Is atheism dangerous? That’s the question posed by Blogging Theology. I know the author of that site will undoubtedly argue that it is, because the author of that site mistakenly conflates the absence of belief with political ideology.
I don’t need to watch his video to understand his thought process, because he and I have danced this merry dance before. I’ve recently discussed this notion at length with others. There seems to be a chronic lack of… let’s call it awareness, among many religious commentators, where it comes to atheism (a less-kind observation might regard this attitude to be ‘willfully ignorant’ or even blatantly dishonest).
As my earlier post points out, there are plenty of people of supposedly good religious stock who proved to be thoroughly immoral, at least by the standards we would deem reasonable. Yes, there are atheists who commit crimes; there are Christians and Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and more, who commit crimes. Adherence to religious dogma doesn’t have a bearing on that. A person is absolutely capable of being good without religious beliefs, and absolutely capable of being bad, with religious beliefs. It’s a pity the author of Blogging Theology is incapable of understanding nuance.
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Is atheism dangerous? Well, there are a lot of people who talk without backing it up without authority. They have opinions and perhaps monkeys have opinions too! The test of any ‘theory’ is if it can produce a constant declaration or answer to the question. So, over the many, many, many centuries the ‘Holy Records’ of the Abrahamic tradition can answer the question of whether atheism is dangerous or not. I go to the records and not to the people to give a clear guidance. The answer given is especially clear in Islam.
I understand that others have a voice but so don’t the local lunatics of any religion or non-religion have a voice. I don’t go by their ephemiral beliefs as they are not consistant over thousands of years declaring the same thing. Just go to islamtheway.org and find a lot of Comparative Religion that when interpreted correctly shows a type of oneness in truth. What other people don’t or can’t see, I’m not responsible for nor are they responsible for me!
Yours,
Ahmed Ismail
Greetings Ahmed,
Forgive me, but I am not entirely following the meaning of your comment. You wrote that the Holy Records can tell us if atheism is dangerous; what of real-world experience and history? My firm belief is that those who paint atheism as a murderous entity do so out of wilful ignorance; they conflate, quite purposefully, atheism with political ideology. The followers of organised religions have historically not only been at loggerheads with each other, but with atheism, and the great problem with organised religion (be it Christianity, Islam, or anything else) is that on every side, you have a lot of people with unwavering belief in the morality of their faith, and in the rightness of their faith, and using that to justify all sorts of actions. Every holy book proclaims itself to be the one, inerrant truth, so which text do we turn to? It’s a bunch of circular arguments, that occasionally divert to calling atheists amoral, without ever justifying that claim.