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I've been hearing a lot about the growing move-ments such as strong atheists, militant atheists, and soft atheists. Even a group of atheists that calls itself "Brights." Disturbing classifications that sound like atheists are starting up their own religions. When I heard that The Secular Coalition had gone to the White House recently to represent non-believing Americans, I was hoping that they were bringing some clear thinking to the increasing frustration many feel at the lack of separation between church and state.
Yesterday, after reading the message from the new president of The Secular Coalition, I tweeted about how his using "theistic" words like "believe," "deserve," and "wrong" just didn't represent me. Then I went on to say that I thought atheism should be promoted, but not using the god-gamer's language because that was like playing a game invented by idiots.
A concern among the Twitter atheist community seems to be: "If we don't take on the god fanatics, how do we promote our cause?" Engaging the theists can be entertaining and let's face it, pitifully easy fun (the religious do provide absurd material) but on a more serious note, why should atheists persist in fighting a dual non-belief/belief war?
In order to deconstruct false claims, one must think critically, but to do that it's necessary to parse the language used to make the claims. The original Greek meaning of "a" is away from or without so a-theism literally means "away from theism," which at first glance, seems appropriate for us non-believers. But theism is a flawed concept, therefore, a-theism builds its church on a cracked foundation which puts non-believers on the same level as religion. To illustrate my point, here's a thought game question: "If there's no apple in the room, why talk about the apple?"
Atheists know that one of the main lures of religion is that it satisfies the weak human need to explain/personify the "mystery" of the nature of reality. Many philosophers and physicists in history have tried to explain/prove this "mystery." Wittgenstein, one of the greatest brains in history, ended his Tractatus, (his exploration into the nature of reality) by writing, "What can be said can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
So what is this "what cannot be spoken of"? Theism is built on the belief that there is something "out there" something magical, distinct, and mysterious that just cannot be attributed to ordinary humans. It's obvious that the human is more than just a biological machine. Theists attribute the "mystery" to an imaginary friend, someone floating off in space, Buddha said that the absolute truth is that nothing is absolute, and Einstein gave us the theory of relativity.
To the theist, this 'what cannot be described' is labelled that which is distinct and away from the self: god. In the theism/atheism debate we use the common language of the theist, which solves precisely fuck all and does little to advance the clarity of a-theisim. Instead of the back and forth war between atheists and theists, atheism should focus on deconstructing the idiocy at theism's foundation. Perhaps this new "move-ment" could be called Aetheism, which would signify complete disengagement with theism, even prior to the notion of engagement at all.
The dual nature of theism must be deconstructed if we want to expose religion as a farce. To do that, it is no longer necessary to engage in the this or that back and forth and come from the center, where the adividual exists.
The theme of the book I have written is how we, as individuals living in a dualistic world, can use clear thinking to unconceal the adividual, that which is present before the need to view reality as this/that, right/wrong, black/white. Atheists and theists alike may one day discover that the only true measure is the adividual, because the adividual is the only absolute existent competent of measure.
Instead of trying to refute religion, isn't it time atheists deconstructed the idiocy outside of the notion of duality, and stopped playing a game with rules made up by theists?
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