Posted: Jan 19, 2019 4:47 pm
I shall try to clarify what I have been saying. I appreciate that I may well not succeed.
1. Ideology, belief system, worldview.
I take all these terms to refer to a reasonably coherent set of positive beliefs about the world which a person or society accepts and lives by. I prefer to avoid the term “ideology” altogether here, since in ordinary usage it’s become pejorative: to say that someone has an ideology is to say that they have an irrational set of beliefs, which doesn’t help either clarity or coolness of discussion. I shall use “belief system” and “worldview” interchangeably.
2. Definition of “atheism”
Atheism is not a technical term, but an ordinary word in the English language, so I don’t think it’s possible to lay down the law about exactly what it ought to mean, it’s defined by usage. As with many English words, it has shades of meaning in different contexts. Most dictionaries (which describe usage) define “atheism” as having 2 meanings: disbelief in god(s) and lack of belief in god(s). In casual, social contexts I’m happy enough with the first; if I say I’m an atheist, I’m happy that people would understand me to be saying that I don’t think there are any gods, which I don’t. However, in any more extended discussion of atheism (such as the rest of this post), then I much prefer, and would insist on using, the second meaning, and I’m in strong agreement with atheists who press for greater recognition of the second meaning: lack of belief in god(s). There are several reasons for this preference, Calilasseia expounded some of them forcefully in #2689 of this thread. (I quoted the whole of that post in post #2697, and explained why I agree with it, although Calilasseia was taking issue with a post of mine.) The second meaning is the more inclusive one; if atheism is taken to mean lack of belief in any gods, then someone who strongly believes that there is no god is still an atheist because, as well as believing there is no god, they lack belief in god(s).
3. Atheism is not a belief system
In this context, discussing atheism at length, I am using what I gave as the second dictionary definition of atheism: lack of belief in god(s). Accordingly, any belief system which does not include positive belief in god(s) is an atheist belief system. Atheism is not itself a belief system, and there is not, logically, any one belief system which is entailed by atheism.
The title of this thread includes the term “atheist ideology”, and it’s fair to say that I was carelessly courting strong disagreement when I defended it, even as used by an opponent of atheism. By defending the term “atheist ideology”, I managed to imply simultaneously both that there is a single belief system which is logically tied to atheism, and also that that belief system is irrational. Since I strongly disagree with both of those implications, I shall stop attempting to defend the term “atheist ideology”, and express my thanks to the people who have been pointing out the error of my ways.
I shall continue to defend my view that in the modern world, it so happens that there is a particular belief system, which I am calling the scientific worldview (attempted definition in the next 2 paragraphs), which is associated with atheism. I am emphatically not claiming that all atheists hold, or should logically hold, the scientific worldview – for a start, there were plenty of atheists before the seventeenth century, and they could not have held it. I am also not claiming that theists can’t hold the scientific worldview (although if they do, they need to be deists who say that their god doesn’t interfere in the observable world). I am claiming that the majority of atheists in the modern world broadly accept the scientific viewpoint, and that this is not a coincidence, because the stunning successes of science in accurately describing and controlling the world make it easier for people to discard religious beliefs.
4. The scientific worldview
I’m taking a worldview (or belief system) to be the set of working beliefs about the world held by a person or society, provided those beliefs are reasonably coherent, or at least not actively contradicting each other.
I’m defining the scientific worldview for my purposes as provisional acceptance that everything in the world can, at least potentially, be described in terms of the mathematical regularities of modern science (taken as beginning roughly in the seventeenth century, particularly with Newton’s laws of motion).
5. Science, religion, and Theory of Mind
Humans have evolved a number of specialised brain mechanisms, known collectively as Theory of Mind, for understanding and predicting other people. It is my view that supernatural beliefs (including religions) are characterised by taking Theory of Mind as a direct window on reality, accepting the independent existence of souls or spirits.
Human brains, like those of other animals, have evolved effective systems for dealing with inanimate objects. We judge distances, weights and speeds directly, using our senses. Our ability to deal with the inanimate world has been very greatly enhanced by science.
The mechanisms of Theory of Mind, which evolved for dealing with other people, do not make direct use of the evidence from our senses. Instead, they start with the implicit assumption that one human is similar to another, that the other person is “like me”. On that basis we guess, largely automatically, what is going on in the other person’s brain by running the appropriate mechanisms of our own brains “offline”. When we use Theory of Mind to think about someone else, we see that person as a soul, or centre of consciousness, with desires, beliefs, intentions and a point of view, all of which are or may be different from our own. This takes a lot of computing power; evolution of Theory of Mind is probably why we evolved large heads.
This way of understanding and predicting people is radically different from the ways we understand and predict inanimate objects. It is also impressively effective; an ordinary person using prescientific Theory of Mind isn’t just better than all the resources of modern science at predicting what another person will do, they leave modern science standing (so far, at any rate). Theory of Mind also works well, though with more reservations, for understanding and predicting other living things. Even the growth patterns of plants are often most easily understood, and predicted, in terms of the plant “wanting” e.g. to deter plant-eating animals, or to gain more light, or to spread its seeds.
For early humans, trying to survive in a complex web of living things, it would have made sense to apply the powerful mechanisms of Theory of Mind to almost everything in their environment. I’m linking again to the 2016 article “Hunter-gatherers and the origins of religion” here, which provides evidence that early humans, probably without exception, were animists, who believed that everything has a spirit or soul; this would have been a straightforward consequence of their using Theory of Mind. Quoting the first part of the discussion section of the article:
Our results reflect Tylor’s (1871) belief that animism was the earliest and most basic trait of religion because it enables humans to think in terms of supernatural beings or spirits. Animism is not a religion or philosophy, but a feature of human mentality, a by-product of cognitive processes that enable social intelligence, among other capabilities. It is a widespread way of thinking among hunter-gatherers (Bird-David 1999; Charlton 2007; Klingensmith 1953; Piaget 1929). Animistic thought is a natural by-product of the human capacity for intentionality or “theory of mind mechanism” (Dunbar 2003). This innate cognitive trait allows us to attribute a vital force to animate and inanimate elements in the environment (Piaget 1929; Tylor 1871). Once that vital force is assumed, attribution of other human characteristics will follow. Animistic beliefs are generally adaptive in the environments that prevail in hunter-gatherer societies (Bird-David 1999; Charlton 2002). Animistic thinking would have been present in early hominins, certainly earlier than language (Coward 2015; Dunbar 2003).
The belief that spirits or souls are an essential component of the world comes naturally to us, it’s likely that our ancestors held that belief before they were modern humans. I suspect it takes an alternative worldview with fairly powerful reasons behind it to shift that belief, and I think it’s likely that this is at least a part of the reason why atheism was uncommon before the seventeenth century and the impressive successes of science.