Big Claims, Big Proof;
Infinite Claims, Infinite Proof
Dave
From: "Dave"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, January 21, 2001 1:33 AM
What a nice site this is! I can tell you've spent a lot of time and energy on it, and I really appreciate it. It's a wonderful resource, full of excellent articles and quotes.
I've been atheistic for a long time, but maybe I'll describe that in the de conversion section.
After reading the entire The Philosophy of Positive Atheism article (of course, now I have a thousand-and-one little numbered sub-links to go back through and read other quotes and articles) I suppose I should just call myself a 'strong atheist' and be done with it. It sometimes helps to clarify some definitions and examine their meaning. If someone appeared out of nowhere and told me he was 'God', and demonstrated a hundred miracles, I still wouldn't believe his claim. I have too little 'faith' and too much 'skepticism' in me. Big claims, big proof... infinite claims, infinite proof.
There were a couple of little corrections I wanted to make, though. 1. From: 'Let's Go To The Atheist Page Just For Laughs'
"The only atheists I know who would snicker upon encountering you might be the one or two Satanists who would consider your being a fundamentalist Christian to be an even more fitting curse than even they could conjure!"
I think it should be pointed out that a proper 'satanist' could technically be considered a theist, and associating atheism with satanists is problematic at best when confronting theists who believe we are 'evil incarnate' to begin with.
2. I don't like applying the phrase 'Coming out of the closet'. It associates being 'atheist' very solidly with being 'gay'. I would prefer something more like, 'Holding your head up and being atheist'. (As opposed to bowing to religion.) or perhaps, 'Getting off the pew'.
I'm more right-wing conservative than most people would consider is likely for an 'atheist'. I think it's a crime that the Republican party needs to bow to so much Christian pressure within its ranks. The 'liberal scientific method' does not mean you need to be a political liberal to follow it. I like low taxes and economic growth. Maybe I should be libertarian, but they keep putting up such goof-balls for public office. I visited http://www.atheists.org/ [American Atheists] and was appalled at the leftist political activism, and associating its self with the planned (and not so bad as they could have been) riots for the presidential inauguration. I don't think being an atheist makes anyone 'left wing' any more than being Christian makes people right-wing. Looking at the California link http://www.atheists.org/ca/, the photos are frankly pathetic. I mean, seeing the same dozen faces under the same banner all alone shouts 'loser' louder than any 'born again' bozo could. If I have better things to do on Sunday, I certainly have better things to do than join a big 'organization' whose mailing list will probably get leaked to 'true believers'.
I'm adept at not bringing up religion or showing outward signs of being different in social situations. I could care less if people want to talk to their imaginary friend before dinner, or sing a song about angels and heaven and other crap about their personal delusions. It's not my place to become a 'martyr' against religious fundamentalism. I have had religious debates with ministers and their respectable madmen. They tend not to be open to new ideas about a lack of god. Ten years ago, one minister even actively campaigned to get me fired from my job after a short BBS debate which contained my work email in it. I might have gotten rich off the lawsuits, but fortunately for all, my supervisors at the time were a bit more enlightened than all of that, and gave me a warning that made us all laugh afterwards. Where I work now, a catholic priest often comes to visit some coworkers of mine he's friends with, (they're involved with the church, and fix his computers for him, etc.). He's a well educated, soft-spoken, nicer-than-nice, likable old man who plays a lot of golf. I never bother to bring up my atheistic tendencies with any of them. What's the point? It would make the priest and my friends uncomfortable, and lead to tension that isn't worth having. All they need ever know is I'm not much of a 'church-goer', and don't go to catholic ones, anyway. It would hurt friends and family (emotionally) that I would rather not hurt if they found out I was a real atheist. I cover my tracks, and don't maintain explicit hard copy materials about it. Even the email and web history/cache/autocomplete remain 'innocent' of such clues, in case I ever drop dead or get crushed by a blimp or something. Let them believe what they like, but I do drop little hints like my email address and don't apologize for it. I don't need to confront anyone or stir them up too much. There are probably a lot of 'not a church-goer' people who are actually more atheistic than not, but won't admit it to themselves. I tend to believe my father is one.
