Atheism Is Simply Another Religion

re·li·gion
rəˈlijən

noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

“ideas about the relationship between science and religion”

synonyms: faith, belief, worship, creed

a particular system of faith and worship.

plural noun: religions

“the world’s great religions”

a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.

“consumerism is the new religion”

Faith in Science

At the core of most legitimate atheism is an underlying belief in science, the scientific method and mathematics. Much of science deals with things that we can not see such as subatomic particles or invisible forces and even higher dimensions that are impossible for the human brain to visualize or comprehend. Science infers their existence from logic and clever experiments that lead to conclusions that such and such a thing must exist and have such and such properties. Yet science thrives on Theories, the very word of which comes from the root “Theo” which means God, self-referential theory itself. Theories become accepted facts once enough peer-reviewed experiments and evidence has mounted to validate the theory or invalidate it.

Yet theories themselves multiply like tribbles and lead into a house of mental mirrors where the same thing is reflected all over the place. For example, currently there are a plethora of legitimate, scientifically-based theories on the origins of the Universe and the Big Bang is just one of many such theories. There are the multiple big bangs over eternity theory. There are the universe is a simulation theory. There is string theory. There is multiverse theory where each of an infinite number of universes coexist on different “membranes.” Some say when membranes collide it produces a big bang somewhere. Some say we are living on the surface of a black hole as pure information. The theories go on and on yet none of them can possibly explain existence in a meaningful or convincing enough way to where we go, “Of course, that must be the way it is!” Scientifically speaking Creationism is just another theory that can be backed up by evolutionary theory applied over eternity where God evolved because anything can evolve in infinity years. That’s just logic. Even if it evolved one tiny bit every thousand years, over infinity thousands of years, the most fit, smartest, most powerful being would eventually evolve into existence starting about infinity years ago. To disprove this you would have to prove that a) eternity isn’t possible and/or b) evolution can not take place over eternity. If I put a penny in the bank every thousand years for eternity, I would have infinity dollars in my account — that’s a god-like bank account!

Face it, science “facts” have been disproven over and over again by newer better science facts from the future. If you believe that the background radiation at the limits of our Universe model are the final proof that the Big Bang was the only big bang and there are not other such big bangs beyond, outside or even inside this big bang, then you have Faith because you believe something you can’t possible know because you have no means to measure or study it. So science always operates in a “bubble of current understanding” only to be superseded by a “bubble of future understanding.” That’s not a criticism, it’s just the reality we’ve observed.

Plato created the Divided Line to categorize knowledge:

The Divided Line — (AC) is generally taken as representing the visible world and (CE) as representing the intelligible world.

Thus AB represents shadows and reflections of physical things, and BC the physical things themselves. These correspond to two kinds of knowledge, the illusion (εἰκασία eikasia) of our ordinary, everyday experience, and belief (πίστις pistis) about discrete physical objects which cast their shadows. In the Timaeus, the category of illusion includes all the “opinions of which the minds of ordinary people are full,” while the natural sciences are included in the category of belief.

According to some translations, the segment CE, representing the intelligible world, is divided into the same ratio as AC, giving the subdivisions CD and DE (it can be readily verified that CD must have the same length as BC:

There are two subdivisions, in the lower of which the soul uses the figures given by the former division as images; the enquiry can only be hypothetical, and instead of going upwards to a principle descends to the other end; in the higher of the two, the soul passes out of hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is above hypotheses, making no use of images as in the former case, but proceeding only in and through the ideas themselves (510b).

Plato describes CD, the “lower” of these, as involving mathematical reasoning (διάνοια dianoia), where abstract mathematical objects such as geometric lines are discussed. Such objects are outside the physical world (and are not to be confused with the drawings of those lines, which fall within the physical world BC). However, they are less important to Plato than the subjects of philosophical understanding (νόησις noesis), the “higher” of these two subdivisions (DE):

And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses — that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole (511b).

Plato here is using the familiar relationship between ordinary objects and their shadows or reflections in order to illustrate the relationship between the physical world as a whole and the world of Ideas (Forms) as a whole. The former is made up of a series of passing reflections of the latter, which is eternal, more real and “true.” Moreover, the knowledge that we have of the Ideas — when indeed we do have it — is of a higher order than knowledge of the mere physical world. In particular, knowledge of the forms leads to a knowledge of the Idea (Form) of the Good.

