There are atheists who believe that there are no gods. All I was saying is that the minimum requirement is a lack of belief in gods.
Did you hear about the dyslexic atheist who didn’t believe in Dog?
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In my view, if you stretch the definition of religion to cover any set of shared beliefs then it becomes somewhat meaningless. You might as well call the United States Golf Association a religion, especially given all the people playing golf on Sundays.
I think it is more interesting to question why people feel it necessary to label atheism a religion.
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Let me repeat my first sentence:
Are you saying it is impossible for a group to start with atheism (or anything else) and add conditions, litmus tests, and labels until it takes on some of the trappings of a religion? That is what I argued.
I don’t see how that comment addresses what I wrote. A relevant Golf analogy would be more like this: All true Golfers (Golfers-plus) love the environment and therefore have a great concern about anthropogenic global warming. If you think about Golf deeply, you’ll agree. It’s inevitable. Otherwise you are just a dictionary golfer.
It would seem that every organization made up of human beings would also be labeled as having the “trappings of religion” using that definition.[quote=“heddle, post:44, topic:36466”]
A relevant Golf analogy would be more like this: All true Golfers (Golfers-plus) love the environment and therefore have a great concern about anthropogenic global warming.
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All true USGA members would strive to follow the rules of golf (their Bible) and promote their sport to non-golf players (evangelism). Are those the trappings of religion?
No, I guess I am not being clear. The atheism plus movement imposed a dogma that they insisted was a rationally derivable consequence of true atheism. They did not say: we are a private club and we only want to associate with like-minded individuals who play by certain rules. That would be an atheist USGA. They argued a sort of natural law, that their values which included many things that might be associated with with atheists or theists, are a consequence of atheism.
Another analogy. Science is a method. I don’t recommend it, but you don’t have to like science or even believe in science to do science. You just have to follow the scientific method faithfully. Science is agnostic about the motivation of its practitioners. However, if you add on to science that true scientists must love science and must only do research for the common good, and that true scientists would never work on defense projects or test on live animals, you then have science-plus. And at that point it then has some of the trappings of religion.
I heard it as the atheist dyslexic insomniac, who layed in bed at night wondering…
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The question is whether one does something primarily because one believes it to be right and good, or because one wants the approval of others. If one does something because one believes it is good, then it means that 1) this action is objectively good, and 2) there is a way to determine that fact. Christians believe that God is Good and that anything done out of the love for God is good. I do not see anything like this that you have expressed. If my peers or friends claim to be following the commands of God and I find no good evidence for this, then I am obligated to follow my conscience and not to follow them.
I would agree that one does not need to be motivated by judgement to be moral, but one does have to have a sense of right and wrong. I do not see where one can logically have a sense of right and wrong without having an objective, rather than a subjective, source of what is good. Christians maintain that this must be the Creator. What do you think?
SPV, no human can KNOW what God is like. But, like most of the BioLogos posters, as soon as my mind had matured sufficiently, I began to marvel at the Universe that surrounded me. WHY was it here? Was it always here, or did some superior being create it; and if so, does that being just sit back and uncaringly observe it? Given the particular mind I was born with–AND the experiences I had while my mind was maturing–I reached tentative answers to these questions. Then, as a mature human that accumulated a variety of lifetime experiences, I tried to fit them into the earlier framework to see if they formed a consistent ‘worldview’. Your life must have taken a similar course, but at present our paths seemed to have diverged widely. No reason to be surprised; our experiences have been quite different.
As a 19 yr. old G.I. with a medical discharge from World War II, my experiences in life led me to favor the view that a loving, caring God was in charge of the Universe. However, there was one fly in the ointment: the Holocaust. There was no doubt that the Holocaust was real. So how could a loving God be real? At that point in time I gave atheism a 50/50 chance of being True.
So what changed me? Luck and further life experiences. I met a 15 yr. old girl who gave full meaning to the words Love and Caring, and we courted and were married. Over the next 72 yrs. I (and all our progeny) were the recipients of that love and caring. Could a callous Universe produce a creature with these attributes? Hardly. So all my experiences since then ‘fit’ the supposition that a loving God was somehow responsible. Does it explain the Holocaust? NO. But in all my experience in the lab making experiments to best describe the physical parameter, hydrophobicity, there always were outliers. When humans try to understand God there always will be outliers, as the Book of Job attests.
wishing you the best,
Al Leo
As compared to a religion, which is a group of people who believe in a deity and worship said deity.
