According to a new poll, less than half of Icelanders identify as religious. The other half, obviously, are religious—as everyone has a religion (atheism, for instance, is a religion. When people say they are not religious, it usually means they don’t identify with a church denomination). And the younger generation in Iceland is the least likely to identify as religious, with more than 40% of young people claiming to be atheists (which means they adhere to the religion of naturalism—atheism). And 93.9% of those under 25 believe the big bang created the universe and 0.0% believe it was created by God. Zero percent! Not a single young person they asked said that God created the universe—not a single one.
Well, that was incoherent. I guess that happens when you try to type through your tears.
I find the common accusation that atheism is a religion ludicrous. It’s simply a denial of a negation: not-X is a kind of X! Ham is basically rejecting the idea of a religion at all, since in his simple little brain, everything is a religion. If that’s the case, then I’m going to join the church of Deadwood, hooplehead.
People who use the atheism is a religion argument seem to be using it pejoratively. I find that interesting.
It seems to me that “atheist”, “a-theist” originally meant “without god”, not “against god”, nor “denying god”. 90% of the time almost all so called believers are acting without “god” in their minds, so in my opinion they are then acting “a-theisticaly”. In practice nearly everyone is atheistic most of the time.
Of course I know that words change their meanings with time, so I am merely tilting at windmills I suppose, but it pleases me at the moment to do that, so I am.
Once upon a time we had religious thinkers who were rigorous and sincere in their beliefs. Perhaps they had logical flaws, or engaged in various fallacies such as begging the question, but at least there was some substance to their arguments. And being religious was considered an achievement, not a default state.
The argument that non-religious people are actually religious not only treats atheists with contempt, it also treats religions with contempt. It’s nothing more than a sophomoric debating trick, at the level of the kind of gainsaying that one expects from Monty Python’s Argument Clinic. If a lack of faith is considered to be the equivalent of faith, is that some kind of admission about just how weak this faith is in the first place?
Well, based on Hammy’s definition, I have an amazing number of hobbies and sports interests. Among myriad others, I am an A-philatelist, since I don’t collect stamps, an A-numismatist, since I don’t collect coins, an A-golfer, since I don’t waste time chasing a little white ball around a huge lawn, and an A-yachtsman, since I simply can’t afford a yacht. Now I must go to pursue my other A-activities…
I get weirded out by the “everyone has a religion” idea that religious folks like to bandy about. Because it seems so weird to me that they want to devalue their own religions in that way.
Not everyone has a religion. Everyone has beliefs. Some of these beliefs are religious beliefs. But just because you have a collection of religious beliefs that doesn’t mean that you belong to a religion. Religions are as much about worship and ritual as they are about pure belief. Atheism can’t be a “religion” because there’s no worship or ritual involved in it – nor can Deism be a “religion” because it’s just a set of beliefs. There’s no religion there, just a number of statements of belief about the universe and gods that are mostly unfalsifiable.
But Ham wants to elevate simple beliefs up to the level of an entire religion. I mean, great, I guess – I’m not sure how it helps his cause in any way to do that.
It would be nice to see you taking a prominent position on the Deadwood stage some Day.
Re: Paul @ #4…
Per Tom Lehrer…”Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? *I’ve* got a hobby re-reading _Lady Chatterly_.”
Ah, Iceland… The only country I know of that converted from a pagan religion to Christianty by a legislative vote (the Alting). Good think Hammy-boy didn’t look too deeply into Icelandic religious practices. As I understand it, there is still a fairly strong pagan/folk-belief in the country. They consult will pagans when building roads, so as not to disturb the elves.
Of course! And not-smart is a kind of smart to Ken Ham. He may be wrong, but at least he’s consistent.
Xians such as Ken Ham like to claim things like atheism (and of course evolution) is a religion because they’re trying to drag those things down to their level.
“I find the common accusation that atheism is a religion ludicrous.”
Yes, it is, of course. It’s difficult to determine whether or not the religiots actually cannot understand atheism or if the claim is just sophistry. Also very few of the faithful will, in debate, accept that the burden of proof is on them, not atheists, because atheists maintain that there’s no evidence for a deity or the supernatural.
The current crop of militant celebrity atheists probably doesn’t help the cause either.
whheydt #8:
That does seem to be a wise practice. One does not want to upset the elves. They can be mean motherfuckers.
