The Two Faces of Atheism

Our society is generally egalitarian in nature, but it gets there in fits and starts. If it's true that Blacks are the new Jews (generally respected publicly but commonly discriminated against in private when the bigot can get away with it) and Gays are the new Blacks (supposedly respected but often publicly held to be invalid persons without shame on the part of the speaker), then Atheists are the new Gays (publicly viewed anywhere between invalid persons or just mentally ill, depending on the charity of the speaker). In fact, a new USA/Gallop Poll found that not only would the vast majority of the U.S. public not elect an otherwise well-qualified atheist that their own party nominated, but that among the most die-hard Homophobic Evangelical Bigots (my terminology), they'd rather see the very same homosexuals they hate so much (irony, anyone?) in office before they let an atheist in.

This general low-esteem has led to the expected "hey, there's nothing wrong with us" reaction, and now there's a lot of pro/anti-atheism rhetoric sloshing around. Some of the more vigorous proponents of atheism (Richard Dawkins especially) are doing a good job of simultaneously rallying the like-minded and infuriating the religious, but, speaking as an ex-seminarian, ex-Christian Buddhist atheist, I feel they're doing the wider body of atheists, myself included, a rather large disservice. The reason for the problem is simply that there is no one such thing as atheism -- there are in fact two such things.

Type-1 atheism, peopled by folks like Dawkins, are folks that look at religion, especially the three semitic religions, and see a bunch of bronze-age myths that have served the powerful well through the centuries, but are otherwise total nonsense. Atheists of this sort feel active incredulity at the idea of a God; to them, you might as well believe in Santa Claus or the Headless Horseman. These people's atheism is stridently (pardon my psuedo-greek) anti-theos. They argue that God doesn't exist, not on evidence that there is no God, which they know can't be found, but on the basis that there is no solid evidence for God's existence that doesn't also have other "credible" explanations, and that since the prime characteristic of religion seems mostly to be to protect belief regardless of the facts surrounding said belief, including finding any and all wiggle-room possible to reinterpret facts so as to preserve the belief (e.g. the "Process Theology" escape-hatch for the fact that evolution just isn't going to go away), that religion is really just a general cutural artifact we'll surely outgrow.

One day while discussing religion on my blog (which I do often, it being sometimes a bit of a "sore tooth" for me) someone remarked that my perspective was understandible for someone who is "the kind of person who assumes there's no metaphysical reality". This statement is key to the second kind of Atheism. The second kind of atheism doesn't claim that there is no God! The second kind of atheism honestly could care less if there's a God or if there isn't one. This atheism's face, to the extend that it could be said that it's aimed at anything, is aimed at anti-theism. Really, though, it isn't aimed at anything at all, and is based on a negative assumption. The type-2 atheist assumes that there is no God, or, if not that, assumes that there's no God whose existence could possibly be relevent to himself or herself. To a person conditioned to religion, this's vastly weird; but it's really not that different mentally than the assumption that there isn't a condor upon one's rooftop. One doesn't say "today I shall go about all my duties and pleasures as if there were no condor on my rooftop". Not seeing a condor upon one's roof when returning at night, this "belief" is repeated the next morning and every day thereafter without much batting an eye. Likewise for God. If, given the absolutely incontrovertible evidence for the existence of condors and, at least here in California, the fact that we're within their territorial ranges, one just blindly assumes there's no condor upon one's roof, then what should one say about a God whose existence is unproven and about whom people throughout the world have contradictory and seemingly impossible claims? A sceptic might say "well, sure, that's easy, because there are no consequences to having a condor upon one's roof, but there are should God exist". Unlike the type-1 atheist who just shakes his head and calls the religious person an idiot, the type-2 atheist says "yeah, the consequence is that I should be obliged to swear sovereignty to a dead man, never to eat meat, to refrain from eating meat sometimes, to cut the tip off my dick, to smack my head on the ground five times per day, to spin around in circles some afternoons, or to stay up all night reciting sutras, but without any solid evidence as to which one of these won't get me tortured for all eternity by an all-loving God?" The type-2 atheist just isn't going to bother until the religious people themselves agree on an answer. If that comes to pass, he or she will probably chose to go along with it under Mr. Izzard's "not getting killed with sticks" plan, but, short of any evidence that it really matters, will believe in God no more than he or she believes in the local speed limit.

Both faces of atheism are in their own ways religions. Type-1 atheist are positivists; there is no prevailing evidence their positivist outlook is actually true, but type-1 atheists put their faith in their positivism (irony, anyone?) and dismiss everything outside of the Court of Evidence as equally unpriviledged conjectures, dismising any unprovables as paradoxical or false. The type-2 atheist is also religious, but the type-2 atheist follows the religion of realism, the belief that there is an objective and at least partially knowable physical reality ("proved" by the fact that we stub our toes) and that, while one may have to adjust or abandon facts from time to time, sees no point in attempting to go beyond the realm of plausible facts into a realm of priviledged truths.

I think we'd all be better served if, when we call ourselves or others "atheists", we were to distinguish between Positivist Atheists and Realist Atheists. Maybe Janus-headed atheism will remain personae non-grata by most of the USA, but at least among the open-minded, distinguishing between Positivists and Realists might prevent much misunderstanding and invective.

Don't Mess With George Takei