Does atheism need better PR?

[harvey1]

There's an interesting study that came out a little over two months ago that suggested that atheists are basically villified in the US. My question is what do atheists need to do to improve their public image, and are atheists willing to change in order to have more in common with the religious folks? Here's the contents of the article:

American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology. From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry. Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher. Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism. Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.” The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts. The study is co-authored by assistant professor Joseph Gerteis and associate professor Doug Hartmann. It’s the first in a series of national studies conducted the American Mosaic Project, a three-year project funded by the Minneapolis-based David Edelstein Family Foundation that looks at race, religion and cultural diversity in the contemporary United States. The study will appear in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.

[Grumpy]

Dion

Just one word about your post,"BRILLIANT!!!!!" "STUNNING!!!" "INSIGHTFUL!!!"

OK, that's more than one word. My favorite?

I, for one, don’t feel that I need to ‘provide false or misleading reasons’ to support my position. Reason, logic and evidence, or lack thereof, will do just fine.

Harvey's hostility(maybe disdain is a better word) toward Atheism and the believers thereof, and his opinion that Atheism is a logical falacy is well documented in these fori. I hold much the same disdain for the mental weakness(IMHO) of superstitious belief. He and I will rarely see things eye to eye. But I am not an Atheist because I hate gods, but because I can never accept their (even possible) existence without solid, repeatable objective evidence(then, like Dion, I will be in church every time they open the doors)

Also like Dion, if someone needs the emotional crutch of believing that a sugar daddy in the sky is watching over then, or that accounts will be settled in the sky, by and by, who am I to try to strip their supernatural Prozac from them??? Just because I don't need Prozac doesn't mean it does no one any good.

In the same vein, Someone who is heavily medicated(spiritually speaking) is someone who I will not allow to drive my car(life decisions) nor will I take seriously anything they have to say(due to impaired mental facilities(Again,IMHO).

Again, Dion, great post!!!

Grumpy

[harvey1]

This sounds very much like one of those stories, so beloved of Creationists, in which the fine, upstanding young Christian High School student destroys the argument for evolution put forward by their 'atheistic' teacher, leaving the teacher a speechless and quivering wreck. A nice piece of propaganda but I doubt it ever happened. Can you provide details in support of your story? Perhaps the name of the 'atheist physicist' who so suddenly and unexpectedly found herself on the road to Damascus?

Well, I wasn't citing the example as an one that shows how easily atheism is defeated if the person is open-minded; the example was just to illustrate someone who probably didn't possess enmity for God because they were willing to believe once it was shown that they wouldn't be irrational for believing. However, the person's name probably will not be disclosed by Craig, but if I remember correctly, he mentioned this in the question and answer section of a debate with Peter Atkins. If it is completely fictious (which I doubt Craig would lie about that, but that's for each to judge), then it doesn't change the purpose of my example--it just makes the example fictitious.

Why would atheists want to 'pose meaningless origins and outcomes for humanity'? Why would atheists WANT 'meaningless origins and outcomes for humanity' any more than you do?

Well, you might want to ask Thomas Nagel:

Even if we do not bring God into the picture, "the [rationalist’s] idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind . . . makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable." In short, we fear religion. "I speak from experience," he writes. "It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that."

I know that, if someone could provide me with any real evidence that God exists, I would be in church every day praying my little heart out. Anything else would be utter madness!

An atheist can still be at enmity with God even if they would be willing to believe in God if God were scientifically proven. Enmity exists if one won't cling to a God belief except if they perceive it to be irrational (like Craig's physicist friend). And, by irrational, I don't mean because it contradicts their materialism, I mean that they see no way remotely feasible that God could exist in light of empirical scientific theories and/or philosophical arguments. If God was shown to them as being feasible, they would immediately convert--unless of course they were to some degree at enmity with the idea.

As an example, some of the people who first heard about inflation theory from Alan Guth immediately accepted it even though all that had been shown was how inflation was feasible. They weren't at enmity with the concept, so once it was shown that inflation was feasible, they were instant converts to the idea. Of course, others were very resistant to inflation, and they need proof to believe it. They are, to some degree, at enmity with the idea of inflation.

