Atheist Talking Points: Is Atheism a Religion?
1. Is Atheism Legally a Religion? (Apparently So).
KAUFMAN v MCCAUGHTRY (News item)
“(The Seventh) federal court has ruled that prison officials in Wisconsin violated the rights of an inmate who sought to form an Atheist discussion group because they failed to treat Atheism as a religion.”
“James Kaufman filed suit while incarcerated at the Waupun Correctional Institution after submitting an official document titled "Request for New Religious Practices." He asked permission to form an inmate group "to stimulate and promote Freedom of Thought, and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices, (and to) educate and provide information concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices."
“The Court noted that the group was "interested in humanism, Atheism and free speaking," and that Mr. Kaufman included a list of Atheist groups and literature.
“Prison officials turned down the application, however, concluding that Kaufman's request was not motivated by "religious" beliefs as specified in a section of the Wisconsin penal code.
“The [Seventh US Circuit] Court of Appeals, however, ruled last week [Oct ’05] that the prison violated Kaufman's civil rights by not considering Atheism as a religion and protected form of religious expression.”
This decision was predicated on several previous Federal Court decisions that declared Atheism legally to be considered a religion. Here are some excerpts from the decision, which reference a few previous decisions that also discerned Atheism to be a religion:
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District
Circuit Court,
Chief Judge: Crabb
Circuit Judges: Bauer, Wood, Williams
Kaufman v. McCaughtry
Document 04-1914; Aug 19,2005.
Excerpts:
“The Supreme
Court has said that a
religion, for
purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct
from a “way of
life,” even if that way of life is inspired by
philosophical
beliefs or other secular concerns. See Wiscon-
sin v. Yoder, 406
U.S. 205, 215-16 (1972). A religion need
not be based on a
belief in the existence of a supreme being
(or beings, for
polytheistic faiths), see Torcaso v. Watkins,
367 U.S. 488, 495
& n.11 (1961); Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F.2d
197, 200-15 (3d
Cir. 1979) (Adams, J., concurring);
Theriault v.
Silber, 547 F.2d 1279, 1281 (5th Cir. 1977) (per
curiam), nor must
it be a mainstream faith, see Thomas v.
Review Bd., 450
U.S. 707, 714 (1981); Lindell v. McCallum,
352 F.3d 1107,
1110 (7th Cir. 2003).”
“Without venturing
too far into the realm of the
philosophical, we
have suggested in the past that when a
person sincerely
holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ulti-
mate concern”
that for her occupy a “place parallel to that
filled by . . .
God in traditionally religious persons,” those
beliefs represent
her religion. Fleischfresser v. Dirs. of Sch.
Dist. 200, 15
F.3d 680, 688 n.5 (7th Cir. 1994) (internal
citation and
quotation omitted); see also Welsh v. United
States, 398 U.S.
333, 340 (1970); United States v. Seeger,
380 U.S. 163,
184-88 (1965). We have already indicated that
atheism may be
considered, in this specialized sense, a
religion. See
Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934
(7th Cir. 2003)
(“If we think of religion as taking a posi-
tion on divinity,
then atheism is indeed a form of religion.”).
Id. at 52-53. In
keeping with this idea, the Court has
adopted a broad
definition of “religion” that includes non-
theistic and
atheistic beliefs, as well as theistic ones. Thus,
in Torcaso v.
Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, it said that a state
cannot “pass laws
or impose requirements which aid all
religions as
against non-believers, and neither can [it] aid
those religions
based on a belief in the existence of God as
against those
religions founded on different beliefs.”
“Id. At 495.
Indeed, Torcaso specifically included “Secular
Humanism” as an
example of a religion. Id. at 495 n.11.”
2.
Is Atheism Really a Religion?
“Stephen Jay Gould
launched a direct attack on religion thereby exposing the true religious nature
of Darwinism. After quoting Psalm 8 "Thou has made him a little lower than
the angels...thou madest him to have dominion...thou has put all things under
his feet." Gould went on to state, "Darwin removed this keystone of
false comfort more than a century ago, but many people still believe that they
cannot navigate this vale of tears without such a crutch." Ending the
article, Gould admonished his readers, "Let us praise this evolutionary
nexus, a far more stately mansion for the human soul than any pretty or
parochial comfort ever conjured by our swollen neurology to obscure the source
of our physical being, or to deny the natural substrate for our separate and
complementary spiritual quest."
Regarding Gould’s article in
“Science”, 6-25-’99;
“High Priest of Evolution
Reveals his Religion” Gary L.
Achtemeier, Ph.D. (emphasis added).
What exactly constitutes “being a religion”? the internet has dozens, maybe hundreds of conflicting definitions for religion. Here is a fairly inclusive composite definition.
