Atheism

This may offend any of you who are "hard-core" atheists, but when have I ever worried about offending people with what's on my page?

Can atheism even exist without religion? No religion exists for long before being questioned, and atheism seems to be little more than the final extent of such questioning. If every atheist in the world got together in their own "utopian" society, they may be able to maintain atheism for as long as a few generations. Then religion would naturally crop up again.

Only a few people have the capacity to be spiritual/ethical/moral without a religion. It is unlikely that this ability is an inherited genetic trait. If it is genetic at all, it's probably like left-handedness or sexual preference in that it just happens every once in a while, and isn't especially dependent on the parents.

Thus, even if the parent generation in the above religion-free society is entirely capable of acting ethically without belief in a higher power, their offspring are less likely to be able to do this. One of the main aspects of religion is its attempt to control people through fear in what a higher power will do if they misbehave. Therefore, people will likely develop, all on their own, a belief in such a higher power in order to keep themselves in line.

Generally, atheism continues due to the observable stupidity of many religious people. Specifically, the unswerving belief in something that is either not provable (God) or in actual contradiction to observed facts (Creationism). Without this comparison and the subsequent belief that those of us who don't hold such superstitions, people would once again seek to put some kind of label on what cannot be understood and/or explained.

The concept of God, in its most "primitive" sense, is a label for all that cannot be labeled as something else. Sometimes people realize that nothing is really explainable, and develop pantheism. That is, God/Dharma/Brahma, or whatever they call it, takes up everything. Other times, people believe that some things can be explained conventionally, but use God for what's outside of that.

Atheism may seem to be the opposite end of this spectrum, but it really isn't. Atheism is merely a lack of theism. That is, there is something in which atheists don't believe. All it would take is a generation or to without theistic religions, and that something believed not to exist will take on, quite literally, biblical proportions. There is no way around this impending "doom" for atheism. If nothing else, people will begin to hope for something more than what is here in this life. Hope is a very natural human emotion, which is held by atheists and theists alike, so it will not disappear as long as we remain human. This hope will eventually, once held by enough people, form a belief that later becomes part of a religion.

More likely, religion among younger generations will be the result of it being the subject of conversation among the older generation. (This is assuming that the founders of our hypothetical society came from our own present society.) The elders will either tell their children what it is they're discussing and why it's wrong (in which case some of the younger generation will be intrigued and develop some kind of theism out of simple teenage rebelliousness), or the adults will fear this possibility and simply keep quiet about the whole thing. In the latter case, the younger generation will either develop a religion based on what little they overhear, or base it on the simple fact that their parents won't tell them something.

In both these cases, the religion will be based on the fact that the adults think these ideas are significant enough to be kept quite. Thus, the formation of religion is once again the basic reaction to what isn't understood or explained. No society can be kept stable merely by keeping things quiet. Theism fails when people start to question what it doesn't explain (generally this is in the form of scientific discoveries), and atheism fails when the same thing happens (i.e. when people begin to question the possibility of an afterlife and other things only explainable through religion).

Both theism and atheism lead to the other. Much is made of the fact that all traditional (tribal) societies are, without exception, theistic. However, it can probably be safely assumed that before people, or early hominids, formed tribes, they were godless and animal-like. Even if gorillas and chimps, and so probably our common ancestors, have some kind of theism, at some point before that they must have been atheistic. The cycle will not end unless humanity disappears through extinction or through evolution into something else.

1-23-01

This is a slightly more scientific continuation of the earlier email, and unless you disagreed with that one greatly, there's not really much need in reading the rest of this one.

If we assume that there is no individual soul, each person has in their mind room for God. (If we assume that there is an individual soul, it's a moot point.) That is, God is the label some people choose to put on what isn't explainable, and there will always remain something unexplainable. This is a physical truth. Going about it from an entirely atheist perspective, some things can't physically be understood through explanations.

Take consciousness itself, for example. All of us has an understanding of this through direct experience, but people have always, and will always, seek to find an explanation in addition to this experienced reality. We must assume that the mind is finite in extent. If we assume otherwise, we are assuming the existence of something infinite within each of us which we may as well call a soul. Because our minds are finite, it is impossible for them to hold information regarding all of the workings of consciousness in addition to actually remaining conscious.

