The Creator Gators

Atheism and Fundamentalist Christianity: Two Sides of a Coin

Atheism

I have known or interacted with a number of atheists in my time. There are quiet atheists and there are more vocal atheists. All are absolutely sure they are right, and the vocal ones are often arrogant.

Motivations

Atheists have no qualms about coming up with psychological explanations for religious beliefs, so at the risk of being labeled a motifabricator*, I can list the main reasons that seem to propel people towards atheism.

There is intolerance and even war sometimes between different factions of the same religion. There is religious militancy and terrorism. There are hypocritical preachers. There are churches that are mainly social clubs. You can't blame a thinking person for seeing the ridiculousness of all this.

There is evil, poverty, and serious disease in the world. Again, the thinking person can't reconcile all that with the idea of a benevolent God. So atheism has to be respected for coming to what seems to be the logical conclusion. It has to be respected for not falling for the man-made dogmas of man-made religions.

But to go from agnosticism to hard atheism requires more than even these observations. It may be the fact that atheism is convenient. No one is watching you from above. You're not going to be held accountable for your behaviors. You live your life and that's it.

Beyond atheism

An intelligent person usually goes through at least an agnostic phase. But at some point something happens with some of these people. Something causes them to revise their thinking and to see things from a larger perspective. It may be an intellectual insight, brought on perhaps by channeled teachings that are free of the usual piety of religion, or something like this website. It may be a traumatic experience of some kind. It may be a direct experience of the supernatural. Whatever it is, that person arrives at a place where everything makes way more sense than it did before.

I think there are not a lot of people (as a fraction of the whole) who make this journey completely. The world is populated with agnostics mostly, even among churchgoers.

Fundamentalism

I think "fundamentalism" means the basic belief in a deity. Fundamental Christianity adds a small amount of dogma, but that dogma is quite firm and rigid. In some ways Christian fundamentalism is the flip side of the doctrinist coin, with atheism on the other side. Both are hard, unyielding belief systems and both are sure they are right. Both can be annoying in their righteousness, but fundamentalism wins the prize for irritation. It has as its objective the conversion of other belief systems to its own. Atheism, meanwhile, doesn't ordinarily go about trying to convince others of its correctness, with implied threats of dire consequences if it is rejected. Atheism doesn't preach morality or much of anything else. Give some points to atheism in that regard.

The Evolution Debate

Fundamentalists tend to reject those parts of science that conflict with their beliefs, including evolution as a whole. To deny science isn't easy but they try, and they lose most of their credibility in doing so. The flip side of this is that atheists, and probably most scientists, refuse to accept that known science has limits. They credit evolution with being the entire explanation of life, a position that is both unprovable and highly unlikely. They don't think in detail about it very much, they just blindly believe that it is the explanation. If those rationally-minded persons did reflect on the issue for just a minute, all sorts of difficult questions would arise. The problem for them is that they have to take evolution as the origin of species, because the only alternative is a creative intelligence.

The Communism of the Religious World

Christian fundamentalism is the Communism of the religious world. It adheres to a hard-line doctrine about sin, the need for salvation, and Jesus as the only provider of that salvation. It negates the value and identity of the individual in favor of the group identity. The individual has no innate value without membership in the group. He/she is a worthless sinner, unable to do anything about it by himself/herself. Billy Graham spent much time and energy telling us how sinful and unworthy we are. The group leaders, especially the well-known television preachers, collect as much money from us as they can and live in luxury. Even Joel Osteen, who does not belittle us and whose messages are often quite helpful, is part of the wealthy elite. What percentage of the leadership wealth goes to helping those in need?

"You Must Be Saved"

Hell and Salvation are not major themes in the Bible. The concept that you must be "saved" to enjoy eternal life was a distortion solidified by the (Catholic) Church, as a means of power over the populace: only through the Church can you obtain it. Christian fundamentalism later adopted it, also as a power and subjugation mechanism.

Two Sides of the Coin

Fundamentalism and atheism: two sides of a coin. If you surrender to fundamentalism you surrender your unique identity and power in this lifetime. If you go the way of atheism you deny the larger aspect of you, that aspect which is invisible to you now. Either choice delays your evolutionary journey. (PWB 1-12-22)


*Motifabrication: my word for making assumptions, often unfounded, about another person's or group's motivations.