Religion is a complete worldview composed of some or all of the following elements that were discussed earlier in the Worldview section:
1. Cognition of essence of reality, and levels (Godelian) of reality:
a. Natural essence (First Principles of existence and truth)
b. Intuitive essence (First level of validation)
c. Spiritual essence (Second level of validation).
2. Stories concerning the essences:
a. Origin Story
1. Origin of the cosmos
2. Origin of life
3. Origin of man
b. Purpose of Life Story
c. Value of Life Story
d. “Becoming” Story
e. Afterlife / Beyond life Story
3. Statements of Belief
a. Statement of Faith (Non-negotiable)
b. Statement of Ethos
c. Statement of Heresy
d. Statement of The Sacrosanct
e. Statement of Evangelism
f. Statement of Evil
g. Statement of Apostacy
4. Hierarchy
a. High Priests
b. Teachers, evangelizers
c. Becomers
5. Sacred Legacies
a. Texts, documents, unquestionable absolute truths.
3. The Atheist Worldview
Unlike, say, Buddhism, Atheism has almost all of these features. Let’s expand each worldview component to see how Atheism fits:
Cognition of reality, and levels
(Godelian) of reality:
a.
Natural essence (First Principles of existence and
truth)
Atheism is first and foremost Naturalist and Materialist. For now, we will assume that the Atheist accepts the First Principles of existence and truth.
b.
Intuitive essence (First level of validation)
By accepting the First Principles of existence and truth, by default the Atheist affirms the existence of intuition, which is the means for validation of the innate truth of the First Principles. This will produce stress for the Atheist, who might deny the concept of intuition, but who will exercise intuition by accepting the materialism of the First Principles. This produces a violation of the second First Principle: a paradox, within which the Atheist lives.
c.
Spiritual essence (Second level of validation)
Atheism will specifically deny any
spiritual essence. This denial becomes
part of the Atheist Statement of Faith, coming up.
Stories concerning the essences:
a. Origin Story
i. Origin of the cosmos
ii. Origin of life
iii Origin of man
Evolution is the Origin Story of Atheism. It is the Atheist’s ABSOLUTE Truth, unassailable, unquestionable cant; dogma. It is manipulated into forms for explaining not only the cosmos, life, and human origins, but also the origin of morality, and anything else that had an origin.
b. Purpose of Life Story
Life is a random accident according to the absolutist dogma of Evolution. Atheism therefore sees absolutely no purpose to life beyond the perpetuation of one’s own genes, as natural selection occurs. So the sole purpose of life is genetic self perpetuation. Denial of this sole purpose leads to other paradoxes.
c. Value of Life Story
Again, life being a random accident according to absolutist Evolution cant, life has no value; there are no values in a randomly assembled world. The evolutionist claim of evolved morality is not accepted by many Atheists. Some claim that human value is in procreation; others claim that value is found only in the ability to produce. So life, by itself, has no inherent value, and eugenics can (and has) become a “legitimate” topic.
d. “Becoming” Story
The evolution of life to produce the evolutionist is the “becoming” story. There is nothing else to become, once one has naturally materialized, so to speak. However, “becoming” an Atheist is seen as total liberation from annoying moral restrictions, and restrictions of any kind including western, rational, non-contradictory thought. There is a thought that humans will evolve into something higher-ordered, becoming a race of super-humans. However there is absolutely no sign of such a genetic lineage so far.
e. Afterlife Story
With nothing else to become, once the spark of life has gone there is nothing left but the material fodder for worms (M.M.O’Hair).
Statements of
Belief
a.
Statement of Faith (Non-negotiable)
The dogma of Evolution is taken on 100% faith as follows; faith that there is no other possible position; faith that “science” will find all the answers; faith in the [irrational] connections drawn between supposed “ancestors”; faith in the supremacy of the mind of man.
A Faith Statement might be as follows:
I have complete, non-negotiable FAITH in the following tenets:
· Faith that the supreme intelligence in the universe is me, embodied in my mind.
· Faith that the appearances of design are false.
· Faith that the first life self-assembled from warm chemicals in goo.
· Faith that the universe is a self-induced, random occurrence.
· Faith that a “multiverse” that we can’t see is a rationale for a random universe producing life (Anthropic principle is false).
· Faith that my mind is an assembly of random mutations, with no actual purpose beyond survival of the fittest. (A Meat Machine). Even so, it is the supreme intelligence in the universe.
· Faith that the brain and the mind are one thing, inseparable.
· Faith that there is no intelligence in DNA.
· Faith that if I can’t sense it, it does not exist. (No metaphysical existence).
· Faith that empiricism is the one and only true path to all-encompassing Truth and Enlightenment.