No structure can contain a complete model of itself. This is an obvious limit to storage capacity. The only complete model is the object itself, and a finite object can't contain two of itself (the 'real' one and the model). Therefore, the only way a mind could fully explain consciousness is by having a model of itself within its structure, which is impossible unless it's already infinite.

All this shows, though, is that one thing can't be explained. However, this is enough for the claim that there is room in each mind for God. Even if we could somehow comprehend the external universe in its entirety, it is not physically possible to explain the workings of our own consciousness. As there will always be something which is not explained, it will always be possible for a person to use God as a label for this something.

With the potential for such a label a scientific certainty, it is only a matter of time before somebody uses the label. If at any point in the future, there is an atheist who feels something is missing, this label will likely be applied. There is no reason to expect otherwise, either, as everybody, at some point in life, feels something is missing. Even if we assume, as atheists do, that religious practice is some kind of mental imperfection, we can't stop individuals from filling the emptiness with something. Even if we assume, as Buddhists do, that emptiness is the natural state of reality, people will still reject this assumption and seek to fill the percieved void.

Spiritual curiosity can no more be snuffed out than scientific curiosity. People will wonder about things the establishment has no explanation for. Whether these things involve natural processes (planetary motion) or spiritual processes (life after death), is really not important. People in an atheistic society will question the claim that there is nothing after death just as often as people in religious societies question the claim that there is in fact something after death.

I was possibly going to say more originally, but I went and ate dinner and lost my train of thought, so I'll end it here.

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And here is an email response to the above along with my responses to it. (It was sent by this person)

Here is my take on all of this. Religion was created by sheer speculation borne of ignorance and proposed as if observed to be factual. Unsupported sheer idle pondering based on those initial faulty notions asserted with assumed with insistant certainty are all that perpetuate religions today.

- Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here, modern religion is mostly based on ignorance and fear.

Having the ability to discerne the truth through objective analysis and cognative reason cannot and will not evoke spiritual or supernatural beings.

- But, like I said, not every aspect of the truth can be discerned and explained through reason. Not so much a flaw in reason itself, it is just not physically possible for our minds to comprehend the nature of our minds.

The only way to concoct a belief in such things is to really really want them to exist already. If no evidence of g[G]od[s] is ever actively and intentionally sought, none will ever be imagined to become evident, as it must be manufactured out of pure desperate rationalization.

- And? I have no doubt that this has always been the origin of the God concept. The fact is, there will always be pure desparate rationalization.

There will always be insane people banding together under the bond of every conceivable lunacy, but the numbers of religious persons will continue to dwindle and the most ardent supporters will continue to be ignorant, illogical, irrational, stupid, and probably hateful, prejudiced, and reactionary as well.

- I don't know that the number of people who consider themselves religious is actually decreasing at all. Surely the number of fundamentalists is, but people have always depended so much on religion that they will change it radically long before they will give it up entirely.

It will, therefore become increasingly difficult to start up new religions for want of unenlighted neurotic congregations to brainwash into subservience. But I admit that does not mean that there will ever be a shortage of stupid or gullible people.

- It doesn't require stupid or gullible people to reject what one has been taught. If somebody is depressed and feels something is missing, he or she will come up with whatever is necessary to fill this void.

I believe that if we could ever have two consecutive generations in an entirely atheistic society, that we would never see religion crop up on its own again.

- Again, being brought up atheist means you are not allowed free reign to ask your own questions and find your own spiritual path. Therefore, you are much less likely to readily accept atheism than if you asked your own questions. Well atheism may be the path some of us arrive at after questioning our religious upbringing, religion would likely be the path people arrive at after questioning an atheistic upbringing.

The only likely exception to that is in the case of deceivers and multi-level marketeers out to part a fool from his dollar or to control a horde of malleable sycophants. Religious zealots make perfect zombie goons, and the ignorant masses are highly susceptible to charismatic suggestion, so such a tactic is likely to be employed again. As we progress as a species however, I expect these cults to be recognized, exposed, and dispersed before they can elevate their status in human culture.

- Cults have always been a part of society. Some are more successful than others. Christianity started as a fringe group who worshipped a carpenter as God Himself, and is now the largest religion in the world. Any "cult" that is not as radical as some of the Heaven's Gate and/or doomsday cults we see today is likely to attract many more followers. New religions in the future will be no easier to disperse than new religions in the past were.