But seriously. If there can exist something called “ceremonial deism” I don’t see why there should not be ceremonial paganism, animism and polytheism – and don’t see why it should not be preferable. Especially if it emphasises respect for nature, environment and heritage.
I thought the leading religion in Iceland was ‘Zuist’ — an phantom ancient Sumerian cult that enterprising atheists created to enable them to redistribute government tax money to the original owners — money previously collected for and distributed to religions. (Assuming I’m not imagining the whole thing).
As a result of their snubbing of god, I predict god will get angry and split Iceland in two. Further, volcanoes will erupt, spewing ash and lava across the terrain. All the people shall be cursed with blonde hair which is the mark of the devil and they shall be forced to dine on rancid shark meat.
Actually, SCOTUS has said, for the purposes of “freedom of/from religion”, atheism is religion, just like a corporation is person. Nothing but a legal fiction, but something the zealots can grasp onto for their idiocy.
re 2:
My understanding of the etymology of atheism produced the colloquial translation of “without religion”. Not focusing on the existence or non- of god, just the religion aspect. (or how I interpreted the word, YMMV).
Seems Hamster is so committed to his religion that the only way he can imagine rejecting it is to pick another one. To him apparently, atheism=”religion that is not Ham’s religion”.
regardless
Ham is showing a little number salad in the quoted block in the OP.
amusing
Typing through his tears. The tears of a clown. When there’s no one around.
slithey tove:
Your understanding is incorrect, as you can Google for yourself.
(Also, someone can be religious yet still godless; theism and irreligion only intersect)
To quote Maher (I know, but this one is good):
Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
Atheism (for me) has to do with rejecting the premise of religion. It’s a hypothesis without any evidence or predictive power, which makes it useless.
If I fell from the sky today, landing in a place without other humans, how would I ever discover the god that religion X, Y or Z describes? Using only my reason and power of observation, where would I find this vengeful, capricious deity in control of everything? Where would I even come up with the idea? Is there anything in nature that tells me beyond any reasonable doubt that there is something intelligent in control of the world?
Having been brought up without the notion of god I always found the idea silly, even before my teens I would say to others I didn’t believe in god and was surprised at their reaction. To me it was a no-brainer, why would I believe in that?
Damn! I am religious and didn’t know! Where do I sign to get my tax exemption!?
I see that Ham has finally discovered another country beyond Australia and the US. Perhaps the scales will fall from his eyes and he’ll write to his local news station, asking that they occasionally report on other countries in future — other than the ones which their country is dropping bombs on, perhaps.
There’s a difference between a religion and metaphysical belief. Atheism is the latter.
@20
At the risk of raining even more hate upon me, just because a thing is useless does not mean that it is worthless, let alone that it cannot exist. For example, art has not predictive power, and there’s no real evidence that something is or isn’t a work of art, and pure aesthetic art has no use or purpose, but art exists and we can say it’s good, we don’t have to justify art’s value or existence in terms of a provable hypothesis. We can, but even if we don’t art still exists.
Saying the lack of evidence excludes the existence of something is a sort of logical positivism — we take empirical evidence, draw an inferential truth: “god does not exist,” and then accept that inference as being as real as the evidence that it rests upon. There isn’t really a problem here, but a smartass will reply that we cannot safely assume that our reason is as reliable as our senses; these smartasses are usually trying to construct a God hypothesis out of something called “reliablism,” but the God they posit is pretty much incompatible with any orthodox Christian belief about the God (or really any traditional religious tradition.)
Reliablists are sort of projecting their own biases, they think that reason is unreliable; of course the first piece of evidence in support of this hypothesis is the fact that people for thousands of years took for granted the existence of gods, based on nothing more than their meat-brains and the empirical evidence.
@1
It’s not even that complicated. Ham just wants to prove atheism is a religion for crassly political reasons; he wants to be able to walk into a public school or a government science lab or wherever and declare that, if you aren’t teaching a flatly Christian worldview, that you’re a religious zealot that should be hauled into court for indoctrinating kids/using government money to promulgate religious dogma.
