BrianAndPamela.com

There's been something on my mind recently. I've been seeing a growing number of stories in magazines and websites I frequent (Wired magazine, digg.com, Slashdot, Boing Boing, among others) that I find really amazing. It seems there's a growing movement that I can't really find a better word for than Fundamentalist Atheism. How can I use those two words in the same sentence? Atheists have been around for as long as there have been theists, it's nothing new. What is fairly recent is the attitude (and emotion) behind the recent resurgence in atheistic dogma. Strangely, the more aggressive adherents have begun to sound like the thing they vilify the most: fundamentalist Christians. So come on in, brother and listen while I preach to you about the evangelical Fundamentalist Atheistic Revival Church of Earth! (Hmmm… I just noticed that's FARCE. What a coincidence.)

I am, of course, stereotyping to make examples… unlike some more (vicious? Mean?) atheists, I'm fully willing to admit that not all atheists have all of these traits. But most have some and some few have most. I understand, and you should as well, that there is a big difference between agnostics and these Fundamentalist Atheists (FAs). Agnostics either don't know or don't care if God exists. They also tend to have more live and let live, believe and let believe attitudes. FAs on the other hand, well, let's get to it shall we?

They see themselves as persecuted. Take for example the recent latimes.com piece by Sam Harris which states:

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
source article

First of all, quoting "several polls" without sources is just bad form. I could, if I tried, find several polls that support any claim, but that's a nit to pick with style. The point of the above quote is to demonstrate the process of strength through common victimization. Nothing builds bonds and zealotry as much as feeling like a persecuted minority. The reality would seem to offer the opposite view. With the press that people like Richard Dawkins and other "Brights" have been getting recently, it seems they are accepted more now than ever. And a response to the offered Newsweek poll is simple: I bet that the reason many people would not vote for someone like Richard Dawkins is that they feel that he and those like him are as closed minded and intolerant of other world views as any Christian extremist. Ask the same question of the same people and put "Fundamentalist Christian" in place of "Atheist" and I bet your results are similar.

They are evangelical. More than that, they are proselytizing – The members of the FA movement feel the need to proclaim loudly their "gospel" and to convert others. It's not enough to be tolerated; they want you to believe as they do. They practice Atheistic apologetics, constantly needing to defend and explain their beliefs, even when it is clear that the beliefs are understood. As I try to tell some of my zealous Christian friends, the fact that someone disagrees with us does not mean they do not understand our arguments.

They are Self-Righteous – convinced that their brand of Truth is the only one that is good for the world at large and other people. Without them and their truth, the rest of us are superstitious savages.

Fundamentalist Atheists see themselves as smarter than the great unwashed masses of the world. Some feel as if they are missionaries, bringing the light of truth to the darkness of the religious world. They feel they are more in touch with reality than the rest of us, which gives them a position of intellectual high-ground from which to argue their case.

They are dogmatic – After claiming that theists can not prove the existence of God, they assert the negative. Yet they can no more prove that negative than theists can the positive. Still they tightly cling to the firmest and arrogant conclusion that they are in possession of the sole "truth" on the issue.

For one such as these, the concept that a differing world view has any validity at all is completely alien. Their world view is the only one that counts and anyone else is at best simply misled, or at worst, actively trying to subvert the world to evil.

They denigrate others beliefs. It's not enough for these atheists to be right. Everyone else has to be wrong. It's their way or the highway. People that deny the supreme truth of atheism are "deluded" (see Dawkins Book "The God Delusion"). Many of them actively fear or loath spirituality with a zealousness that borders on, or crosses into, extremism.

It's important to note here that many of these atheists really have no position from which to speak about true spirituality. They are so convinced of the absence of the supernatural, yet they each claim to fully comprehend it (or at least where it comes from). Some attended church as children or have "read extensively", which is an awful lot like a deaf music critic who has read extensively and feels qualified to comment on a symphony because they listened to a cassette tape when they were six years old. I think it is very safe to say that none of these people has ever had a profoundly spiritual experience – what a Christian would call an encounter with God. Or if they have, the personal psychological defense against such a soul baring moment must be significant.