That’s a discussion stopper. That means nothing can be like a religion or have the the trappings of a religion, except a religion. No point to argue further.
In the old Soviet Union the Communist Party made atheistic Scientific Socialism the official dogma.
Objectivism is for some an atheist theology.
I think that the vast majority of humans already have a sense of right and wrong without needing to believe in a deity. What religion or deity you decide to follow is also entirely subjective. One religion says that such-and-such is bad, another religion says it is just fine. I really don’t see how following a religion makes morality any less subjective than it already is. All you are doing is subjectively choosing which moral code to follow.
It also gets a bit scary when people ignore their own sense of right and wrong so that they can follow the edicts of a religion. If you take the position of “If God commands it, it must be moral” you can get things like airplanes flying into buildings or homosexuals being hung in the public square.
Why do you find it important to portray atheism as having the “trappings of religion”?
This is getting frustrating so I should stop.
A) I never portrayed atheism as having the trappings of religion. I stated clearly that atheism is not a religion. I portrayed the atheism based movement, Atheism-Plus, as such. Its very name tells you it is not just atheism, but atheism with add-ons. It is the add-ons, IMO, that gives Atheism-Plus, not atheism, the trappings of a religion.
B) In any case it is not important to me, it’s just an observation.
Regardless of what you think, it seems that the vast majority of humans do believe in a deity which provides them with a sense of what is right and wrong. Assuming that there is a connection between belief and morality, I would expect that the vast majority are right.
All you are doing is subjectively choosing which moral code to follow.
If you believe that all moral codes are subjective, that is, not based on objective right and wrong, then you are correct. On the other hand when you say that “the vast majority of humans have a sense of right and wrong,” then you must know yourself what is right and wrong.
As far as I am concerned, it seems that you are right in that people are created to love and are most fulfilled by love, but many people do not accept this. Fortunately Jesus Christ is more than religion, and more than human wisdom, and more than other institutions. Religion is not at fault for everything. Governments cause wars, businesses cheat, and criminals steal. The institutional church has done some wrong things, but it has done more things right.
To say that all religions are the same is wrong. It is a cop out for having to make a real decision between what is right and wrong.
Just because they believe in a deity does not mean it is the deity supplying the sense of right and wrong.[quote=“Relates, post:56, topic:36466”]
On the other hand when you say that “the vast majority of humans have a sense of right and wrong,” then you must know yourself what is right and wrong.
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I only said they have a sense of right and wrong, not an absolute knowledge of what is absolutely right and wrong. As you say, we are born with the ability to love one another and that is where our morality comes from.
I am not blaming religion for anything. I try to hold people accountable for their own actions, not the religion they belong to.
I was saying that religions say different things, and I never meant to give the impression that all religions are the same. One thing they do tend to have in common is a claim to some absolute authority, even though those absolute authorities can disagree with one another between different religions.
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I wasn’t calling atheism in a religion (in that specific post – though I have at other times, so I still register your response in stride.) No – here I was referring to the much more positive and commendable religion you have when you wrote:
I feel I am accountable to my friends, family, and community.
I.e. – the positive stuff to which atheism is probably irrelevant.
Just FYI, BioLogos senior scholar Jeff Schloss has said that atheists can lead a moral life.
That’s not a religion.
We are born with the ability to love another, however Darwin taught that our basic instinct is to strive for survival against one another. Both cannot be true. I understand that Jesus Christ was the first one to teach that our basic morality must be based on loving God Who created us and gave us life, and loving others who are our brothers and sisters because they too are created and loved by God our Father. Of course there is more to this theology than that, but this is for me the only rational basis for the morality you suggest.
Another important aspect of this is that our lives are part of a plan, so life is not just some sort of accidental event but has meaning and purpose. Of course humans do not have follow God’s plan. They can be selfish and mean if that is their choice, but they must take responsibility for this choice, so we live in an objective world, not a subjective one.
One thing they do tend to have in common is a claim to some absolute authority, even though those absolute authorities can disagree with one another between different religions.
Love is not Absolute. Love is relational. Jesus was very clear on this. Many people are not aware of this, so that is why we need to make this known.