Julian Baggini: Is Atheism a New Faith?
[7:13]
ATHEISM IS NOT A FAITH….We don’t need faith to know that China is still in the same place as before, even though we can’t see it for ourselves. The pilot will not get lost on each flight. We also do not need faith to know that China’s population is over 1 billion people even though we can’t see them all. We do not need faith to know that there is oxygen in our atmosphere even though we can’t see, smell or taste it… We do not need faith to know that it will rain in the UK in 2018 either.
Over time questions are asked, people are skeptical, research is then conducted, lots of testing and re-testing, producing eventually, consistent results and then therefore evidence beyond any doubt and no need for a majority to actually see, hear, taste or smell something to know that it is the real deal. CONSISTENT EVIDENCE OVER TIME IS KEY AND WE DEVELOP A TRUST. We create reference points from these 100% fixed consistent patterns. We plan our day from knowing them… We then create other patterns and know for example which is the low cost supermarket (the same each time we visit unless we hear different), we know which neighborhood is the most dangerous, so avoid walking in that area at night. We make these various decisions upon the gathered, consistent information received from various and different sources.
Atheism in the same way therefore is not a faith…. Atheists are the process of investigation…Skeptical first, with a right to be, guided by reason, asking questions due to the ambiguity of conflicting religious / spiritual views across the globe, Atheists then definitely need 100% evidence to sort all out and prove things beyond doubt. That’s just being smart, nothing to do with faith. The same process used for gathering information to help us get by in our daily lives with minimal fuss.
All observations in the first paragraph, are fact despite us unable to actually see for ourselves, due to the consistent 100% data patterns produced. Nobody in their right mind will bet against it raining in the UK in 2018, despite not being able to observe the future. Each pilot that flies from one airport toward Beijing, from the consistent data produced in the past, we know that they will find Beijing airport in the same place again 100% of the time in the future, otherwise we would get to hear about it through thousands of news sources.
However, the 3000 gods produced over time, depending on which era and region, also chakra’s, chi energy, remote viewing, feng shui, telepathy, miracles, reiki, homeopathy, talking to the dead, astrology, tarot card reading, and many other, have never ever passed the test to confirm they actually exist or are real. Why?….Many considerations are put in place including the placebo effect, also people’s susceptibility to forming cognitive biases and most importantly the lack of 100% consistent evidence over and over means that people become non-believers of such things and as a reference point, labels are created such as ‘Atheism’ for this rational investigation process.
Years and years of research, thousands of people with various investigation techniques, many arguing and debating against each other, creating a healthy platform to eventually get to the EVIDENCE that is necessary. NEVER ANY EVIDENCE PRODUCED by those who are spiritually connected to whatever.. Claims that are also unseen (just like China’s position on the map), but without evidence and 100% data to back them up… Sai Baba has millions of followers, but there are millions of followers of other faiths too that believe in not him but something else, so from this observation, how many followers a faith has does not count toward making something fact… All sorts of studies like this are thrown into the investigation pot to try and get eventual evidence….
Hundreds of years of research and it remains that with any faith based idea, all we consistently find is lots and lots of human creativity backed up with detailed, articulate justifications but never any evidence… Which one to believe as the real truth? This is the Atheistic position… It’s an investigation process, not a faith. The mass data sets consistently provide no evidence required to confirm any spiritual faith as actual fact. Atheists aren’t haters, they are not competitive, they are just a group of people who sift through the ambiguity and realize evidence is required before believing something.
Atheists recognize that there are so many faith claims, all of them conflicting with each other and therefore create separate labels such as MUSLIM, ZOROASTIAN, CHRISTIAN, HINDU, SIKH, SCIENTOLOGIST and so on…. Believers of either can not gladly shift from their label to another, despite some claiming to have the same core values as other faiths. None of them can produce any sort of evidence to back up their various claims to disprove another faith… All faiths become just a comfort zone subjective tool to help cope with living in a demanding world and nothing more. How would a neutral know which one of the thousands of beliefs available is actually the real deal without investigating?
In the beginning a few told the masses that China was where it was on the map due to sailing there a few times… People needed faith to believe them, simply because there were only a few reports, and a small amount of journeys made. Skepticism of the reports given would have been a healthy thing to have before confirming anything… Over time though, thousands of the same reports from different, unconnected sources confirmed that China was still in the same place and was in fact a real place. The doubt, skepticism and faith at the beginning shifted to evidence beyond any doubt and a 100% reference point created… Religion and spirituality of any kind has never been able to create that shift toward evidence from doubt and skepticism ever.
By Panayiotis Stavrou
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