions. Some claims…we can provisionally conclude that they are false.”21
One point of interest is that they claim that creationism, among other concepts, “have been tested (and failed the tests) often enough that we can provisionally conclude that they are false.”22 The fallacy in this statement will work itself out in part 4 as we deal with science.
Philosophical Skepticism:
“Philosophical Skepticism is a critical attitude which systematically questions the notion that absolute knowledge and certainty are possible, either in general or in particular fields. Philosophical Skepticism is opposed to philosophical dogmatism, which maintains that a certain set of positive statements are authoritative, absolutely certain and true. Philosophical Skepticism should be distinguished from ordinary skepticism [which does] not necessarily doubt that certainty or knowledge is possible. Nor do they doubt these things because of systematic arguments that undermine all knowledge claims.”23
One can instantly see the fallacy to which Philosophical Skepticism is headed, if they are not already firmly ensconced. If absolute knowledge cannot be gained then we would never know absolutely that absolute knowledge cannot be gained. However, if they claim to know absolutely that absolute knowledge cannot be gained, they are actually affirming the reality of absolute knowledge and therefore they defeat their own argument. Moreover, if they are opposed to philosophical dogmatism then they could not condemn claims to authoritative, absolute, certainty, and true knowledge, for to do so would be philosophically dogmatic.
Universism:
“Universism is the world’s first rational religion…and denies the validity of revelation, faith and dogma.”24
“Your beliefs and your actions are your responsibility alone. Believe what you will, while striving to allow all to believe what they will. Do what you will, while striving to allow all to do what they will…Sociological problems motivated the recent birth of Universism. Chief among them, that civil society is endangered when we see ourselves first as members of ideological groups. Further, priding oneself as part of an ideological group limits individual growth and creativity. In no sphere of life is this phenomenon clearer than religion, where the divisions have spread to fracture our entire planet. Endless situations arise where our ideas and desires clash, and no philosophy will cease this drama. But Universism can help. Universists are people who recognize that ours is not the only way.”25
Here we find the absolute dogma that it is rational to deny revelation, faith and dogma. But we are also told that we ought to believe what we will, while striving to allow all to believe what they will. Apparently we are to let others believe what they will while pointing out just how wrong, just how irrational, they are if they disagree with us. We also encounter a stalled moral system in which we can do what we will, while striving to allow all to do what they will. But what if our will is to hinder others? What if it is the will of others to hinder us?
Also, note that chief among the sociological problems was seeing ourselves first as members of ideological groups and that priding oneself as part of an ideological group limits individual growth and creativity. This comes from the world’s first rational religion that excludes revelation, faith and dogma. But what is the only hope for mankind, who has after all fractured the entire planet? Well, Universism can help but they are not the only way. They are not the only way but neither is revelation, faith or dogma and so what is the way? A pseudo moral system? Pseudo tolerance? If Universism cannot hinder the beliefs and actions of those who fracture our entire planet then they are certainly not the only way and perhaps no way at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page.