Atheism, and the secular
philosophies that support it or are derived from it, do not provide useful
answers to human problems, drives and needs. What answer does atheism
provide to this common plaint: "I never attended church much, I really
didn’t bother myself about religion. I drank, suffered clinical
depression, and tried more than once to kill myself. All of that ended on
the day that I found Jesus/Islam/______________ (insert name in blank
space)."
Part, if not all, of the
problem derives from the struggle to provide a definition for its name.
It’s mind-boggling to realize that even very few atheists agree what this
simple, definable concept means. Many dictionaries fail to provide an
accurate definition. Politicos and superstitious cultists slur it and fear
it for no real reasons. The error lies in the perception of atheism as a
primary motivation. Atheism is not a primary force behind any beliefs or
philosophies, but may be the result of many. Science, for example, is a
naturally atheistic pursuit at the present stage of its development. An
ultimate act of science may be to discover a god, at which time that
statement no longer will be true, so atheism cannot honestly be said to be
its operating motivation. Even at that, most scientists take great care to
avoid public pronouncements about the interests religions indulge in.
Atheism is not a cause, it is
the absence of one, or the product of one. All of the philosophies that
appear to be derived from it answer not to the needs of humanity, but only
exist to describe a view of existence wherein atheism appears by default
due to the complete absence of any gods. Were there a driving force behind
any of them, a "good works" philosophy that drove its proponents to spread
them, to induce guilt because of lack of support and involvement, to gain
the moral high ground when "witnessing" to those who might have expressed
their own doubts, I would not be writing this. Atheism alone has none of
that. It cannot, and remain as atheism.
As it is now approached in our
cultures, atheists seek only to counter-philosophize religion, to separate
religion from prominent places in governance, and to influence us as to
religion’s baselessness. While I entirely believe that is a right thing to
do, I see it as wrong for so long as atheism has nothing to offer in
replacement of what it seeks to take away. Where are the great atheistic
slogans, not written to counter theism, but to state its own great truths?
What great atheist has there been for us to emulate with our own lives?
How can we build a monument to honor nobody who inspires us to honor,
charity, dedication to truth, reason and rational living and the pursuit
of happiness?
First is to realize that the
way we go about the conceptualizing of atheism may be entirely in reverse
of correctness, an effect that may be in response to condemnatory theism.
Whatever philosophies may have spawned our atheism, it is the atheism on
its own that cultists will attack. By allowing them to lead us away from
our actual philosophies, we seem too willing to allow cultish theists to
determine our own modes of thought, and therefore our perceptions about
ourselves and our actual beliefs.
Rather than make those
determinations in a fact-seeking manner, we do it as a reaction to their
aggressive encroachments upon
our higher moral
ground, which we then feel forced to defend. Outnumbered, out-talked,
and outflanked, we seldom develop an actual cogent philosophy by which we
can state the things we actually do believe in, except to offer up a name
such as ‘minimalism’, ‘materialism’, ‘determinism’ or ‘whatever’, which
contain no definite systems of values with which we demonstrate our
progressive ideals. Instead, we talk about issues and proofs, an
aggravating waste of our time and effort.
Once in that mode, we never get
to leave it, because we discover there will be no end to a supply of
cultists willing to go on the attack against us just because the very fact
of our godless existence shines a light of deep doubt upon their own
rectitude and upon what appears to them attempts to replace their
carefully nurtured sets of values with the emptiness of our nihilism. They
threaten us and we feel threatened. We react with a denial of all their
charges and accomplish nothing but the deepening and a widening of the
scope of their threats that, by our
foolish repetition
of them in our statements of denial, we actually end up reinforcing and
promoting. We know that but for governmental intervention and the rule of
law, it could escalate overnight to the point of physical violence and, we
know, that still it sometimes has.
It is this immoral aspect of
cultish theism that prevents proactivism and good works by any
subculture’s members other than those who belong to the majority. Although
it may be subtle, done in such a way to appear innocuous to anyone
uninvolved, even members of different divisions of the same cult or sect
will receive the taunts, the vandalism, the subtle threats that they know
could escalate into hard-to-explain violence. Practices of different cults
in the same geographical area may often interfere with each other, or irk
each other, or actually be of practices and beliefs the opposing cult has
deemed to be immoral. Many American laws have been written only to this
end, to support the cult’s position with the upper hand in numbers. The
sheer fact of its presence makes all cults regard atheism –a denial or
statement of doubt of their fundamental precepts– to be immoral, a threat
to their position in the culture and, not a statement of a truth, but a
statement about nothing being true.
Atheists inherit all this by
default, by accepting cultish statements regarding them as something to
rebel against, and as the only way to view themselves. Can there be an
atheist culture?– no. Atheism is not a cult, a statement of belief from
which cults and their cultures arise. Is atheism a memeplex? No! Atheism
in its purest form is but a statement of unbelief, and even then that will
only be true if the atheist is aware of some idea of something to say he
does not believe in. Atheism in its purest form will be oblivious to the
concept of belief. In its purest form, the atheist will be unaware of
atheism because he or she remains unaware of theism.
