The author lost me at "The evolution and growth of modern science has been accompanied by the adoption of a militant, materialistic, reductionist, and atheistic creed by many leading scientists and popularizers of science".
Militancy: the view that it's OK to tell people that they are wrong.
Materialism: the expectation that things are made up of stuff that can be investigated by empirical experiment; which is to say, physics.
Reductionism: the expectation that what things do is explained by what the things they're made of are doing [plus whatever outside influences exist, of course].
Atheism: the view that gods need explaining as much as anything else.
It certainly can be.
Militancy: the view that it's OK to tell people that they are wrong.
This would be OK if the people to whom they were saying this to were actually wrong. The truth is quite often they don't have any evidence for this. For example, if a mystic were to go to the average physicist and tell them that they were God and they had created the Universe, they would laugh in the mystic's face, yet that doesn't mean the mystic is incorrect, it just means the physicist did not understand the mystic, nor were they inclined to attempt to do so. This sort of militarism is a block to knowledge and understanding.
Reductionism: the expectation that what things do is explained by what the things they're made of are doing (what else would you expect - some sort of soul that imparts unexpected properties?)
Reductionism assumes that fundamentally everything is made up of individual parts, a "lego-theory of the world" if you will, yet this is not what the known physics itself says is happening. Take the case of quantum entanglement, you have two "things" that yet act as one. Physicists are still baffled by this. Legos do not behave this way.
Further, it must be acknowledged that even if everything is made up of "individual parts", these parts interact with one another, and hence they are not truly individual and separate, their behavior and any meaning that can be attributed to them requires the simultaneous acceptance of all other parts of the system, the understanding of mutual-interdependence (a mystical concept). Without the rest of the parts, the individual components are without meaning themselves. Meaning only arises out of the relationship between the various components, and that does not fit with the reductionist viewpoint.
Atheism: the view that gods need explaining as much as anything else.
No, atheism is the outright rejection of the idea of God. It is a religious belief in itself that requires a faith in the non-existence of any sort of God. It does not ask for an explanation of God, for if it did it would have to accept the possibility of a God.
This is pure nonsense. Kindergarden logic.
I am an atheist because I don't have god in my life. I live without god. It's not a non-belief in god. It's simply that I don't believe in this thing that someone claim exist any more than I believe that we are living in the matrix or that advanced aliens created us.
If we are to follow your line of reasoning then all believers who are only allowed to have one god would be going against their belief by not believing in the thousands of other gods out there.
I think this is the idea that Itistoday tried to say. That there is some subset of militant atheist who believe so strongly in science, that they do not accept any possibility that there is something that science cannot explain. Traditional religions being the forefront example of such beliefs, they develop an irrational hatred of anything related to that.
You accuse me of spouting nonsense, yet you actually make two contradictory claims:
1) "It's not a non-belief in god."
2) "It's simply that I don't believe in this thing" (thing referring to "god")
Statement #2 is clearly an admission that you hold a non-belief in god.
I think part of the problem here is that you do have a belief in God. You believe "God" to refer to some specific thing, and it is that thing that you choose not to believe in. Whatever that is, I don't know, but if you assume that the word "God" has a clear and singular definition, well, then you don't know very much about religion, do you? :-)
But that doesn't seem to be the case, it just sounds like you might be a little confused, as in your last sentence, you demonstrate an understanding that there are in fact multiple definitions for the word "god".
So, what is atheism then, really? Wikipedia gives the following definition:
Atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of
deities.[1] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there
are no deities.[2] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that
any deities exist.[3]
A deity[1] is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may
be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by
believers, often religiously referred to as a god.
And that is were the crux is. For the mystics do not believe that God is supernatural or "preternatural". This is not the notion of God as understood in Hinduism or Buddhism, for example. In those religions, God is natural. God is nature.
So, if you identify as an atheist, and by that you mean you disbelieve in a God that is outside of nature, then I think that is just fine (and fairly unremarkable), but if you disbelieve also in the second type of God, the one who is one with nature, then that is another thing entirely. You may in fact believe in God, but you just might not have known about the various meanings of that word.
No, atheism is the outright rejection of the idea of God. It is a religious belief in itself that requires a faith in the non-existence of any sort of God.
And you also forgot one definition. Namely that of religion:
Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.
Please explain what god or gods i believe by not believing in god?
Please explain what atheists believe in?
I am an atheist by definition. Not by belief.
No, atheism is the outright rejection of the idea of God. It is a religious belief in itself that requires a faith in the non-existence of any sort of God.
Yes, you are right to point that out; after looking up the definition on wikipedia I saw the nuance regarding "supernatural" and expounded upon that above.
And you also forgot one definition. Namely that of religion:
How so? I generally tend to agree with that definition of religion. Notice how physics overlaps that (cosmology and TOEs specifically).
Please explain what god or gods i believe by not believing in god?
Please explain what atheists believe in?
I already addressed this above. If you have a specific question let me know.
You argue as if you know what my belief is.
So I ask you again. What is my belief? What is it that I believe in that makes me religious. Which god do I believe in?
That I don't believe in god's or boogymen or dragons?
Is that a belief? Then surely the word itself is meaningless.
If you say that non-belief is a religion then all religions that only allow for one god consist of people who daily do what is forbidden by their own religion by not believing in the thousands of gods that exist.
My assertion, as I explained, is that you have a poor understanding of the various meanings of the word "God". If that is so, then you might be missing something important. It's fine not to believe in a "pink elephant", but doing a quick Google search will show you that there are in fact things that exist and go by that name.
If you're still in disagreement and would like to take this conversation to a satisfactory conclusion, feel free to contact me via email. You'll find it via the link in my profile. I think I am done refreshing the page for this thread for today though.
Unless you are actually going to address that, I am afraid I don't see how any satisfactory conclusion can be reached.
No biggie.
On the contrary, that's exactly how reductionism tries to understand things.