Rallying behind people such as Richard Dawkins, a more militant form of atheism is rising. Ironically enough, they often share the worst traits of the religious fundamentalists that they decry. Please note I’m using the term atheism as it’s commonly used today, and not as the original and dictionary correct meaning of “not theist.” Much could be said on this issue, but all I want to do today is to discuss an argument by atheists that seems to be becoming quite popular for them to use. Here’s a few brief quotes that demonstrate the argument.
The atheist argument begins by pointing out that Christians (or another variety of monotheist) do not believe in a large number of gods (Odin, Poseidon, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc). It then states that atheism merely takes that disbelief one god further and applies it to the monotheist’s god. Thus, beliefs are divided like this:
Monotheism - Denies the existence of “X” number of gods.
Atheism - Denies the existence of “X + 1″ number of gods.
The atheist argument then concludes that the monotheist position is actually quite close to atheism, but that atheists merely have disbelief in one more god (which of course is the reasonable thing to do according to atheism). This argument can get tricky for atheists if they instead face polytheists, and it would seem incapable of addressing other religious positions like pantheism, universalism, and others.
I would argue, however, that the atheist claim is a much larger claim than the mere disbelief in one more god than monotheism. It is the complete rejection of the supernatural. Despite huge differences in religious positions between groups diverse as Christianity, Wicca, Hinduism, and others, they all acknowledge the existence of something that is supernatural. Thus, beliefs can be divided like this:
Atheism - Denies the existence of the supernatural.
Everything else - Acknowledges the existence of the supernatural.
I think this shows why the atheist claim is a much greater claim than a mere “plus 1″ on the list of gods not believed in. The claim that no supernatural exists is an extraordinary one.
I’m not a mathematician or logician, but it is interesting to me that the existence (or not) of a god is a formula. Call me old fashioned, but to me the existence of god is common sense and intuitive. (That is not saying anything about Christianity, which isn’t common sense at all.)
Jasen said: “The claim that no supernatural exists is an extraordinary one.”
I don’t think there are many cultures in the world who have come up with the idea that no supernatural exists.
In computer science we have what’s called the Zero-One-Infinity rule. The point is that there is a big difference between zero and one, and between one and many, but the difference between 2 and 3 (or 3 and 4, or 4 and 5) is unimportant. So the difference between believing in one god is fundamentally different from believing in multiple gods, and is fundamentally different from believing in no gods. The Plus 1 argument doesn’t even hold water in the realm of computer science, so I don’t see how anyone could take it seriously when applied to religion.