Is American Atheism Evolving Towards A Cult?

[Feck]

On a couple of occasions I've watched Dawkins, Pinker, Harris give presentations in front of audiences that are entirely sympathetic with their point of view, and I have to say there is little discernible difference between that and a fundamentalist style religious service. Everyone comes with a preconceived set of beliefs, there is a sermon where those beliefs are validated, the sermon includes disparaging references to other belief systems, and the audience gives enthusiastic support and approval regardless of the rationality of anything that is said. I would disagree with Seth that it has anything to do with either atheism or science. It's pure rationalism and scientism. It's not quite a cult, but it's quite ritualistic, with certain catch phrases and emotional buttons that tend to come up repeatedly.

How is that different from any other speaker on any other social issue? Guns, abortion, environmental issues, or anything where like minded people get together for information, community and support?

Because it's ideological.

Yeah around here we all lap up everything RD (blessed be his name ) says we just ate it up when Hitch (peace be upon him )told us the Iraq war was moral . If there is one thing you can say about Ratz is we are all singing from the same prayer book .We all have the same ideology we are 'On mission '

[Gallstones]

There will always be cultish people. Some will be cultish atheists cultish about atheism. This does not mean that they will drag every other atheist into it with them---thinking that is absurd. Please.

[amused]

Seth -

You're an advocate for individual responsibility. Cool. But you also insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything? Those two concepts seem at odds to me.

Do I? I challenge you to find one single example of where I "insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything."

Go right ahead and look. Look here, look there, look at Ratskep or search the archive of RDF. Look anywhere you like.

I'll wait...

Okay, it took a while for me to read the entire internet, and you're right. You never said that. My bad.

[Seth]

Seth -

You're an advocate for individual responsibility. Cool. But you also insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything? Those two concepts seem at odds to me.

Do I? I challenge you to find one single example of where I "insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything."

Go right ahead and look. Look here, look there, look at Ratskep or search the archive of RDF. Look anywhere you like.

I'll wait...

Okay, it took a while for me to read the entire internet, and you're right. You never said that. My bad.

Thanks for checking and confirming that, I hope you didn't run up your ISP bill too much.

Now, do you wish to amend your argument in light of that revelation?

[amused]

Seth -

You're an advocate for individual responsibility. Cool. But you also insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything? Those two concepts seem at odds to me.

Do I? I challenge you to find one single example of where I "insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything."

Go right ahead and look. Look here, look there, look at Ratskep or search the archive of RDF. Look anywhere you like.

I'll wait...

Okay, it took a while for me to read the entire internet, and you're right. You never said that. My bad.

Thanks for checking and confirming that, I hope you didn't run up your ISP bill too much.

Now, do you wish to amend your argument in light of that revelation?

It's not really an argument, more an observation. Are you saying atheists are wrong, for being atheist? That is, by inference, are you saying that there IS a god, if atheists are wrong about saying that there ISN'T a god? If so, then that would seem at odds with individual responsibility.

[Seth]

Seth -

You're an advocate for individual responsibility. Cool. But you also insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything? Those two concepts seem at odds to me.

Do I? I challenge you to find one single example of where I "insist that there's a celestial dictator who controls everything."

Go right ahead and look. Look here, look there, look at Ratskep or search the archive of RDF. Look anywhere you like.

I'll wait...

Okay, it took a while for me to read the entire internet, and you're right. You never said that. My bad.

Thanks for checking and confirming that, I hope you didn't run up your ISP bill too much.

Now, do you wish to amend your argument in light of that revelation?

It's not really an argument, more an observation. Are you saying atheists are wrong, for being atheist? That is, by inference, are you saying that there IS a god, if atheists are wrong about saying that there ISN'T a god? If so, then that would seem at odds with individual responsibility.

No, I'm saying that atheists are wrong for denigrating people who choose to believe in God when that belief factually and actually does them no harm. It's intolerant, arrogant, rude and insensitive. Your atheist beliefs are your own, but trying to impose them on others is as wrong as theists trying to impose their beliefs on atheists. Atheist beliefs are no more and no less valid than any other beliefs, and all persons are due basic respect and tolerance for their beliefs, so long as they actually manifest themselves in a peaceable manner.

I have no problem with attacking beliefs that are not peaceably expressed, but to conflate the agenda of one or another radical fringe element and characterize it as being the agenda of the vast majority of religious believers is intellectual dishonesty and breeds intolerance on the part of everyone.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If people don't like having their beliefs laughed at they shouldn't have such funny beliefs.

[JimC]

It's better than evolving towards occult...

[Exi5tentialist]

No, I'm saying that atheists are wrong for denigrating people who choose to believe in God when that belief factually and actually does them no harm.

