Yep. In different ways and for different reasons. But it was for that reason its own problem then, as it is now.

Wasn’t the word used as a slur even back in antiquity?

Do they actually identify with the atheist movement? And believe in the supernatural? If they meet both conditions, then I concede there are a few such persons, but so rare as to be all but socially invisible.

“They are therefore not a counter-example to my point.” The point I responded to was this: “But you will never find a Christian claiming to be an atheist.” You did not say that nobody who would “come to our events and promote atheist pride” would call themselves Christian. The statement you wrote is different, and as I’ve shown it is false.

“supernaturalist atheists are extremely rare in the West.” Again, not true. Although there are plenty of animists in Central and South America for whom gods and demigods do exist, there are millions of other animists in that part of the western world who do not hold such beliefs.

Dave H.

Most of the people you are referring to would never identify as atheist. They wouldn’t come to our events and promote atheist pride, for example. They identify instead as Christians and as theists. They are therefore not a counter-example to my point.

As for Jensen, he is an atheist. He believes in no actual god. His coopting the label Christian is moot; the only notable peculiarity is that he is still a supernaturalist, but supernaturalist atheists are extremely rare in the West. And I suspect on almost every significant point he would indeed agree with us, and thus is effectively one of us, but on the fringes, like an atheist who is into UFOs.

For those interested in this subject, I’ve just discovered these must-read items:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/christianatheism.shtml

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2151/atheism-in-christianity-by-ernst-bloch

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/04/religion-atheism

Dave H.

Not true. See Thomas Altizer’s book The Gospel of Christian Atheism, and Don Cupitt’s Taking Leave of God. According to Gavin Hyman (see his book A Short History of Atheism) the aforementioned theologians see themselves as having reconciled atheism and Christianity. In chapter 8, Hyman discusses a half-dozen other thinkers, whom he says are representative of a large swath of contemporary theology, who believe in a medieval theological conception of a transcendent God but are atheist with respect to the personal God that most Christians have worshiped in the modern era. From the standpoint of today’s lay Christianity, these people are, I reckon, Christian atheists.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Atheism-Library-Modern-Religion/dp/1848851375/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335527792&sr=8-1

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

As it happens, just the other day, while doing research for a book I’m writing, I discovered that one of the most valuable academics we have here in the U.S., Robert Jensen, has called himself a Christian atheist:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/28/finding-my-way-back-to-church-and-getting-kicked-out/

Dave H.

kacyray:

But you’re right… I haven’t met a theist yet who claims to disavow reason.

BTW, I have. It’s one of the main agendas promoted throughout the panels in the Kentucky Creation Museum. But these views are among the most extreme (and the scariest). They aren’t typical.

I can’t accept that saying “I’m not one of them” translates to “I am one of you”.

Right. It communicates only that they aren’t one of them, and are bold enough to say so, and hang out with us. The rest we have to determine on a case by case basis, same as any social networking.

Do you agree that by identifying yourself primarly as an atheist, you are sending the message – not only to theists, but to anyone who hears it – that atheism is your primary absolute?

It doesn’t matter, because either they will be smart and honest enough not to think that (e.g. they’ll inquire what my beliefs are, or what our beliefs are, as a movement; which inquiry will turn up humanism and naturalism as near universals among us, and as our primary hypotheses, from which atheism is merely derivative), or they will think that no matter what label I use (e.g. if I call myself a humanist or a naturalist, they will hear “godless commie who believes life is meaningless and will rape babies and skeet-shoot kittens if given the chance”; in other words, exactly the same thing they hear when I say I’m an atheist). I know this from experience.

We need to force them to inquire (by making our very existence known), and mock them when they don’t.

If the former, how much effort do you put into to ensuring your audience realizes that atheism is not a primary belief, but a derivative position? Or do you even feel that is important?