Wouldn’t this also discredit his beliefs, you say? Not really, all he wants is to be able to bring court cases in sympathetic constituencies where he knows the school board or circuit court will take a blind eye to Jesus-riding-dinosaurs textbooks, and any lawsuits against them could be cowed into submission. He knows the political establishment in a lot of places has a pro-Christian bias and in the event he can displace secularism in this or that public domain, he and his allies can just start shouting “Traditional Christian Nation Arglebargle!” until they get what they want. It’s not a consistent worldview, it’s just a rhetorical strategy to win marginal court cases and school board disputes.
We should remember that Ham makes a good living pushing creationism. So he’s complaining that there’ll not be a lot of Icelanders visiting his “museum”.
sigaba:
<snicker>
What has worth perforce has utility, O philosopher.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/02/iceland-temple-norse-gods-1000-years
To make Ham even sadder, they are booting his god in favor of another set. Though to honest, at least Odin fought for us against the frost giants which is more than Kenny’s has been able to offer.
I’ll grant you that
is wrong, ridiculous and illogical.
However, as confusing as it may be,
is factual, cogent and logical.
To be fair, Computer Science always gives me the heebie-jeebies and those awful shakes.
Iceland does have some atheistic groups that are treated as recognized religions, notably Siðmennt with 1,020 members in January 2015 (and 612 in 2014). Zuism had 4 members in January 2015 but apparently many joined in 2015 using it to dodge out of the tax (everyone pays the tax, if you officially belong to a recognized religion it goes there otherwise it goes to the state, Zuism apparently claims it will return it to you).
Siðmennt commissioned the poll of 18 questions. See http://sidmennt.is/2016/01/21/life-stances-and-religious-views-of-icelanders/
@John
(angry man in marker pen font) Oh, why would we want to monkey up a dispute on the non-existence of god with philosophy! /s
Things like art and love have worth, but have no real utility, unless you want to bring in some evo-psych justification for the formation of human emotions as some sort of survival strategy… We don’t typically talk about people “using” things like love, or beauty, or trust; at least not in a desirable, normative way. When we think of these things in terms of their utility it usually means someone’s being exploited (which is why creepers love evo-psych).
And then there’s things like dignity: your mother has worth but the question of wether or not she’s useful is subjective at best and a little disgusting at worst. Utility isn’t really a concept that’s applicable to people, but people have worth; even worse, there people that are, for all practical intents and purposes, completely useless, people in persistent vegetative states, or people who are merely dead. Abraham Lincoln is useless, but saying he is worthless would presuppose a pretty narrow context of meaning.
But even more generally, how do you know that that which has worth perforce has utility? Is it an axiom or do you base it on your experience? And if the latter, is your experience with worthy things exhaustive? Or are you making an induction?
sigaba, you’re funny.
Because nobody can influence another via art or love, right?
(And influencing others is not at all useful!)
Your “we” excludes a not-insignificant portion of people, O saintly one.
Heh. Even the Pope has claimed he would punch someone who dissed his mom!
Ok, you’re an ignoramus.
Semantics.
It is a biconditional that what is useful has worth so that what has worth is useful.
In other words you made it up. Saying that they’re “biconditional” is just a tautology, it’s just a jargon way of saying “perforce.” Congratulations, you can do words.
As far as I’m concerned if you scorn Ken Ham you’re on the side of all that is good and decent, your enemy is right. To believe that atheism is a kind of religion is stupid, misguided and fallacious.
You can mock Ken Ham. But if you seriously accept, uncritically and with no justification, a pat slogan like “what is worthy is perforce useful,” you’re really not holding yourself to the same intellectual standard as you’re demanding of Ken Ham, assuming such a low standard can be conceived. What does the world need with another dumb atheist? Or worse, an atheist who goes around proving the non-existence of god and the value of human experience with formal logic, and then tells people it’s just “semantics.” Schmuck.
Sigaba, your flailing keeps amusing me.
Nope. A biconditional expresses X ↔ Y, whilst a tautology expresses X = T.
But then, you’re clearly a simpleton.
(It is logically possible for someone not on the side of all that is good and decent to deride Ham, which would lead to a contradiction)
I haven’t demanded anything of Ken Ham, rather, I’ve addressed your silliness.
You believe that I am demanding a standard which needs to be assumed possible to conceive?
(Whence this purported need? ;) )
Nothing — but nonetheless, you exist.
Leaving aside that I have made no claims about god here, do you not see how far you have come from your initial contention, to wit, that something can be useless yet nonetheless have worth?
Ooh, can Oscar Wilde get involved in this debate?
“Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.”
As far as I can tell, it’s incorrect to call atheism a religion, but it can be considered a belief system, or rather a group of belief systems that have in common a rejection of the possibility of deities. A lot of people, apparently including Ham, think of religions and belief systems as being the same thing, which if true would introduce lots of new religions to the world!
As sigaba pointed out in #24, there is a barely hidden political motive in this – if creationists can get a scientific worldview labeled as a religion, they can charge that teaching generally accepted scientific principles that they don’t like, particularly evolution, is “teaching religion in schools”.
springa73:
All cognitive content is definitionally a ‘belief’, but that doesn’t entail that it is an ideology — i.e. a belief system.
Again: Atheism is at base a privative concept — the lack of theism. It has implications, but only in the context of a larger philosophy.
(It’s every bit as silly as calling aSantaClauseism — the belief that Santa Claus is not a real being — a religion)
Yeah, but sigaba is full of shit; also, most of us know that a label is not the same as that which is labelled.
(Also, did you not notice how Ham imagines that “93.9% of those under 25 believe the big bang created the universe” is not a form of creationism? It should be obvious that to claim that X created Y is definitionally creationism)
springa73 @35
“it’s incorrect to call atheism a religion, but it can be considered a belief system, or rather a group of belief systems that have in common a rejection of the possibility of deities.”
No. Atheism doesn’t reject the possibility of deities, atheists maintain that there’s no evidence for the existence of deities and that the onus of proof is on the believer, not the atheist. There’s Russell’s famous ‘orbiting teapot’ example of how that applies. Atheism is also not a belief system, how can it be on that definition?
” if creationists can get a scientific worldview labeled as a religion, they can charge that teaching generally accepted scientific principles that they don’t like, particularly evolution, is “teaching religion in schools”.
Agreed, their tendentious arguments are completely transparent, it’s possible that they really don’t comprehend the difference between atheism and theism, although I doubt it. There’s also the problem of theodicy which the faithful quite naturally sweep under the carpet.
John Morales:
Is that actually the distinction you’re trying to make? Single, non-systematic beliefs only have implications “in the context of a larger philosophy.” It’s hard to imagine an exception to that. Feel free to provide a better example, but here’s one: you think you’re staring at a monitor right now, reading some words that I typed…. But that wouldn’t make sense with you having some system of beliefs that include the existence of light, vision, computer monitors, written languages, me, and so forth — a system that works to make such ideas work together in a coherent way. That may not amount to an ideology in the usual sense (or it’s a trivial one that nearly everyone has), but the point is that I don’t see how atheism is supposed to be different.
Maybe I just don’t get what I’m supposed to have in mind when considering a non-systematic sort of atheism. It would just be a single isolated belief of some sort (with some content, presumably, pertaining to the nonexistence of a certain class of alleged entities), and this kind of atheist doesn’t think it has any systematic implications about the entirety of the natural world (e.g., that it wasn’t created by an intervening personal theistic god, or created by one or not that there are no such things doing anything with/to/in/about the world)?
Or do these atheists simply not try to systematically formulate all such implications to themselves, even though they do have some definite ideas about some of them? Are there any actual living, breathing atheists who have this pure form of the real or bare or decontextualized atheism? Does it just happen to be the case that there are no such people but that potentially it’s still not logically ruled out, given the (very sparse, etymological and perhaps unhelpful) way that you’ve defined your terms (as “the lack of theism”)? If we don’t hold to your ideology about what the word fundamentally means, then what are we to do outside of that larger philosophical context you’ve created, if you acknowledge that your idea of it may not have any implications about whatever ours may be?
Of course, what precisely the implications of atheism might be, according to one person or another, who has one ideology or another, does depend on the context of that individual and what the rest of their “system” is like. I’m not disagreeing with that, although I don’t see how it’s relevant. But it’s not clear what you think the bare, isolated, unsystematized thing could be at the “base” which supposedly lacks such features altogether.
