FROM https://academia.edu/191087/Fundamentalist_Atheism_and_its_Intellectual_Failures ABSRACT A new breed of atheism has emerged which seeks to obliterate religion: fundamentalist atheism. ... In this paper I document fundamentalist atheism’s salient characteristics, specifically its tendency to narrowly define and stereotype religion in order to bolster its claim that religion is civilization’s greatest threat. I make the argument that, because its apocalyptical view of religion is based on faulty reasoning, fundamentalist atheism, although a response to fundamentalist religion, constitutes a dangerous intellectual failure within the ranks of atheism. Indeed, fundamentalist atheism results in an illogically-founded fanaticism that pits itself against pluralism and tolerance. .... CONCLUSION Fundamentalist atheism’s analysis of religion is colored by an ideological fanaticism often identified with religious fundamentalism. This tunnel-vision analysis of religion distorts the diversity of belief found among religious believers. Fundamentalist atheists have developed a deeply flawed characterization of religion and its believers as inherently irrational, anti-science, violent, and averse to progress, which, they believe, mandate a strident response free of intellectual tolerance. Their critique of religion is based on a series of generalizations and assumptions that neglect both the diversity and complexity of religious belief, as well as fundamental sociological considerations. Thinkers such as Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens create a religion that amounts to a monstrous straw-man which they then burn at the stake. They do not, however, provide sufficient evidence to believe that religion is the root of society’s ills. Fundamentalist atheists’ adoption of a dangerously apocalyptical mindset, wherein they believe peace will not prevail in the world until religion has been annihilated by reason, is based on a definition of religion that illogically relies on the most fanatical and fundamentalist examples available. In doing so they have violated a basic tenet of rational discourse, that guilt by vague association is not enough to convict; or that just because two subjects correlate—share a religion —does not mean that one (non-extremist believer) necessarily results in the other (violent extremist). One cannot define a mass of human beings based on a handful of others who share similarities. While it is true that violent behavior sometimes correlates with religious belief, fundamentalist atheism has not sufficiently demonstrated that religion is always the root cause of violent behavior on the part of a believer. From what we know now, violent extremist believers are the exception to the norm, not the norm. If fundamentalist Christians have charged secularism and atheism with responsibility for causing catastrophes and evil, fundamentalist atheists have conceived of religion as the root of all evil in our civilization. This ideological perspective has inspired fundamentalist atheists to proffer the most simplistic interpretation of the facts. To confirm their belief that religion is the root cause of violence in the world and thus deserves to be intellectually eradicated and no longer tolerated they craft a simplistic, stereotype-ridden and generalized understanding of religion as a whole, lending it to easy demonization. The result of this faulty logic is the fundamentalist atheist’s conclusion that democratic liberalism’s basic tenet of pluralism and tolerance dating back to Enlightenment philosophies, is no longer tenable. So much for reason.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 04:12:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015