Not only that, but I actually WANT to believe that God exists. My wife died eight years ago at the age of 45 (cancer) leaving two children ( then 8 and 11 years old). She was as good a woman as ever walked the Earth. Indeed that was her worst fault - it’s very hard to live with someone who is that good, especially when she was so unfailingly forgiving of my many faults. Also, despite twenty years of living with me she was still a believer. (I don’t try to convert people I just argue my corner.) If anyone ever deserved to go to heaven, she did. For her sake alone I WANT God and heaven to exist. It would also give me the hope that I might be able to meet her again.

I certainly am very, very sad to hear that. And, I hope that while we are having these discussions that it is clear that I am in no way questioning your desire to believe in God, or your honesty in saying that you would believe if you had sufficient evidence. What we're discussing here is more of the armchair philosophy discussion, so perhaps if my comments can be understood from afar while not bringing up personal desires, pains, etc., it will be easier for us to discuss this topic. I certainly don't want to even suggest anything of the sort that you wouldn't want there to be a God in that emotional sense. (My comment was referring to people like Thomas Nagel who really don't want there to be a God at all.)

[QED]

Surely we exercise most reason when we believe in things that have great explanatory power? Harvey's example of Inflation is believable for this reason. The degree of explanatory power that is provided by postulating the existence of God would seem highly problematical as it provides us with an unqualified explanation of anything and everything. Even more problematic would be the motivation towards belief in something hypothetical like the afterlife. As far as I can determine the belief isn't motivated by its ability to explain something, which leaves what other than the satisfaction of some sort of desire? If there is some mystery that we are faced with that is cleared-up by believing in the afterlife then please let's hear it.

I think Paul was just scoring easy points by declaring the natural mind to be at enmity with God. It would seem far more logical to think that the people most likely to be at enmity with God would be those who believe him to be directing the destiny of things in the world. Sooner or later everyone is going to get a chance to fall-out with God for letting/making something bad happen, but that's hardly a matter of atheism.

Paul gets up early in the morning and slaps his towel down by the pool. If there had been an organized and chronicled atheist resistance movement with apostles of their own they could have easily come up with their own slogan and got a good spot for themselves. I think it really is as silly as all that.

[harvey1]

Surely we exercise most reason when we believe in things that have great explanatory power? Harvey's example of Inflation is believable for this reason. The degree of explanatory power that is provided by postulating the existence of God would seem highly problematical as it provides us with an unqualified explanation of anything and everything.

Okay, but you've just admitted that enmity toward God is justified. I don't think it is justified since the history of science has brought us closer and closer to how God's laws are the structure behind the working of the universe. Why not just admit that there exists this enmity? Why act as though this enmity does not exist?

[QED]

Okay, but you've just admitted that enmity toward God is justified.

You kicked this thing off by asking if atheism needs better PR. Now I'm unclear as to your motives for starting this topic, but it seemed like a good place to bring up the "when did you stop beating your wife" type of question that I think is unfairly applied to atheists.

Maybe enmity towards the concept of God is justified, but that doesn't mean it has to be exercised.

I don't think it is justified since the history of science has brought us closer and closer to how God's laws are the structure behind the working of the universe. Why not just admit that there exists this enmity? Why act as though this enmity does not exist?

While there is obviously scope for some atheists to be so confused in their thinking that they can simultaneously not believe in something and hate it at the same time, it is mostly absurd to have a notion of an atheist hating God.

As for the history of science bringing us closer and closer to yadda yadda... you're climbing to the top of a tower of laws that "structure our universe", hoisting a flag for God there and then telling us how science has led us to God. I'm afraid that's just an opinion Harvey and it certainly isn't mine.

[Grumpy]

QED

As for the history of science bringing us closer and closer to yadda yadda... you're climbing to the top of a tower of laws that "structure our universe", hoisting a flag for God there and then telling us how science has led us to God. I'm afraid that's just an opinion Harvey and it certainly isn't mine.

Nor mine!!! But it is a flag Harvey hoists over and over again(He has to, every time he puts it up, it gets shot down again). This is not because of enmity toward his (IMHO) nonexistent deity, but enmity towards explanations which cannot be supported by objective evidence but must be accepted on faith alone.

Grumpy

[Cathar1950]

I am still wondering what the natural mind is and why it would be against God.
It seems like if God is all that obvious the natural mind would be the best recipient. What do you need to not be at odds with God and unnatural mind or maybe a supernatural mind?
It would seem that if the natural mind is at enmity there might be a reason such as experience and reason.
If God is the satisfaction principle why call it God? Why not call it the satisfaction principle. It seems satisfaction and relations are part of any occasion and there seems to be no need for God above pulling all the string. A real pantheist idea could acknowledge this with out resorting to dualism or sophistry.

