Why Atheism is not a Religion
Often when I decide to express my atheism (or "unbelief" as Ghazali would have put it) in public, I am mostly expected to defend my position. People of faith often observe that I hold a passion for philosophy and science and query as to whether I might possess as strong a faith as them. Could my atheism possibly even be classed as a religion in itself? For the individual holding the faith card, this appealing argument would probably seem almost like a trump.
When I first began my philosophical studies and could usually rely on others, such as my college teachers, to aid in my formulation of arguments, I found this one to be particularly useful. After all I, like most individuals of our time, had fallen victim to the post modern values that are ingrained within us at an early age. I was a spokesman for needless subjectivity and a defender of potentially dangerous value systems. It is easy to make the jump from these hideously subjective thought-traps to the conclusion that a keen interest or a professed absence of belief is actually a substitute for religion. It is likely that I used the same argument myself in casual debate. However, this line of logic, whilst satisfying to a religious True Believer, is an example of misleadingly nonsensical reasoning.
Foremost, the term atheism by definition cannot be used as a label to define any one individual belief system and far less a religious one. Often the individual attempts to do so based on a common misunderstanding. Words like atheism, theism, monotheism or pantheism are, roughly speaking, descriptors for an individual's intellectual disposition on god(s)/God. (If the language of this analogy isn't suited to you, try to think of them as the allegorical umbrella under which your belief system shelters.) Ideally, one would have to have this descriptor in place before even contemplating which individual religion they would believe in. The word atheism defines itself as the complete opposition to even entertaining an opinion on any kind of Supreme Being. Therefore with the atheism descriptor in place, nothing thereafter can be termed as religious, for the descriptor defines a complete absence of belief in any kind of theology.
The analogy is a crucial element in the toolkit of any philosopher of worth and I have devised what I would term as an adequate one to express the value of such language. Human, conversational language holds a direct parallel to the language of computer programming. For the benefit of those that do not possess any esoteric programming knowledge, I shall try my best to delve into an explanation without digressing for fear of becoming discursive. For those, crudely speaking, in the technological know, please allow yourself to be ingested by this short literary delight:
In computer programming, variables with assignable values are essential so that totals, sums or other values can be calculated at real time i.e. whilst the program is running. In short, the programmer inserts a set of containers, represented by a word, in which to hold his hypothetical or potential value. He might need to use this for a number of reasons. For example if the program in question is a simple addition calculator, the programmer would need to set three main variables. One would represent the first input number (we shall call this variable nFirstNumber), another would represent the second input number (we shall call this variable nSecondNumber) and the final variable would represent the sum of the first two variables (we shall call this variable nEquals). He would then assign an event that would look something like the following to the program's "equals" function:
nFirstNumber + nSecondNumber = nEquals
The user would be able to input a numeric value into both variables one and two so that they contained any integer value. The programmer would then instruct the program to present the total of nFirstNumber + nSecondNumber (assigned to the nEquals variable) in a label at real time so that the user of the program could view the result of the sum that they had input.
This is an example of how a simple integer type variable can be used and manipulated in a program. However, integers aren't the only type of variable a computer program is able to process. My example was simply to familiarise you with the concept before continuing the analogy. Programmers are quite free to use "string" type variables which can contain an alphanumeric string of text as a value. They can be used to contain words or short sentences. However, just as variables can be assigned values, they can also be declared null. A variable might be designed to hold no value but still work within a particular paradigm. This is where our analogy begins to set itself up nicely. To modify a Wittgensteinian concept slightly, words can be said to act like these types of string variable. The word can be paralleled to the string variable. It is simply the name of the variable which then contains the value. This value is the meaning that we imply by using this type of descriptor. In short terms, the value is what we mean when we say a word (the descriptor variable). Whether or not we can truly denote the meaning that another individual implies is another question and we won't allow ourselves to be entangled into that debate here. I simply wanted to set up an analogy which we can work with for the time being.
The word "monotheism" can be said to hold the meaning value of something like, "a belief in one deity." A word like pantheism can be said to hold the meaning value of, "a belief that the supreme deity is in everything." The word "atheism" then, would act as the null value within the paradigm of a disposition about any kind of deity. It is the variable that contains the value nil. Further still, it is the variable with an absence of value. Therefore, when processing the variable, if it holds no value then it can't possibly be manipulated into a sum greater than itself.
This analogy is preferable to that of the aforementioned umbrella. This is because it sets the basis for a simple thought experiment to analyse the hypothesis that atheism is not an applicable descriptor to the paradigm of religion. Think of the variable as the bridge between two halves of a line of code. It inserts the value that you have asked the computer to process to allow the program to read the line without a hitch. However, if you have accidentally entered an error into your line of code, the two halves of the line or function cannot join. The bridge is broken, causing the program to err. This is called a bug. If we treat the statement "atheism is a religion" as a line of code and try to compute the program (by analysing the values of the terms, as we have just been doing) we can see that the statement would contain a bug. Using the term religion to describe the atheism variable would result in an error that would prove fatal to the running of the program. In our case, the program would represent the hypothesis. This is where our analogy and thought experiment begin to break down since, unfortunately, we have no infallible debugging system for human argument other than the power of a reasoned counter-argument. Thus, the onus is on the individual to assess and realise the errors in their hypothesis before attempting to substantiate their argument based upon it.