Weird Things Atheists May Believe

• The Entire Universe violently exploded from an infinitely dense point of nothingness about 15 billion years ago. Before that was the Atheist Void that had infinitely dense points of nothingness with little universes in them that no one understands or likes to talk about and have never seen nor proven but they still believe in these.
• Time has a beginning. Before that, there was no time. Eternity is possible, but nothing could evolve over Eternity because evolution only happens on Earth and nowhere else in the Universe.
• All religion is based on myths and all spiritual religious or experiences ever reported are not evidence of anything other than delusional hallucinations produced by matter extruded from the Big Bang point of nothingness.
• Only things that can be tangibly measured and understood by humans can be real because we are the be all and end all of wisdom, intellect and perception. If it can’t be seen or measured or experimented upon, it doesn’t exist or we can’t introduce it into the “courtroom of science.”
• Matter randomly clumped together with a set of randomly (no intelligence) generated rules from the quark-gluon soup produced by the Big Bang that also produced all the forces, dark matter, dark energy, atoms and more that later randomly clumped into molecules that then randomly combined in a way to produce self-replicating DNA and single cell organisms that then over eons randomly combined to survive, thrive and become all animals and plants we know.
• We live in an inconceivably improbable world where all conditions are perfect, including the atmosphere, the magnetic shield, the temperature, the amount of water, the Moon that perfectly matches the disc of the Sun, large outer planets that vacuum up hazardous meteors and asteroids, flowers that are beautiful and smell good, teaming life to sustain us. Everywhere you look you see perfection, balance and harmony yet this is the result of billions of random accidents over billions of years.

Sure, there is always good science and great minds behind all these thoughts but they are still improbable, unintuitive and rather imaginative at times. In fact these are often no more believable than many religious beliefs such as the Hindu belief in Maya, or illusion, where reality is actually an illusion or dream inside of a higher being or consciousness. We even have scientific theories to support this such as the universe as “simulation” theory.

Dismissive Tendencies

A proper atheist is forced to dismiss everything about religion, even when they don’t actually contradict science. This makes them a particularly intransigent lot that thumbs their nose at thousands of documented experiences from Ayahuasca spiritual realizations of universal consciousness to appearance of supernatural beings (angels, aliens, demons) to experiences recorded about exceptional historical figures common to all cultures. These must ALL be rejected nonsense to the atheist and are easily explained by means of modern psychiatry (a pseudoscience) and neurology or physics yet no one has been able to fully investigate each incident scientifically to either prove or disprove it as such. Otherwise, the atheist would be in the uncomfortable position of accepting some form of supernatural phenomena but not others. Thus many such experiences are discounted and dismissed by nothing other than strong belief in their spurious, unproven, counter-experiential nature. Hard science says delusion, therefor it’s delusion until otherwise proven.

There is a certain arrogance in an atheist’s certainty in God’s non existence and they tend to be pretty self-assured in this belief. It comes off as smug to free thinkers who entertain the possibility of much higher planes of existence and consciousness and embrace the mysterious nature of reality. Also, it is arrogant to think that there is meaning in the fact that God can’t be detected by what amounts to microscopic bits of protoplasm on the surface of what appears as a spec of dust in the greater scheme of the Cosmos which is a bit like an ant not being able to see an airplane in the sky. It’s there but they are not equipped to perceive it. Even more arrogant is to think such a being wouldn’t fully control the level of perceptibility of Itself to lower sentient beings.

Atheists are Really Unwitting Agnostics

One of the first tenets of philosophy is to admit “I don’t know.” Philosophers from Lao Tse to Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Hegel were compelled to think deeply about the meaning of life and the nature of reality. To a person, each one of these was forced to confront a gaping ignorance of the things outside their understanding. All philosophers would be the first to admit that what they “know” is insignificant next to what they don’t know. Like the shaman who draws a circle in the sand and says, “Inside this circle is what you know. Outside this circle is what you don’t know.” Last time I checked the area of a circle divided by infinity was pretty much zero. Atheists are no different except in one thing: They Know with a capital “K.” Of course we all know this is preposterous because they are no better than all these thinkers and so we have to conclude that atheists are untruthful with themselves and really with others and their circle may even be a little bigger through a great education but the area outside the circle is still infinite.

