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Similarly I feel the same way about the atheist movement, and I say this as a atheist who had on occasion corresponded with Christopher Hitchens. It is more ant
by willcipriano 5y ago
Similarly I feel the same way about the atheist movement, and I say this as a atheist who had on occasion corresponded with Christopher Hitchens. It is more anti-religion than pro-free-thought as I felt it was in my youth. Science appears to be growing it's own clergy, demanding deference as opposed to encouraging debate.
When we first attempted to find truth in the world, the truth seekers called themselves philosophers. Once philosophy had become polluted with Platonism, the more Aristotelian thinkers were driven to science. I think one day science will be left behind in the same way and seekers of truth will go elsewhere.
- medvezhenok 5y agoRationalism is the new philosophy :)
- beambot 5y agoI assume Christopher Hitchens is someone of note within some atheist circles(?), but regardless: name dropping for credibility by association in the same paragraph as lamenting "thought clergy" is ironic.
- willcipriano 5y agoI would describe him as a militant antitheist, but he was a product of a different time. Things like teaching evolution in schools wasn't a given. Proper sex education was rare, abstinence only was more typical. State governments would routinely justify choices with biblical verses. They had mandatory prayer in some public schools. Gay people weren't allowed to get married. We needed to fight back against a religious power structure that was visible in media and government. Great news, we won! While all of those issues aren't resolved perfectly, they are largely solved. Religious leaders just don't have the clout they did twenty years ago. Nobody cares what the Pope says. It's over, or will be over soon. Now, in my opinion, atheists should choose to be gracious winners. We should attempt to find common ground with the religious, and agree to disagree where we can. We don't need to turn into the monster that we have just slain and put our boot on their neck. Revenge stories like that are best left in the old testament.
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoAs an atheist I actually believe (some) religious establishments have found their niche in providing care, attention, and even love for people who have no other avenue for such things. A lightning rod for the less fortunate, as is their doctrine. There for those who need it, can be ignored, or even appreciably but minimally acknowledged, by those who do not.
- systemvoltage 5y agoWell said. I still see Hitchens and Dawkins as the people that changed my life for the better. I was in highschool and their influence has led me to live a more fulfilling life. I am grateful for that.
- trasz 5y agoMeanwhile in the US in several states christian fundamentalists managed to introduce an abortion ban. Similar stuff is happening in parts of Eastern Europe. It’s nowhere near resolved yet.
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoI thought Christopher Hitches is someone relatively difficult to avoid if one's done any research on atheism. Christopher Hitchens is _the_ definition of militant atheist. If you've not heard of him, look him up, there's gold you're missing.
- maroonblazer 5y ago> Science appears to be growing it's own clergy, demanding deference as opposed to encouraging debate. What are some examples of this? I'm also an atheist (although I detest the label) who was raised Catholic and seriously considered joining the priesthood. But a life guided by reason and rationality I've found to be so much more fulfilling than the guilt and fear that made up much of my Catholic life.
- Osiris 5y agoI live by reason and rationality and am also religious. I see "God" as Truth, or a consciousness that knows all truth, and that seeking truth, including natural laws/science, is equivalent to seeking god. The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts.
- rackjack 5y agoI do not think this is what most people believe the definition of religion or God is.
- tengbretson 5y agoI would recommend the prologue of the book of John to learn more about this.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago> The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts. Only if the religion is unfalsifiable. If it can be proven false then it's irrational to believe in it. If it can be proven true there is no need for faith.
- mbrock 5y agoWhat if believing in it is proven to have significant benefits, regardless of the scientific truth value of the doctrinal propositions? How do you really judge the rationality of that?
- tgb 5y agoMy impression is that that was kind of the case a decade ago and now basically isn't. Though I've had a slightly feeling it might be returning, but regardless I don't expect it to go anywhere. Atheism is becoming too boring and common place for the angsty side to be so alluring.
- ummonk 5y agoYeah there was the whole Atheism+ thing and then it kind of just petered out and people started increasingly becoming nonbelievers or just nondenominational believers without needing to have a big organized movement / identity around it. Arguably, a lot of the reason for the atheism movement's existence no longer exists - prayer and creationism in public schools seems to be a thing of the past. The angst is still there though - it's just directly applied towards modern culture war fault-lines rather than towards religion / belief in god.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoApolitism is the next big thing.
- mbfg 5y agoThe fight has always been about people's beliefs. and the actions they take because of those beliefs. Very few people care about what you believe in the privacy of your own home, it's when people take those beliefs and act on them in the legislature, courtroom, police station, schools, etc, etc. That's how it started, that's how it will end. There hasn't been a significant change over time.
