(August 18, 2014 at 5:13 am)robvalue Wrote: I came to a realization which kind of stunned me. It's obvious once you lay it down, but it shows that atheists and theists are taking part in the same tug-of-war, but for different reasons.
Theists are frequently trying to "save" atheists from the eternal punishments which await them for their lack of faith.
What I realized is that atheists are trying to save theists also. (I mean this in a general sense, I'm not saying every atheist has the same motivations, but I hope this would make sense as an overall description.) We want to save them from the shackles which control them. We want them to take ownership of their own rules and morals, and stop having them dictated to them by those who presume to speak for god. We want them to realize that it's up to us. If we want the world to be a better place, than we have to do it. It's not going to magically happen on its own.
And further than this, we want to free society. We want to stop the endless conflict religion causes, both on a small scale, and much larger ones such as wars. It seems to me that a primitive society might "need" religion to help it become in some way civilized, to give the people some way of coming together. Some guy can't just stand up in the middle and say, "Right, I've just come up with these rules which you have to live by". It's much more compelling to say, "God just gave me these rules you must live by." Until most people start living by sensible rules, you can have no civilization, and maybe that's the only way it could get going. But we now have civilization, and it's clear that our rules are so far removed from those laid down in any religion as to make such "commandments" irrelevant. And science has shown us that primitive guesswork about the nature and origin of the universe is non-productive and unnecessary.
So we have this tug of war, both side feeling that their side is the true way, and which will lead to a better world for everyone. But atheism isn't trying to just trying to prove a point about who is right, it's trying to rescue the enslaved. We want to stop future generations being born into this slavery also, and to free society from the unfair power religion holds.
People need censorship (rules), even if it's just to have a line to cross.
Many people like to behave in a way consistent with the social group they feel themselves part of (Ref: Asch conformity experiments) even when that behaviour is counter intuitive.
We are pack-animals, we have evolved with and developed many general and specific social strategies to gain or improve access to resources. The fact that these strategies may seem irrational to people outside those social groups is hardly surprising and may even be the aim in certain cases. It's even less surprising that we feel the particular social rules we buy into are superior to others. The vary act of buying into a particular ideology or philosophy will lead to self-assurance behaviours, including the denigration of other ideologies and philosophies. It happens all the time, just look round AF.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
