Heh. When that came out I had the unfair advantage of already knowing the 1966 Oriana Fallaci/Ray Bradbury original, obviously much more fantastic.
(and notice,** begbert2, **that he does touch on that who eventually gets to perpetuate our history may be a modified version, adapted to environments not inhabitable by us…)
Which still, does not make a certain futurist teleology “a tenet of atheist mythology”.
Just a very common, very human fallacy shared by many a believer, atheist or indifferent alike which is the presumption that we are inevitably moving directionally towards a superior state (and its additional variation from the Western industrial age, the presumption that this movement is necessarily accelerating); combined with a particular brand of woo, namely that if you can tell a Good Story about it that touches people’s emotions, you can make it become true.
If anything, Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” speech, stating “no hint of any help coming to save us from ourselves” and “for now, Earth is where we make our stand”, is more characteristic of the philosophy of atheists and humanists I know.
Except… there are always those nutballs who want to go someplace even if it’s uncomfortable, dangerous, and difficult - the top of mount Everest, Antarctica, the Moon…
If we did have “generation ships” that could take long, slow trips to other solar systems I’m pretty sure that when they get there they’ll be a few rebels, mavericks, and oddballs who will make the trip down the gravity well.
Well, to use an on-Earth analogy, with the possible exception of Ireland immigration to the New World had little effect on the number of those who stayed behind in Europe. It had a big effect on those who immigrated, though. By all means, make human life on Earth more sustainable and not rely on the pipe dream of relieving it by going elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go elsewhere as well.
Atheism is a mythology like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Saying humans will never colonize other planets is untenably bold. Even saying we won’t do so within the next ten thousand years is bold, and ten thousand years is a blink in the grand scheme.
That analogy is pretty lousy, though, because emigration to a quite hospitable climate on one’s native planet is almost nothing like emigration to offworld colonies that can support a radically modified approximation of human life only through artificial means.
And of course atheist mythology isn’t a monolithic or mandatory set of beliefs. It’s just a bunch of prejudices and misconceptions, by no means universal among atheists or unique to atheists, that are commonly found among atheists. It’s about equally based on ignorance about the past and unrealistically accelerated expectations of the future.
During the discussions about overpopulation in the late '60s early '70s (which led to books like Make Room, Make Room) Asimov at least specifically said that sending people offworld was not going to cut it. I think the atheist mythology at the time was more reduce population growth. At least some of the religious mythology was breed, breed, breed.
Even native speakers, which I guess you are not if you grew up in a communist society, quibble about ‘atheism’ v ‘agnosticism’, but seems to me that practically atheism connotes not only positive belief in no God but in practical terms in a Western context tends to mean anti-Christianity. Communists generally are anti-Christianity because of their belief in its negative role as dominant religion in Western society. It’s not a pure debate about the existence of a God.
Which also tends to be true of a lot of leftish, implicitly Marxist influenced even if not specifically communist, atheism.
Which either way has about zero to do with space exploration/colonization AFAICS Which I guess is piling on to other responses, but still.
I can see an arguable religious aspect to the potential discovery of non-human ‘intelligent’ life beyond earth, but not space exploration/colonization itself. And even then it would be about pro/anti-Christianity mainly. We don’t know if there is some form of God. Finding other intelligent beings who didn’t know wouldn’t answer the question. Only finding beings advanced enough to somehow actually know and be able to prove the answer would.
On myths, basically all people have them: national myths, ethnic myths, politically correct/incorrect myths etc. But in the Western religion debate atheists believe that Christianity (again in theory ‘organized religion’, but in practice heavily focused on Christianity) is a myth. But there’s no purely ‘atheist mythology’ from a Christian POV. For example the Russians have myths about their country’s 20th century history and role in the world: they had them under the anti-Christian USSR, Putin has rehabilitated those national myths despite also viewing (nominal) Orthodox Christianity as a key part of Russian identity. The USSR’s myths were myths promoted by nominal atheists, but not exclusively ‘atheist myths’.
Don’t forget that there are thousands of possible gods, and positively not believing in all of them would be exhausting. Just lacking belief in them is much simpler.
Anti-Christianity in the West is the result from both Christian dominance and the desire of lots of Christians to impose their belief system on the rest of us. If every street corner was littered with Hindu temples saying “Denali is the reason for the season” you might see more diversity in our opposition.
Yeah, yeah, it was largely a political stunt to beat the Russkies, but there was a lot of what Jack said as well. You are showing how far we have fallen.
Atheists by definition lack of belief in God(s), but their perception of reality and expression of their worldview shows a type of modern mythical thinking whose elements can be recognized in popular science, entertainment, advertising, science fiction and the behavior of young radicals.
Atheism is never simply lack of belief in God(s). If it were, the idea of New Atheism, for example, would not make sense.
