Atheist Alignments: Neutral Atheism

Neutral Atheism (Hypothetical Definition): Atheism that is either neutral to theism on the grounds of language: either the semantical difficulties or coherence of God concepts; ignosticism/igtheism and theological noncognitivism respectively, or ontological neutrality in some way to theism and/or atheism, either seeing the concept of God as obsolete to society, as in post-theism; or finding the dichotomy pointless/meaningless, in the form of apatheism.

Now we’re at the concluding sphere of this fairly exhaustive, though by no means complete, three-part analysis on atheism in all its diversity. Starting at the most accessible and progressing to the more difficult is a good practice overall, don’t you think? One can appreciate that atheists in some form are respectful and civil. And like any belief or lack thereof, there will always be those that are more driven to distinguish themselves, even if they’re also more obnoxious. But now we come to a less clear area of atheism which many might accuse of being skeptics or agnostics, withholding judgment or asking questions that pierce into the nature of the position itself in contrast to whether it is true or not. I was actually going backwards with my issues when I first introduced them. The third issue applied to lawful, “organized” atheism, the second to chaotic “individualist” atheism, and the first was relevant to the neutral “ambivalent” atheists, common difficulties with defining the term “God”. Since it is not clear whether there is a definition of “God” that can apply to every concept of divinity, perhaps Neutral Atheists are right to critique theism as an incoherent belief as opposed to saying that there is a lack of evidence or reason for believing it as Chaotic or Lawful would. The two pronged system of Neutral Atheism inquires two things: whether God is an adequately defined and whether God is relevant.

The first subset sees a difficulty with theological language. When someone asks this type of atheist, usually called an ignostic/igtheist or theological noncognitivist, if they believe in God, there are two answers that reflect a split within this area. The ignostic/igtheist would answer “What do you mean by ‘God’?”, while the theological noncognitivist would say “The word ‘God’ is meaningless/incoherent,” With the first response, this is a question that any particularly inquisitive thinker would present with even the initial monotheistic conceptions of “God”. The Christian concept of God in Trinitarianism differs from the Nontrinitarian form, which also differs from Jewish, Muslim and Sikh concepts of God, however similar in some ways they might be. Not to mention the concept of “God” in a different sense in Hinduism, alongside the ideas of multiple “gods” in polytheistic religions, such as Wicca, Asatru (Norse deities) and Reconstructionist Paganism (attempts to revive historically dead faith practices, such as ancient Egyptian or Babylonian polytheistic religions). With all this in mind, an ignostic/igtheist’s concern that we don’t have an overall idea of what constitutes divinity should be taken seriously. There are scholars that have attempted to unify the idea in some way, such as a philosophical approach to the question that reduces “God” to an entity with particular qualities. However, this only seems to answer the inquiry about the monotheistic and anthropomorphic “God”, whereas the “God” that is in some way synonymous with the universe in at least popular Hinduism and pantheism as well as the “gods” from polytheistic religions seem to be excluded because they don’t fit the original standard. In this way, the critique from an ignostic/igtheist is that there is an unjustified standard of semantic orthodoxy in many people’s minds about what “God” means. The fact that people choose not to consider whether their concept of God includes other people’s differing concepts is a problem that turns many people to the alternative of this form of Linguistic Atheism, as I’ve coined it.

The second type is that of theological noncognitivism, which says that any language concerning the divine, such as “God”, is meaningless, usually because it is not verifiable. If one cannot demonstrate any real reflection in reality or coherence of the concept termed “God”, then the term is able to be applied loosely to anything and would appear to not logically correspond to anything at all. The escalation is intriguing in that the initial ignostic/igtheist skepticism towards “God” language could be reconciled and then they would have a choice between the general typologies of Chaotic or Lawful in the two variations within each. But once you start going to the level of saying all “God” language is meaningless, it becomes nearly impossible to be anything but Neutral in the overall sense that this sphere of atheism implies. Neutrality can either be on the grounds of not having sufficient evidence to judge something; such as lack of a consistent standard for “God” or a lack of motivation or relevance of the thing in question. We’ll confront the latter next.