I agree it's wrong to denigrate people who choose to believe in God but I don't agree that belief in God does no harm. The problem is that belief in God is inextricably linked to conditioning under capitalism. Capitalism and religion are virtually interchangeable belief systems, mainly around their authoritarianism. Capitalism and religion both cause serious harm. But we are all dependant on capitalism so we all therefore to some extent follow the beliefs of religion. I believe it is virtually impossible for anyone to be a genuine atheist in our society. Anybody can tick the boxes on the surface, simplistically meeting the popular dictionary definitions, but to follow the consequences of atheism to its full conclusions is probably impossible. The Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris cult thing is just an attempt at atheism-lite, a way of relieving the anxiety that realising the depth of our religious & capitalist conditioning creates. We're all susceptible to this cult-trap, therefore to denigrate others is to denigrate ourselves.

[apophenia]

There will always be cultish people. Some will be cultish atheists cultish about atheism. This does not mean that they will drag every other atheist into it with them---thinking that is absurd. Please.

I would agree, to an extant. However, if my take on recent meetings with atheists and humanists is valid -- ignoring issues of personal bias for the moment -- it's my estimate that the cultish outnumber the non-cultish by about 5 to 1. In any group of 10-20 people, there are usually a few, seldom more than 3, who take a critically informed whack at the subject matter -- the rest more or less simply parrot the party line, and look at you funny for your impudence in disagreeing. (And yes, one also has to consider whether the party line is reasonable, so I'm likely exaggerating the ratio -- even at 1:1 though it would still be a troublesome number.)

In general, I agree with Hymmer's view, though I haven't read the all of his relevant posts; I know from past experience that he and I see eye to eye on the matter. All human behavior is fundamentally cultish in the sense being discussed, and I would humbly suggest if anyone thinks they are above it, they're likely simply too mired in it to see otherwise.

One of the groups I participated in discussed Christopher Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great." In the midst of assimilating this torrent of anti-religious vitriol, a thought occurred to me. I identified six key factors which I feel determine whether we are religious, and in what way. I don't mean to imply any causation in most of these criteria, only correlation -- but I think that's enough. In no particular order, they are:

1) The inability of the human animal to reason in anything like a rational fashion (cf. the Wikipedia entries on "List of fallacies" and "List of cognitive biases" -- also in this is studies showing that, for some fallacies and biases, even training the subject to detect or correct them and/or priming them to do so does not result in appropriately valid cognitions. Though this may be argued conversely from the paradigm of bounded rationality, which interprets things differently.).

2) The tendency toward religious belief among the under-educated. The more ignorant, the greater the tendency toward religiousity.

3) Intelligence. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are able to distinguish truth from error, and the more likely they will trust in their intellect to guide them to the deferral of external authorities, whether they be bishops, professors, or a self-elected peer group. Also, the more intelligent, the closer to the finish line you will be at the end -- if religious belief is something to be reasoned out of, the unintelligent have a major handicap. (This is probably a controversial one as it seems to endorse a directionality away from religion with intelligence -- unfortunately, it's difficult to decouple the effects of education and intelligence; if anyone knows of any quality studies on this, I'd be most grateful.)

4) Factitious nature — we are all born into families and communities which possess bodies of shared truths which they pass on to the arriving generation through the authoritarian tools of education (which even if not per se forced, is taking advantage of the situation: how can I choose not to place my interests and the interests of my parent in the same basket?).

5) Humans vary along certain dimensions that affect their core sensitivity to whether certain types of ideas are believable or not — these include but are not limited to: schizotypal personality traits, activity of certain neural mechanisms such as the dopaminergic system, sensitivity of the mistakenly labeled "god center", and the activity of mirror-neurons.

6) Socio-economic status. While here in the U.S. it's a popular icon that a man/woman can become anything they want, regardless of where they start out, the truth is far different. Those who start in poverty, end in poverty. Same for any social strata. Sure, some rise to the top (as do some sinking to the bottom), but the socio-economic class of your parent(s) is a strong predictor of where you will spend your days. And it's well known that poverty and religion tend to go hand in hand.

These six factors strongly influence the likelihood and character of religious belief, they are not themselves freely chosen, and they cannot be “fixed” by presenting a persuasive argument based in science or reason. What then is the point of the atheist intellectual argument?

(Anyway, just an idea.)

[Jason]

• 

Goshdarnit! Away from a hardline for a few weeks and you usurp my position as the Shakespearean 'fool'.

Curse this bandwidth usage cap! Consider yourself fortunate Seth. Gallstones will go much easier on you than I would.

Gawdzilla.. well.. he's an 8bit user in a 64bit world. Exponentially retarded as it were.