So regardless of what an atheist claims to know, they are forced to admit that what they don’t know far surpasses that. In other words, that “God doesn’t exist” is really an unproven theory they hold but since they have to abide by logic they really have to admit they actually don’t know for sure, let alone what God might or might not be. That makes them Agnostics whether they like or admit it. Or, more accurately, agnostics in denial who have absolute Faith in non-God.

In Defense of Atheists

None of this is to discredit the sound fundamental thinking of an educated atheist. Atheists are absolutely right that God as presented by many religions is a ludicrous figure, often even portrayed in human male form with a beard, of course. They are also right to say we don’t need God to explain how things got to be as they are and we can devise any number of theories that don’t involve a Supreme Being behind the creation and management of the Cosmos. They are right to point out the silly contradictions in religion or things that seem so implausible or defy reason and experience, perhaps most preposterous is this Almighty God figure people say exists. They are just being honest and calling it like they see it (or don’t see it). That is in itself commendable. Skepticism is a virtue when it comes to facts. Atheists make skepticism into a religion.

Flying Spaghetti Monsters

One of the most common arguments against Religion and one that is logically valid is an argument that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon those who make unfalsifiable claims, not on those who reject them. It is true that one could posit nearly anything invisible, undetectable and claim to have experienced or seen it yourself and that doesn’t make it real whatsoever. However, the same could be said for Newton or any number of scientists who posited invisible, undetectable things such as gravity, electrons or superstrings that at the time were also unfalsifiable. One might even claim that the mere thought of a thing makes it real if not only in the mind that imagined it. Also, the “burden of proof” is a term used in legal proceedings when in fact reality has no such burdens. Something either exists or doesn’t exist or perhaps has a probability of existing or not existing. Some have calculated that the probability of you existing is zero percent, yet you exist, or you think you do. And just because you aren’t compelled to disprove something that seems absurd to you, that in itself is not a proof or disproof, but a stance you have taken. Otherwise, someone would have incontrovertibly proven that a God or gods don’t not exist by now but no such proof is possible. You are entitled to your stance and can die with that stance, but it’s just your personal stance on the topic, not the absolute Truth.

Conformists

The atheist is forced to explain the world as they understand it to conform to a particular model they hold. Often, they have to contrive ever more elaborate explanations to make the world rational and devoid of supernatural things. This reminds me of Ptolemy who was sure the cosmos in its Earth-centric mathematical perfection must operate with perfect circles, so he carefully measured the motion of planets and proceeded to place them on ever more complex epicycles of circles revolving around other circles until his system matched the model he had in his head with what he observed. He was going to force the world into his pre-determined model, no matter how ridiculous and imperfect it became. It turns out he wasn’t entirely wrong since Keppler later found orbits were actually ellipses, which are still conic sections and just circles viewed from a different angle. Of course we now know that these ellipses are distorted in infinite directions by gravity and they are really just averages of probabilistic forces applied to the bodies that when we observe them we actually change them in infinitesimal ways so they can’t actually be measured exactly.

When something is introduced to an atheist that doesn’t conform to their model it gets rejected even if on some level it conforms to another part of their model. For example, we all agree that governments exist at nearly every level of social organization on Earth and most atheists believe in evolution, but if you say it’s likely the Cosmos evolved a higher level of government that manifests as god-like beings that are hard to detect by normal means it ticks them off because you have no proof for a perfectly plausible theory based on experience in our local domain, Earth (except the god-like part though some animals are IMO).

The Problem of Consciousness

The atheist must never believe in a soul or that consciousness itself is something mystical or supernatural. We were non-existent. Then we live. We die and oblivion sets in — return to non-existence. Everything we perceive, think, dream and do is merely a fancy collection of molecules making us feel we exist and perceive during our brief lives. There is no real “I” at the center of this. And of course, through artificial intelligence we can create the exact same feeling of existence in a computer with the right program. All we need is a program that makes enough connections and calculations per second and voila, it’s conscious and aware. When in fact all we can determine is it seems aware, it passes the Turing test for thinking. There is no Turing test for awareness or consciousness, only thinking, and thinking is not consciousness.

We can’t even determine if another person is conscious like we are, let alone a machine. This qualia paradox isolates us from the rest of the Universe and so we infer that others are 1) real and 2) also experiencing awareness like we are. Atheists are no different and must live with this built-in uncertainty unless they take a leap of Faith and presume it is so without proof. In mathematics, there is an analog to this called Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. No mathematical proof is fully self-contained and relies on unprovable postulates outside the proof, even if they are called self-evident. Self-evident is not self-proved.

