In the 1920s, American Conservative Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan developed the theology of what would become Reconstructionist Judaism, founded on the idea that God is not personal, but a summation of all natural processes. Four decades later, Reform Rabbi Sherwin Wine came out as an atheist and founded "Humanistic Judaism," which emphasizes secular Jewish culture and history over belief in God.Siddhartha Gautama showed little interest in worlds to come or the nature of Deity. Many of his followers have created extensive theologies complete with Gods, Demons, Heavens and Hells: he was much more focused on mindfulness in the here and now. One Western Buddhist, Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs and Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, has discussed this in some detail:
What Batchelor believes the Buddha did preach were four essentials. First, the conditioned nature of existence, which is to say everything continually comes and goes. Second, the practice of mindfulness, as the way to be awake to what is and what is not. Third, the tasks of knowing suffering, letting go of craving, experiencing cessation and the "noble path". Fourth, the self-reliance of the individual, so that nothing is taken on authority, and everything is found through experience.Meanwhile, many contemporary Pagans and Hermetic Magicians are more precisely Jungians than theists. They believe that the Gods and Mythic Heroes are symbols and archetypes hard-wired into our brains. Through the use of ritual, meditation and other techniques they hope to access those archetypes and gain wisdom and personal empowerment thereby. Others (like myself) are animists: while we believe that consciousness is not exclusive to human beings - or to carbon-based biological organisms - we do not believe that these other sentient beings are omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent or omnibenevolent. So by any standard which claims that God must be defined by the "Four Os" we too are atheists.
But none of us would qualify as "atheists" by the standards of the New Atheists. Their atheism doesn't just involve a lack of belief in God/s. It involves an open rejection of and contempt for anything smacking of "religious thought," combined with a steadfast conviction that anything which can't be corroborated, falsified and repeated must be ignored or mocked. And it requires a rejection of anything which smacks of the "supernatural." Not only does it act as a religion: it elevates people like Penn & Teller and The Amazing Randi to the status of prophets.
There's no reason why one could not be an "atheist" and believe in telepathy. The fact that people might sometimes be able to hear the thoughts of other people does not imply the existence of a God: it merely suggests our brains may, under certain circumstances, function as transceivers. One might accept the existence of incorporeal beings like fairies and djinnis without accepting that they worked in service of or in opposition to some Higher Power. Microbes and viruses are invisible without appropriate tools, yet their effect on the visible world is hardly questioned by even the most ardent atheist. There are stories throughout different eras and cultures of beings like the "Good Folk" who occasionally interact with humans and have enormous impact on their lives. The similarities in these tales is certainly thought-provoking at the very least. Yet anyone who showed up on a New Atheist forum talking about the possible existence of fairies or telepathy would quickly be laughed off the virtual stage.
Consider the way atheists like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins have rejected Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. It has passed the hurdles of corroboration: it has made several speculations which were later proven true regarding weathering of rocks by microorganisms, the lack of life on Mars and the role of microorganisms in transferring essential elements from ocean to land. It answers intriguing questions about the amounts of methane in the atmosphere and treats the planet as a complex and self-sustaining system - something which would seem self-evident to most based on the available evidence.
Yet it is controversial among many atheists not because it is wrong but because it can lead to some uncomfortable conclusions. It suggests that evolution and the development of life on Gaia was directed: that there may be some form of consciousness involved in the planetary system as a whole. (Lovelock has backed away from this in recent years, to little avail: of course, Galileo's refutation didn't convince many people either). The idea that evolution might be a teleological (goal-directed) process must be rejected out of hand not because it is wrong but because it might lead to Science being poisoned by Mysticism.
The Gaia Theory does not prove the existence of a God in the Abrahamic sense: it merely provides tantalizing evidence of a Higher Power with Intelligence which is not limited to a human body. This Intelligence does not require worship, faith, or sacrifice of virgins: it is not Personal nor is it directly concerned with our welfare, our morals and ethics, our sex lives, or our voting habits. But it must be ignored or refuted because it runs afoul of scientific orthodoxy in much the same way evolution runs afoul of certain religious orthodoxies.
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2 comments:
In your criticism of "new atheism" you target what is essentially the bottom of the barrel at atheist forums. I wonder how fair or useful you would find it if I plumbed occult forums for the absolute worst in thought and behavior and indicted the whole of the occult community because of it? There are small minded jerks who are atheists, who are pagans, who collect stamps; If you want to make the case that there is something to atheism that makes people more liable to be small minded, or mean you are to try to make that case, certainly there are atheists who have argued as much about theism. I don't see that you have done that here, and at any rate you are wrong about so much you have posted here it is difficult to see that you have made any cogent point at all.
You also cite atheism as a religion, a proposition as ridiculous as suggesting that not collecting stamps is a hobby, and that this religion elevates entertainers such as Penn Jillette or James Randi to the status of prophets, itself a ridiculous notion, no atheist reveres either of those men the way a Muslim reveres Mohammed. This said they along with two others you mention, Dawkins and Gould, are at least more fair targets if you're looking to criticize so called "New Atheism."
Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' which you cannot have read,addresses most of your points before chapter five. Dawkins, a man who describes himself as a "cultural christian" refers to pantheists as atheists, he envisions a 7 point scale with true believers and absolutist atheists at either end, confesses that while he is sure they exist, he cannot easily imagine there being many absolutist atheists, and proceeds to make the point that his case against theism rests on examining why god is not a very probable idea, and as such does not deserve to be treated as though it was equably as probable as there being no god.
Penn who I dislike for political reasons, has a very wide definition of atheism, to paraphrase: "If god, however you define it, communicated to you in whatever way that would convince you it was god's will that you kill your child, would you do it?" If your answer is no, Penn considers you an atheist.
I'm frankly at a loss as to why anyone serious about proving their theories on what you describe as things approaching the supernatural, would dislike what Randi does, though certainly I could understand why one may disagree with him on points or find him abrasive, as Carl Sagan said of the man, "We may disagree with Randi on certain points, but we ignore him at our peril." If you sincerely care about legitimate research into these issues you should want the frauds who discredit research into these phenomenon to be rooted out. Randi has stated that what drives him is seeing con artists draw financial gain from the gullible, the grieving, the sick. Hardly the mark of a dick, in fact, however scathing you may find him, surely exposing a fraud like Peter Popoff who was fleecing people via trickery can in no meaningful sense be more of a dick move than what Peter Popoff was doing. Again if you hold your faith or your art as a magician in high esteem I would think you would want to be distanced from the Peter Popoffs of the world.
It's not possible to advocate for atheism and not offend some of the faithful, so to cry foul that some atheists are more aggressive than you would like is not a charge than anyone can seriously address, it is a tone argument that hold no real water.
Still, not all of your post is expressly about angry atheists, it is also about how in your estimation atheism leads people to disavow evidence which supports your brand of animism (which for the record sounds rather more like panpsychism to me). Your main argument here is the Gaia Hypothesis, yet what you say about that theory, about it's co-author Lovelock, and about criticism levied at it is so off the mark that it warrants its own comment (thanks to a character limit on replies) which will follow shortly.
Some of what you say here is so vague it is difficult to comment on, for example, "recent years" is not a set amount of time, but Lovelock went on record stating that his hypothesis never postulated direction by intelligence in 1990 which at this point is is over two decades ago, not what I would describe as "in recent years" nor would I characterize his denial as being the same as backing of an earlier claim. Lovelock has been pretty upfront that misapprehension of the theory likely stemmed from two areas, one a false assumption that his use of a goddess name was meant to imply what is essentially intelligent design, and two a weak grasp of non linear mathematics. Though I think it's evidence that he was too close to his theory when he complained that detrimental specialization in the sciences were a reason it was primarily biologists who took issue with and were unable to understand is theory that the earth behaved like a biological organism.
It's interesting that you cite Gould as an example of an atheist so staunch that it leads him to reject the Gaia Hypothesis, Gould is actually a champion of what might be called soft atheism, his notion of NOMA being a point of contention among hard atheists like Dawkins.
Gould criticized the hypothesis not as wrong, but that is was only a metaphor not a new discovery. Dawkins was critical because he felt Lovelock was suggesting foresight and planning that the biota was not capable of. This an important point because even if Lovelock is right and cooperation rather than competition is the primary driving force in evolution it does not change the fact that teleological interpretations of the gaia theory contradicts evolutionary theory. The kind of planning required necessitates complexities that necessarily arrive later on the planet. It's important to note that neither Gould nor Dawkins (or Doolittle or Kirchner) said that every part of the theory was false, they took issue with specific pieces of wording that contradicted all evidence. There are other issues too, disagreements on the definition of life as an example but..
To suggest therefore that Dawkins refuses to accept the theory in whole does not mean as you seem to suggest that he refuses to acknowledge testable results the hypothesis has produced.
Teleological evolution is more commonly known as intelligent design. To suggest Dawkins rejects it because he is an atheist does not explain for example, why Francis Collins, a devout believer, also rejects the notion of intelligent design as regards evolution. Collins gets it right when he says such propositions are bad science. It is important to understand that rejecting a hypothesis as pseudoscience is not the same as saying a specific phenomenon is impossible, this is why W. D. Hamilton called Gaia Theory a Copernican theory, speculating it would require another Newton to explain how Darwinian Evolutions jibes with the Gaia Hypothesis. The larger point is this, Lovelock did not present a teleological theory of evolution and the extent to which you think his theories are evidence that support your idea of animism are at best a spiritual or philosophical analog to his work, but they are not science, nor has Lovelock or any of the successes of his theories constituted evidence of teleological evolution.
I agree that in their rush to mitigate the damage done by religious thinking some atheists severely undervalue the worth, perhaps even the necessity of creativity. That's a worthwhile thing to talk about, and incidentally I was very happy that James Randi invited fellow magician and artist Alan Moore to speak on the subject at one of his events. That talk was well received by many, in case you were wondering, including atheists as militant as PZ Meyers.
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