He Can't Be Serious

Well, I hope not!

The 'he' in question is an agnostic blogger named Mark Vernon who has written a pseudo-Freudian psychoanalysis of Richard Dawkins' motivations as revealed in The God Delusion. Viewed as satirical writing, the piece is hilarious; viewed as a serious attempt by someone undoubtedly not qualified as a psychiatrist, let alone a psychoanalyst, the post is trite and . . . lamentable.

Freudian psychoanalysis is the very last tool to use when trying to understand anything about human psychology. Think in terms of Freud's description of psychological defence mechanisms where those are appropriate, but forget the ridiculous 'Oedipal' and 'Electra' concepts. Perhaps the Oedipal complex tells us something of Freud's psyche, but the potential insights stop right there. I don't think that it is particularly difficult to understand Dawkins’ motivations—he says himself that he values truth, life, and humanity.

Drawing Vernon's argument that atheism is substitution of one father for another to its logical, tongue-in-cheek conclusion, one would have to assume that agnostics such as Vernon are simply uncertain of their paternity.

I won't analyze the 'psychoanalysis' because the post has been dissected elsewhere in Never mind what he did say and in Atheism as grand oedipal symbolic act. The salient point is that Freud's Oedipal and Electra complexes are entertaining but meaningless.



atheism, psychoanalysis, psychology, Richard Dawkins, Sigmund Freud, The God Delusion

Scientific, spiritual, angry?

This poll is a bit daft: What kind of atheist are you?

I tried it anyway, and I disagree with the agnostic score. I am not agnostic. I am 100% certain that no deities of any description exist, ever have existed outside invented concepts, or ever will exist.

Although I recognize that it is not logically possible to disprove a negative, including the negative of Russell's orbiting teapot, it does not follow that we should assume that failure of disproof constitutes proof. That is, the logical impossibility of proving that God, or an orbiting teapot, or any other nonexistent whatever, does not exist does not mean that we should assume that this leaves any room for the actual existence of any supernatural deity or orbiting teapot or whatever.

Only a theoretical purist would concede that there is a vanishingly miniscule possibility that the supernatural entity invented by the writers of the Bible actually exists. The utter lack of evidence combined with the fact that the supernatural is an artificially contrived category indicates that there is no call for disproof. Like Russell's teapot, deities have been repeatedly and demonstrably invented, and often abandoned, by humans for reasons peculiar to human purposes.

Scientific Atheist 92%
Spiritual Atheist 58%
Angry Atheist 42%
Apathetic Atheist 42%
Agnostic 25%
Militant Atheist 25%
Theist 8%

The 8% theist bit? I'm sufficiently open-minded that if irrefutable evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity were to present itself to me, then I'd be open to belief.

I'm safe, though. Anything that could present itself to me would have to manifest in the physical world, and as soon as anything manifests in the physical world, then that thing is physical and not supernatural. So, even though I'd be open to being convinced by incontrovertible evidence, there can never be a physical manifestation of a supernatural agency. Theists argue against this position, as of course they must if they wish to retain their emotional beliefs, but they are, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly incorrect in their specially contrived arguments.

Developmental Atheism

I think that most atheists in Western society have passed through a series of conceptual stages:

1) blank-slate aconceptual at birth (to coin a neologism);

2) magic-thinking acceptance of the simplest, most widely publicized explanation ("God did it" theistic stage);

followed by 3)

a) disbelief in deities (atheistic non-acceptance of deistic or theistic claims)

or,

b) uncertainty (agnosticism = we can't know either way).

atheism