[Dion]

harvey1

Well, I wasn't citing the example as an one that shows how easily atheism is defeated if the person is open-minded; the example was just to illustrate someone who probably didn't possess enmity for God because they were willing to believe once it was shown that they wouldn't be irrational for believing. However, the person's name probably will not be disclosed by Craig, but if I remember correctly, he mentioned this in the question and answer section of a debate with Peter Atkins. If it is completely fictious (which I doubt Craig would lie about that, but that's for each to judge), then it doesn't change the purpose of my example--it just makes the example fictitious.

I certainly didn’t mean to impugn your honour or indeed that of Craig by implying that either one of you was deliberately lying about the incident. I was merely pointing out that unless we know much, much more about all of the circumstances, the story amounts to little more than propaganda. Was the lady a convinced atheist like me? Or was she someone who had been religiously brainwashed as a child, (Give me the child to the age of seven …) driven to atheism by her scientific studies, but who, nevertheless, longed for any excuse to return to the childhood certainty of her safe, comfortable religious fantasy land? I tried to point out in my last post that even we clear-headed, cold-hearted atheists are not entirely immune to the siren song of such fantasies. But wishing that something is so and it actually being so are not necessarily one and the same thing.

Well, you might want to ask Thomas Nagel:

My only knowledge of Thomas Nagel comes from the link that you so kindly provided, so any comments that I make must of necessity be somewhat speculative. One or two things do stand out for me though. Nowhere in the link does it state explicitly that he claims to be an atheist. You may know that he does say he is an atheist from other sources and I will happily accept your word for that if you do - but I still remain troubled by other parts of the article.

The most common nonsubjectivist answer in our time has been evolutionary naturalism, which, Nagel writes, "has always seemed to me laughably inadequate." He means that it seems incredible that the appearance of reason should be a kind of natural accident, as if through some evolutionary mechanism a mindless universe should be able to generate mind—as if what is higher should be explicable entirely in terms of what is lower. Such an account of reason cannot possibly be the last word.”

The rejection of ‘evolutionary naturalism’ is an extraordinary position for any modern atheist to take. If what is higher is not explicable entirely in terms of what is lower then we are, almost by definition, assuming God. This is a curious kind of atheism.

If not this answer to our question, then what? The reader suddenly realizes that the other possible answer is "the religious one" and that Nagel takes it quite seriously, even if he also says that he has never been entirely able to understand it. He is, he says, "made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well–informed people I know are religious believers."

So he rejects evolutionary naturalism (and its logical consequence) because he finds it personally incredible but he takes the religious answer ‘quite seriously’ on the basis of, effectively, personal testimony? How very strange!

In the standard terms of the history of philosophy, he has been arguing the side of "rationalism" against "empiricism," and that side, he notes, "has always had a more religious flavor."

He champions rationalism over empiricism noting that rationalism "has always had a more religious flavor.". Do we have here an indication of which way ‘the wind is blowing’ in his mind?

From the reviewers comments in the rest of the article we see that he believes that Nagel is to be closely compared with a famous convert (C. S. Lewis). Even that Nagel might be sympathetic to, or even moving in that direction. There is a suggestion that there might be some convergence between Nagel’s views and a religious viewpoint via a type of “natural piety”.

So from the limited amount of information available in the article what conclusion can be drawn? Simply this; Thomas Nagel may be an atheist in his head but I suspect he is a believer in his heart, and probably always has been. Why, we might wonder, would he not admit, perhaps even to himself, that he holds religious beliefs? Well, he is clearly a clever man, clever enough to recognise that religious belief is intellectually untenable. How difficult it would be for someone who lives by his ability to think rationally to admit that he holds these fundamentally irrational views.

But what do I know! I’ve never met the man or even read one of his books. So I may be completely wrong. Probably am. But what I do know is that if Thomas Nagel is a real, to the marrow of his bones, atheist then he is of a most unusual variety.

" In short, we fear religion. "I speak from experience," he writes. "It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that."

I can think of no reason why my authority to speak to the views of other atheists should be any less than that of Thomas Nagel; and my belief is that his views are very unusual amongst atheists. Perhaps other atheists who read this might like to comment by way of a straw poll.