Atheism is an essential premise within a person’s philosophy of life and conception of the world, closely intertwined with all the other important options and beliefs. To understand what atheism is all about people should not rely on a the definition offered by Google - instead they ought to look up the concept in the right dictionary: “The existence or non-existence of any non-observable entity in the world is not settled by any single argument or consideration. Every premise will be based upon other concepts and principles that themselves must be justified. So ultimately, the adequacy of atheism as an explanatory hypothesis about what is real will depend upon the overall coherence, internal consistency, empirical confirmation, and explanatory success of a whole worldview within which atheism is only one small part. The question of whether or not there is a God sprawls onto related issues and positions about biology, physics, metaphysics, explanation, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy of language, and epistemology. The reasonableness of atheism depends upon the overall adequacy of a whole conceptual and explanatory description of the world.” (source)
Going to even the nearest star will require a huge jump in technology to achieve speeds of a significant fraction of the speed of light. To date, we have only recently managed to send a vehicle outside our solar system. A number of possible engines for space travel have been suggested, but are largely hypothetical at the moment. But one day somebody will figure out how to get them to work.
For various reasons I think we can safely assume that we could only manage a speed of up to about 30 to 40% of the speed of light, so an interstellar trip to even the nearest star (AFAIK, about 4 to 5 light years) would stiill take around three decades, bearing in mind the need to accelerate and decelerate. And that most likely rules out manned flight on such a vehicle.
An interesting question is whether it is possible to travel faster than light, given that it had been suggested that it would be impossible to achieve the speed of light because of the energy required. And what would happen to time at speeds faster than light?
There is of course the big question as to how far it would be necessary to travel to find a planet that is even remotely habitable. Two things that make the earth habitable are its iron core (that generates a magnetic field) and a moon in close orbit.
But I agree with those who say that there is no telling what technology will have been developed within a few hundred years from now.
That’s just taking one side of the argument. The important point is to realize that ‘atheism’ in Western context really usually means anti-Christianity, not a pure debate about the existence of the divine.
Therefore that kind of overgeneralized concept is not very practically useful. Again practically speaking the ‘theism/atheism’ debate is 95% Christian v anti-Christian. Christianity believes in one God categorically ruling out others, not very complicated in terms of which gods exist. And even if it were politically correct to bash Judaism and Islam, they believe in the same one God (by any reasonable analysis, not saying everybody on the internet is reasonable so linky-link away at unreasonable people saying otherwise ). If it were politically correct to bash Hinduism that would open things up a little arguably; the East Asian original philosophic-religious traditions don’t take a clear position on divinity. I guess debating the validity of animist religious traditions other than as some rhetorical device in debates about Christianity is sub 1%.
So practically speaking believing in no gods v evaluating ‘thousands’ of gods one by one is not a relevant comparison of ‘simplicity’ IMO.
When I was a believer I was Jewish, and I suppose I was anti-Christian without being an atheist back then. My Hebrew School teachers gave us the distinct impression that Christianity was incorrect or worse. I realize that anti-Christian in the US today is less about actually being anti-Christian and more about doing things that offend some Christians (like being gay) or objecting to when Christians discriminate against others.
It is true that atheists I listen to who have deconverted from Christianity are more anti-Christian than I am.
I’m not anti-Jewish at all, but I did not grow up Orthodox so I don’t have anything to rebel against. God belief is incorrect, but my rabbi never said anything much that was offensive or that I would disagree with even now.
Lots of Hindus where I live and where I used to work, but the only impact on me was cool celebration of festivals with good food. If I lived in the increasingly fanatically Hindu India these days, I might be more anti-Hindu. Atheists in India seem to have more of a problem than atheists here - certainly more than atheists in the Bay Area.
So I don’t disagree with you about atheism in the US being more anti-Christian, but that’s just because atheists used to be Christian and suffered from it.
Nothing to do with the OP, but stuff like this <<<Atheism is an essential premise within a person’s philosophy of life and conception of the world>>> Pisses me off. Essential premise, my arse.
You know for a lot of us it really fucking is. Your quoted definition of “atheism” bolts on a bunch of accessories that are not part of simply going through life knowing that there is no god.
Do we get to tell you what you really believe and think?
Wow, that is a really terrible definition and I’m not sure why I should consider it definitive.
Atheism should be the default position. The time to believe in a god is when such a god has been demonstrated to exist. The time to believe in the interactions posited to occur between various objects of mass by gravitational theory is when those interactions are verified to happen, that is the theory corresponds well enough to reality. So too with the germ theory of disease, evolutionary theory, the Big Bang theory, abiogenesis, and so on.
It is possible to be an atheist without having a generally accurate theory of gravity to explain planetary motions. People managed to be atheists for thousands of years without one.
It is possible to be an atheist without having an explanation for why some people get sick and die, particularly after having part of their body opened up and exposed to the environment or coming into contact of varying degrees with other sick people. People managed to be atheists for thousands of years without one.
It is possible to be an atheist without having an explanation for the variety of life on this planet. People managed to be atheists for thousands of years without one.
It is possible to be an atheist without and explanation for the origins of the universe as we know it. People managed to be atheists for thousands of years without one.
And it is STILL, today, not only possible, but I’d say perfectly honest and even appropriate, to be an atheist without being able to fully explain the origin of life on this planet. People have been doing good work towards developing a theory of abiogenesis to explain how life might have come from non-life at least once way back then, but there’s still some work to do before we can set it up as “fact” along with all that other stuff outlined above.
My bottom line is an absolute rejection of your definition’s bottom line: atheism, as a single position referring to a non-belief in the existence of god or gods, need not provide a conceptual and explanatory description of the world. We (humans in general) have other theories for such things, and you are free to expand your worldview to incorporate them, in spite of what your particular religion’s dogma may try to tell you about the universe.
Which I guess is piling on to other responses, but still.