RE: Why did you join this forum?
March 19, 2014 at 11:01 am
(This post was last modified: March 19, 2014 at 11:05 am by Whateverist.)
So how would we want to define a "fundamentalist atheist"? I'd say an F.A. would understand "god" as a being with a personal history like any other and with properties as defined by the literature for that theist tradition. For a fundamentalist, of any stripe, god(s) is like an immortal person on cosmic meth. For an F.A., such a god is present or else he is not. End of story.
Most fundamentalist atheists would positively believe that no gods exist, and some of those probably feel they have persuasive things to say about why everyone should agree with them.
Over against fundamentalism, it is also possible to approach the concept of "god" as something that has arisen spontaneously in all human cultures for as long as we can find records for. Personally I'm more interested in why that is than I am in snuffing out the practice altogether. It might seem like our tonsils or appendix, anomolous features for which there is no obvious purpose. But it turns out both of those organs do serve a function and it may well be that belief in god does the same in our psychological well being. That doesn't mean we need to accept some literal account of god. You can't go back. But you can understand "god" in an "as-if" way, as a kind of useful fiction for understanding the unconscious mind.
Most fundamentalist atheists would positively believe that no gods exist, and some of those probably feel they have persuasive things to say about why everyone should agree with them.
Over against fundamentalism, it is also possible to approach the concept of "god" as something that has arisen spontaneously in all human cultures for as long as we can find records for. Personally I'm more interested in why that is than I am in snuffing out the practice altogether. It might seem like our tonsils or appendix, anomolous features for which there is no obvious purpose. But it turns out both of those organs do serve a function and it may well be that belief in god does the same in our psychological well being. That doesn't mean we need to accept some literal account of god. You can't go back. But you can understand "god" in an "as-if" way, as a kind of useful fiction for understanding the unconscious mind.