- em3rgent0rdr 5y agoHitchens is an atheist, but he doesn't represent all atheists. I doubt that most atheists even consider themselves to belong to an "atheist movement".
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoThis is one of those examples that actually allows me, as a white male living a life of privilege, to come remotely close to understanding the trivialising power of a 'label'. I'm an atheist, but my atheism is my own. And, in that, I realise that the number of degrees of freedom of an atheist are only slightly greater than those of a devout religious type, in that there are almost infinite things that "label" doesn't define, whilst a very limited number of things (1 for an atheist, a few more for a religious person) that a label does define. You are an atheist. You are a catholic. You are a woman. You are Japanese. Few words, but even less meaning. I just (re)watched the space snake episode of Rick and Morty last night: “Imagine being a racist snake. Hey, other snake, I hate you because you’re the wrong colour snake!”
- mbfg 5y agoI am a non-stamp-collector! I wear that label proudly!
- nichohel 5y agoWhen 95% of the people in the world are stamp-collectors, and stamp-collecting is a harmful activity, then yes ... I would wear that label proudly.
- ineedasername 5y agopolluted with Platonism, the more Aristotelian thinkers were driven to science. Could you clarify this? Plato & Aristotle have both gone in & out of fashion within different communities of thought over the centuries, sometimes in with one group and out with another at the same time. Humanism and Platonism came together around the 14th century in a push back against pure Aristotelian thought, and that seems like it would be much earlier than the shift you have observed. Further down the road, Leibniz described himself as closer to Plato than Aristotle but was part of the natural philosophy tradition that evolved into modern science. More recently both, Bertrand Russel and Kurt Godel were both platonists of some flavor. = Is the shift more recent, the past half-century or so? Or a specific aspect of platonism that has taken hold?
- willcipriano 5y ago> Could you clarify this? Plato & Aristotle have both gone in & out of fashion within different communities of thought over the centuries To this point, I have a few things to say. Plato's more abstract and metaphysical thinking is largely compatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church. It is my reading of history that when we have embraced these more metaphysical ideas, it has often lead to great suffering and barbarism. The inquisition, the crusades, etc. There was a time where only the clergy were able to talk about religion, as a common person you would simply be ignored out of hand. I see that sort of thinking in the allegory of the cave. I see this sort of thinking today where it is claimed that someone without a degree can't have a opinion on a scientific topic. In contrast, the Wikipedia article for Aristotelianism claims that: "In the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna and Averroes translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic and under them, along with philosophers such as Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi, Aristotelianism became a major part of early Islamic philosophy."[0] This is why lots of stars have Arabic names, during their golden age they were the first to discover and chart them. From there, it is my view that Aristotle's ideas form the core of thinking that lead to the Renaissance as access to his works became more common in Europe. The Renaissance obviously was a huge influence on the founding fathers. America with it's right of free speech, is probably the only place that something like modern scientific thinking could take off. In contrast to the allegory of the cave above, Aristotle was the first to speak about "common sense"[1]. He elevated the common man (it was almost two thousand years ago, cut him some slack) where Plato felt them unworthy. > Is the shift more recent, the past half-century or so? Or a specific aspect of platonism that has taken hold? It's subtle, and I'll be the first to admit this isn't something I can prove, it's more how I feel. Roughly 15 years ago I noticed the start of the idea that someone needs credentials to speak on a topic within the skeptic community, prior to that you'd be called out for making argument from authority[2]. We went from, lets have a debate to shut up, are you a expert, show me your papers. I'm no philosopher, but I see the former as more Aristotelian and the latter as Platonism. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelianism [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- dqv 5y agoAnd with veganism. Not that I've given up on being 100% plant-based, but I got bored with it after learning the 10 or so repeated talking points (and the derivations in response to people who criticize veganism). Proselytizing was the next step and I didn't feel particularly interested in that. So I left. I had this same experience with atheism groups too (albeit when I was much younger)... it just gets boring. I think the repetition in religion is much more drawn out. You've got thousands of pages of text and so it takes a lot longer to reach that point of "yeah I've heard this before..." and by that time you've built up a community that has more activities than just reading a sacred text.
- jhanschoo 5y ago> Once philosophy had become polluted with Platonism, the more Aristotelian thinkers were driven to science. This sentence is meaningful once you define what you mean by Platonism and Aristotelian, and once you do so with definite meanings sufficiently close to what they seem to mean, I really don't think this is correct at all.
- bananapub 5y ago> It is more anti-religion than pro-free-thought I'd say that is more the weird american athiest-as-persecutee strand.
- InitialLastName 5y agoLet's be fair, "[my group] is being persecuted" is the only thing most Americans agree on. It's the steady state fodder of fine-grained segregation of news sources by ideological subset.