I took part in a conversation about contemporary atheism, which appeared on The Point, which is a web series spin-off of The Young Turks, which itself is both a web series and a show broadcast on Current TV. (Got all that?) My co-panelists were Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and Edward Falzon, author of the (satirical!) book Being Gay is Disgusting, and it was hosted by Cara Santa Maria, science correspondent for the Huffington Post.
The format of the show is that we hear three very brief pre-recorded “points,” to which the panelists then respond. In this case, all the points and all the panelists were already confirmed atheists, so we could put aside for the moment the endless arguments about whether God exists and focus on the very interesting questions of what to do about the fact that he doesn’t. The points we heard were from James Randi, PZ Myers, and AJ Johnson of American Atheists. I wasn’t familiar with AJ before this event, but her video was very strong; I think (hope) we’ll be hearing a lot more from her in the future.
It was a great talk, although it did reinforce my conviction that while we atheists are mostly right on the metaphysics, we need to really raise our game when it comes to epistemology and metaethics.
I guess Sean isn’t interested in answering my question. He has more important things to do, like figuring out when his next appearance on The Colbert Report will be, as well as other media-related projects that benefit his hungry ego and help establish his fame and importance in the world.
Jay: “What are the non-religious arguments against same-sex marriage?”
No offspring.
It can be argued that the sole purpose of marriage is to provide for pregnant female and offspring.
@AI: But the idea that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation by itself is an originally religious concept, and falls apart when you remove religion from your considerations.
@Mephane: I disagree, mariage is clearly a concept rooted in biology, there are plenty of examples of behavior which can be seen as an archetype of marriage in animal kingdom. Birds pairing and nesting together to rise offspring for example.
It’s a consequence of the fact that when the effort needed to give birth to and raise successful offspring is very high it makes evolutionary sense for both parents to cooperate.
Both religion and other meanings imputed to marriage came later.
“Sean, how do you know God doesn’t exist?”
Richard, how do I know Superman doesn’t exist?
Answer: because there is no evidence that he does the feats attributed to him, and because the documents attesting his existence are internally inconsistent and contradict much of our other knowledge.
#22 @Julian: Please use a spell checker. You keep leaving the second “o” out of “Good.”
There likely is no way to prove that god does not exist if people are willing to define god in very abstract ways–as giant forces with sentience. But those depictions make god so different than god in a personal conception that I doubt they are God. Protein could be god, or bozons plus the four forces, but it makes little sense to pray to them. THe word atheist is ill-conceived. Not only does it mean either against theism or not-theism, but against God or disbelieving in God. It’s like vegetarianism that can seem to concern vegetables, which it doesn’t, simply not killing sentient animals or eating mutilated and rotting animal cadavers. Are people aunicornists if they don;t believe in unicorns and afairiyists, if not fairyists? Atheists are better understood as people who do not believe in what is not there, god among other things. But where believers thing God is especially crucial to believe in, they make God a focus. Atheists or agnostics simply don’t. God does not matter to anything for them. I am a Catholic, buddhist, UU Jew, and belief in God has nothing to do with that either.
God and ghosts are creation of human mind.Actually,man doesn’t want to end his life like other animals.He thinks that he must live always.
So, human mind creats god.And,as he believes in god he thinks about another side that is ghost,and he always tries to relate himself with these supernatural things.
But, a mentally disturbed person or animals who are brainly poor never thinks about god or ghost.This proves that god and ghost is only our imagination
@27: Yeah, which is why the law only permits women to marry before menopause. FAIL
Sean, thank you for offering both helpful clarifications and depth to this conversation. I appreciated that you not only pointed out why theism is irrational, but also that you took seriously the ways the atheistic position is underdeveloped. Near the end of the video you asked an excellent question that was never really addressed: “What is the fundamental reason for saying some behavior is good and some behavior is bad?”
The religious community gives an answer that question that you don’t accept, and you’ve given some good reasons why you think their argument is not sufficient. What work is being done to provide an answer to that question from an atheistic viewpoint? As you said in the video, this is a difficult question to answer, but do you have any ideas about what the beginning of an answer might look like?
