Atheism is still a minority in the world. The fear of death still maintains a religious implication for the purpose of easing ones experience of the act of death. Nonetheless, atheism is on the rise. However, having had a considerable level of discussion with people who call themselves atheist, a clear distinction is needed. Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of any deities or supernatural governor of the universe. The first distinction that needs to be made here is the difference between this and theism.
Theism is the complete opposite of the definition of atheism, labelled above, which states that indeed there is a deity that is responsible, and in many cases, remains responsible, for the order or perhaps chaos (depending on your philosophical persuasions) of the universe. Religion stems from theism and one cannot say that atheism is a religion. Atheism is an ideology based on the foundation of evidence and verified facts (as long as you leave Descartes alone). Religion is based on ones belief and ones idleness (to not wish to look for facts and adopt fiction), ones cowardice (looking at the universe and understanding how we have no possible hope in fulfilling the anthropic principle) or ones gullibility (this should speak for itself). Atheism is not a religion and this is a distinction that needed to be made before we address the public ignorance surrounding agnosticism. Carl Sagan justifies his atheism by saying that “I don’t want to believe, I want to know”.
Agnosticism is, simply, that we do not know whether or not there is or was a designer or that this is or was a moral supervisor in the universe. Atheism provides certainty. Many atheists argue that their position is the strongest because they are not providing certainty. Religion, to them, is what is providing certainty. This, to me anyway, demonstrates a vast ignorance amongst atheists. Atheism is an ideology the propagates certainty that there is no divine or deistic implications in the universe.
This is where my problem lies. The four horsemen (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett) of atheism are all guilty of the certainty of atheism. They are all, also, guilty of the certainty that religion has little foundation. This second act is not particularly sinful but the first act has inspired a lot of misuse of diction. Many anti-theists, those who despise and acknowledge the ridiculous nature of religion, often start calling themselves atheists because they hold similar anti-theist convictions of the four horsemen. It is often seen that these people who agree with the four horsemen then go about calling themselves atheist, despite stating that they do not know the answers to these questions. Therefore, while they may disagree with theism they cannot claim the certainty that atheism asks. I submit that I am one of these individuals (hopefully one day I can say that I was one of these people).
Therefore, I feel that there are many people out there who label themselves as atheists but they are actually agnostics. Their contempt for religion has clouded people’s ability to maintain the fact that we cannot provide certainty and therefore we cannot be atheists.
To finish off with, there is a case to say that there is no certainty to be had within ideology. No measureable certainty at least. Therefore, until we do know everything that there is within the universe and beyond (a moment within the history of human intelligence that I we will ever see) then we cannot claim to know everything and have overall certainty about the universe as a whole. Therefore, everyone, by nature, has to be an agnostic and all the ideologies that follow are simply attempts, majority of them being poor ones, at trying to elevate ourselves away from our agnostic nature.
beyond the Edge of reason 