Faulty Atheism Articles
I came across two articles on Atheism recently from two different, but reputed authors.
One from Jug Suraiya in Times of India. (Atheism is the best worship)
The other from Manu Joseph in OPEN magazine. (The Decency of the Atheist)
As you can guess from the titles (do read the articles too!), the authors are trying to make a case for Atheism. Personally, I have no stand on Theism, Agnosticism or Atheism. Each one has its own positive and negative value systems and arguing one against another would be a futile exercise.
However, what got my attention was the striking similarity in the structure of these two articles and the gigantic logical fallacy both make.
In summary, Jug says,
“If God himself is a Babu who can be bribed to do your bidding with a prayer and a few diyas or candles, where’s the harm in slipping some currency notes to a bureaucrat or politician or policeman to do what you want done? Doesn’t God himself teach us to bribe? In which case, how can bribery and corruption be bad things, if they’re God-given?
The atheist not only lives according to a higher code of ethics than that sanctioned by a bribable God, but also inhabits a higher plane of spirituality.”
Manu Joseph goes even further and declares,
“There is this unsung decency about atheists, as they are loosely called. They know there is no hot weather hell, there is no punitive rebirth as an earthworm, yet they never hope to benefit through evil. They do not create traffic jams, they do not create noise, their charity is never a pathetic transaction.
They just go about their lives without harming anyone, even though they know nobody is watching.”
Did you notice the fallacy? It went something like this.
Theists bribe God.
Theists grovel before God.
Theists believe somebody is watching.
And hence, Atheists are good, wonderful people.
There are many examples to prove Atheists have done harm to other people. All the well known dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao were atheists. These three were responsible for the death of millions of people across the world. Then, there was Communist Pol Pot, who killed as many as 2 million of his countrymen in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il are of the same bent. So, even though nobody was watching (according to Manu Joseph) or bribing them (according to Jug), they went about killing a lot of people.
Can I quote Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro and then come to a conclusion that all theists are good, wonderful people using the same brush that the two authors use? It would be highly erroneous to come to that conclusion. There have been a lot of religious wars in the past (Crusades for example, and not to speak of the lunatic extremist fringe that we have currently) which resulted in the death of thousands of people. Lot of geographical and political bifurcations have been done on the basis of religion – and not always to the benefit of the population involved. So, even though someone was watching and bribing, Theism led to a lot of killings.
Can I then make an argument that since Theism only killed thousands of people while Atheism led to killing millions of people, Theism is slightly better than Atheism? Absolutely not. That would be a specious argument.
I presume that these authors are taking refuge in the ever insightful and brilliant Richard Dawkins’s argument, “What matters is… whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does. Atheistic individuals may do bad things, but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism”. Very true indeed. However, that’s only a part of the picture. How about the systematic expansion and influence of Theism on Art, Culture, Education, Architecture over thousands of years? Shouldn’t that be a part of the consideration when you make the Theists vs Atheists argument? I think it should.
I think, on a fundamental basis, theism and atheism try to achieve the same goal, albeit with different means. Theism propagates concepts such as seven deadly sins, karma, rebirth et al, so that people who believe in a particular faith (be it Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc) be honest, hardworking people who think good and do good. At a rudimentary level, there is an inherent incentive-disincentive basis to the theistic concept. Atheism on the other hand, banks on the concept of ‘conscience’ and formulates its own incentive-disincentive scheme (When I do wrong, I feel very bad, for example).
Painting with a broad brush and using logical fallacies to make sweeping statements about theists or atheists is editorially wrong, fundamentally more so. I hope the authors do get the message one day or the other. Or the editors stop publishing such articles. Either way, we’ll have less of these syllogistic arguments.
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1. Hitler was not an athiest, he was a roman catholic. The crimes committed by these atheists have got nothing to do with atheism. In hitler’s case , it was some belief that aryans are a superior race , in stalin’s case , it was marxism. That they were bad people had nothing to do with what god they believed in. In the supreme leader of N. Korea’s case , you can call it a religion, in that somehow he has made people believe that he is the “god” of n. korea and his people. He does not believe in a personal god , but he treats himself as one , so i dont call it atheism.
My point is , that being an atheist does not drive you to be bad , other factors contribute. But you know as well as I do what the final words of the people who drove a plane into the WTC in NY were. That was religion driven , and there lies a case.
As Feynman said “good people will do good , evil people will do evil. But it takes religion to make a good person do evil”
1) Hitler wasn’t atheist. He was a staunch Roman Catholic and his faith directly influenced his anti-Semitic and xenophobic (at large, he was to make the Slavs extinct too) political views.
2) Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc. did not kill in the name of atheism. They killed in the name of their lofty execution of Marxism. No one claimed atheism gives anyone moral superiority, it’s very foundations lay on highlighting the indifference that such views should have on people’s lives.
3) Everyone agrees to, and venerates, the influence of theism on art, culture and architecture. None of us wants to burn churches or suppress religious activity (as long as it doesn’t violate civility, which is rarely the case) here. Hitler, like it or not, changed the shape of the World in the last century. So did the Soviet Union. Does that mean we turn ourselves into Nationalist Socialist shitholes? No, just like there is no need to drown ourselves further into this sanguine sea of bigotry known as theism.