There are also at least two kinds of what I’ve termed Ontological Atheism. I chose this because one can say that their disbelief is concerned with the ontology, the study of causality, of their disbelief or belief in God. It isn’t that you find the term without some general and particular definitions and/or evidence, but that you either find the term irrelevant/obsolete or you find its existence and nonexistence are irrelevant. This is again a gradated system, where the first can potentially lead to the other. First we have post-theism, which admittedly has manifestations in what is called liberal Christian theology, but I find it more closely resembles Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead”. When people think of this, they usually take it literally, as if Nietzsche is somehow mocking the notion of God’s death in the Christian narrative and saying that any resurrection makes no difference, because the original God is dead. While this might have manifestations in another school of thought (Death of God theology, maybe?), Nietzsche is speaking about what the term means to society. It used to be that God was regarded with reverence. But modernization is potentially what Nietzsche sees as partly what has made us more secularized in focusing on the world at large instead of any future world or afterlife, or even the spiritual dimensions, if you will. Without going into more details than necessary, post-theism says that we have in some way outgrown God as a reality or a part of our lives in a traditional sense. Instead we have relegated God to a tradition, something ancient and archaic, but somehow still casting a long proverbial shadow in that we still definitely have the strong presence of monotheistic religion, particularly in the U.S., but also according to sociologists of religion, across the world in general. Post-theism is more difficult to justify in that it is less a personal judgment than a sweeping claim about society as a whole. To defend the claim that God is meaningless for all of us is to fly in the face of the convictions of many believers that claim that their religion is undergoing a new revival of sorts, even in the face of what they also believe are the supposed End Times, persecution of Christians allegedly high (though this is nothing new).

So one may instead go along with the other side of the coin, cleverly coined apatheism. It doesn’t say that the concept of God is meaningless, though it might be implied. An apatheist is one who doesn’t believe the question of God’s existence or nonexistence matters: whether God exists or not, an apatheist doesn’t care. To claim this means complete apathy about God is disingenuous. I consider myself an apatheist, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely detached from discussions about God. There is, at best, an assumption I hold; that God’s metaphysical existence is not nearly as important as the psychological and conceptual reality, since that is what primarily motivates people’s behavior. A person will behave differently because their psychology is fundamentally adjusted by a religious/spiritual experience, such as those popularized in Pentecostalism. It doesn’t mean that any deity actually exists when a person radically changes personality or ethics. In their minds, the concept of God is real and relevant. Of course, they are concerned with whether God exists or not and will defend it staunchly to the affirmative, but the existence/nonexistence of God to an apatheist is about physical reality per se, but experiential reality. That is, people experience the world as if God is part of it through events or miracles, etc. In this way, there is a potential overlap of a theological noncognitivist and an apatheist in that they both regard some aspect of “God” as meaningless. The connection is ironically still about some kind of ontology, either linguistic for the noncognitivist; since God doesn’t fit with language objectively, it’s pointless to use it as a term; or motivational for the apatheist; since God isn’t something that compels one by necessity to act, it does not need to be concerned with.

All in all, this topic could be extended more as one has exchanges with theists and skeptics about what categories and qualities distinguish between those who reserve judgment, who judge something to be so and who judge it to not be so, all in regards just to the question of the existence/reality of “God”. Whether one believes, disbelieves or doesn’t care either way, these areas could apply in some way to theists and skeptics in that they reflect both approaches and degrees of convictions. So there’s probably some overlap of all three spheres in that we all tend towards some of each of these qualities. I’m Lawful in that I appreciate the philosophical defense of a position. I’m Chaotic in that I make an existential choice a part of my worldview as an atheist, in the umbrella sense I’ve been referring to. And I’m Neutral on two counts, one being the linguistic/semantic difficulties I’ve found with theological language, courtesy of Antony Flew’s article, “Theology and Falsification” (short read, highly recommended), the other being that the idea of “God” doesn’t seem relevant to me in a philosophical, existential, or experiential/conceptual sense, relating again to the previous two spheres. So, these categories I’ve tentatively generated could be a way to consider our beliefs on a larger spectrum beyond the umbrella terms that join us together in incidental ways, theists, as atheists or skeptics. So, until next week, when I’ll be starting again on current events hopefully, Namaste and aloha.

