Atheism seems to be a minor theme that has popped up more recently in the last year or so. There was a spate of books, with one of the leading being The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. My parents-in-law gave us a copy for last Christmas, though I have to admit that I haven't read it. I had a hard time finding the motivation I guess, already being an atheist. I also tend to prefer reading and looking at arguments with which I don't agree , rather than reading something that tries to convince me to become something I already am. It's just fundamentally more interesting.
Anyway, Dawkins popped again within the last week or so ago, leading the charge on atheism in the UK, by supporting an advertising campaign on public buses of all things. It seems a little overblown; the UK is already very secular and the Church of England seems to be on life-support, with dwindling church attendence rates.
However, one thing did catch my eye in the article about the non-believing buses. It was a quote from Dawkins about the term atheism itself. He pointed out that he didn't believe in unicorns, which made him, using parallel naming logic, an aunicornist; he also doesn't believe in martians, consequently also making him an an amartianist. It is a good critique of the term. In any case, it is a bad idea to be defined by that which you deny, no? Such a definition doesn't seem like a promising start if you want something founded on reason and logic.
Up till now though, I haven't come up with a non-lame alternative term. Humanist? Rationalist? Empiricist? Realist? I kind of like realist, as it confounds a number of other meanings of the term and also connotes some sort of connection to reality as opposed to mythology and faith.
But perhaps that's the wrong approach. Do we need a term? Why? After all, I am not positing the existence of a supreme being or any other mythological creature. I am accepting the contingency of life, and accepting that we only possess a thimble-full of error filled knowledge. I am not proposing something to make me feel better about that.
And no, just for the record, I don't think that being an atheist, if we have to use that term for the moment, involves denying the existence of God. I have a sneaking suspicion that some Jesuit theoretician somewhere came up with that self-defeating definition. It always struck me as being far more sensible to simply argue that just like martians, there was really no way to scientifically test for the existence of God. He's up there with flying pigs, unicorns and martians, smiling away.
Agnostic is the term people use to describe your last sentiment. Alas, agnosticism is one of the less fashionable -isms.
ReplyDeleteAtheism is a belief system that has exactly as much logical validity (or empirical support) as theism, and can be executed with just as much arrogance.
It is not a sign of weakness to admit that one doesn't know the unknowable. In fact, to claim otherwise is by definition foolish. (How 'bout that for arrogance.)