I am an atheist, and I completely hate it. I find atheism to be nihilistic, depressing, and makes life utterly meaningless and pointless, and please do not give me any of this “you have to find your own meaning” crap. I believe atheists who are comfortable with the pointlessness of it all suffer from some kind of autism. I find atheists to be emotionally cold and distant, but what is worse is that they do not realize how cold and distant they really are. I saw my father, a religious person, die of cancer. The atheist in me wanted to scream out, “there is no god dad.” But when I saw him praying and dying with dignity, hope, and meaning I had to keep my mouth shut. What was I supposed to say? “No dad, you will die and putrefy in the ground, all the pain and chemo you are going through means absolutely nothing, just suffer and die.” What is to be gained by making people aware of the pointlessness of it all? Truth is overrated. Once again, the only people who are not depress by atheism are autistic like individuals. That is why I dislike the modern atheist, not because the are wrong, but because they believe the rest of humanity can deal with the nihilism atheism brings.
Red– I have ideas, but nothing so well-developed that I would claim it is worth other people’s time to think about. My starting point would be the understanding that the universe itself (1) is all that exists and happens, and (2) doesn’t pass any judgment at all about right or wrong. It has to be a human construction from start to finish. But we’re not blank slates; we possess inclinations and preferences. The subject of morality has to be about systematizing what we think of as the best of those preferences.
Nice thoughts Walter. It seems that you have advanced past naive atheism to “late atheism” — aka “nihilism” or “cosmicism”. But why do you think this mental cul-de-sac is the end of your journey? What makes you feel beholden to “objective reality” at all? Maybe this is where origins of all religions lie: in the disillusioned minds of nihilists, who conjure new illusions from somewhere deep within their psyches, saving themselves and future generations from total despair?
@Jay: Yes, the argument also obviously works against marriage of infertile couples, I don’t see your point though. You wanted non-religious argument against same sex marriage so I gave you one, law has nothing to do with it.
I meant a good argument, obviously.
Walter: “I am an atheist, and I completely hate it. I find atheism to be nihilistic, depressing, and makes life utterly meaningless and pointless…”
While, atheism may be depressing it’s certainly not atheism that makes life utterly meaningless and pointless, life simply IS that way, atheism is just seeing it as it is as opposed to deluding yourself. Also while the truth about life’s meaninglessness is indeed depressing I still think concepts like eternal damnation in hell are infinitely more depressing if one truly believes in them.
And while some atheists may indeed be “emotionally cold and distant,” myself included, it’s much better then the zeal of religious fanaticism which drives people to commit mass murder in the name of their delusions.
Non-religious arguments against same-sex marriage:
“I (a heterosexual man) view women to whom I’m sexually attracted as something less than fully human. I’m terrified of the possibility that some gay men might view *me* that way. Therefore I find gay men icky, so I don’t want them to have any cookies, such as the right to marry. Gay women remind me too much of gay men, so I don’t want them to get married either.”
Or this one:
“I define marriage not as an equal partnership between two people who happen to be a man and a woman, but as an inherently gendered relationship with a (superior) male role and a (inferior) female role. (That definition isn’t rooted in religion any more than any other definition of marriage is.) Allowing a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman would mean changing that definition of marriage, which I don’t favor.”
I didn’t say they were *good* arguments, and I (not a heterosexual man) don’t subscribe to them myself. But religion doesn’t have a monopoly on bigotry.
Ai, with all due respect, I believe you are failing to understand the argument. I think many atheist do, I know I used to. If you believe that knowing the truth has some intrinsic value then I can see atheism as a good thing, but as an atheist I do not believe that anything has any intrinsic value, including truth. So, truth can, and is, overrated. We in our modern world believe that we rather know the truth even if that means suffering through existential crisis. I ask, what for? There is no god, there is no value, there is no meaning, and there is no point. We are just walking meat waiting to die, living in a universe headed for a frozen dark end. So, why not value delusion? The fact that people are willing to die for their faith speaks to the power and meaning faith can offer. And what are we atheist hoping to replace that with? Of course you have to be emotionally detached to endure being an atheist, but most people lack the stamina and constitution to accept the implication of atheism. I would not wish atheism on a loved one, which is why I sometimes fake belief around family.