That will not occur in cultish
societies, where each cult deems it to be its acquired task and reason for
existence, that it should send its members forth to accost each and every
individual alive with dogma and precepts it upholds. Atheism has no venue
to support for the doing of such, nor any common ground for atheists to
stand on for much of any kind of shared activity. Atheists may claim their
nonbelief to be drawn from precepts of materialism, or humanism, or
secularism, or Buddhism, or communism, or simple unacceptance of
irrational theological dictums; but none can rationally, reasonably claim
that any doctrines or beliefs arise only from precepts of atheism. Atheism
is neither a religion nor a science. Such cannot exist. It results from
both, but causes neither.
While any atheist might insist
plenty of science-based facilities operate for the purposes of offering
help to people such as the man in our introduction, they act to place
themselves aloof and separate from those seeking help. Visit a typical
medical clinic of any kind, faith-based or not, and observe a complicated,
expensive, inefficient and ineffective rigamarole in operation. Fill out
forms, and wait. Talk to a subordinate and wait. Discover why those on
each side of you are there, see how long they have already been waiting,
and wait. Drop down on your knees and plea for help, and see where you get
carried (or driven) off to.
Science based –or secular–
facilities are unavailable to most of us for much of anything beyond the
most rudimentary care. One simple test can cost a month or more of your
wages, the only resource the majority of us have, and you might succeed at
suicide while awaiting the results. Worrying about the expense might drive
you to it. Having worked for the sake of insurance doesn’t offer that much
help. Worrying about whether they will refuse to pay –after the fact of
your indebtedness for something you have no qualifications to evaluate–
only adds to your stress. Insurance and the dispensing of drugs drives the
medical establishment, not science or secular reasoning. The bottom line
is numerical only, dedicated to a god named Dollar.
What kind of institution can
secular approaches develop for an impoverished, ill-educated,
problem-ridden human being to turn to for the same price as Jesus, Buddha,
or Muhammad? "I am self-dependant and self-directed" does not make for
much of a slogan when one’s self is leading one astray, when one’s self
has fallen too ill to keep the job providing the questionable insurance,
when other selves have abandoned oneself, and oneself has gotten
desperate. Where can (s)he turn for the price of a prayer and gain a
secular answer?
How should we go about seeking
an answer to that, or even making a determination that we should?
I would recommend we first
define our moral base and the way it must be perceived and understood. To
do that requires we abandon all responses to cultish theism, and to
recognize which approaches to a naturalistic doctrine were made as a
result of theistic instigations. No conceptions should be allowed that
would require a mystical influence for their origins, and no conceptions
should be allowed that cannot be verified as valid. Accomplishing just
this much might take years, and result in much hostility and rage, but is
likely more than worth the risks, the infighting, and the inevitable
taunts and attempts to influence from cultish theists. No area of the
relevant cultures should be left uninvestigated, tested, and evaluated and
documented. The main aim of such investigation should likely be to bring
an accord to the various secularist doctrines by finding scientific ways
to test them. Otherwise, we all must subscribe to and endorse diligent
application of the principles
of parsimony and defeasibility. Science has not made any real inroads to
culture. With no real excuse for otherwise, it may be time for it to
begin, while opportunity still knocks, and while we still can answer.
The "herd of cats" ought to
begin working on how to recognize their mutualities and shared
endangerment as being of greater importance than their differences, which
are mostly derived from idealistic opinions rather than any kinds of
facts. A rule could be devised: "If it inspires controversy, test it,
accept the results and go on with new business." The construction of a set
of agreeable moral standards should enable a teamwork atmosphere in which
work could begin on the setting of worthwhile goals for secular groups. An
approach that recognizes how natural talents and inclinations may work
together –such as in my eBook, 1Creative
Dissatisfaction– for the mutual benefit of individuals and the overall
society will likely come from that, and be seen as the most moral of all
possible approaches to cultural development.
Any unit depends upon the
quality of its components for its own quality, and upon the quality of
their assembly. In a truly quality-oriented cultural setting, the
individual would be of paramount interest, as would his or her
relationship to the overall unit. There should be no one in such a setting
whose problems of coping with his or her existence would equal those of
our introductory example. The aim of the entire culture would be to
bolster that individual to his or her best fit and provide all the
necessary help required to achieve that, thus making welfare obsolete for
all but the absolutely incapacitated. We would not all be seen by some
arbitrary standard as ‘equals’, except as being equally important to our
own selves, and to the unit in its entirety, the same as a lugnut is as
important to an automobile as any other component. We cannot all be
multi-channel stereos, nor do we all want to be, nor do we want the story
with which this page began to be our own. There is no great morality to be
found in a culture where that story is prevalent among its members.
Atheism, by its simple
definition, will never accomplish any of this. It would come about under
another name, or with another name attached to it. I like the idea of
calling it Progressive Panatheism or Progressive Secularism,
a less restrictive name. I like the idea that it needs to be
started up and done even better, whatever it might get called by others
down the road.
But who, given the lack of
impetus in atheism, would gain the vision required to foster such an
effort as all that would require? Atheism is a lost cause because, as
stated, it is no cause, but only the product of other causes. Those afraid
of atheists are foolish, or looking for scapegoats for their own failures,
or afraid of facts such as lead to atheism. When looking at atheism as a
cause for anything, you are misleading yourself. An honest look at what
brought the atheism about will show you that atheism acts only as a child
of other agendas, if it acts at all.
