The rationality of atheism/Needs to be NPOVed

POV? POV is what we have left in the main article and is too mild a word for what we have here. This is a blatant attack on atheism, perhaps added to by some atheists. Consider this gem:

It is difficult to see how a morality that arises "out of social interactions" can be consistent, or superior to religiously based morality.

Modern atheists take these arguments in stride. In the first instance - that the atheist would appear to need arguments for the non-existence of God - the modern atheist takes existence arguments as the weakest of all objections to atheism. After all, the burden of proof is on those making an assertion, and the assertion in this case is the one made by theists - that a god does in fact exist. This is a parallel to the justice system, in which guilt must be proved but innocence cannot be - it can only be presumed. Thus, the modern atheist sees the allegations of God's existence as a charge which must be proved, and the testimony of "religious experience" as hearsay evidence.

Placing the burden of proof on the theists appears to be a creative restatment of Occam's Razor. What evidence would one expect to find? The expectation of material evidence for a hypothetically immaterial, transcendent god implies an assumption that such a god would reveal Himself (note the gender!) in a specific, predictable manner. The lack of the specific desired revelation at the desired time and place cannot prove that God does not exist. The existence of God is not falsifiable.

Related to this is the theist's argument that since one cannot prove a negative, atheism is therefore based on faith. The modern atheist sees this as only slightly more sophisticated than the existence argument. He also sees it as the place where theistic arguments begin to fall into a muddle. In existence arguments, the theist claims that "religious experience" is proof positive enough for the believer of the existence of God. However, the negative-proof argument asserts that the theist has no proof of God's existence because belief requires faith. The atheist's response, then, is, "You can't have it both ways. Which do you require: proof or faith?" (This is quite beyond the simple response that it is entirely possible to prove negatives: one can quite certainly prove that the die did not land on 6.)

The simplistic negative-proof argument of reliance on faith, is a bit of a straw man. A more sophisticated version of that argument suggests that in the absence of evidence either way, a person should be agnostic. If astronomers are able to detect a far-off solar system, but not able scan it completely, would it be more rational for them to state with certainty the number of planets and how many moons each has, or to simply describe what they could detect and acknowledge that there may be more planets, and even more moons, than their limited instruments are able to detect from here in our solar system? In a similar way, humans do not by definition have the ability to detect a god who be able to remain undetected if He possesses the attributes commonly assigned to Him. This is why the existence of God is not falsifiable.

Atheism is no more concerned with disproving God than religion is with proving him. Atheism is a way of life which rejects superstition and supernaturalism in favor of rationalism and naturalism. Religions are many and varied, but their one commonality is supernaturalism. It is the mark by which theists and atheists alike can identify just what is a religion and what is not. Atheism, therefore, is not a religion.

Contrasting rationalism with supernaturalism in this fashion leads to a circular argument that belief in the supernatural is irrational. It would be more accurate to contrast supernaturalism with naturalism or empiricism.

Modern atheism, just like religions, is concerned with morality and ethics. Modern atheism considers religion to be an immoral choice of lifestyle. Its objections vary in detail from religion to religion. Gautama Buddha, for example, temporarily relinquished his wife and family for his pursuit of Nirvana. Christianity is based on human sacrifice. Islam means submission. Atheism rejects the idea that morality is handed down to man from a supernatural moralist; rather, it sees morality as arising out of social interactions. The atheist finds the escape from responsibility which is fostered by many religions to be morally unacceptable. For example, the atheist believes it immoral for one man to be brutally murdered for the sins of another, or that all one need do is confess his sins for them to be absolved, or that all one need do is believe and obey in order to gain entrance to a post-mortem fairyland. The atheist finds religions to promote fear, guilt, irrationality, and irresponsibility (let alone wars and persecution). Though specifics will vary with the individual atheist, the common rationales that tie them together, then, are rationalism, naturalism, and responsibility.

It is difficult to see how a morality that arises "out of social interactions" can be consistent, or superior to religiously based morality. It is not clear how such a standard renders Islamic submission immoral, for instance. However, religious people have suffered tremendously under militant atheist regimes in the twentieth century, particularly in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and also in Communist China. The persecution of Christians and believers in Falun Gong continues in China to this day. Recent history would appear to demonstrate that when atheism is adopted as the official government policy, it does not necessarily embody a higher standard of morals than the religious believers it seeks to convert.

See also : The rationality of atheism