The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #151015   Message #3526570
Posted By: Steve Shaw
14-Jun-13 - 08:24 PM
Thread Name: BS: Can all Athiests be lumped together?
Subject: RE: BS: Can all Athiests be lumped together?
"Fundamentalist atheists" are just like "fundamentalist Christians." They allow only for their own ideology.

This is utter nonsense on several levels. First, there is no atheist ideology. We do keep trying to tell you this, but you clearly want us to have an ideology in order for you to have something to shoot at. I can sum up my atheism in about two lines (I often have done), and there is no tightly-argued quasi-antitheological corollary. That isn't fundamentalism - it's one big shrug.   Second, "fundamentalist" implies the possession of an ideology. See above. You can't be fundamentalist about nothing. Third, fundamentalism implies certainty. I have no certainty about any religious matter. I don't know whether there's a God (which is not to imply that I sit on the fence - I don't). Fourth, fundamentalist Christians have deliberately shut their eyes to evidence and reason. Well, if there is any such thing as an atheist, it's a person who has taken on board the evidence against a deity, which is strong, and applied all his powers of reason (any atheist who isn't like that isn't the kind of atheist I wish to associate with). Atheism cannot mean certainty, and certainty is a sine qua non of fundamentalism. Your post is what I described above: a mixture of frustration and goading. Well, you goaded me into this response. The frustration is all yours to deal with.