Atheist Alignments: Chaotic Atheism

Chaotic Atheism (Provisional Definition): Atheism that either emphasizes the individual and existential nature of the choice, usually in the explicit and strong atheist form of asserting “there is no God”, or taking the position of strong atheism a step further, actively working in some way against religion and/or theism

This form of atheism may be more difficult to divide squarely between two halves of a whole that reflects a sort of chaos or dissonance. Lawful Atheism’s difficulties were in definition and categories of what counted as genuinely atheistic and whether there was any compatibility between organized atheism in any form and a second type that underlies the saying that “organizing atheists is like herding cats,” The difficulty I noted two weeks ago about the degree of disbelief holds as very important here with the two branches of Chaotic Atheism. With Lawful Atheism, there was an affirmation of God’s nonexistence as a metaphysical default to any reasonable person, existence only coming after considerations through logic or other philosophical areas, such as ethics. A Chaotic Atheist is less inclined to say that their nonbelief is a logical necessity as opposed to something that liberates or makes them a more genuine human being. Of course, there is a contention that theistic belief can bring out the humanistic side of us; humanistic here meaning the general affirmation that humans have a nature that we can develop. But that’s where the first type I’ll discuss has a curious type of overlap with the Chaotic equivalent of theism.

First, I propose that an existential form of atheism is an underlying form of the Chaotic sphere. By existential, I specifically mean that one’s atheism is motivated by a personal choice, the goal to be either liberated in some way or to affirm oneself as an individual. This form of atheism, as self centered and egotistical as it might seem at first, is ironically in line, with some qualifications, with Christian existentialism, started by Soren Kierkegaard. It is usually understood to be a Christian, or if you will, a theistic, set of beliefs underpinned by an existential approach. One believes in God not because there is a claim of authority, a conclusive proof or even a convincing argument that admits some weaknesses, but because you have a relationship to God that you cannot deny, and must by association make what is called a leap of faith. Of course, we’re not unfamiliar with that term, but in this context, it means more than simply particular events where we have to act without significant deliberation or thought; instead, it has a far reaching effect on us. Similarly in existential atheism, one doesn’t simply behave in such a way that others would think you don’t believe in God, but you make an affirmation in the face of what would otherwise be a nihilistic world that you will persevere, you will make your own purpose as an individual in a sea of other subjects like yourself. There are, of course, stark differences between an existential atheism and theism respectively, but the common goal is affirming a core value of individual willpower. Just because you stand apart from others, either as a creation of God, or a product of what is at its core, an uncaring universe, does not mean you should view yourself as ultimately superior to lesser creations of God you are interrelated with (plants, animals, landmasses, etc) or that you should view life as not worth living and kill yourself or behave in a reckless devil-may-cry (pardon the pun) attitude. Instead, you behave with purpose because you exist, because you are alive. Regardless of if you believe that your persistence is because of your faith in an objective and ultimate entity called “God” (with other conditions attached usually) or that you persist because giving up is not in your human nature and going against slavish conformity to society or intellectual/philosophical suicide, as Camus termed any sort of belief in an ultimate purpose or purpose-giver for every human being, is preferable to literal suicide, which both atheist and theist philosophers alike would agree does not reflect a strong will, but a weak one, contrary to Greek Stoicism’s claims. In this way, the importance of the individual will in the existential worldview, however different it may be in the goals theists or atheists have in mind, can be a common, however tenuous, bond that both of those groups as humanist in the general sense share. There is the element of Chaos here, yet a nominal sort of common ground that many so called existentialist, individual atheists have among all their differences that still may come up with other areas besides belief/disbelief in God: individualism.

