I’ve been thinking about writing this following a discussion on atheistmemes because it gave me a lot to think about.
The idea is quite simple. I acknowledge there are multiple visions of atheism but never really took the opportunity to discuss it with people.
So here are the main cornerstones of my vision of atheism. Do you share them or reject them ?
-Gods, as religions define it, do not exist. There might be some kind of metaphysical supreme entity, but it would be more akin to an abstraction.
-Spiritual beliefs, per se, are not a good or bad thing. I admire quite a lot of religious minded people. Abolitionist quakers, anarchist christians, muslim thinkers, poets, activists fighting for emancipation from colonial/theocratic rule, etc. That being said, I believe I’ll live and die as an atheist.
-Religious institutions are quasi-inherently evil. I write “quasi-” because I don’t know enough about all beliefs system. What about animist/pantheist institutions ? I don’t know. I come from a family of African immigrants and I hear mixed things about those.
-Being an atheist do not make you better or worse than being a believer, and, quite importantly, not “wiser”. Wisdom is earned from character and mind. That being said, being a fundamentalist and being wise are mutually incompatible imo.
-I deeply hate and resent all missionaries. Religious ones, especially fundamentalism of all shapes and forms, for sure, but also atheist ones. I believe there’s no god, I don’t need my friends to accept this. If they want to learn about atheism, I’ll tell them. I often question them about religion, because I sometimes have trouble understanding how they can be great people while believing in what are basically myths to me. But that’s all. That’s just me who don’t understand. I don’t think they would be “better” as atheists.
-I have an ambiguous relation to Islam. While I reject it as a set of institutions, like all other religions, and absolutely despise it’s fundamentalist current, I do understand that some large part of anti-Islam movements are actually ethnoracists in (a bad) disguise. I tend to favour alliances with muslim individuals/groups i’ll be able to talk with without it being infuriating. Tbh, the only fundamentalists I actually talked with irl were Christians and Jews. But that’s just my social position. If I was born in another context, another place, another family, it who would be different. I don’t doubt all religions produce fundamentalism in a somehow equal measure.
-I truly think reason is not a quality which is restricted to atheism. Even if, like wisdom, I think some conceptions of religion bar people from living according to reason. But I can’t respect people waving the “reason” flag like a title, an honor or an automatic consequence to being an atheist. Reason is a way of life, certainly not an authoritarian one, it’s hard earned and always fragile. And it’s certainly not restricted to “maths”. Although mathematics are a part of it. Understanding what’s good and bad for your own complexion is, for me, the beating heart of reason. Easier said than done.
-Despite all I said, I understand and won’t criticize a very strong stance against any religion from someone who’s been oppressed by them. Although, and take it with a grain of salt because it’s only my experience of those people, I don’t feel like they’re the first ones to wave atheist as the flag of a nation or a pride backed by a superiority complex.
To end this wall of text, here’s a summed up version of how I was raised. My parents are far from perfect, but this they did fine.
Both were religious. Jewish and Muslim, with various degrees of adhesion/rejection/deviation from their faiths (quite complicated for my mother). They had us participate in both religious rituals when we were young. We sang prayers (as we sang folk songs, we didn’t make a difference). But they didn’t give us any kind of religious education. When we were 14 or 15, they gathered my siblings and I and basically told us this :
“We are religious. But that’s just us. You’ve experienced what is religion. You should make a choice about it. Either now or later. There will be no consequence to your choice under this roof.”
There were three of us. We all choose to be atheists. They acknowledged our choice add we never once discussed that again.
That’s it. I’d like to hear your opinions about all this, if any. Thanks for reading !
Edits : typos
Great post, very informative and clear, thank you ! Although I suppose, under certain circumstances… it could get a bit more complex ? I’m thinking about… hmm… where would you classify branches of animism ? There’s a lot of that in a certain branch of my African family. A set of beliefs involving what is, for me, supernatural forces. But for them, it’s nothing divine or magic, it’s just part of how world works, and as far as I can understand, there’s not really a concept of supreme divine being. Another case would be quite common in xvii-xviii century philosophies. A kind of… abstract god, reflecting a kind of absolutization of reason, but which existence is strongly stated, without room for ‘reasonable doubt’. Edge cases, perhaps, yet interesting ones, don’t you think?
They are interesting. Deism is a theistic belief, and while the statement “unknowable” is thrown around sometimes when discussing deism, it is not the unknowable of if the entity exists, it is the unknowable will of god kind of unknowable. This, many were still gnostic theists. There is some evidence to suggest that some deists were actually agnostic atheists and that it was a way of hiding without being killed for their beliefs… But we should assume that many if not most of them were actually theists.
Animism can be either theistic or atheistic depending on if they believe there are gods or not. Some sects of animism are undoubtedly theistic. Some of these were spiritual belief structures infected by Christian missionaries while others developed their own polytheistic god structures. It sounds like the people you know are potentially atheistic. It only appears to be difficult to reconcile until you realize that dualism is a very common belief and many people take it for granted. Apart from modern neurobiology and neuroscience it might actually be impossible to make adequate arguments against dualism that even begin to ‘feel’ right.
Descartes is the European philosopher best known for codifying the same philosophy. Cogito, ergo sum. I think therefore I am. Descartes philosophy is steeped in western theistic religious dogma, but the basic premise exists without it. Mind and matter are two separate entities. The qualitative experience of cognition is so seemingly distinct from the physical body that they must be unique and independent. Most, if not all, theists believe in dualism. Many atheists also believe in dualism, quite a few of them without even thinking about it.
Viewing animism in this light it is much easier to see how their philosophy is not significantly different than many western philosophies. It is perhaps easier to dismiss “because plants aren’t conscious” or “plants don’t have a brain” but a dualist who says such things is perhaps being a bit hypocritical since one of the key points of dualism is that the conscious experience is independent of the physical body and if dualism is right, who is to say that plants don’t have a rich mental experience.
Modern philosophy has leaned much heavier into monism (as opposed to dualism) which is where it appears your quandary with animism actually stems. A monism vs dualism debate more so than a theism vs atheism debate if you will.