So you are an atheist. So what!?

Atheism, as I understand it means not believing in God or gods, so if you believe that the whole world is held up by fairies and that your body is made up of candy canes, but you don’t believe in God or gods you are an atheist. Golly-gee, big accomplishment!

I will point out that the Stalinist Progressive Labor Party here in the U.S. is a 100% atheistic organization. From my understanding, the Neo-Nazi organization The Church of the Creator is also a 100% atheistic organization. Don’t let the name confuse you, the Creator is the white male. I would dare suggest that most of the readers of this blog have little in common with Stalinists and Neo-Nazis.

For me, atheism is a side effect of a much more important assertion, which is that the natural world is all that exists, and science is how we understand that world. Science is an application of what philosopher’s call methodological naturalism.

For those who study science and value science as a way to discover things about reality there is a bit of an existential conundrum. You basically have two choices, you can put your head in the sand and rant and rave about the limits of science (which are ever decreasing), or you can carry methodological naturalism to what seems to me to be the obvious conclusion which is philosophical naturalism.

The people who call themselves “atheists” that I count as my comrades are at the very least philosophical naturalists. Philosophical naturalists essentially treat reality as what science calls reality. Pretty fraking simple.

This carries with it a burden, and that burden is to try to advocate for action which is consistent with what we know to be real as a result of science. Only one of these things is the unlikelihood of the Abrahamic god (not to mention other gods).

I think of equal importance is that we advocate for other pertinent things which the scientific evidence is beginning to weigh in clearly on.

For example human affected climate change has reached as much of a scientific consensus as anything can in science. Yet, I see very little from the mouths of philosophical naturalists on this issue, I guess its just more fun to complain about young-earth creationists.

For me investing a lot of time and energy on young-earth creationists is a little like trying to prevent a violent take-over by the Amish. As far as affecting the ability of science to inform policy and science to cause real world action to improve the world, these whak-a-doos are not much of a threat. You just don’t hear too many senators argue their policies on the idea that cave men rode dinosaurs like horses. But the fact that human affected climate change has been framed as a scientific mystery with two sides to the issue, and the “atheists” have remained largely silent about it is a real threat to the ability of science to help us make wise decisions. Human affected climate change has two sides to the same extent that intelligent design and evolution do. Which hopefully you realize that means it doesn’t have two sides. The data is conclusive and a consensus has been reached, in science thats as good as it gets.

“Atheists” have also remained largely silent about stem-cell research and “abstinence only” sex education. Sam Harris will occasionally mention these two things as evidence of the fact that the religious exercise far too strong a foothold on policy, but I argue that this is not enough.

We know a great deal about human sexuality and the psychological factors at play due to a half century of psychological research. We also know a great deal about human development in utero and how the brain develops. We know what the brain needs, generally, to be self-aware, to suffer, to experience life in any meaningful way. We also know with great certainty that a blastocyst, which is the what the organism we use for embryonic stem-cell research is called, does not cut the mustard for consciousness, not even close. Fighting for better sex-education and funding embryonic stem-cell research should be on the forefront of a secularist agenda.

In essence what I am arguing is that those of us who have found ourselves energized in the secular movement, and inspired to fight superstition, need to ask ourselves what are we trying to do. Are we just searching for catharsis about how annoyed we are at the antics of the religious are we trying to make the world a better place?

If you are with me in trying to make the world a better place, I think that what we must do is make it a top priority to find out how science is weighing on issues of political consequence and speak on behalf of science.