[hiyymer]

One of the groups I participated in discussed Christopher Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great." In the midst of assimilating this torrent of anti-religious vitriol, a thought occurred to me. I identified six key factors which I feel determine whether we are religious, and in what way. I don't mean to imply any causation in most of these criteria, only correlation -- but I think that's enough. In no particular order, they are:

An amoeba behaves in rather complex ways in order to fulfill its life intentionality. An amoeba has no brain, no consciousness, no beliefs. It does have a group. When food gets scarce a certain kinds of amoebae will congregate in a slime mole (exterminating a few of themselves in the process) which will propel itself to happier hunting grounds. It's amazing isn't it. All that complex behavior arising simply from the life form itself, the genetically evolved and replicated mechanism we call an amoeba; devoid of any intelligent agent in charge of all that life intentionality to survive and replicate; apparent will without a will-er. Every cell in our body comes from the same tree of life as the lowly amoeba. We are amoebae with the additional evolved mechanism called consciousness. To me the explanation is much more about why someone does not participate in a religious group than why they do. We can say that those amoebae should have thought about it before they formed that slime mild and killed a number of their own members; that it's not rational and there must have been superstition involved and look at all the harm it did and slime molds should be banned from existence until a more humane way of doing it becomes possible. But coming from the amoebae over here with an inexhaustible food supply, it has a hollow ring to it.

[Feck]

Well, nice oversimplification of slime 'moles' . To say that simple organisms can work cooperatively in groups therefore ... superstition and religion, is a gross over simplification . Superstition is an error caused by our brains trying to solve a problem for which we don't have enough information , by spotting patterns .
The need to belong to a group (and how big a group should be ) should be studied by anthropology and (dare I say it sociology) Rather than an over simplification of the many radically different types of life loosely categorised by the term slime mould . There are many species that have an almost solitary life to ignore this fact and say that some how group bonding in humans must be religious because of 'the tree of life' IMHO is bollocks.

[Seth]

No, I'm saying that atheists are wrong for denigrating people who choose to believe in God when that belief factually and actually does them no harm.

I agree it's wrong to denigrate people who choose to believe in God but I don't agree that belief in God does no harm. The problem is that belief in God is inextricably linked to conditioning under capitalism.

I see no evidence, either in the record or in your post, that this is remotely the case. Capitalism is an economic theory that describes the actions of free markets. It's neither a system of government nor a religion. It describes how economics works most effectively, nothing more.

Capitalism and religion are virtually interchangeable belief systems, mainly around their authoritarianism.

Please expand on this and explain in greater detail what you mean. It's patently obvious that religion and Capitalism are not interchangeable at all, so I'm interested in hearing your reasoning on the subject.

Capitalism and religion both cause serious harm.

Again, an unfounded assertion that defies both history and logic. Both Capitalism and religion have evolutionary utility to the human species, which is why I posit that they are such enduring behavior patterns.

But we are all dependant on capitalism so we all therefore to some extent follow the beliefs of religion.

I'm afraid I don't see the connection. Can you elucidate?

I believe it is virtually impossible for anyone to be a genuine atheist in our society. Anybody can tick the boxes on the surface, simplistically meeting the popular dictionary definitions, but to follow the consequences of atheism to its full conclusions is probably impossible.

How so? What aspects of atheism are you referring to, and why? It might help your reasoning to consider the fact that many atheists are actually Atheists, and are members of a religious cult themselves...like Dawkins and Hitchens.

The Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris cult thing is just an attempt at atheism-lite, a way of relieving the anxiety that realising the depth of our religious & capitalist conditioning creates. We're all susceptible to this cult-trap, therefore to denigrate others is to denigrate ourselves.

True enough, but I'd like to hear your reasoning and evidence supporting your assertions.

[amused]

Here's where I think religion is hurtful.

There are, interpretations, of religious writings that justify (with the right interpretation) the abuse of non-believers. This is pretty classic tribal behavior, and it's a very human thing to do. Where it becomes hurtful is that it causes divisions within the virtual tribes we call nations. The so-called 'culture wars' being a prime example in the US. A lot of money, energy, and time is continuously wasted in the effort to keep creationism out of the public school system science classes. That waste is hurtful.

And, if I am in a fight against another tribe of another nation, and the person beside me suddenly aligns himself with the enemy because they are both from the same religious tribe, then I am hurt. The US Muslim soldier who killed some of his fellow US soldiers being a good example of the issue. (I'm not picking on Muslims specifically, it's just a good example.) The founding fathers recognized the divisive nature of religious tribes within national tribes in the continual wars that raged across Europe at the time, when every time the new ruler of a nation had a different religion than their predecessor and the pogroms began. Hence, the separation of church and state. But we see in the aggressive Christianist right wing, an insistence that there is no separation between church and state. So there's a continual waste of money, energy, and time trying to keep this nation a cohesive secular tribe. That waste is hurtful.