The second, more easily accessible notion that people may have concerning my proposal of Chaotic Atheism is the form where chaos represents hostility and opposition of some form or another to theism and/or religion. What comes to mind first in most peoples’ minds would be what has been termed the “New/Gnu Atheist” movement, contrasting with what might be understood as “Old Atheism” with nonbelievers like Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche and the like making personal choices (Nietzsche is a questionable example, though, with the potential abuse of the will to power doctrine). There is some overlap of the New Atheists with the Rational Lawful Atheists in that they both seek to defend atheism as philosophically valid, but instead of treating theism as a viable possibility in the apologetic sense of defending atheism as rationally equal in some way, there is instead with Chaotic Atheism a polemical method of criticizing the system and finding weaknesses in it to leave only the basic alternative; atheism in this case; as the choice one is compelled to by this argument’s logic. There are a number of allegations about religion and theism by New Atheists, particularly the “Four Horsemen” (biblical metaphor, lol) of the group: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. At least two of these individuals are either self identified antitheists or have expressed sentiments that are antitheistic. I use the term antitheism to distinguish what is admittedly part of the atheist umbrella term, but not exactly the best representative for its public and civil discourse. The potential for misunderstanding when you have a biologist (Dawkins), a journalist (Hitchens), a philosopher/neuroscientist (Harris) and one qualified philosopher (Dennett) all speaking in varied ways about their understandings of religion, ranging from the Abrahamic faiths to Hitchens critiquing even Eastern/Dharmic faiths as possessing dangerous potential for abuse and violence, we have the obvious retort that very few of these individuals have any skills necessary to practice even good polemics, since there are sweeping generalizations about all members of a religion and all its possible permutations. The “New Atheists”/antitheists seem to forget that there are pacifist Christians, moderate Muslims and various other examples that would contradict their claim that theism or religion as a whole is a virus or a corrupting influence on society. Only people in a minority would claim that religion or theism is perfect and the majority of other believers would admit the flaws exist but argue that it is nonetheless compelling to them in giving purpose and meaning to their lives. While that is another topic entirely, Polemic Chaotic Atheism seems to have the least effectiveness in confronting theists as equals and as imperfect human beings (which the New Atheists could be said to sparingly reference in their own books, such as The God Delusion and God is not great). In fact, it’s this form of atheism that has risen to popularity and even parody by other atheists as what is usually called “militant atheism”. If Lawful Atheists, or even Neutral Atheists don’t rise in number or at least recognition by society, the negative stereotypes about atheism in general will only persist, it would seem.

So with the dual pronged subset of Chaotic Atheism we have almost two extremes: one group that asserts its individuality in various ways and the other that asserts a position, in an ironically group centered manner in the case of the New Atheists to an extent, that is focused almost solely on the opposition and negation of their own position in the form of theism and religion. The overlap of Polemic Chaotic Atheism with Apologetic/Rational Lawful Atheism is also ironic with Dawkins and Dennett suggesting at one point the term “brights” to apply to all nonbelievers, later suggesting “supers” (which wasn’t much better). But there is the stark difference of the willingness of each group to accept some kind of civil disagreement and differences, Chaotic Polemic Atheists ironically seeming in some sense as bigoted as the religious and theists which they tend to blame. Not to say I don’t agree with them in some sense, but as some of their opponents have noted, there is some common ground with theists and religious people in that what the New Atheists oppose is a similar enemy: that of dogmatic and legalistic thinking in religion. But again, this is another topic for another time.

So next week, we’ll be talking on Neutral Atheism, which I will give a bit of a preview of my ideas: Semantic and Apathetic Neutrality respectively are the two divisions I’m positing. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Atheist Alignments: Lawful Atheism

Lawful Atheism (Tentative Definition): Atheism that either behaves with ethical or rational defense in mind as opposed to existential considerations or seeks to maintain a sense of law with an overarching system of some sort (Secular Humanism, Freethought, etc)

The start of my three part Atheist Alignment series confronts both the first of at least two dual branched systems and a second problem added on to the first problem relevant to this particular form of “atheos”. The initial difficulty I brought up previously was that atheism tends towards more innovation and invention rather than tradition and transmission. There’s very little to organize atheism under besides the basic idea of not believing in theism, though this brings up the obvious semantic difficulty of what you mean by “God” or by “theism”. This can make or break whether people consider deists and pantheists under the canon of theistic positions or whether they’re considered less than even the polytheistic pagans, who admit of some kind of personal interaction between the human and divine. It all seems to hinge on one’s orthodoxy of what proper theism consists of.

But to go into the second difficulty this two pronged sphere of atheism brings up, people might claim this only solidifies their allegation that atheism is a religion and belief system in and of itself the more one tends towards this manifestation. But to infer from the existence of certain groupings of formulated systems of atheism; such as the Fellowship of Reason and Secular Humanism; that atheism as a whole is religious is no more reasonable than saying that theism has to imply a religious organization around it, though one cannot deny that it has that tendency. There is a general idea of theism as much as there is for atheism; theism believes in the divine, usually personified in some way (not always) and atheism does not believe in the divine. While this simplification might seem unfair at first glance considering that I’m investigating the diversity of atheism, it’s only a way to demonstrate that broad generalizations of an entire group, such as theists or atheists, is not only intellectually dishonest and demonstrates a lack of critical thinking, but also makes you appear to want things to be simple for the sake of simplicity, just another excuse not to think. And I don’t think either theists or atheists as they exist among most people would advocate that we stop inquiring and thinking about these kinds of categorical and descriptive problems. I should also mention that there will be overlap between these three spheres of atheism; they’re not radically separate from each other all the time.