4) Your comparison falls flat on it’s face because simply, atheism has no goals. A more rationale and humane outlook is what we desire, the people, not our ideal. Hell, it isn’t even an ideal. Is your knowledge (I refuse to use the word belief) that Harry Potter is mere fiction and shouldn’t influence your kid’s real-world activities an ideal? No, it’s fucking common sense.
5) Now to a point you mentioned earlier in your post, plainly because I consider myself mentally traumatized by it. THOUSANDS? MERE THOUSANDS? I’m sorry, but you need to seriously go back to your History class. How many cultures and civilizations were obliterated by the military-styled spread of Islam? How many have died due to religious violence in our own country, forgetting the Crusades of Eurasia and Scandinavia that easily add a power of tens to the first quantity. The number goes in billions. Grave, w.r.t. of the 6 billion Human population we have, but true.
6) I could blame you for your fallacious logic, and the hypocrisy of blaming the above 2 authors for it, but I guess your grossly inadequate knowledge of History needs more of an undertaking from your side.
As long as we’re beating the “execution numbers” dead horse, did you look up and see that fanatic clinging to religious or spiritual faith has killed more people than all the other wars put together? You can start by reading about the brutality of the Christian crusades perhaps? I don’t even have to start about the Islamic conquerors. The catholic church has done a great job of controlling and brainwashing the masses, over a billion parrots in its fold.
Nik, Falak and Jagadish – Thanks for visiting, and welcome to my blog.
@Nik – In essence, we don’t have an authentic definition for atheism then? What is atheism? Non-believer in God? Belief in Self? or both? In either of these cases, all the examples I have mentioned are atheists. The nomenclature of Fascist or Marxist are totally different and the comparison would be that of apples and oranges. To the Feynman quote, no doubt…religion did lead to a lot of evil things, and I did indicate the same (crusade wars etc.). What beat me was the sweeping assumption of Atheism is the best thing that has ever happened. How? Why? There was no proper justification.
@Falak – Thanks for your comments. With respect to the Hitler, Stalin argument, please refer my response above. To point 5, I did mention “Can I then make an argument that since Theism only killed thousands of people while Atheism led to killing millions of people, Theism is slightly better than Atheism? Absolutely not. That would be a specious argument.” I have no ability nor an estimate to even get to the actual number and compare vis-a-vis. Even if I do get to it, number comparison would be a foolish argument because of the ratio of population involved then to what it is now. Millions, Billions…sure. To your point 4, which sounds logical…for the record, I never stated Theism is better than Atheism. What I did say was ‘Atheists don’t grovel before God, doesn’t mean they are all good and rational and wonderful’…which was the point the authors were trying to make. And to point 6, totally agree with you – my knowledge of World History is poor and I don’t know when it might get to good even after reading a lot of books. Absolutely no counter-argument there.
@Jagadish – As I stated in my response to Falak above, I never attempted to compare numbers and say which one is more at fault. That would be a pointless exercise. Of course religion caused many wars leading to thousands, millions or maybe billions of deaths. And so did Atheism. What I did try to point out was the faulty logic in claiming atheists are good, wonderful people because they don’t pander or grovel before a God or don’t bribe a God. There is neither statistical or logical evidence to prove such a sweeping statement.
There are about 2 points left for addressing. Much better than the multiple trajectories usual strawmen “debates” take.
The definition of Atheism was never pulled into question. It stands clear in any dictionary to anyone not interested in pointlessly entangling the issue in postmodern intellectual procrastination. The point was, it wasn’t the motive behind their atrocities. And of course Fascism and Marxism are different, that’s why I mentioned “lofty execution.” They did it wrong. They put class struggle over the common good of people, as the Dalai Lama puts it. Atheism simply doesn’t get credit for anything, not for the bad, not for the good that I or anyone else does. It simply holds no causative force on the actions of ANY people. Just like being left-handed or having a Baritone voice do not.
And, I’m in total agreement with your ending statements. Atheists being good people by default is plain out absurd and a sick joke in the face of the rational outlook most claim to possess. But, how good are your faulty accusations to something not even capable of the crime? Would you “unite” with fellow Harry Potter non-fans and start bombings and desecrations? No, to say someone does ANYTHING in the name of LACK of belief is absurd. Sure, we want separation of Church and State, sure we do not want religion to hamper scientific understanding of the general populace, sure we want less hold of religion on society which has continuously demonstrated to be nothing more than power-hungry and chauvinistic, with no hesitation to commit crimes worse than one could imagine … but I ask you, beyond beliefs, which Human would not?
P.S.: You don’t need to read History books, the atrocities of religious people are as accessible as the folklore of Isaac Newton having an Apple fall on his head. Eurasian crusades, the Scandinavian crusades, the various Inquisitions, Islamic caliphate expansions, Brahman subjugation of Buddhists, Jains and lower-castes before identifying a central “Hindu” identity in light of Muslim and British conquests, and there’s a million more to count.