Well, truth does have value to me, but in a sense similar to how food has value to me – my mind simply demands truth, just as my body demands food. I don’t tolerate nonsense, even though it may make others happy it would never work for me and there is nothing I can do about it. So there really is no option other then atheism for me.
But I tend to agree that if people are happy with their current beliefs, however absurd they may seem to me, as long as they are not harming anyone else atheism or any other doctrine should not be forced upon them.
Walter, I can relate. Experiencing the death of a loved one really nails it. I also remember being at the dead bed of an old lady who was visited by no family or friends and who had no religion. She couldn’t move but her facial expressions and few words said it all. Anger, despair, terror. Contrast that experience with the death of a devout loved one, suffering but still giving off peace. Oh, guess what, I think your beliefs are silly… I wish there was something deeper that I could truly believe in.
Random. I think if we looked closer we would find at least a mild correlation between atheism and autism. This is not a criticism of atheists, but an acknowledgment of my own envy of militant atheist. I wish I could reengineer my brain as to be capable of emotional detachment, to see the world in purely mathematical terms and accept it for what it is, rather than having my primitive brain throw tantrums at what cannot be changed. But I cannot remake my brain any more than the rest of humanity can. Atheist would help themselves more if they were to acknowledge that most of humanity does not function as they do.
Sean,
How do you know God doesn’t exist? Maybe God does exist. Does science answer the question? If so, how? Just curious. I’m an agnostic. For me, science deals with explanations of things which can be testable. Since we only have access to the physical world of the Standard Model, etc., because we are made up of Standard Model particles, the only testable ideas and explanations are those that have the Standard Model as their basis (i.e. “natural causes”, “materialism”, etc.). But we don’t know if this aspect of reality is the only one. Hence my agnostic views.
Thanks!
The best way to promote atheism is to promote democracy and excellent public education.
Walter, I’m an atheist and I completely disagree with your nihilism view. My wife died of cancer at the age of 39 and she did not believe in god or an afterlife, and she wasn’t tormented about the “pointlessness of it all” as you seem to be. And I guarantee she was not autistic. You denigrate the idea of “finding one’s own meaning,” but I also think you’re wrong here. The fallacy in this point of view is that you think meaning can only come if life goes on indefinitely (e.g., in an afterlife) and that “meaning” is derived externally (from “God” or some other agency). This nihilistic view seems to be a consequence of the inability to live life in the present, to find value (and meaning) now, at this moment, and not 100 years from now when you’re gone. Do you not think your dad found moments of joy (and meaning) in his life, or do you think those moments would somehow evaporate if he were reminded that he wouldn’t be around forever? I doubt it.
Sjn. It’s nice to have exchanges without degenerating into insults, it is rare nowadays. So I am enjoying amiable this back and forth. I think you are right in a way. Many people do not seem to be troubled by atheism, and I envy them. Unfortunately that is not true for the majority. I am a firm believer that not all humans are “created” equal. It might well be that same people are just born with the capacity to face atheism without an existential crisis, but most of us do not. I do not mean to imply that those who are untroubled by it are fully autistic, but I do believe they are closer to functional autism than the rest. Autism is not black and white, is a spectrum. Atheists can play by double standards. People of faith are derided for not accepting the world for how it is, for twisting the facts in order to accommodate their superstitions, but atheists often do the same. Recognizing the nihilism of atheism is not conceding a point to the enemy, it is simply recognizing an uncomfortable fact of life, denying it will not make it go away, and a few cases of the happy atheist does not change the reality for the rest of humanity. So lets not ridicule those who cannot see reason when it conflicts with their beliefs, we atheist do the exact same when refusing to recognize that for most of us life without transcendental meaning is pretty futile and pointless.