So where consciousness comes from may never be fully known unless in fact we can download our consciousness into a machine and then experience it in another form. Even then our new clone might not be able to convince our “real” self that the clone in fact is as conscious as we are so we still have a qualia issue. It is strange to think of the same consciousness occupying two points yet unconnected. If we could then connect the two conscious versions of ourselves, maybe then we could be convinced (with quite a migraine too).

Throughout history and cultures, the central being in our consciousness is usually referred to as a soul. The atheist doesn’t necessarily have to reject the notion of soul, but they must reject any Divine connection to its existence since that would lead to a contradiction. Also, the atheistic soul would generally be considered a physical manifestation of energy and would therefore likely dissipate at death rather than persist in another “dimension.”

I recently watched a discussion between two famous and brilliant avowed atheists, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and Brian Greene, a physicist. When the discussion turned to the thorny topic of consciousness, neither man had a convincing argument or sufficiently compelling evidence on what its origins are and basically just agreed that it must be a yet-to-be-understood manifestation of molecular interactions, fitting the answer to their world views.

The Basis of Morality

Secular Humanists are a type of atheist that believes all moral codes and norms are mere human constructs that are there for no other reason than that they benefit society and vicariously, themselves. They don’t necessarily have an answer why they actually care if society benefits, they just do. We see that animals too have codes of behaviour that can be construed as morals and ethics and honor so it seems to be a natural principle of survival common to most species.

However, there are many cases where one may garner benefits for oneself or for society by committing an “immoral” act and there are plenty of opportunities to get ahead by not playing fair and leaving the “suckers” in the dust. In this case we write our own moral code that justifies our behavior. After all, if this is my only life and all I have coming is oblivion, why should I care if some stranger gets hurt by my actions? There are no repercussions I see other than my personal gain. Sounds good, and too bad for the other guy who by the way is free to do the same.

Where does our innate sense of fairness and compassion come from or do we have one at all? An atheist believes morals are simply evolutionary advantages that allowed us to thrive and survive but they don’t offer proof that immoral behavior is A) truly immoral by a scientific measure or B) not a better tool for survival since one could eliminate rivals with less internal conflict without moral handcuffs.

The Basis of Love

Atheists love their children and families and spouses as much as anyone. The sort of love that will make us lay down our lives for another or show kindness to a stranger or fight for a righteous cause in the service of the Good is only possible by accepting belief in the value and worthiness of another person or thing outside ourselves. A parent’s love for children can be easily seen as a successful evolutionary trait so Nature creates the chemicals in our brains and oxytocin to make us feel love and protect our progeny. But this doesn’t explain the love we have for other children or people, our pets or the beauty of Nature itself, all things that could hinder our evolution by spreading out the burden of protection to those that we love over our own self interests.

The Semantics of Belief

Whether you say you don’t believe in God or you believe in no God, it’s still a belief system, and not a knowledge system because you can’t possibly have the knowledge required to make a proper determination that would qualify as self-evident, like one plus one equals two. Any belief system that involves God is by definition a religious belief system. Any religious belief system can be qualified as a religion, therefore Atheism is a religion.

God Doesn’t Bother Atheists

Whether God exists or not, he/she doesn’t seem to do much to interfere or otherwise affect an atheist’s day to day life so it really doesn’t matter what one’s stance on the matter is. If God exists then he/she seems pretty fair to atheists and doesn’t insist on your belief and lets you enjoy free will. After all, such a God would have allowed you to exist and develop the thoughts you have. If God doesn’t exist then there is nothing there to bother you anyway other than the struggle for life and death we all share. So believing or not believing is really just a personal choice that makes no difference.

Turned Off By Organized Religion

At the heart of a lot of atheistic beliefs is the obvious ridiculousness of much of what has built up in the form of religious worship in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples around the world, often as part of a vast network of power, governance, priesthoods and arcane rituals. The sheer variety and number of such cults lets us know they can’t all be right and this becomes so frustrating that it gets wholesale rejection by the atheist. Many if not most of the world’s problems are caused by religious conflicts. The level of hypocrisy in religion is a rightful target of the atheist where we can see clearly the followers are not even close to abiding by the teachings at the core of their supposed religion. But that is man’s doing, not God’s.