I live in the 'real world', and to deny that tweaking theists would cause me harm is like denying that carrying around a long metal pole in a thunderstorm on a hill could cause me harm. I could 'get away with it' for a while, maybe even for years, but it doesn't take much to send some jerk with a fire bomb on a holy mission. It never has. Time and education will do more good and less damage than any protest ever could. Atheism makes sense, but sensible people always seem to be hard to come by. Passively giving atheists and 'the undecided' resources is a nice way to go about letting them know they're not alone.
Anyway, it was nice to find your site.
Gee, whiz! 'Eudora' is warning me my message 'might contain offensive language'! I wonder what the heck it's complaining about?
From: "Positive Atheism Magazine" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Dave"
Subject: Re: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, January 21, 2001 2:28 AM
1. From: 'Let's Go To The Atheist Page Just For Laughs'
"The only atheists I know who would snicker upon encountering you might be the one or two Satanists who would consider your being a fundamentalist Christian to be an even more fitting curse than even they could conjure!"
I think it should be pointed out that a proper 'satanist' could technically be considered a theist, and associating atheism with satanists is problematic at best when confronting theists who believe we are 'evil incarnate' to begin with.
I constantly take flack for this position, but I stand my ground: If we atheists insist that theists stop misrepresenting us and our positions, then we ought at least to get this one right: Satanism, as advocated by Anton Lavey's Church of Satan, is clearly and unashamedly atheistic. To them, Satan is a metaphor for Self, and when someone says, "Hail Satan!" that person is really saying, "Hail Me!" No Lavey Satanist thinks there's any such thing as a literal, personal Satan, any more than they think there is such thing as a literal, personal God. Several of my personal friends are Satanists, and two of them reviewed my piece, "Ethics & the Æsthetic of Satan," before I published it. I specifically asked them about the Satanism as a form of atheism aspect, and they loved the part about fitting in to any Humanist or atheist group -- if Satanists were into joining groups.
I have no more problem associating Satanism with atheism (especially since Satanism is a form of atheism) than I have with associating the racist World Church of the Creator with atheism (since the World Church of the Creator fits all definitions of atheistic). In fact, I have less of a problem, since the only thing scary about the Church of Satan is what goes on in the imaginations of Christians: the Satanists just love to get Christians' goat and their favorite method seems to be to fire the Christians' imaginations about the evils of the Church of Satan.
If I wanted to be absolutely consistent with the views I expressed in the dialogue with John Love-Jensen, I'd call Satanism a form of theism simply over the language issue. I have backed off from this stand slightly, after reading George H. Smith's new book, Why Atheism?, wherein he calls this definition "superficial":
| "Scholars continue to debate the question of whether Spinoza was really an atheist; and if this debate seems incapable of resolution, this is partially because the key term 'atheist' is rarely used in a clear and consistent manner. The question 'Was Spinoza really an atheist?' can be interpreted in (at least) three different ways. If we apply the label 'atheist' only to writers who never employ theistic terminology, then Spinoza was not an atheist in this superficial sense. If, by 'atheist,' we mean a thinker who explicitly disbelieves in any personal, transcendent, or supernatural God, then Spinoza was indeed an atheist. If however, we mean 'Did Spinoza view himself as an atheist?' then the issue becomes far more problematic." -- George H. Smith, Why Atheism? pp. 198-9 |
So, in order to keep Satanism within the realm of atheism, I must soften my stand on the semantic position, that the use of religions language, being all we observers have to go on, is enough to qualify someone as a theist. In the practical sense, that advocated by Smith, a Satanist is fully atheistic in every sense of the term.
I am not ready to abandon the semantic distinction described in the Love-Jensen dialogue, for the reasons stated in that dialogue. However, I do admit that my assertion that Satanists are atheists is inconsistent with the views I expressed in that discussion.
