Yes I agree with you that atheism in and of itself is certainly not a religion. All my years as an atheist I heard many atheists explain this over and over to theists, to our irritation. My opening post is not saying that at all, to be clear. I am going to further clarify what I am seeking to discuss and it is not directed only to you Dr. Kingsfield, but everyone.Dr. Kingsfield wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 4:36 pmThe question of whether or not atheism qualifies as a religion is one that is still up for debate.Free Ranger wrote: ↑Wed Jul 12, 2023 8:29 pmThis is my response to another poster on this thread: viewtopic.php?t=157779&start=30#p2838792
I thought it deserved its own topic for discussion, for as I answered the question it led to me realizing the topic further supports my contention that we may just be homoreligious or prone to metaphysical thinking and benefit from non-toxic beliefs, which was the point of the thread linked above that began with videos by atheists and scientists supporting non-toxic beliefs. So here is my response and I welcome all to respond and give their opinion:
To answer your curiosity as to these “supernatural” beliefs among some on the secular far-left. I would say that these atheists' reasons for rejecting what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, is not because they reject the “Social Justice” movement, as you put it. Most atheists tend to lean politically Liberal or Left, and so I don't think the liberal atheists who are opposing what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, are doing so because they reject social justice, when I see them actually supporting most social justice issues. And these same liberal atheists mentioned below, just 5 or 10 years ago, would be considered by people on the Right to be proponents of Social Justice. These atheists and liberals I will mention below, are simply critical of the new methodology being used to enforce social justice, which they see as a religious methodology. ...
... , the agnostic scientist Neil Degrass Tyson criticized non-scientific thinking (i.e. supernatural thinking) on the far-Left about seven years ago, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kEJqMTjYtU
https://gizmodo.com/neil-degrasse-tyson ... 1780648740
I do not like to use the term woke or wokeism because it triggers people on the political left and right, but unfortunately I have to use it for ease of communication. It's a complicated term as well and it's my understanding that woke's original meaning is that of being awakened to social injustices, to be woke to social injustice, in particular racial inequalities. I don't see any liberals or atheists rejecting this origional meaning of being woke. They are instead critical of what they see as an ideology and religious ideas that they see has been added onto this simpler definition.
One could argue that even focusing on social injustice, may involve a degree of supernatural/metaphysical thinking, a belief in Right and Wrong and Good and Evil. This is the argument of the atheist Nietzche who would have opposed wokeism, as he opposed the atheistic social justice warriors of his day, basically calling them pale atheists unable to embrace raw reality for instead supernatural thinking, and pity and piety inherited from Christianity. Nietzche would have said something like an ant colony ...
... So, in my view, if we remove traditional religions and spirituality the vast majority of people will go seeking for an alternative, whether it's my Swedish ancestors and their elf beliefs or emperor worship in China, or the sects of wokeism.
Here are some examples of atheist and liberals who see extreme versions of wokeism (or some woke sects) as supernatural thinking and toxic forms of religiosity:
John Mcwhorter on The New Religion: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/th ... rogressive
Who is John Mcwhorter? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter
How Social Justice Became a New Religion: Our society is becoming less religious. Or is it? By Helen Lewis: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/671172/
The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness by James Lindsey: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/cult- ... -wokeness/
The atheist exmormon at https://thoughtsonthingsandstuff.com/ went from only criticizing Brighamite Mormonism to recently spending a lot of time criticizing what he considers something more harmful at this point than Mormonism, which is the secular far-left's "new religion," as he sees it. So his videos have gone from pointing out cultish thinking in Mormonism to cultish thinking among the some of secular far-left in his videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTCFh ... Zlwl1JOoHQ
Again, even if only five or ten percent of what these authors say is true and are legitimate criticisms, then there is a "new religion" growing up among many on the secular far-left, and whether or not that is good or bad -- and one could even make the argument that it's good because the end result would be good (depending on your politics) -- in my view it proves or supports my point to a certain degree that we are by nature homoreligious.
This article https://americandreaming.substack.com/p ... e-wokeness points out that the atheism of the early 2000s created an existential vacuum.
The Atheist on this podcast explains the origins of wokeism and the resulting divide in the atheist community: https://youtu.be/Y61IPmUEfmo
Observing this clear divide among atheists and liberals is evidence to me that the atheist community was longing for a higher meaning, craving a moral purpose in life based on metaphysical beliefs like the inalienable Rights of the individual as if he is a soul, so that he should be treated fairly and justly and given a good quality of life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness or well-being. And so the mechanistic deconstructionism of Dawkins and Hitchens and others, replacing religion with the Void, was just not satisfying existentially; and so there emerged atheism(+) which evolved into the various sects of wokeism. All because, again, in my view I think we are homoreligious.
Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose attempted to basically highlight what they saw as bad scholarship in several academic fields by pointing out what they saw as religious thinking, or supernatural thinking, which led them to get published absurd ideas in academia, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/acade ... holarship/
One could argue this was the equivalent of people on this board criticizing Mormon apologetics when it lacks scientific rigor and is too often couched in supernatural thinking.
Peter Boghossian, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, and many other atheists who were once revered and admired by nearly everyone in the atheist community just five years ago, are now often villainized by many or even most atheists who reject their perspectives on scientific issues. ... Richard Dawkins has written several massive books on evolution and biology, so it's interesting that he was once considered an authority but is now so easily vilified. I would argue that this phenomenon is because of growing religious sentiment and moralizing metaphysical thinking among some on the Left, which again can be interpreted as either good or bad depending on your political perspective.
Steven Pinker wrote The Blank Slate which was an early attempt to completely reject some views of the new-religious Left, as it's been described.
So whether you agree or disagree with these atheists, it is obvious there is division, and it's because one side sees the other side as embracing a religion.
These atheists, I have mentioned, are just a few as there is definitely a divide among atheists, which I believe comes down to those who are more mechanistic thinkers and focused on biological science and those who are more "right brain" thinkers seeking some form of meaning, spirituality and morality.
Even the atheist liberal Bill Maher, who produced the documentary Religulous, has compared the new religion on the left to Maoism, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM which was a secular religion in many ways as Maher explains.
This is not surprising to me that there's a divide because we are I think homoreligious, and thus as Nietzche put it, we need to feed both brain chambers, the one chamber that functions via the non-rational/"spiritual" and one for rational science. Or as he put it in Human, All Too Human, “A higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain chambers, as it were, one to experience science, and one to experience non-science. Lying next to one another, without confusion, separable, self-contained: our health demands this. In the one domain lies the source of strength, in the other the regulator. Illusions, biases, passions must give heat; with the help of scientific knowledge, the pernicious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be prevented.” Is wokeism feeding the non-rational "spiritual " brain chamber? Nietzche would have said yes it is, and he would say he has a better spirituality, what scholars call Dionysian Pantheism, that rejects social justice ideals.
I actually personally support most social justice ideals, but I will readily to admit that it is completely grounded in the metaphysics of Christian ethics, which was best pointed out to me by Tom Holland in his book Dominion, and by listening to his many debates and discussions on Youtube.
When I go back and read my Swedish ancestors' Norse religious writings and learn about their culture pre Christianity, I do not see anyone concerned with social justice or stoic cosmopolitanism, but instead there was tribal justice, concern for your tribal neighbor, and the military-like valor of the strong man on the battlefield and conquering and oppressing one's enemies. The concept of "love your enemy," and being "woke" to the unfair treatment of minorities would have been absurd to my Viking ancestors, just as much as the lion would ignore one's pleas to not mangle the cute baby deer and tear into it's throat with impunity. The Vikings saw it as their natural right to take from the weak who cannot defend their property or belongings. Now look at my Viking ancestors in Sweden after converting to Christianity, so that even though they now often describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, a deeper investigation reveals that they are still culturally Christian.
You wrote:
"Any claim that nature 'designed' The human brain for spirituality is based on a misconception of evolutionary science. There is no nature that designs. The existence of a specific human trait is not evidence that is, or has ever been, beneficial to survival of the human species."
No atheist who believes religion can be beneficial, thinks that there is a teleological direction or design in evolution to make us homoreligious, that is not their argument.
This site begs to differ with your last sentence above:
"Religion can be understood as a spandrel in the same way that Stephen Jay Gould claims the surface area between two adjacent arches are spandrels. In using natural selection we have chosen for traits that allowed for a strong foundation that has promoted human survival for thousands of years. Traits similar to behavioural and cognitive characteristics like cooperation, that allow for a more communal lifestyle that may boost one own fitness or increase inclusive fitness. Survival without religion is possible so it does not make this a vital component to survival, however it continues to be a inevitable by product of the things that do continue to promote fitness to our species."
Source: https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/evpsych/chap ... spandrels/
So if religion is possibly or likely a spandrel and the atheists in the videos I linked to here viewtopic.php?t=157779#p2838436 argue non-toxic religion or spiritual practices can be beneficial, and many atheists think there is a new secular religion to fill the existential Void caused by former versions of atheism, then is it not at least possible that non-toxic spiritual beliefs and religious ideas and practices are innate to our species and good for our mental health and social cohesion?