· Faith in Evolution, which is unquestionable; it is non-negotiable truth. See “Heresy”, below.
· Faith that, because Evolution is non-negotiable truth, life has no meaning.
· Faith that after death there are only worms.
b.
Statement of Ethos
Anyone familiar with Jeffry Dahmer, Madelyn Murray O’Hair, or Peter Singer will realize that the ethical code of Atheism is “Any Code I Desire” (A.C.I.D.) In fact any code that benefits me, right now, at this very moment. The code is total Narcissism.
c.
Statement of Heresy
The fight for the minds of school children is in fact a battle to eliminate heresy from the religious world of Atheism by means of governmentally-enforced installation of the Sacred Text of absolutist Darwinism into the schools. Referral to a second Godellian level of validation (spirituality) is heresy to the Atheist, who will take it as a serious affront to the Atheist Faith. So the exclusive installation of the sacred Precepts of absolutist Darwinism into the minds of children is imperative.
d.
Statement of the Sacrosanct
Naturalism, and Materialism are sacred Beliefs. Empiricism and Forensics are the Sacred Rituals. Absolutist Evolution is Sacred Truth, unquestionable and therefore sacred dogma.
e.
Statement of Evangelism
Evangelism is highly organized and fatly funded; the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have been government funded to the tune of millions. Evangelism is done primarily by threat, just as is Wahabi Islam; it is a form of domestic terrorism. A heretic is threatened with financial ruin by litigation by the fattened Atheist Evangelists. However, indoctrination is already state-imposed in many public school systems. The next generation is under constant evangelistic siege.
f.
Statement of Evil
As with any cult, evil is
seen everywhere in the form of other religious faiths. In a stunning twist of logic, the purveyors
of the ethical code that protects the Atheist (Christianity, the Bible and the
Ten Commandments) are deemed evil. And
any attack on the Sacred Precepts of Absolutist Darwinism are evil. The credo is that “science is not to be corrupted by the inroads of ’religion’ in
the classroom”. So the denial of the
next Godel level and the internal Type 2 (b) paradox are institutionalized.
Hierarchy
a. High Priests
The celebrity scientists and philosophers clearly are the high priests of Atheism: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen J. Gould, Bertrand Russell, Theodore Dobzhansky, Carl Sagan, celebrities all. In politics, Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. In the media, pick a channel; in Hollywood, pick a movie star; in the U.S. Senate, pick a Kennedy or a Clinton.
b. Teachers, evangelizers
The tool of Evolution, plus the duality of modern secularism has made most school teachers into evangelists for Atheism. The media of all types is also secularly dualist, and promotes not only Evolution, but all forms of corrupted thought that contributes to secularization.
c. Becomers
Every young person on the way to college is a potential “becomer” for the Atheist evangelist to victimize. In fact, the inroads into lower schools made by Planned Parenthood operatives has made even first graders into to potential candidates to victimize.
Sacred Legacies
a. Texts, documents, unquestionable absolute truths.
The theory of Evolution, being the only hope for the Atheist, is the holiest of absolute, unquestionable truths. In fact, by way of contradiction and paradox, the completely relativistic universe of the Atheist is interrupted by one Holy, Absolute, Unquestionable, Unassailable Truth: Evolution.
Without Evolution, the Atheist has no logic at all because everything else in the Atheist world is relative; only Evolution is Absolute Truth. With Evolution, the Atheist need only deny a few details here and there, such as in Darwin’s Dodge, and Darwin’s Horrid Doubt, along with the other Darwinian falsifications (Coming up in the Chapter on Evolution). Then all the rest of life is free of all restrictions.
So Atheism satisfies the criteria for religion-hood. In fact it’s a better fit than some other religions, such as Buddhism. Atheism is the religion of self, of narcissism.
When Atheism concludes that there is no deity, it presupposes that the human mind is capable of knowing all that a deity might know, all that a deity could do, all that a deity would see. This automatically places the Atheist mind in an exalted place, as the source of all truth.
“My mind is supreme”.
As the source of all truth, the Atheist mind becomes an
object of awe and worship, and the situation becomes that of pagan
self-worship. The Atheist might argue
(and did in Kaufman v. McCaughtry) that, no, Atheism is the anti-religion. This merely summons the next question: Is an
anti-religion a religion?
Aside from the affirmative legal arguments, consider this: Is disorder (entropy) a form of order? Is a null-set a set? Is zero a number? So is believing in “nothing” the same as believing in “something”? Is it the “something” that makes it a religion, or is it the belief? If it is the belief, is belief in “nothing” a religion?
