Is atheism a relic of modernism?

[repoman]

David Kyle Johnson discussed Alvin Plantinga's arguments in rather gory detail, like the fine-tuning argument. Titled links:
Why 62% of Philosophers are Atheists (Part I) | Psychology Today
Why 62% of Philosophers are Atheists (Part II) | Psychology Today
Why 62 Percent of Philosophers Are Atheists Part III | Psychology Today
Why 62% of Philosophers are Atheists (Part IV) | Psychology Today
Why 62% of Philosophers are Atheists (Part V) | Psychology Today
Why 62% of Philosophers are Atheists (Part VI) | Psychology Today
Is Atheism Irrational? - The New York Times -- that Alvin Plantinga interview

I find Alvin Plantinga's take on Bertrand Russell's teapot argument to be rather hopelessly literal-minded. He asks how a teapot could have gotten into interplanetary space, when he believes in a God who could have poofed it into existence there.

I hate literal mindedness like that.
Why read anything written by such a missing the point moron? Thanks for saving me time.


Also as far as fine tuning arguments go, until we have a large sample set of all life forms in the universe (not gonna happen in our life) it is a bar room shit talk nothing of an argument. Only a highly skilled chemist, biologist, physicist or polymath in all these fields has even a pretense to have a guess at this.

 

[Ovazor]

It includes Bertrand Russell, who preferred to call himself an agnostic. As to Lucretius, he thought that the deities of his society's religion were real beings, but that they a lot like us, rather than superpowerful cosmic superbeings.

It is true that Russel preferred to call him an agnostic. However, when Russel says "atheist" he seems to mean what would be called a strong atheist, i.e. somebody who claims to know that there is no God. in his essay What is an Agnostic he says:

"An atheist, like Christian, holds that we can know whether there is a God."

But in some other occasions he seems to say that he does not believe there is a God, e.g. in Has religion contributed to civilization:

"I see no reason therefore to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated."

Of course, his writings covers decades of his life and his view on this may have changed during that time - his views in many other subjects certainly did. But to me it seems that he was a pragmatic or agnostic atheist, i.e. one that does not believe in gods, but does not think that it can be really proved in the philosophical or mathematical sense.

 

[lpetrich]

Relic explicitly means "done and over with, now of only historical interest".

Perhaps to an atheist.

I did mean to imply that the context in which it flowered is perhaps not as relevant as it once was.

Perhaps?

Perhaps "legacy" would be a better term.

"Result" or "outcome" might express your intended meaning better, without any implication of the timeliness of its presumed parent ideology.

 

[Sarpedon]

Atheism is still relevant because there is still no god.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Another thing to consider about the rise of atheism, is that there was a rise after WW2. A lot of people lost their faith in a God that did not act in the face of the holocaust. After 40 years of Communist rule in Germany and East Europe, many people were in fact atheist. Suppression of religious proselytization can be effective.

 

[southernhybrid]

I don't think that atheism is a relic or a result of anything pertaining to any past or present philosophical movement. People lose their faith in the gods for all kinds of reasons. The atheists that come to places like this aren't anything like most of the atheists that I know in person. I wasn't going to respond to this thread, but wanted to make sure that you understand how much diversity there is among atheists.

Most of them never read a philosophy book, or care about discussing religion or atheism. Some of the women are mothers who are struggling to raise their children. Some are very poor. One of my older female atheist friends is a retired GBI agent. I've known a few that were PHD college teachers, one in biology and one in history, I think. One younger man works at the local library as an IT specialist. One was a former neighbor of mine who worked as a welder. He became an atheist immediately after his only son died. One of my favorite neighbors, who died at age 95 a couple of years ago, was a closet atheist or agnostic. She simply thought that Christianity was silly, but I doubt she knew anything about other religions. Another female atheist friend was raised in a secular Jewish home. She's a soon to be retired hospice social worker. One of my favorite female atheists in Atlanta is married to a former president of American Atheists. She told me that most of her friends are Catholics. She's very down to earth, and not the least bit interested in ruminating about philosophy or the history of atheism. That's not what we talk about when we get together.

Atheists come in all ages, genders, sexual orientations, educational levels, ethnic backgrounds, socio economic backgrounds etc. We are very different from each other and that's why we have such a hard time forming and maintaining our weak communities. We just don't have enough in common. But, some of us still try to get together now and then for fun, because we tend to feel pretty isolated here in the Bible Belt and it's fun to be able to speak freely about everything one can possibly imagine. We rarely discuss deep abstract intellectual subjects, although we occasionally discuss the latest science news. We're really just a bunch of cats who have a hard time forming a herd.

 

[Sarpedon]

That's really an excellent point.

The "modern" can be seen as a golden age for atheism-or it can be seen as an era of collapse and ruin for Christianity. From that perspective, it is not so much atheism is being produced, but Christianity being destroyed. Thanks to the scientific progress of the modern and immediate premodern periods, there is no longer any intellectual credibility to Christianity. Christianity has persisted, but not recovered. Atheism has continued to grow, but really, all the big points have been made, and there's not so much left to say, except to beat back the periodic attempts of Christians to rewrite history and science yet again.

From this point of view, could this era we live in be another such era as modernism, as Christianity today is again suffering greatly, not because of intellectual progress, but because of their own abuse and misbehavior?

And could there be another era of catastrophe for Islam coming (arguably, it is happening right now) as muslims grow tired of the constant interference of religion in their lives, and turn towards secularism? I expect that the collapse of Islam will create another 'flowering' of atheism, one that perhaps future muslims will try to paint as a passing fad, even as their faith continues to fade.

 

[Politesse]

I don't think that atheism is a relic or a result of anything pertaining to any past or present philosophical movement. People lose their faith in the gods for all kinds of reasons. The atheists that come to places like this aren't anything like most of the atheists that I know in person. I wasn't going to respond to this thread, but wanted to make sure that you understand how much diversity there is among atheists.

Most of them never read a philosophy book, or care about discussing religion or atheism. Some of the women are mothers who are struggling to raise their children. Some are very poor. One of my older female atheist friends is a retired GBI agent. I've known a few that were PHD college teachers, one in biology and one in history, I think. One younger man works at the local library as an IT specialist. One was a former neighbor of mine who worked as a welder. He became an atheist immediately after his only son died. One of my favorite neighbors, who died at age 95 a couple of years ago, was a closet atheist or agnostic. She simply thought that Christianity was silly, but I doubt she knew anything about other religions. Another female atheist friend was raised in a secular Jewish home. She's a soon to be retired hospice social worker. One of my favorite female atheists in Atlanta is married to a former president of American Atheists. She told me that most of her friends are Catholics. She's very down to earth, and not the least bit interested in ruminating about philosophy or the history of atheism. That's not what we talk about when we get together.

Atheists come in all ages, genders, sexual orientations, educational levels, ethnic backgrounds, socio economic backgrounds etc. We are very different from each other and that's why we have such a hard time forming and maintaining our weak communities. We just don't have enough in common. But, some of us still try to get together now and then for fun, because we tend to feel pretty isolated here in the Bible Belt and it's fun to be able to speak freely about everything one can possibly imagine. We rarely discuss deep abstract intellectual subjects, although we occasionally discuss the latest science news. We're really just a bunch of cats who have a hard time forming a herd.

No doubt! But no group is homogeneous. I don't think it is unreasonable to talk about the context of a social phenomenon, simply because those touched by it are not stereotypes of one another.