Concerned About Atheisim

[psychoslice]

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."

But don't you see, that way of thinking is just going to end up like the religious way of thinking, people are intitule to have their fantasies and to live in their fantasises, of course as long as their fantasies don't hurt anyone else's fantasy, and this is my concern.

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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?

Yes this is what I normally do, listening to science arguments, even though I am not a science, I do have a gut feeling who is right and who is wrong, if I am wrong in that gut feeling, then at least its my own decision and not just believe everything I am told to believe.

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Nothing can turn either atheism or theism into religions. They are differing opinions on a single topic. They can be a feature of a religion, but not a religion in themselves or even the primary basis for one. There's no atheist world view for the same reason that there is no theist world view: everyone has a world view, but their atheism or theism isn't it.

I like that, and hopeful that is how it will stay.

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free thinking sounds a lot like, "The devil buried dem' bones der' to test our faith in LORD JEBUS, HE'YUCK!".. you aren't secretly a christian with some hidden agenda, are you?

Now way, been there done that, and glad to be out of that, oh yea.

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As a former atheist I confidently say that I came to faith primarily by rational reflection. The fact that you think this impossible means that you are not thinking freely but are a slave to your antireligious bigotry.

I agree with this, of course it works both ways, you could be a science and also be a slave to your own theory, and never see past it, as with religious thought also.