The Atheist Faith
Belief in nothing is a belief without proof, a leap of faith. And because self-validation is an act of Godellian illogic, Atheism is a blind leap into illogic…the very definition of “religion” that Atheist’s love!
The answer is clearly “yes”, Atheism is, in fact, a religion.
And it develops its own sets of rules to govern it. One such set is Secular Humanism, also legally declared a
religion. Other rabid Atheist
groups have their own sets of rules. So
Atheism, the “anti-religion”, despite flimsy denials, is a religion. It
is auto-pagan (self worship)…Narcissism.
How Do Atheists Determine Morality?
“Some say there is no objective
morality. When told that a certain individual believed that morality is a sham,
Samuel Johnson responded, ‘Why sir, if he really believes there is no
distinction between virtue and vice, let us count our spoons before he leaves’."
Atheists bristle at the suggestion that a-theism equates to a-morality. Yet the “Paradox of the Honest Atheist” (Chapter 2) clearly illustrates the paradoxical dilemma that the Atheist position produces with respect to morality.
Because the Atheist mind is the “source of all truth”,
morality is determined by each individual Atheist mind. So there will be as many moralities as there
are Atheists… creating a chaotic amalgam of contradictions (Godel Type 2 (b)
Paradoxes) under a single banner.
Or perhaps the Atheist co-opts an existing morality, while
rejecting the source of that morality.
This would be an intellectually compromising position. Yet I co-opted
the Judeo-Christian ethic myself, as did many others also, ignoring the
intellectual dishonesty such a position entails. This is a common state of existence for many Atheists: ignore the
contradictions and live inside the paradox.
Chapman Cohen [(1868-1954) third president of the
National Secular Society, Britain's largest Atheist organization] wrote in “Morality Without God”:
“The moral
feeling creates the moral law; not the other way about. Morality has nothing to
do with God; it has nothing to do with a future life. Its sphere of application
and operation is in this world; its authority is derived from the common sense
of mankind and is born of the necessities of corporate life.”
And,
“Finally, in the development of morality as elsewhere,
nature creates very little that is absolutely new. It works up again what
already exists. That is the path of all evolution.”
So according to Cohen, the moral feeling came first, then
evolved into rules. But just as Darwin
refused to address First Life and the origin of the mind, so Cohen does not
address the origin of the “moral feeling”, which might be
called conscience (See also, The problem of Metaphysics, and Appendix F). And Cohen’s model does not refute that
separate populations might develop antithetical codes for their
“morality”. His model simply states
that for evolutionary success, people learned to get along by doing mutually
compatible things. Or at least not
getting bashed.
But is the concept of “If you touch my wife, I’ll bash you!”
really a moral precept? From the
offender’s view point there are two possible points of perception:
(a) I shouldn’t touch his wife because
he will hurt me;
(b) I shouldn’t touch his wife because
it is wrong.
The first is entirely pragmatic, and could be circumvented
when the wife is alone. The second is
conscience based, and works under all conditions. Is it likely that (a) will evolve into (b)? No, because evolutionary theory demands the
perpetuation of one’s own genetics over all other activities. Perception (a) is
the only possible result of the theory of evolution. The concept of “wrongness” could not have evolved,
under the definition of survival of the fittest. Just as the existence of selflessness falsifies Darwinian
evolution, so it falsifies Cohen’s evolutionary theory of morality, “Evolving Morality” is seen to be another
evolutionary crutch for propping up Atheism.
But the most damage to Cohen’s “Evolving Morality” is done by
asking who benefits from ethics and morality.
It is not the fittest, the strongest. And it is not enough to say
that the entire group benefits, because the benefit is not equally realized. It
is the weakest, the least fit who benefit the most and are protected
from the stronger and more fit. This is
directly counter to Darwinist evolution.
Q: How many
Darwinists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None, they
know that given enough time, one will evolve by itself by random assembly.
The single moral premise that appears universal to Atheists might be “survival of the fittest”, the main conclusion of the Darwinists. As a moral premise, this suggests that anything that advances the race/species is acceptable. More simply put, “anything that benefits me is acceptable”, which would equate to amorality.
This is compounded by the statements and beliefs of Atheists such as Aldous Huxley, Julian Huxley, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, etc, that Atheism is the freedom from all moral constraint. In fact “freedom from all constraint” is a main attraction factor in accepting Atheism. So morality (or amorality) is a prickly subject indeed for the Atheist, who might subconsciously realize the disingenuous nature of claiming to be moral.
Behaving Like an Atheist?
If an Atheist is behaving like an
Atheist, how is he behaving? Like a
Christian? Like a Buddhist? Hindu? Can
a person legitimately claim both Atheism and the morality of, say,
Judeo-Christianity? Shouldn’t an
Atheist behave exactly as if there is no deity?