Can atheism be a world religion? – Malay Mail Online

FEBRUARY 10 Humankind has been searching for the truth since time immemorial. Apart from looking for the best way to live and indeed what that way would constitute, they have also been asking what lies in The Great Beyond, past the threshold of death.

Various answers have emerged in the form of what we know as global religions. Each religion has its own postulation about what happens to us after we die.

And there are those who say nothing happens. When our bodies cease to function, so do our consciousness. It is then a total blackout forever.

That is what atheists postulate and this view is not something new. In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, we find plenty of examples of atheism in history. However, they were very marginal back then, owing to the fact that Europe had a strong religious presence.

In recent times, however, atheism has exploded in terms of numbers.

What has brought about the rise in atheism? By some estimates, and I have noticed this on social media myself, even in the very conservative Saudi Arabia 15 per cent of its population are atheists.

This is possibly due to excessive religious authoritianism which has put many young people off religion. Not only that, the presence of social media has enabled the internet savvy to consolidate with one another and moreover, absorb ideas from abroad.

When the allegedly atheist Raif Badawi was jailed and sentenced to whipping, he received tremendous support from atheists all over the world, thanks to social media.

The question now is, can atheism become a world religion? For a start, it definitely has the rhetorical capacity to do so.

While some religions claim to be a personal relationship with God and others a complete way of life, atheisms slogan is that it is a non-belief.

In other words, it alleges that our primordial state, our psychological tabula rasa as it were, is one of non-belief. Atheists tell me that if one were to ask a baby if he or she believes in God, the answer would be no.

The problem is, if one were to ask a baby that, one would first have to explain the concept of God. In doing so, one would undoubtedly fertilise the babys mind with the idea of a deity.

Hence, the baby would no longer be able to retain the purity of innocence from that idea and lose his or her objectivity.

It is the same problem with the questions of ethics. In his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris sets forth a scientific methodology in determining ethics.

This is another one of atheisms proclivities, by the way, scientism. Scientism is not the same as being scientific. Being scientific is a methodology for deriving information.

Scientism is rather the ideology that science is a means of attaining truths. I am not saying that science cannot yield truths but that the truths it produces is subjective to the experiments it conducts.

This is why, there was a time when science was used to prove racial superiority! It all boils down on how an experiment is set up and more importantly, why it is set up to begin with.

Another issue which concerns me is New Atheism, a political movement which is very anti-theist and anti-religion. While I welcome their criticisms of the existence of God and religion, the language they employ is decidedly lacking in nuance.

The aforementioned Sam Harris, for example, called Islam the motherlode of bad ideas without deigning to acknowledge aspects of the religion which even the vilest of racists would find acceptable. This may appeal to his neo-colonialist masters but it is intellectually dishonest and moreover, only serves to deepen the conflicts between civilizations.

Can atheism be a world religion? Not yet, I surmise. Strong counter currents from religious movements will keep atheism on the side for the time being but maybe in the next generation, things will change. Atheism can perhaps stem the tide of religious fundamentalism.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Can atheism be a world religion? - Malay Mail Online