Agnostic.com

3 4

Religion, Scapegoat of Atheists?

I enjoy discussing with fans of Jordan Peterson in particular, because I feel the Canadian psychologist and his smarter followers do make the "Steel Man" Argument; that is, the best version of the arguments I (generally) oppose. As my hero, John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that."

The 'Petersonians' take a somewhat lenient outlook that could be summarised in: "Believing religion is somehow responsible for human atrocity is scapegoating or externalising". And yet this is coming from people that often liken Atheism to Nihilism, and then to Gulags. I call this The Yoda's Slippery Slope: "Everything I don't like leads to the Dark Side".

There are a few problems with this. Even by Peterson's own arguments, religion is a mechanism explicitly evolved as means to coalesce large populations. It fulfilled a necessary role in the development of human societies. Sure. No one with a passing knowledge of anthropology can dispute that. But then it means it was omnipresent until the enlightenment, and still prevalent since. We can't possibly absolve religion from all the atrocities committed in the name of God(s), and it isn't scapegoating when said "goat" is a necessary catalyst of authoritarian regimes.

This isn't about believing in some inherently good, primal innocence of humankind. As much as I agree with Hitchens in that religion poisons everything, I don't think that once we got ourselves free from this 'god virus' we will forever live in peace and harmony and sing some sort of atheist Kumbayah. That would be puerile. Human nature is much complicated than that. Not even Dawkins agreed with the title "root of all evil" that Channel 4 added to his now classic documentary about religion.

My thesis here is perhaps as unfalsifiable as Peterson's, but I claim the same right to make it. And I am not the only one. For example, Paul Taylor from Pew Research has been measuring the decline in religiosity across the whole western world, not to mention China and Japan. I'd suggest this dwindling of religion is about a passage to a new way of being, the emergence of a different social glue that isn't so much based on magical thinking and; especially not, in exclusive narratives. Here is the key. When I see Peterson's emphasis on Judeo-Christian myths, I see a fanboy defending why DC Comics is better than Marvel or vice-versa. I think we should like or dislike all comic-books equally and only based on their content, not the editorial. I'm more than happy with harvesting metaphorical wisdom from said stories, as long as they don't turn into a real belief.

What's the danger of genuine belief, you may ask? Well, see where the aforementioned decline in religiosity isn't happening.

The Middle East.

How does Islam resist the advance of Atheism? By threats of banishment, and more often than not, death.

Of course, like everything in natural selection and the equilibrium of Evolutionarily Stable Strategies, the transition to irreligiosity isn't guaranteed. But at least you can say the momentum of any transformation builds up in the previous stage. Polytheism gave rise to Henotheism, and that gave birth to Monotheism. It only makes sense that we go one god further.

leofalas 4 June 16
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

3 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

i have heard it all stated many times before and I am still an atheists

Marine Level 8 June 17, 2018
1

Well stated. Thank you!

2

Completely agree with you.

In general, both sides of this debate claim that the critiques of the other side are based on stereotypes rather than a nuanced understanding of what's being criticized.

There is actually some truth to that. But not nearly so much as they'd have us believe.

My main critique of religion's core is that it's a failed epistemology -- the acceptance of assertions about reality based on authority and without a requirement of substantiation of any kind. "[Relgious] faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". This seems a very unambiguous statement of what religious faith is. To their credit, some theists absolutely embrace this; a few try to weasel out of it; but it's pretty unambiguous and inescapable. Religion decides, based on a holy book or dogma or tradition or the pronouncements of religious authority figures, what is true, and then accepts only information that appears to support that presuppositionalist notion. Atheism is the rejection of that, generally in favor of something more like the scientific method -- the examination of evidence leading to a conclusion (if one is possible).

When it comes to god, atheists see no evidence to support the conclusions of religion, and so do not afford belief to it.

Not believing in the truth claims of religion implies some things ... that the religious are mistaken in some way, and this leads to pointing out various logical and ethical inconsistencies in their beliefs. This conflicts with the carefully cultivated self-image of most religions persons as uniformly good, decent, well-meaning, rational, kind, generous people; it introduces a fly in the ointment. But it needn't. Many religious people actually ARE consistently good, decent, well-meaning, at least mostly rational, kind, generous people; it just doesn't come from where they have been conditioned to think that it does. But the tendency is to identify one's beliefs with one's selfhood, and so to question the beliefs is to personally affront or even assault the believer -- it becomes an existential threat.

What simple disagreement, much less active disagreement, looks like to a believer, is the wheels coming off their very identity. Whereas what it looks like to unbelievers most often is just disagreement.

I leave it to the reader to decide who is laboring under stereotypes more. As an atheist, I can affirm that religious people mean well and try their best to do well.

As a theist, I tended to assume that atheists don't mean well, have ulterior motives, and intend me grave personal harm.

Which is a stereotype?

Sure ... some theists (generally, liberals) don't assume anything about atheists, and actually are curious what actual atheists actually think, and why.

Sure, some atheists assume too much about theists, and don't consult them about their actual beliefs and motivations.

But for the most part in my experience unbelievers are far more generous and forbearing with believers, than the inverse.

And also in my experience, when a believer cries foul -- decries an atheist as "hateful" toward god or to his representatives for example -- I go through that atheist's remarks and look in vain for hatred or even too many assumptions. All I see is a failure to utterly defer to and automatically buy into the theist's dogma; a request for them to evidence their assertions; or pointing out logical inconsistencies or lack of evidential support that need to be addressed. That is literally ALL I see, MOST of the time.

So forgive me if I regard most of these complaints from theists as whining.

You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:108268
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.