Formula Athiests (part 1?)

One thing has always bothered me about religious discussion online. It's been with the popular strain of atheists online. I'm not talking about religious atheists like some kinds of Buddhists or LaVeyan Satanists, or the more nuanced agnostics. I like to call them formula atheists, but I don't think that's how they self identify.

The thing that has always bothered me is that they had always been far more homogeneous than the religious groups they argue against. They tend to use precisely the same arguments worded almost identically and as often as not they link to the same list of strange/creepy stuff in the bible from 1998. They invariably refuse to discuss things other than Christianity, and seem to think that common criticisms of Christianity somehow invalidate different faith-traditions. They also insist on the strangest form for Biblical Literalism, far more than even the most fundamental of the radical Fundamentalists with this strange aversion to "cherry picking" like making the strange assumption that poetry about women lusting for men with dicks of donkeys is figurative. Never mind theology, or even literary scholarship, everything in the Bible is either entirely literally true or entirely false. Then there are the constant allusions to science about things that science and logic about things that science and logic are silent, asserting that these things are in inevitable and eternal conflict ignoring the long periods where they mutually supported one another.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not definitively stating that they are all entirely false forever. But it was the fact that these discussions almost always go exact same way from the position of the atheist. I've been around long enough that I'm pretty certain that I could effectively spoof that whole discussion from there perspective. Still, I didn't agree in 2000, and I still don't agree now.

I think I figured out why. Now, this is just me putting forth a hypothesis that seems to fit my admittedly casual sample and not intended to apply to all atheists, but just the kind previously discussed. It's a reductionist ideology. It's a simple way to look at a complicate issue. Religious groups are "bad" and the various differences between them and the very nature of theology can be glossed over because a very distinct set of assumptions.

I have to say, if I accepted those assumptions as true and were to base my own world view upon them then I would likely agree with them. Their later arguments are generally well crafted based on the assumptions they start with, they all follow and make sense. The problem is, I'm familiar with a wide variety of theological arguments, and a lot of those assumptions (Christianity is representative of all Religion, The Bible is intended to be entirely literal, Religion opposes Science, Religious people are atheists about all deities except their own) ring false. But, they can appear to be true when not examined. When pressed in discussion, these individuals are not willing to discuss the veracity of these specific topics. Why? Because they are the assumptions, and because these assumptions (among others) are used to reduce the complexity of the issue at hand to where the more complicated arguments make sense and disagreement can be brushed off because they can be assumed to be false based on the givens at the beginning of the discussion.

This is the same kind of idea structure that leads to things like "All Arabs are Muslim and therefore Terrorists", "The Government wants all our stuff and lies therefore we don't have to pay Income Taxes", and "Republicans/Democrats are dicks/hate America therefore they oppress minorities an the poor/force people to do stuff that doesn't make sense". It's all reductionist ideology designed to create artificial certainty about a complicated topics by ignoring that complexity through the use of a set of simplifying assumptions.

The problem is, while these comments and arguments make perfect sense are are unassailable when all involved agree to that set of assumptions, they are arbitrary, opaque, and mostly nonsensical to those who adhere to a different set of assumptions. The only way anyone can "win" is when someone buys into a new set of assumptions.

Now, I'm not saying that this demonstrates that anyone is "wrong" or "right", they also aren't the only ones who do this in religious discussions there are classes of religious debaters who fall into the exact same category. I'm just excited to have a working hypothesis on this particular concept.

What comes next is figuring out a way to test this hypothesis. If I can figure out an experiment then I'll follow this post up with results.