Expert: Austin Cline - 7/7/2008

Question
Austin, A little while ago I sent you a question. I haven't received an email confirmation, which I usually receive almost immediately. Just in case I wrote the wrong email address last time, I'm sending it to you now. If there's an error, the question confirmation and answer to my previous question should be sent to the email address I'm including with this question. Of course the email confirmation might just be delayed. Thanks and sorry for the trouble, David

Answer
I'll past my original answer here, in case the first copy doesn't get to you:

"I often find them distasteful because they oly seek to take people's religion away without providing a secular alternative which satisfies the same human needs. ...From what I've read, I think atheists don't get this."

1. You yourself agree that there is no life after death. So, do you find them distasteful if they provide no alternative to a life after death? Surely not, since you feel no need for that — but others do. What they perceive as a "human need" you recognize has only been encouraged by religions which promote belief in a life after death. In other words, they get people to think that they have a need then offer to fulfill it — classic marketing. So, how much of what you assume is "human need" falls into the same category? How much of what you're looking for do you really just need to let go of in the first place?

2. If you keep reading books which are designed as critiques of religion or theism, you shouldn't be disappointed that those books don't also offer non-theistic alternatives. You should, instead, seek out *those* books. Have you?

"Mostly I've seen sneering ridicule of religion and religious people and a feeling of superiority."

You don't think that there is anything in religion that deserves ridicule?

"Atheists can't just take away what religious people have; they also have to have something to put in its place."

Atheists can't and don't take anything away; this completely misrepresents what's going on. If I criticize and ridicule some idea, and someone else comes to agree that I'm right, then I haven't "taken" anything from them. It doesn't matter if the idea is "god exists" or "gun control is good" or "capital punishment is immoral." You can fill in any idea and nothing is "taken away." From my perspective, gods are as real as elves, so if you came across someone who believed elves lived in his garden and you got him to realize his error, do you really feel responsible for "taking away" something? Correcting errors counts even less as "taking something away" than anything else.

Furthermore, the fact that someone ends up agreeing with me doesn't mean that I have a responsibility to give them replacement beliefs. Quite the opposite is true: people have to be responsible for developing their own beliefs. This is *especially* true when it comes to something as expansive as religion.

Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you read a bunch of my writings and decided to abandon both Judaism and theism. You aren't even going to remain a secular Jew who observes a lot of traditions but without all the religious and theistic beliefs. Do I now have to provide you with a complete secular, atheistic philosophy as a replacement? Of course not. If I did, I'd be contradicting many of my own arguments because I'd be trying to replace one authoritarian system ("believe this because God says so") with another ("believe this because Austin says so"). No, you have to be responsible for developing your own alternatives.

There are plenty of atheists who write in defense of secular philosophies who will provide you with ideas to use, but whether you accept those ideas and how far you take them is up to you.