We don’t have to maintain any claims about epistemology. We are making a claim about what exists, which is a metaphysical claim. Methodologies or what’s evidence or how to interpret the evidence or who supposedly needs to do what in an argument … those aren’t a necessary feature. You could file that stuff under “best practices for atheists” or “good, useful, solid advice for atheists that I think is the correct way to argue for it and put theists in their place,” but they don’t go in “what makes an atheist an atheist” or “what atheism is.” If something thinks they can logically deduce that gods don’t exist, or that they can’t possibly exist, they’re wrong (at far as I’ve ever seen), but in fact it is still the case that they do disbelieve in gods, making them atheists.
It’s true that they don’t correctly define the rest of us (the vast majority of us) by using a certain logical approach that is supposed to entail the impossibility of gods and claiming that their approach is essential to the belief itself, which is fair enough since (like I just said) you also don’t get to do the same thing.
If someone thinks they can … blah blah blah. Not something. Getting tired.
Everyone seems to be focused on the “atheism is a religion” thing, but what bothers me more is that Ham seems to be bashing another country for having fewer religious people than his, and for virtually no one in Iceland buying into his pseudoscientific bullshit. I’m sure he sees Iceland as some sort of wretched den of evil atheists.
It always infuriates me when religious shitballs think that they’re in any place to condemn another country for not buying into nutty fundamentalist doctrine. I don’t know much about Iceland, but on a cursory glance it seems to be a perfectly nice country, albeit one going through some economic turmoil, that doesn’t need any frothing, sanctimonious fundamentalism slapped onto it.
Bottom line, Ham and his cronies are dead wrong about fundamentalism being necessary for a moral, functioning society, and if anything fundamentalists like them actually make the countries that they live in worse.
consciousness razor @38:
Yup. That of a belief vs. a belief system.
(I am not its originator)
A belief on its own, rather than a mutually-supportive system of beliefs.
(e.g. apatheism)
That it’s true suffices.
Emergence, you make a good point.
One should not fall into the trap of imagining Ken Ham to be stupid. He has a wily intelligence that has made him lots of money for no useful work. He aims his writings at stupid people and makes money from them, doing huge damage to the education of children vulnerable because of their parents’ ignorance.
I shouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Ham didn’t believe a word of his own bullshit.
#1 :”People who use the atheism is a religion argument seem to be using it pejoratively. I find that interesting.”
Me too. You can almost see the inferiority complex poking through the bluster. Hence the desperate attempts to drag science down to their level.
#24: “Ham just wants to prove atheism is a religion for crassly political reasons; he wants to be able to walk into a public school or a government science lab or wherever and declare that, if you aren’t teaching a flatly Christian worldview, that you’re a religious zealot that should be hauled into court for indoctrinating kids/using government money to promulgate religious dogma.”
Possibly. If so, it’s a sign of even more desperation. Ham must know that legally discrediting science is a pipe dream. My take is it’s more about teaching his rubes how to verbally spar with atheists. They may not win the argument, but they never have to cede it either, because after all if it’s just one religion vs another, they know the Jesus-religion is the correct one. Thus It’s getting harder to argue with the more motivated ones since they learn their lessons well, and once they regurgitate them, they consider it case closed and tune out any counter arguments. Ham knows they just need (and want) to be trained in a few simple specious arguments, and they’re good to go.
John Morales @36
Again: Atheism is at base a privative concept — the lack of theism. It has implications, but only in the context of a larger philosophy.
(It’s every bit as silly as calling aSantaClauseism — the belief that Santa Claus is not a real being — a religion)
I agree that atheism entirely by itself can’t be considered an ideology or belief system because it’s really just a statement of lack of belief in a particular concept. I was making the mistake of using “atheism” as shorthand for the larger belief systems that it is often part of, which I think is a common mistake.
Yeah, but sigaba is full of shit; also, most of us know that a label is not the same as that which is labelled.
(Also, did you not notice how Ham imagines that “93.9% of those under 25 believe the big bang created the universe” is not a form of creationism? It should be obvious that to claim that X created Y is definitionally creationism)
Well, I think that sigaba is pretty accurate about Ham’s motivations – Ham’s attempt to equate science with religious belief is bs, but I think that’s what he’s trying to do. As other posters have pointed out, this is kind of ironic, because his argument really boils down to “science is no better than my subjective, unreliable beliefs”. He’s implicitly denigrating his own belief system.
I don’t think that Ham counts something as “creationism” unless it is Biblically literal creationism. Silly, but “creationism” has become shorthand for taking the Genesis account literally.