Some could offer the distinction between "strong" positive atheism and "weak" negative atheism as an argument against atheism being a total absence of belief in a deity. Since any position on God is completely subjective, philosophers have resorted to this kind of graduated approach to atheism based on different individual's stances on the subject. This seems a little like proverbially bending over backwards to pander to theologians. The so-called weak branch of atheism borders on overlapping into the higher tiers of agnosticism, with the individual choosing to withhold their belief in the supernatural rather than letting go, or else never really grasping it at all. However, the term "weak atheism" in itself is illogical. I speculate that this attempted graduation into atheism has been inaugurated as a result of misunderstanding rather than intellectual merit. It seems to stem from the familiar and quite ridiculous human tendency to quantify that which either is or is not. I feel a rather large duty to iterate that you simply cannot place quantification upon the total when you have already defined the result as final. I apologise for apparently ranting, but this is one of my pet hates and I hold the irritating tendency to pick people up on it (including myself) whenever I hear it in speech. As an example I urge you to question as to whether you have ever found yourself saying something like the following:
Recently a friend of mine observed what she deemed to be a rather poorly selected representative of youth culture on the television, remarking something close to the following, "Well, I thought that was a little bit wrong."
At first glance, or in casual speech, there might seem to be nothing wrong with using such language. However, terms like right and wrong are equivalent to the Boolean type variable in computer programming. Boolean statements contain only two possible values in the set, "true" or "false". There is no room for graduation. The value that the Boolean variable is describing can only be one or the other. Therefore, nothing can be "a little" wrong and nor can it be "mostly" right. Something either is right or it is wrong. By stating that something is either right or wrong, you have already defined your final meaning. This is why adding a quantifying peripheral adjective makes the statement nonsensical. A statement like this is adequately analogous to trying to quantify one's atheism. I do apologise to any openly professing atheists of the "weak" variety, but this is simply ridiculous. You cannot be a "little bit" of an atheist any more than you can be "mostly" a monotheist. What does it even mean to make a statement like that? I would implore you, please, to take a moment just to ponder the true value of this kind of statement. By stating that you are a "weak" atheist you have just professed the intellectual equivalent of stating that you hold no belief in most of God. This isn't atheism! If you withhold parts of a belief system centred on a divinity, or choose not to believe in all of God, this is a variety of theism. The individual, in this case, is simply "cherry picking" from the argument or else modifying it for their own ends. This would be a grave error in the view of Immanuel Kant.
Some will read and interpret this as a fundamental misunderstanding of the terminology and I would accept that rebuttal on the grounds that they weren't necessarily intended for the purposes that I refer. However, I merely point this issue out because I do feel that a vast amount of people capitalise on, or misunderstand phraseology altogether sometimes due to its misleading nature.
Another grave, but popular, misconception that most critics of atheism fall victim to is the supposition that they are all scientists. There is a need to correct this mistake. There have been countless pieces of journalism, usually in the form of a television piece, where the presenter seems to use the word "atheist" as a substitute for "scientist". This is irritating and a rather unwitting sleight on the foundations of philosophy. I would urge you to ask any one of the many existentialist philosophers for their view on the validity of the scientific method. Granted that there does seem to be some correlation, but I think it is a little more profound than a simple substitution of terms. Atheism can be a resultant aspect of practicing science and vice-versa. I do no think that many would argue the fact that it takes a certain amount of intellectual integrity to be a good scientist. Likewise, one usually finds that incredibly intelligent individuals are also rather independent. The freedom that comes as a by-product of intellectual independence can result in the individual concluding by realising atheism. This is, in no way, a direct effect by one on the other and I am not attempting to argue that only atheists are intelligent. I merely try to point out that it is a coincidence that quite a number of the scientific community are atheistic. However, it is not a prerequisite to be a scientist before becoming an atheist. As an example western critics often forget, or skim over, the fact that in eastern philosophy there remains some of the eldest atheistic cultures in recorded history.
However, for fear of digressing too far into the history of human philosophy and up the many branches of its proverbial tree, I would like to close by simply stating that I hope there has been something to take away from this piece. My aim was not to argue for or against either atheism or religion, but to simply clear up a matter or two on the subject. I hope I am not being too optimistic in desiring to provide those who attempt to use such arguments in a convicting manner with a clearer understanding of the atheist perspective. If all else fails, at least this essay might inspire people to test their own hypotheses before attempting to construct or substantiate their argument. I also hope there are some, if not many, gaps in my own arguments so that much better thinkers than I can close them.