It would always be important, no matter what labels we used. It’s one of my aims in life to help atheists think about and articulate this (many of my books and articles serve this aim), and I think it’s an important goal of our movement to make our foundational beliefs, or references to them, a central component of our books, websites, conferences, and conversations. More so than even Christians do (e.g. their foundational beliefs are really fear of death, fear of social chaos, and longing for justice, coupled with a faith-based epistemology, to all of which belief in God is derivative; but unlike us, they can’t admit this, even to themselves, because it would expose their fallacies).

you can’t “claim” to be a Bayesian and understand it and not be affected positively by it, whereas one can claim to be an advocate of reason whether one understands what that means or not, and in fact people will often be inclined to claim that, for the same reason they are inclined to be believers: because it is shamefully unpopular to claim to be against reason

Okay, this is persuasive. I suppose I would only rely on the fact that true adherence to reason is the sort of thing that can be fleshed out. In other words… it wouldn’t take very long to demonstrate that a rain dancer who claims to be an advocate of reason is being either dishonest, inconsistent, or simply doesn’t understand reason. With a theist, it may take a bit longer, but it still quite doable.

But you’re right… I haven’t met a theist yet who claims to disavow reason. Instead what they do is claim that it is perfectly congruous with faith.

It sounds like your position boils down to “Atheism is the best option because no other identifier has the predictive value or yields the best results when assessing someone’s level of rationality.” I would cede this contention. Still, I can’t accept that saying “I’m not one of them” translates to “I am one of you”. Sure, atheism and reason may often correlate, but in the mind of someone truly dedicated to reason, atheism is where reason leads – not where beliefs begin.

I don’t want to beat this thread to death – I have one question left:

Do you agree that by identifying yourself primarly as an atheist, you are sending the message – not only to theists, but to anyone who hears it – that atheism is your primary absolute? Or do you rely on the listener to deduce that it is a derivative position, arrived at through the careful use of reason?

If the former, how much effort do you put into to ensuring your audience realizes that atheism is not a primary belief, but a derivative position? Or do you even feel that is important?

If the latter, doesn’t that make you vulnerable to the misinterpretation of your actual position? After all, most theists actually believe that we atheists are simply rebelling against the still small voice of god crying out within us – they have no idea that our atheistic position was arrived by carefully weighing all available evidence, using reason as a guidestick, and coming to a decision based not on what was comfortable and popular, but on what reason demands? By starting the conversation off with “I’m an atheist”, don’t you feel that basically cements this (mis)perception in their minds?

kacyray:

You’re right. I’ll revise. It tells you “not enough” about their epistemology.

That depends on how much you need to know for the purpose at hand. In my experience, it has consistently told me enough for the purposes I describe. (Its failure rate is the same as that of any designator; e.g. a lunatic will call himself a Rationalist just as easily as an Atheist, so there is no self-identifier that will avoid that; whereas no godist will call themselves an atheist, so unlike any other epithet, this one eliminates a lot of delusional people from its roster, and it is precisely the effect of that that I consistently enjoy at public meetup after public meetup).

The danger lies in assuming that this frequent correlation implies some sort of inverse causation. I am an atheist because I embrace reason, not the other way around. Reason ought to be primary – I don’t think you and I disagree on that.

And you’re right, it’s always worthwhile pointing that out. Atheists can be idiots, lunatics, criminals, and douchebags, same as anyone. And we should always be on our guard against that.

It doesn’t have to be. I can still imagine plenty of reason why it would happen, even today. Just to provide one hypothetical – a child may believe in god because he hears about it from a friend at school. But his father is an adamant atheist who has no philosophical foundation to his position (he just disbelieves in god because he just damn well does!). This child doesn’t want to disappoint his father, so throughout his childhood he calls himself an atheist, even though all his life he has secretly believed in god.

I am unaware of this ever actually happening. Like I said, you can’t prove a point with a non-existent hypothetical. If it happens, it happens so rarely as to be predictively of no value.

