socialmedian: Atheism itself isn't a movement

Add News Flash

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Atheism itself isn't a movement | Ophelia Benson

Source: The Guardian

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

There might be currents within atheism, and atheists can argue, but schism isn't the right word

The question: Is there an atheist schism?

Atheism itself, atheism as such, isn't and can't be a movement, because atheism is, at a minimum, simply non-theism: non-belief in any god. Mere non-belief in any X can't by itself constitute a movement, because it's merely an absence (or at most a refusal) of belief. If every absence of belief in [your chosen belief-object here] amounted to a movement, the traffic jam would be a nightmare. A belief about the world shouldn't necessarily commit us to political action – we have to be able to say "No" to affirmative beliefs about the world without thereby signing up to a campaign. We need to be able to make such choices more freely than such a requirement would allow.

Atheism can however include something like a movement, of course, as can other beliefs and non-beliefs. Some of the disagreement among atheists is around this issue. Many atheists want to be able to be atheists without being dragooned into some boring noisy unsubtle

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment