Atheism is semantically erroneous

By Reuben.

Now that this post’s title has gathered your attention, let me draw your attention to a rather excellent quote:

I’m a polyatheist – there are many gods I don’t believe in.

- Dan Fouts

There is a subtle logic here; most believers (of a theistic or deistic bent) believe in one God – usually one ‘true’ God who has much political clout when it comes to dicatating matter. But they therefore must exclude all other Gods mustn’t they? A Christian does not call their God ‘Allah’ while most Jews do not follow the Scientology God known as Theta (or something like that…it’s hard to comprehend most of what Scientology says anyway). Nobody actually believes in every single conceivable God. It’s logically and morally inconsistent to believe in the God of the old testament whilst supposing that – at the same time – Thetans exist inside us (to borrow the Scientology example again). Jews are not also Muslims, Catholics and those who follow the Bahai Faith. That would certainly render the entire purpose of religion in politics (that is, to divide people based on a set of irrational superstitions) completely and utterly useless for starters…never mind the theological side.

Monotheism thrives wholly on the principle of exclusivity even though you can blatently see that, for example, Jews and Muslims worship the same theistic tyrant (who has given false impetus for both people to engage in bloodshed). You’d be hard pressed to find a Muslim, Christian or Jew who’d freely admit their God is the same as another monotheistic religion. Intelligent believers do concede that the Koran, the Bible and the Torah have many traces and evolved from a common source…but they stop short of saying that, name notwithstanding, their God is the same as each others. For the atheist, this is plain to see. Since it’s obviously inconceivable that all three Gods exist as per their relative religious texts’ instructions side-by-side (thus forfeiting their own ‘all powerful’ identity), monotheism has more than enough to answer for…

Pantheism is more curious. Spinoza espoused his own version of this and touched on the idea that perhaps pantheism is a precursor for atheism. Dawkins takes this one step further and I quote:

“Deism is watered down theism. Pantheism is sexed up atheism”

- Richard Dawkins

It would appear that if we were to truly follow pantheism, the whole concept of a powerful being is void. You might as well, Dawkin argues, call the theory of gravity the ‘God of Gravity’ and Einstein’s relativity theory the ‘God of relativity’. We have effectively supplanted the word ‘God’ with various undisputed observations about the natural world. Scientists may have already found something that links every known bit of scientific truth together. We could call this ‘one rule for all’ as some sort of God – but this might be too ironic, since a scientific explanation does not postulate what we expect to see – rather it explains it. A belief in God explains nothing.

The analogous relationship of politics and religion

I’ve consistently said that religion and politics are perfectly analogous. Nat and Kath disagree. I’m not sure about Oskar…though I’m sure he’d disagree with me just for the fun of it.

But what of this analogy? Well, according to Nat (who believes in Determinism…which states that our ideas and opinions are dependent on our environment and our experiences – so therefore we can’t be blamed for our values), this is all a bunch of bollocks. And besides, religion doesn’t cause externalities so we shouldn’t bother with ‘em. Leave those bible bashers in peace! But I beg to differ.

Firstly, let’s put aside the determinist ideas espoused by Nat (and Kath…but purely for convenience sake I suspect). It’s a grey area that’s undergoing immense debate (and will be posted on shortly, we hope). Here are the strong similarities of religion and politics:

• Religion and politics both form a basis for one’s own opinions on any variety of subjects. Euthanasia – for example – is a topic that usually results in some sort of moral high ground being claimed. In such a debate, someone else’s politics and religious identity becomes quite clear. Religion is often intertwined with other issues. To say there are no externalities that exist with personal faith is either blissfully ignorant or disingenuous.
• Politics and religion both dictate our way of life. Religion is more direct, with commandments such as “you mustn’t eat pork” whilst politics is more indirect…but still plays a major role. Vegetarianism – more often than not – is a political statement as one example.
• There are many political parties based on religion. The Christian Democrat Party and Family First are two examples I can think of off the top of my head. There are also plenty of theocracies in the world – I’m thinking Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel (though Israel is certainly the most democratic of all the theocracies) and the Vatican.
• Religion is often associated with conflict. Think of the Israeli/Palestinian Crisis, the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the Indian/Pakistani animosity as classic examples. Obviously religion isn’t the sole factor in such bloodshed, but I think you’ll find it plays a significant role. The Hamas dogma explicitly calls for the destruction of all Jews. Within Israel, the most critical factor in the segregationist social paradigm is religion – except in Haifa, a city in Northern Israel. Does anyone seriously think these conflicts would be just as intense if we removed religion as a factor?
• Atheism, as an ideology, is antagonistic to the Abrahamic religions in close similarity to the way The Greens are antagonistic to the Liberal party. Their ideologies have very few, if any, similarities. Atheism states ‘there is almost certainly no god and religion is stupid dogma’ whereas the Abrahamic religions state ‘there is a divine tyrant in the cosmos that will wreak vengeance against sinners’. The Liberal party would demand that we ‘lower taxes for corporations and free up land in the outer suburbs for urban sprawl’, whereas The Greens would want to ‘curb urban sprawl and place greater taxes on housing to account for other costs’. The interplay betwen these various ideas is quite parallel and analogous.
  

  To say their dress code isn't due to a pious belief is inaccurate...

Guess the word

Trawling through the older blog posts over at GrodsCorp, I stumbled upon this quote by a certain conservative (and racist) commentator:

The problem is, all ##### are supporters of Saddam and love terrorism, and hate the Jews, who are the moist wonderful people in this, our earth.

Can you guess the missing word?

PS: Happy New ‘Ear. All the best from us here at Non-Linear Thinking.