Every atheist parent I know allows their kids freedom to explore their religious beliefs. And then kids grow up and can leave and do what they want. So when we’re talking about adults, even your hypothetical doesn’t pertain.

In terms of predictive sucsess, it works far more the other way around.

It’s simply not outside the realm of possibility. Are the odds against it? Of course. But the fact that it’s possible means you can never be sure.

That’s a fallacy. “Possibly, therefore probably” is invalid (as you acknowledge), but we have no reason to believe improbable things. It’s “possible” an atheist will be an armed robber and steal your car. But is it even remotely probable, to the point that you can’t trust any self-identified atheist, lest they steal your car? Same for anything else, even what’s more likely (like a nut who is obsessed with circumcision, or an irrational libertarianism, or angry vegetarianism).

We adjust our priors as we get new information. But until then, we ride with the priors. That’s the value of atheism as an identity: it is a guaranteed reference class marker (because godists will never pretend to be or think they are an atheist).

[re: “Give me an example of an atheist (an actual atheist, not a hypothetical one) who is an openly self-identified atheist because of “some equally arbitrary, equally ridiculous alternative belief.””] Solipsists. Nihilists. Astrologers are mystics, but not necessarily theists. Same goes for New Agers. In fact, I don’t think Scientologists qualify as theists, strictly speaking (even though they do consider their brand of insanity a “religion”), because they believe in physical aliens, not supernatural gods.

But apart from nihilists, few of these people openly identify as atheists. That’s my point. And nihilists in my experience are often sane, rational people who often even have high moral values (perhaps you are running on caricatures of nihilists and not what actual nihilists actually believe; or the occasional jackass). (And solipsists aren’t atheists because by definition they believe they are God; not that I’ve ever met one, although I hear there are a lot of them in Finland. I’ve met radical postmodernists, who were practically solipsists, but they didn’t identify as atheists, and were extremely rare, and easy to weed out.)

I’ll go one further… my observation is that given two subsets of the latter of those two populations, atheists and advocates of reason, the net rate of delusion and irrationality in the latter subset is almost eliminated.

Like I said, I’m not sure that’s true (everyone wants to claim they are an advocate of reason, especially those who aren’t).

I would conjecture your prediction would be more true of self-professed Bayesians, for the same reason that “atheist” works: you have to really be counter-culturally committed to it to claim it. Few people profess to be Bayesians who don’t really understand it, and those who really understand it are intrinsically armed against excesses of delusion and irrationality, precisely because Bayesian principles (updating priors, acknowledgement of cognitive biases, etc.) make one aware of it, so you can’t “claim” to be a Bayesian and understand it and not be affected positively by it, whereas one can claim to be an advocate of reason whether one understands what that means or not, and in fact people will often be inclined to claim that, for the same reason they are inclined to be believers: because it is shamefully unpopular to claim to be against reason (whereas it has not yet become shamefully unpopular not to claim to be a Bayesian). Not that there aren’t extremists who do claim to be against reason (the most extreme fundamentalists, and the most wishy washy woos), but they never claim to be atheists.

And when we assemble under the broad umbrella of atheism, we are deliberately including those atheists who hold faith-based or arbitrary worldviews. Why? How can that possibly be advantageous when you have the option to specifically identify only with those who share your actual views, and not with all those who merely share a disbelief.

There is no identifier for my actual worldview, so I don’t have that option. For example, secular humanist means ten different things, many of which I don’t align with, and naturalism or even metaphysical or philosophical naturalism means ten different things, many of which I don’t align with.

Moreover, I don’t want to only associate with such people, since I benefit from mingling with diverse worldviews. As long as we share a core set of values (moral and epistemic), we get along. So far there has been only one identifier that reliably puts me in agreeable company that way: atheist.

(For an example of a naturalist, for instance, whom I doubt I would enjoy the company of, although whom nevertheless I would trust the company of more than most godists, see my interaction with Rosenberg.)