Amazing post, Vastleft. If I could add something, I would - but I could not agree more. Thanks for that!

Title of my next article over at NRO (under another nom de plume, naturally.

Heck, why stop at blasphemers? Try "infidels." The connotations are so much better....

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Some professor at Georgetown actually said this. I. Kid. You. Not!

"God" has been a bad idea since the first human invented Him/Her/It/Them/Whatever, and we're the ones who have to come up with new ideas?!

WTF?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Always great to see another first-rate writer show up at the Mighty Corrente Building. Love the stuff you're doing!

www.vastleft.com

Makes me want to write out a fatwa against myself.

James Randi's quote is still the classic, if I may paraphrase: "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby." The lack of believing in bad ideas needs new ideas. My brain hurts.

www.vastleft.com

excellent post, too

one could add "environmentalism is a religion the way not collecting stamps is a hobby.

I've always loved the way that the right wing uses the accusation that any particular liberal idea or set of ideas is a religion as a way to demean them. Yes, I know, they mean that we are substituting a false religion for the one true one, still their delight in making fun of discussions of values attached to those ideas as the opiate of the elites is simply a mirror of classic critiques of organized religions.

Ah well, I suppose they tell themselves in their cases of anti-theological fervor, God wills it.

... anytime it's not of the good ol' Judeo-Christian variety.

Similarly, it's interesting how they advocate "liberal democracy" in the Middle East, but not here, heaven forbid, not here.

www.vastleft.com

While quite progressive, there is one (at least) key distiction between our Constitution and the Iraqi Consitution . One that the Wingers would love to have - a state sponsored religion. Their advocacy stops short of ending a religiously dominated "democracy."
But what do I know?

You'd think the entire administration would be cowering in the hands of an angry God by now -- we'll start with Matthew 6:5 and go on from there -- but n-o-o-o-o.

I mean, what do these guys have to do? Consort with harlots? (Deuteronomy 23:18) Oh, wait...

Say, the silence from the Christianist community on Diaper Danny is rather deafening, isn't it? Just like their silence always is whenever one of the Godly is caught thieving, or lying, or abusing children, or torturing. Why is that?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Faith is a tool, but one that operates on the human mind rather than in the human hand. Of course the world of fact doesn't matter: it's the states of mind made possible by faith, and the resulting expansion in the range of human behaviors that gives faith value.

For example, Henry Kissinger was of the mind that 'military men' are a dumb stupid animals, to be used as pawns in the pursuit of foreign policy. The public believes that soldiers are noble heroes. Which is true? Well, as it happens, there is no need to choose. One believes what he must to become a tool, the other what he must in order to use those tools with the necessary ruthlessness. It is meaningless to ask which is 'real', because that issue is at right angles to the whole rationale behind faith.

Once one society evolves to use this combination of corruption/cruelty at the top, plus gullibility/sacrifice at the bottom as an instrument of state power, other societies must follow suit or perish.

And yes, it is a statement of faith to say 'there is no God', so it is, in that way, a religion. The 'rational' mind (when in the mood) would say: "I have no way to know, so the question of whether or not there 'really' is a God is of no interest".

Some of your other points were interesting, but please don't give us that tired equivalation that claims atheism is a religion.

Virtually any atheist, including Richard Dawkins, will allow that we can't be 100% certain that there is no god. We are atheists in that we have found all standing claims about god's existence to be without demonstrable merit.

www.vastleft.com

RLaing commits a basic logic error by contending that faith is indistinguishable from religion. I employ faith every morning when rising from bed in the belief that this day will be worth the effort to do so, but no religion is required for that motivation. While all religions demand faith, not all expressions of faith need religion. I can on the basis of available evidence conclude that there is no god worth formulating a religion around without developing by faith the position that there is no god anywhere of any sort.

In commentary on your other main point, all, repeat all, complex societies devolve into corruption and cruelty at the top by engendering gullibility and imposing sacrifice at the bottom. It isn’t a matter of some otherwise perfect society being forced into absolutism by the threat of a neighbor; sooner or later, usually sooner, they will all reach the same end. The only cure is revolution, and even there the risk of resuming totalitarianism is high. In my country we have institutionalized revolution within the political process, providing a means by which an awakened citizenry can implement change without risking the chaos of armed revolt.

One of our guiding principles is the separation of religion from civil order, basing governance on the principles of reason and logic rather than faith. We like our system and the majority of us wish to keep religion in its place, outside of government. Please respect our wishes, and keep in mind that the last time we were ruled by someone named George who thought he was empowered to so by divine right, we did in fact take up arms. Be grateful for our current forbearance.

I'm going to stick with my thesis that competition with other societies is the principal force enabling faith. Of course, this has to be speculation, as whole societies aren't the kind of thing we can conduct labratory experiments with. Faith of the sort I'm describing re Kissinger vis a vis the 'lower social orders' must carry a cost, as well, or we'd all be faith-heads, except for a cynical few.

I suppose that one cost is that the faithful aren't particularly good at understanding the world around them, and while faith is certainly a powerful weapon, science has produced some pretty effective ways for societies to compete as well.

Anyway, I said that atheism is a religion only in the sense that it is founded on a proposition that is not subject to proof. I like to tweak people's noses, OK? I understand that faith and religion are not the same, the former is foundation for the latter.

Also, you say that all, repeat all societies devolve towards the same end, without offering any ideas about why this should be so. Pressure towards conformity is obviously coming from somewhere; if not the source I identify, then where?