The first prong or subset of Lawful Atheism is less organized under specific rules or beliefs related incidentally to the general disbelief in God to one degree or another. At its core, this type of Lawful Atheism stresses rules for defending atheism and a general discipline to it that doesn’t exist so much with Chaotic or Neutral Atheism at their cores. Take Antony Flew, a former atheist technically, but well known as one of the key defenders of atheism as a philosophical position in the early 20th century. His advocacy of following the evidence where it leads, and the argument by association, is admittedly an individual choice, but it’s something he might be said to share in common with committed theistic philosophers. That is, the principle of believing based on the evidence and arguments for and against your position. He took arguments in response to his positions seriously and only in his later life did he find any evidence that he found convincing enough to motivate his belief in at least a kind of theistic god, though many might say he was still an atheist at heart with his emphasis upon a philosophical defense of his position, whatever it was, atheist or deist. His persisting suspicion towards, among other things: the Christian claims of Jesus rising from the dead, the afterlife, the free will defense against the problem of evil or other claims regarding the god he had a nominal belief in; still reflect what I would consider a Lawful Atheist position in the subset of a sort of positive rational atheism. This type emphasizes the role of logical and reasonable dialogue and arguments for the position of atheism over more individual or existential motivations that I will focus on in Chaotic Atheism next week. You might call it atheist apologetics in some way, though the term is more commonly associated with theism, so it might just create more difficulties than it solves. If Antony Flew is the shining example, then Lawful Atheism presupposes that atheism is the default position for all people and theism only comes after one finds evidence to the contrary.

The second subset of Lawful Atheism is equally broad, but also admits of more division within its wide horizon. Systems such as Secular Humanism or Freethought, among others, including the Fellowship of Reason, fall under this classification, as well as what scholars of religion have termed “secular religions”, which include Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. In this way, the second branch of Lawful Atheism is actually easier to explain, but harder to defend in the sense of representing all atheists in any general sense. The particular beliefs that are held by the majority of each group can conflict with each other, especially the ones that admit a religious character to them shared by many theistic permutations. Even Secular Humanism is accepted in some schools of thought to be a religion in and of itself, or at the very least a very detailed philosophy that creates dividing lines between itself and, say, the atheism of Antony Flew (who ironically signed Humanist Manifesto 3), more open to the possibility of God existing in some manner, even if it would only be a gradation from atheism in the method, but a drastic change from disbelief to belief based on the similar practice of reasonable arguments. When you have not only a community, but a detailed system of beliefs around that community, it begins to resemble religion more and more. In a broader sense, this type of Lawful Atheism seeks a community of one sort or another. With this in mind, the Secular Student Alliance I mentioned last week is also a permutation of this second type of Lawful Atheism in that its goal is unifying atheists in some sense, even if it isn’t under anything so constrained as any elaborate or enumerated system of beliefs, such as Secular Humanism has, along with secular religions in the sense of making a unified ethics the cornerstone of the community’s design. That is, the communal aspect is the emphasis on “law” here, whereas the “law” of reason dominates more with the former subset. Though Freethought seems to cross both these borders in that it has the group identifier aspect of the second type, yet the emphasis on reason of the first type is there in its guiding principle that nothing should be believed on insufficient evidence. But this is bound to happen with at least one system in each of these three articles, so I won’t let it get me down.

Overall, this form of atheism is probably one that people are less familiar with in the media. With a persistent flavor of more individualistic or polemic (as opposed to apologetic) kinds of atheism and less willingness to find atheists that are at least respectful on some level to theists, however much they disagree with them, it’s no wonder atheists continue to be seen as “another religion” or “anti-religious bigots” and other such tired appellations. The Secular Student Alliance’s attempt to create a community that seeks education on atheism and engages with the general population of theists is the best method so far for those not necessarily willing to take the strong philosophical method, but nonetheless want to have dialogue for understanding between believers and nonbelievers alike. And in that way, there is a common ground between theists and atheists alike here in appreciating a basic need for civility in debates and collaborations for similar ethical goals (ontological issues aside concerning the cause of ethics for atheists according to many theistic critics). So, until next time, Namaste and aloha.