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10 myths about Atheism
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/here-are-10-myths-and-truths-about-atheism/1: Atheists are 100 percent convinced that there is no god, as blindly faithful as religious fundamentalists.
Atheism means different things to different atheists. But for the overwhelming majority, it doesn’t mean being 100 percent certain that there’s no god. It means being certain enough. ... Atheists are saying, “We’re not convinced. The arguments for God are weak and circular; the evidence falls apart under close examination. Show us better evidence or arguments, and we’ll reconsider. Until then, we’re assuming that God doesn’t exist.”
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2: Atheists are immoral: without religion, there’s no basis for morality.
Atheists aren’t killing, stealing, raping, cheating, at any greater rate than believers. Look at countries in Europe, like France and England and Scandinavian countries, where nonbelievers make up half, or more, of the population. They’re not disintegrating into crime and chaos. They’re doing pretty well, and they treat each other pretty well, with a strong sense of social responsibility.
(Editor's note: In all fairness, I should point out that the social structure and stability provided by religious communities conserves "civilization" in times of crisis. They are a fall-back, so-to-speak. In the Middle-Ages, the monasteries conserved the intellectual traditions of Ancient Europe and in communist Eastern Germany, the church-committees kept the tradition of democracy alive.)
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3: Atheists are angry and unhappy, with no meaning to their lives and no hope.
We don’t need religion to have meaning and hope. We have hope, for our own lives and for the world. And we create our own meaning. (Yes, many atheists get cranky when they argue with believers. Especially online. Surprise, surprise. Like no other marginalized group gets cranky engaging with the mainstream … and like losing it on the Internet is an atheist monopoly.)
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4: Atheists are disrespectful, intolerant and mean.
But religion has long been treated with special deference, getting a free ride in the marketplace of ideas. And believers are accustomed to this … so accustomed that questions and criticism seems like the grossest disrespect.
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5: Atheists are whiny.
Women demanding equal rights are being hysterical; people of color are being emotional; LGBT people are being selfishly sybaritic. And atheists are being whiny.
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6: Atheists are just being trendy.
Yes, atheism is everywhere now. In bookstores, on the news, in the blogosphere. Just like gay people were in the early ’90s. African Americans in the late ’50s. Women in the early ’70s. ... Does that make atheism trivial? A fad, something people do to be cool? Of course not.
(Editor's note: The current interest in atheism is not a trend that came out of nowhere. It is actually just the recent stage in a societal evolution that started centuries ago. It began in the late Middle-Ages and Renaissance when scholars turned away from mainstream-Christianity and tried to come up with better religious explanations. This lead to the magical/occult research of the Renaissance in the 15th to 17th century. This lead to the development of the scientific method in the late Renaissance in the 17th century. And driven by what these scientists discovered about nature, the mindset of scholars switched more and more towards materialism in the 18th century. By the 19th century, materialistic explanations of nature had bested religious explanations of nature many, many times.
The novel "Frankenstein" was published in 1818 and gives a nice insight into the mindset of the scientific community of that time.
Materialism had a track-record of success and the next step towards atheism simply arose naturally from that.
And I dare to postulate that the availability of information via the Internet has boosted this mindset of critical searching in the recent years.)
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7: Atheists are arguing with straw men: they criticize the ugliest, stupidest, most simplistic, most outdated versions of religion and ignore the thoughtful, complex forms of serious modern theology.
Most atheists don’t give a rat’s ass about religion as it’s practiced by a handful of theologians. We care about religion as it’s widely practiced in the real world. And that includes many versions of religion that are outdated, simplistic, stupid and ugly … and richly deserving of criticism.
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8: Atheists are responsible for the worst crimes in history: Stalin, Mao, etc.
Yes, some megalomaniacal tyrants have been atheists. Many have been believers. And both atheists and believers have been decent, functioning world leaders. The Stalin argument proves nothing. It’s a red herring and a scare tactic.
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9: Atheists think science belongs to them; atheists treat science as their religion.
But there’s a reason atheists care about science and use it so much in our arguments. And it’s not because science is our religion, or that we follow it without question. It’s not even because we think science has disproved religion (although it has dispatched many specific religious beliefs). Atheists care about science because science provides an alternate method for understanding reality. ... When it comes to understanding the world, science offers an alternative to religion: not merely different answers, but a different way of asking questions. Science doesn’t disprove religion. It simply makes it unnecessary.
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10: Atheists think they’re superior.
Religion has been armored against criticism for so long, people are shocked when they hear it at all. And because religion is so personal, many believers can’t distinguish between criticism of their ideas … and insults to the core of their being. ... This is justanother “Shut up, that’s why” argument. It’s an attempt to make atheists look bad simply for making our case.
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