And please, spare me your national mythologies. Who exactly is this we? The people who revolted against King George have been dead for an extremely long time. Do you plan to claim that their characteristics are passed on to you simply because you happen to be living in the geographic area where these events occured?

First off, RLaing, let’s get a couple of things clear. “Spare me” isn’t going to happen. I am in no mood these days to be sparing and that is unlikely to change, so save your keystrokes. Throwing around pejoratives like “national mythologies” will not serve to draw me off track. If you have something to say, say it plainly; feints like that will be ignored. Please try to remain consistent within your rhetorical framework. You say “I understand that faith and religion are not the same” yet you also say “the faithful aren’t particularly good at understanding the world around them” and “it is a statement of faith to say ’there is no God’, so it is, in that way, a religion”; all quite contradictory and confusing. If you agree that faith and religion are not the same, for you to use them as interchangeable concepts in support of an argument is disingenuous. To claim when called out that it was all in jest, “I like to tweak people’s noses”, leaves others unclear as to exactly what it was that you were trying to communicate in the first place.

You further assert that faith is the “foundation” for religion. It is not. What is required for supporting and sustaining religion is belief, or rather more precisely, the suspension of disbelief. Belief is not the same as faith, and faith per se may or may not be involved in a particular religious experience. Religionists have co-opted words they want to use for their own benefit and re-defined them, perverted them, as a means of circular self-justification for concepts that cannot withstand rational examination; faith is among the words so corrupted. It sounds so much more respectable to self-identify as a “Person of Faith” than as a "Person of Belief" or a “Person of Unbounded Gullibility” does it not?

And speaking of words and meanings, to assert that atheism, the absence of a belief in a god, requires belief that there is no god is absurdist. The best efforts of Thomas Aquinas and Madeline O’Hare notwithstanding, an absence of something cannot be equivalent to the existence of that very same thing. An atheist does not accept that knowing god is possible. This is not an argument that god does not exist, which would require faith or belief, but is rather an argument that believing in a god is not a worthwhile endeavor and therefore need not be pursued. Such a conclusion can be reached entirely empirically, with no requirement whatsoever for faith or belief. Atheism is not a religion, it has no religious component, and to trivialize a philosophical position reached through rationality by assigning it equivalence to a philosophical position reached by abnegation of rationality could strike some people as a self-serving irrationality. It does me.

As to your contention that the principle force enabling faith (religion, one assumes here, because otherwise the entire construct is nonsensical) is competition between societies, I would assert, and you agree, that there is neither any proof that this is so nor is it testable. Therefore, it is more in the manner of a claim, or a conjecture, or a speculation, rather than a thesis as you termed it. Religion doubtless arose as a means of trying to explain the inexplicable, of trying to define a relationship between our evolving consciousness of mind and our external reality – our place, our role, our fate in the universe. I say doubtless because that is its stated purpose today and throughout recorded history. All prehistoric evidence is at least compatible with the same conclusion.

That religion serves as a useful tool to bind together members of a community for their mutual benefit is arguable, but in many respects at least plausible. However, conflict between social groups far predates self consciousness, and is ubiquitous among all higher orders of living things. From monkeys to meerkats, social structures and conflict exist as a means to enhance survival of genetic material without the need for faith, religion or gods. So it was for human ancestors, before we became human.

If religious faith is a tool it is a blunt one, more of a club than a rapier or a wrench, suitable for bludgeoning others into compliance and not much else. Is the tendency of societies to become autocratic the result, as you suggest, of some inherently inextricable co-dependency with religious thought? Again, this is manifestly not so for other species as conflicts abound both between and within social groups for food, water, shelter and breeding rights, and there is no reason to suppose that our pre-human ancestors were any different.

Contemporary humans too engage in cross-social conflict in the absence of religion, and also in spite of religious teachings to the contrary. The prime movers of human behavior, avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure, do not depend upon faith or religion in any way. Rather, religion serves merely as a cloak of false respectability to be pulled over behaviors that otherwise would be seen as crass and objectionable. “God wants this” is a phrase that hides a multitude of sins.

While religion once was useful in organizing and directing the collective behavior of humans ignorant of the workings of the world around them, since the Enlightenment it has slowly become more and more irrelevant and indeed counterproductive with regards to both individual and collective survival and prosperity. Religion is an evolutionary anachronism, and the sooner humanity is shed of it the better. It is not now, and probably never has been, integral to survival of the species or the sustainability of social groups.

Finally, you ask who are we? Clearly you are correct when you assert that all of the people who revolted against George III are now dead. They did, however, leave a cultural legacy and a nation, and I belong to both of them. Am I a nationalist? Absolutely. This is my country, as much as it is anyone’s, and while there is room for improvement I am on balance pleased to be a part of it and proud of the ideals under which it was founded along with those that evolved there from. I vote in every election, get a thrill from the Star Spangled Banner, stand when the flag moves by, and would defend my homeland with my life if need be. I have seen the world, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. So far as I am concerned that entitles me to use “we” in a collective construct that includes everyone similarly committed from the Founders on forward to the present day, along with my self. Your opinion may differ but on that topic, quite frankly, it is irrelevant to me and I just don’t care.

“'God wants this' is a phrase that hides a multitude of sins."

Amen!

www.vastleft.com

"god is santa for grown ups." cuts to the heart of my position, and has just the right degree of mocking derision which reflects my slight contempt for folks who just won't let go of a comforting myth.