Comments on: I Don’t Believe in Atheists

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:26:16 +0000

I think from what I can see everyone has their biases and the makeup of many departments in history and the humanities reflects those biases. Not everyone is so blinded by them of course. And a lot of it is simply not finding something interesting so you don’t focus in on it and are thus ignorant. I think it’s rarely any kind of malice.

I think that’s what’s different with this relatively small subset of atheists. They see religion – especially certain religions – as a threat and treat them with a kind of malice. Of course many religious people are just as bad if not worse. Of course we, as Mormons, know that with some of the fun fundamentalist Evangelicals who truly fear and hold malice towards Mormons. And frankly given the choice of those fundamentalists and the New Atheists I’d take the atheists every time.

By: Gerald Smith

Gerald Smith — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:25:16 +0000

At the recent Mormons and American Life seminar at IUPUI (Indianapolis), William Deverell (Prof of History, USC), spoke on Mormonism, California and the upcoming Civil War. He started with a rebuke to Western historians that tended to ignore religion as a component with the settling of the West. He stated, “western historians ignored Mormons in the gold fields, as if some Mormons accidentally overshot Utah and found themselves in California.” Sometimes it seems as if humanist scholars are so focused on creating a history that is not biased by religion that they totally exclude it.
Of course, often when they do include a bit on religion, it is usually the sensational and negative. Hence, we get many that tell how terrible Islam is, when it is only a segment of that society that is dangerous.
So, for me, much of the issue is just the point of ignoring religion. Yes, some new Atheists seek to destroy religion, or at least attack it. We don’t really see most Baptists actively attacking Mormons, either; but we definitely remember and dwell on the few that do make waves.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:09:39 +0000

That’s the big reason I don’t think it is fundamentalism. I think that at best it works as an allegory. I think the main points of similarity is that one demonizes members of the other group; one projects a utopia if everyone just believed like you; and one tends to talk is absolutes.

But religious fundamentalists tend to take a narrow overly literalistic and inerrant view of some set of texts. Now I think some Marxists used to fit the fundamentalist mold in terms of how they took various Marxist texts. But I don’t think there are too many Marxists of that stripe left anymore. All the Marxists I know are pretty self-critical and take a skeptical view of Marx and later Marxist writers. So it’s a more critical approach to the texts. I suspect that there are a few environmentalists who might fit the fundamentalist mold more. But even there I’d be pretty cautious. And of course most environmentalists don’t have texts they adopt too strongly. Now I’ve met alternative medicine and health food folks who do fit the fundamentalist mold.

I like to think the New Atheists make up a small segment of all atheists just as American fundamentalists make up a small segment of Christianity.

The issue of belief isn’t really at issue as I see it. Rather it is how one views ones beliefs and those who don’t hold the beliefs. (For the record I can’t see you being one of the New Atheists)

By: Michael Dorfman

Michael Dorfman — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:31:25 +0000

How can I tell if I am a “new” or “old” Atheist?

Also, how similar, really, is “New Atheism” (whatever that might be) to fundamentalism? Are you suggesting that it involves a dogmatic reliance on single text (or other fixed body of dogma)?

Maybe it’s my own bias, but I’d like to think that there is an epistemological difference in status between “I believe in Santa Claus” and “I don’t believe in Santa Claus”, and that this might be relevant to the issue at hand.