It's crucial to remember that atheism is not intrinsically a religion. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods; it excludes the practice of worship, rituals, or a worldview typically connected to organized religions.
However, some have noted that when atheism gets structured and involves a strong feeling of community and shared values, it might develop certain traits of a religious movement. Some contend that in such circumstances atheism may adopt the characteristics of a secular religion.
However, it is crucial to understand that atheism does not represent a single movement or ideology; rather, it is a broad range of convictions and perspectives. While some atheists may be more organized and active in spreading their ideas, others may simply reject the existence of a deity without taking part in any organized atheist groups or activities.
Ultimately, interpretation and point of view will determine if atheism qualifies as a religion or not.
What my opening post is getting at is that atheism opens an existential vacuum, it is the removal of a belief in God and with it objectively provable values of Right or Wrong and ultimate meaning in life (cue Nietzszche's Mad Man parable), and as a result people will fill that existential void with different things. Some atheists turn to science or scholastics or their career or their family or a hobby, etc. But what I see happened about 5 to 10 years ago was atheists started to lack meaning and a value-structures and ultimate purpose and a consistent morality. They had no Metanarrative that could bind them together like religion does. I remember attending an atheist meet up once almost 20 years ago and there was way more diversity, quite a few political conservatives but yes mostly moderate liberals, yet mostly they were discussing science. There were a lot of engineers, doctors, professors, and biologists, etc.; but at some point atheism decided to become Atheism Plus and then it started to push out atheists who had been part of the movement for decades because these atheists would not join the new quasi-religious Metanarrative of far-Leftism (let's call it). As my opening post points out, this new "cultish" Metanarrative has been discussed by many atheists from Bill Maher who compares the new quasi-religious Leftism to Maoism (see: https://youtu.be/yysKhJ1U-vM) to Anna Kasparian, a host on The Young Turks (TYT) who talks about realizing a new far-Left ideology that she considers destructive has sprung up, saying at one point "I feel like I just woke up and got out of a cult." She goes on to point out that extreme far-Leftism is basically "cultish," maybe not "literally a cult" she says, but then goes on to basically explain what I am saying. See Anna say this at the 1 hour and 7 minute mark here: https://www.youtube.com/live/z8TD2jNPLK4?feature=share
She basically says that humans as tribal beings are prone to these "spiritual levers" I have been talking about in this thread. She is on one of the most popular Progressive/Leftist political channel as a progressive/leftist commentator. So I think she has some credibility, no?
Her entire interview linked above is her explaining that after 20 some odd years as a political commentator and media host, she has seen the rise of secular far-Leftism that is basically a cultish metanarrative and she wants out of the cult basically.
A guy named Thunderf00t who documented what he sees as the rise of this new far-leftism and its metanarrative and how in his opinion it ruined the atheist community. He sees modern feminism as cultish and has a video series, Why 'Feminism' is poisoning Atheism, part one here: . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKQdJR ... cmYwMHQ%3D
I'm not here to defend thunderf00t but even if only 5% of what he says is accurate, that atheism has been taken over by what the atheist James Lindsay calls Feminist Gnosticism (see: https://newdiscourses.com/2023/04/femin ... nosticism/) then maybe just maybe we are seeing a new quasi-religion emerge in front of our eyes as critical thinkers who were able see through the cultish ways of Brighamite Mormonism. That I think is a huge elephant in the room; and I am wondering why a community who prides itself on critical thinking and deconstructing the problems in Mormonism has not turned that same critical eye to far-Leftism, like all the atheists I have mentioned throughout this thread are doing?
How is it that even Richard Dawkins, who used to be a respected atheistic speaker became vilified so quickly? If that is not the result of "quasi religiosity," then I don't know what is.
I'm simply looking at this like an anthropologist might look at it and I'm fascinated by it and curious by it. It's the elephant in the room.
It seems like atheism creates a void and that void has been filled with a new cultish metanarrative which people like Bill Maher and Anna Kasparian consider a quasi cult. Is Bill Maher wrong? Is James Lindsey of new discourses, completely wrong? Is exmormon Jonathan Streeter wrong? Is Richard Dawkins, who sees this rising cultism, wrong? That is the elephant in the room and I'm curious about discussing it.
Again, not directing that only to you Dr. Kingsfield, but to everyone.
Hopefully, after saying all that, the thread will not turn again towards hyper focusing on me and focus on the actual topic and the ideas.