Concerned About Atheisim

[Alex K]

I don't think there is an atheist 'dogma'. Even the 'militant' among us (and do I ever hate that term; it is the religious who spread the virus of faith through fear, persecution and death, not us) have a message which pretty much boils down to "drop these childish and pointless fantasies. Live in the real world. Have faith in things only when the evidence suggests that they are likely to be true, and keep your standards of evidence high. Enjoy your life. Don't fear the fictional omniscient tyrant, and try to do right by yourself and others not to mollify that fictional tyrant but because of the benefits of doing good."

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I see what you are saying, and I will try not to confuse this with arrogance and dogma

That's an important insight, but... you are justified to remain a bit wary. Whenever big egos and dynasty-like schools of thought are involved, scientific ideals can be compromised. Usually though there is so much competition in the field that someone who publishes biased or controversial stuff gets taken down pretty quickly and mercilessly. What we ideally have to do is make the scientific method our own, such that in light of what you perceive as dogmatism, you don't have to say "science is dogmatic", but instead can be more nuanced and say "I thing ur doing science rong, and here's why". It's hard if you're not an expert, right? But I believe you can get an idea by listening to the different sides of a scientific debate (scientific, not science vs. bollocks) and try to weigh their arguments and counter-arguments. I have to rely on this for pretty much everything but my own field, and I believe it can be done.

The typical example where the difficulty of this becomes obvious is when a biologist proclaims she doesn't believe in evolution and gets denied a position, and we all know it's because of this. Is this dogmatism at work? Are opposing views silenced dogmatically in this case?