They stereotype all who disagree with them. (Yes I recognize the absurdity of putting forth this argument in the midst of an article which stereotypes Fundamentalist Atheists, but what can you do, I'm making a point.) To an atheist such as I am discussing, even a passing consideration of the existence of a higher power is unacceptable. To them, there is no difference between someone who thinks God may exist and a raving "bible thumper" or Muslim suicide bomber. If there is a difference between these people, to the FA it is simply a matter of degree.

A recent Wired magazine article (The New Atheists, November 2006) says this:

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

The question of "can evil exist in the absence of God" can come at a later date, for now it's enough to focus on the specifics of the statement. The same article a little later on quotes the Moses of the FA movement, Richard Dawkins:

Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they've got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can't get elected.

The only choices are that they are stupid or lying? Dawkins does not for a moment consider that there might be intelligent people in the world who hold differing views. They are either stupid or they are liars. (And the issue of liars in Congress is not germane to the subject at hand, thanks very much.)

They reject difficult arguments and focus instead on ones they suppose to be easily winnable. They argue against creationism, believing that if they poke a hole in that, then the theists belief will come tumbling down like the second little pig's house. No matter that most Christians in this country believe in Intelligent Design, or that one can believe in A god without necessarily believing in the Fundamentalist Christian God. Even so, most of the anti-creation arguments put forth by FAs rely entirely on their initial supposition that there is no God or that God is constrained by human understanding and logic. (But it is not my intent here to argue pathological philosophy, and I digress.)

This is besides the fact that, like many zealous theists, FAs tend to ignore arguments that contradict or create problems for their world view. (Shall we call it the problem of Beauty? Or why does altruism exist?)

Lastly – and in this many FAs go beyond what most Americans are used to from fundamentalist Christians and other American theists – They are intolerant of others beliefs. Indeed some prominent FAs advocate the BANNING of religion altogether. (Sir Elton John is one of these, though hardly an intellectual mouthpiece for the FA movement, and one suggests that he may have other axes to grind with theists…) For the most part in the modern world, no one has seriously mentioned banning free thought and belief in more than a century. Yet here are educated members of society advocating the legislation of belief. Even more than that, supposedly intelligent and rational members of society become nearly violent. A recent letter to the editor in Wired magazine (in response to the afore mentioned article) recalled a college professor who told the writer that his "belief in God was so infuriating that he wanted to 'put a chair through [his] head.''' (See Rants + Raves in the January 2007 issue of Wired Magazine.)

Just in the interest of comparison, how would this go if this was say Randy Travis (who is a singer and a Christian) advocating the abolishment Islam or of freedom of the press? Sir John has had very little backlash from his statement. Can we imagine what the results of our posited advocation might be?

All my life I've heard from the "intellectual elite" how extreme and harmful and repressive and intolerant Christians and religious people in general are. So what, then, is their response to this movement? One expects hatred and divisiveness and vitriol, judging from the "common wisdom". Quoting Wired again:

'We would have bet on a stack of Bibles that our cover story on the New Atheism would bring the wackos out of the woodwork. Religion tends to have just that effect. But not on our readers. [The readers] just started talking. … We got more responses to that story than to any other piece in memory. Craziness level: low. [The readers] invoked Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis, Plato and Einstein. Ayn Rand, too. … Many [readers] also worked hard to understand the other side of the aisle. … Our faith in our audience thus renewed, we are left to wonder about reasoned debate in the world's academic institutions.' [See the violent professor story above—brian]

Exactly those institutions and professors are the primary forces behind this Fundamentalist Atheism, and it is from these Ivory Tower academics, so cock sure of their own intellectual superiority, that we hear the most dangerous rhetoric. You would think that students of science and history would have the context to realize how little they must know of Universal Truth. But it is a peril of such pursuits and intelligences that they are tempted to arrogance, to believe that they stand at the summit of knowledge and truth.

So, brothers and sisters, our meeting has come to a close. Now, as the choir sings that old standard "Onward Fundamentalist Atheist Soldiers", those of you needing philosophical confirmation of your own moral superiority feel free to come to the front of the meeting hall where our personal counselors are waitin' to receive you. Go in peace and ignore the Lord. Amen.