An atheist can still be at enmity with God even if they would be willing to believe in God if God were scientifically proven. Enmity exists if one won't cling to a God belief except if they perceive it to be irrational (like Craig's physicist friend). And, by irrational, I don't mean because it contradicts their materialism, I mean that they see no way remotely feasible that God could exist in light of empirical scientific theories and/or philosophical arguments. If God was shown to them as being feasible, they would immediately convert--unless of course they were to some degree at enmity with the idea.

Sorry, I don’t follow what you mean by “Enmity exists if one won't cling to a God belief except if they perceive it to be irrational “.

I do think that the existence of God is feasible - but given the total lack of meaningful evidence it is a possibility that should be ignored for all practical purposes by any rational person.

I agree that enmity toward an idea is perfectly possible. So enmity toward the idea of God may be very common amongst atheists. This should not be surprising, the idea of God leads inevitably to religion and few atheists are big fans of religion. Religion, after all, tends not to be too kind to those who disagree with it. In fact it is perhaps not so much the idea of God that creates enmity but what people have used the idea to do. Enmity towards God, however, is simply not possible for an atheist. Indeed having enmity toward God is a clear demonstration that someone is NOT an atheist.

Not only that, but I actually WANT to believe that God exists. My wife died eight years ago … etc..

I certainly am very, very sad to hear that. And, I hope that while we are having these discussions that it is clear that I am in no way questioning your desire to believe in God, or your honesty in saying that you would believe if you had sufficient evidence. What we're discussing here is more of the armchair philosophy discussion, so perhaps if my comments can be understood from afar while not bringing up personal desires, pains, etc., it will be easier for us to discuss this topic. I certainly don't want to even suggest anything of the sort that you wouldn't want there to be a God in that emotional sense. (My comment was referring to people like Thomas Nagel who really don't want there to be a God at all.)

Thank you for your sympathetic words. I do appreciate them even though eliciting such sympathy was not my intention when I wrote about my personal experiences. I had hoped to point out that we atheists are ordinary people beset with all the same hopes and fears, trials and tribulations, and, as you say, personal desires and pains as everyone else. And that like everyone else, we too will one day have to face death. That being so, I wanted to make it clear that it simply couldn’t make any kind of sense to antagonise God and that atheists don’t think they are doing so because they don’t believe God exists. We are not anti-God, for us God is irrelevant except in so far as God is made manifest through the irrational, and sometimes violent and oppressive, beliefs of others. If we are anti anything it is religion and the fanatically religious.

As for confining our discussions to ‘armchair philosophy’; I would gladly do so if only I felt clever enough, but I’ve never really understood the subtleties involved in philosophy. As a simple scientist I like to try to base my understanding on what I tentatively call the “real world”. If I can’t put it in a test tube or under a microscope then it doesn’t exist - figuratively speaking.

Enmity to God is not possible for an atheist. Enmity to the idea of God is really just enmity toward the consequence of the idea - religion. Religion is, in other words, giving God a bad name.

[Dion]

Grumpy

Thank you very much for your very kind comments. It's always nice to receive unexpected praise.

Unfortunately, as a result, I now find that none of my hats will fit my head!

Still, don't let that put you off.

I can always buy new hats!

[QED]

I can think of no reason why my authority to speak to the views of other atheists should be any less than that of Thomas Nagel; and my belief is that his views are very unusual amongst atheists. Perhaps other atheists who read this might like to comment by way of a straw poll.

Very unusual IMO.

You know what -- I wouldn't mind betting that sci-fi fans are better represented among atheists than theists, just my personal hunch of course, but I think these fans would actually relish the real discovery of God. I certainly would -- it would be the most fantastically exciting bit of news to switch the TV on to (this could make an iteresting poll!).

And the consequences... I've been listening to the many good things that come of God; the love, for one thing, towards us -- his children. How nice it would be to know that we are cared for when it seems we're all alone. How many fears about our own children and the world they're going to inherit would this relieve us of!

No, if I consult my own conscience, there's absolutely nothing I fear about this imaginary discovery; jails aren't overflowing with "atheists of convenience" and my life would proceed unhindered. So I bear no enmity directly to God, but I do have concerns about the rationality of those who behave as though this fantastic story really was true.