The association exists because there exists a valid parallel: Homosexuals were forced by society to remain silent about their homosexuality, just as atheists are still being forced by society to remain silent about our atheism. Also, homosexuals, as a group, are unjustly characterized as evil or "having an agenda" or lascivious or "weak-minded" just as atheist has always been a slander of vilification and the "cause" of numerous societal ills. If you wanted to vilify someone, you called them "an atheist." This still happens today, though it's more likely to occur in the Deep South than anywhere else.
During the past thirty years, homosexuals have united toward gaining public acceptance. One method that has proven effective is to "come out of the closet." This metaphor is no longer exclusive of the gay rights movements, but now means admitting something about yourself that is shunned by others but not necessarily evil.
Thus, I think it is important for us to do for ourselves those things that have worked for others. When we communicate this idea, the easiest and most effective is to use the very metaphor that originally sprang from that movement: "Come out of the closet."
Gee, whiz! 'Eudora' is warning me my message 'might contain offensive language'! I wonder what the heck it's complaining about?
Probably the word atheist.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Dave"
To: "Positive Atheism Magazine" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, January 21, 2001 4:31 AM
Well, thank you for answering, and I appreciate your stand on satanists now. There can be such a thing as 'too much information' (for me to soak up quickly), and I'm sorry to add to your supply of flak. I only hope you had most of that ready to paste into your response. Having been a lone atheist for a long time, it only recently occurred to me to do a search, and yours was the best site I've found so far.
... but I still think I'll stick to calling it 'Getting off the pew', anyway. It has a nice phonetic undercurrent of stink to it. Not as catchy as 'out of the closet', but not as trade marked, either.
I don't particularly believe in following other people's precedents too closely. Yes, the homosexual community has fought for some mainstream acceptance against overwhelming prejudice which still exists. That is true. Both groups have historically concealed their alignment for fear of retribution. True, true.
All can be equally said for communists and separatists and all kinds of other '-ists' and '-isms'.
Atheists are closest to bulls eye for most fundamentally disliked at the moment, but we don't need to link ourselves with other targets. It's irresponsible with respect to the other targets, who will draw flak because of us, and to ourselves, who will generally draw similarly unfounded flak from all of them. The more each cause is linked to each other, the more difficult it is to get any one of them off the target. A bigger bulls eye can more easily be painted with that 'broad brush'. "Homosexuals are atheists, so atheists are homosexuals". "Communists are atheists, therefore atheists are communists". Both statements are inherently faulty logic, but by borrowing bits and pieces of each other's causes, they become strongly linked in the minds of those who don't use logic.
Perhaps my reasoning about hygienic use of terms against a 'broad brush', or my metaphors are faulty, but there they are.
Atheism should logically stand on its own merits, else it will fall with whatever we lean it on. My singular 'ethic' for it may merely be "Think for yourself". Basing what we try on a few other more successful causes has a certain logic to it, but it may be the statistics of small numbers. That worked, so we'll try it. Just because the gay movement worked, it doesn't mean atheists can succeed by copying their terminology and tactics, now that those same terms and tactics are well known to much the same opposition, well studied, and well indoctrinated against.
It's also like following. I don't like following. I learned that the hard way.
Maybe I'm more anarchist than I am atheist. Maybe I just can't stop a debate on a trivial issue once it's started.
I apologize if I took up too much of your valuable time.
Material by Cliff Walker (including unsigned editorial commentary) is copyright ©1995-2006 by Cliff Walker. Each submission is copyrighted by its writer, who retains control of the work except that by submitting it to Positive Atheism, permission has been granted to use the material or an edited version: (1) on the Positive Atheism web site; (2) in Positive Atheism Magazine; (3) in subsequent works controlled by Cliff Walker or Positive Atheism Magazine (including published or posted compilations). Excerpts not exceeding 500 words are allowed provided the proper copyright notice is affixed. Other use requires permission; Positive Atheism will work to protect the rights of all who submit their writings to us.