New distinctions of atheism
More and more does the urgency of a new approach to atheism become clear to me. The old definitions, ie weak and strong atheism, agnostic atheism, you name it, simply will not do. Not only do they paint a blatantly false picture of what atheism is to believers, the old terms also make self proclaimed atheists confused about what they are. So I post this hoping to have some sort of an influence on how we treat the atheist phenomenon at least on this forum.
Let me first begin by reiterating a stance that I have often taken but wil make expressly clear once more for the purpose of this thread. Atheism is a metaphysical stance when it is a rejection of the theist claim about the origin of existence. Atheism is a rejectionist stance by nature because it cannot exist without its counterpart. This is a simple matter of word definitions and us ascribing the appropriate meaning to them.
Theism is also a metaphysical stance, namely in that it says something about the nature and/or origin of Being. This should be no controversial claim, unless someone wishes to raise the point that theism is in essence ethical or epistemological or what else. Sincerely doubting that there is anyone willing to engage in that debate, let us concede to this: as a metaphysical stance, theism often has ethical and epistemological implications when applied to a consistent philosophy.
Now the problem that we often have is that we conflate the notions of atheism and [political] ideology, aswell as theism and religion. Religion stands to theism as the ethical offspring of a metaphysical stance, as I outlined above, and so does [political] ideology to atheism. I am bracketing the world political because more often than not, ideologies are practiced on a political level but it is likely that there exist such cases where ideologies have nothing to do with politics whatsoever.
We are all familiar with the discussions in which these concepts are inappropriately applied. "Atheism is bad, because Hitler and Stalin and Kim Jong Il." Or: "people who believe in God are the likes of pedophile popes that start crusades and Osama Bin Laden who leads a terrorist organisation, look where belief gets you."
We confuse these notions easily because we rarely meet a theist who is religiously neutral and we rarely meet a vocal atheist who is not politically driven. You could argue that the majority of atheism in the western world today exists precisely because of a growing sense of apathy for and disinterest in matters of faith and philosophy, but then we are not talking about vocal atheists at all, and we have actually stumbled by accident onto an example that will serve my case very well.
When I say that the contemporary use of the word atheism is a misleading one, I point in particular to all those in the west today who claim to be atheist but in truth are indifferent about spiritual and/or metaphysical matters. They are not so much atheists as they are absentists, ie people who are absent of any real stance to take. When you ask them what their opinion is they will say "I'm not sure" or something similar, or will instead express some nondescript platitude which they hope will satisfy the requirements of the question. I expect that some will argue that if they do not believe in god, then they are still atheists and therefore my point has been refuted, but I disagree.
Inherent in the definition of atheism is an implied activity. It is a stance contrary to something. X has been posited, and the atheist says: not-X. That denial alone rests on consideration, which is an activity. If one has not arrived at the position of not-X by considering X, then one really hasn't engaged in any activity at all and is simply being intellectually lazy.
You may wonder how one can arrive at not-X by not first considering X, but keep in mind that X itself had to be first considered aswell, and so there is a state of mind pre-X, if you will, where a person has simply not given anything enough attention to be familiar with the notion at stake.
Let's then discharge the intellectually lazy of their atheist title and simply accept them as being willing and ready to accept much of anything and challenge as little as they can. I suspect that the reason for the success of dogmatism in whatever shape (political or religious) is due to the overabudance of these people, and it's for good reason that Immanuel Kant hoped that the Enlightment would bring about the intellectual autonomy he held so dear. Unfortately it did not and Enlightment has now simply become another poorly considered dogma that gets repeated in schools and discussions, but that aside.
The second most common form of atheism is what I refer to as ethical atheism. This is not so much a stance that runs contrary to the notion of theism, but it is a result of the conflation of terms that I mentioned earlier. Theism and religion are held to be synonyms by the ethical atheism, and the evils of religion are in this worldview spawned more or less directly from a belief in god. The mistake in this assumption is of course that all possible notions of god are represented by the religions in existence today, when as with anything to do with human imagination, there is really no end to how many incarnations of the divine we can conjure up. A non-religious theist is often acknowledged by the ethical atheist as being a possibility but since they seem relatively harmless they can be discounted and so the attention doesn't have to shift from religious theists at all.
Atheism in this case, then, is also an active stance since it is once more a considered rejection. Not a well considered one perhaps, but considered nonetheless. It is in this case a rejection of all that religion stands for and the practices it engages in. Religion is held to be responsible for evil, and since all religious people are held to be theists, theists are held to be responsible for evil.
Now earlier I outlined that religion is theism's ethically implicated offspring, and while I understand that this position will need a lot more clarification (which I assume I will use other posts in this thread for) I will simply hold to it for now and assume that even if you are somewhat suspicious of that claim, you will come around to accepting it when I clarify it further.
Now if metaphysical theism spawns ethical religion, why does metaphysical atheism not spawn ethical atheism? The reason for this is simple: atheism, as a counter-stance, is spawned from the notion it rejects. Metaphysical atheism may imply a certain set of ethics (as SigniferOne so often argues) but that is not what is meant by the term Ethical Atheism. When I say Ethical Atheism, what I mean is a form of atheism that is spawned from a disapproval of religious ethics that are held to be a synonym with theist ethics.
What I have hoped to achieve with this thread is to dispell the notions of strong and weak atheism, especially the casual application of the latter term to a tremendous group of absentists (or apatheists) and replace them instead with terms that better represent the source of a particular atheist's considered rejection. It should be clear that I hold metaphysical atheism to be the superior stance of the two, since metaphysical atheism is spawned from the very root of the debate whereas ethical atheism conflates notions and cares little for untangling them.
Nevertheless, both have their place in society as ethical atheism is often the starting point for many atheists, but also the main source of religious conversion (out of the two) for those followers of religion with a strong enough argument to dispell the ethical atheist's objections. With this new dichotomy and the particularities it entails, another possibility also becomes distinctly clear: people often say that it is impossible for religion and belief in god to stop becoming a factor in society, and that theism is simply inherent in man. In essence, all that would be required for atheism to become humanity's new philosophical direction is for metaphysical atheism to convince the religious first and theists second of its the superiority of its arguments.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by cfmonkey45
).
As a matter of fact, a lot of The Dude's criticisms in this post can easily be directed at yourself. 
