Atheist Fundamentalists and Extremists

Atheists simply don’t believe in any God. They understand that there isn’t much logic in wasting time or money debating, arguing and worrying about something that doesn’t even exist. They don’t even feel the need to announce or proclaim what doesn’t exist. Thus they get on with their lives in peace.

Fundamentalist Atheists feel the need not only to announce and proclaim the non existence of God but they also feel the need to mock others who do believe in God with using such terms as “sky pixie” and “flying spaghetti monsters”.

Extremist Atheists seek to ban religion through legislation and/or vandalism of religious places and symbols.

To me: a “fundamentalist atheist” would be one who is 100 percent certain that no god exists rather than one who says “I see no evidence whatsoever and consider such an existence to be unlikely”.

If you are open to the possibility of some grand “organizing force” that you’ve yet to see evidence for (e. g., the way that Dawkins is), then you aren’t what I would call a “fundamentalist”.

Of course, that is an abuse of the term as atheism has no “fundamentals” per se, other than a rejection of all of the “known” gods.

“Extremist”: those who would harm someone or disassociate from someone for believing (e. g., if I fired the single mom who did our lawn because I found out that she was Catholic and not an atheist)

To Mark:

You’re entitled to your point of view but I just don’t see it as realistic. You’re basically saying that an atheist should not say a word, just get on with life and let the religious majority rule the way they want. This is very shallow thinking, even from a democratic point of view, if you believe that your government is democratic.

There is nothing wrong with saying, ‘I don’t believe in your god’. Nor should there be anything wrong with it. There is nothing fundamentalist about this. As for the sky pixie, flying spaghetti monster, pink unicorn, tooth fairy, Zeus, Thor, so and so forth, these are nothing more than analogies. Take them as you will.

For your extremist part, let’s just put it in a real context. Should we allow all religious symbols in public or government areas or should there be none? Does majority rule here? There is nothing wrong with legislation of equality or rights. I thought that’s what a democracy is.

So for my take:

Fundamentalist – A person who takes their beliefs and ideas as absolute. I’m sure there are atheist fundamentalist but I haven’t run into any. At the end of the day however being fundamental about non belief is a bit silly but to each their own.

Extremist – A person who would push their ideas onto others by any means for the sole purpose of justifying their position. In other words, being right. Again, I’ve never met one of these people and I’m sure they exist. However I find it hard to believe that a person who is, what I’d call a ‘real’ atheist, wouldn’t do this sort of thing. Atheist tend to be people from religious background and recognize the harm it does to be and extremist.

Just my opinion.

I think anyone who is stuck in black-and-white thinking, who views situations as “us versus them,” and who has trouble understanding how anyone could hold a different viewpoint than they hold suffers from fundamentalist tendencies. I think atheists can fall into this trap just as easily as people who follow religions.

Oh, and I agree completely with Mike C’s previous comment about the differences between fundamentalists and extremists or militants. This seems to match my personal experiences and observations as well.

Reading through the comments, what strikes me is how many people think that keeping an open mind is necessary in all cases. It’s this bizarre sort of reasoning that we don’t ever use outside of certain religious and political processes.

For instance, I don’t believe phlogiston exists. If someone comes up to me with some phlogiston theory I’m not going to give them the time of day. Phlogiston is entirely discredited. It is not smart to be “open minded” about it, but a waste of time.

So when Richard Dawkins says that there probably isn’t a god, I sorta raise my eyebrow at his, well, wimping out. The proposition that there is a god – or at least a god in any sense recognizable to actually existing religions – is so crazy out of bounds and discredited that I wonder why anyone would bother to put the “probably” in there. It’s kind of like saying light is probably made of photons to me.

To me fundamentalist and an extremist are similar yet different, similar in the way they are both strong values, if you will, and ideology, different in the way that they give a different “feel” to those using the word.

Both seem negative, both seem to be on the far end of a spectrum, but, to me, extremist seems like someone who is much more focused to their ideology of Atheism, effecting everyday of their life, much like a religious fundamentalist, but more motivated to proselytize and push their views onto others.

It also is semantics, every time I searched for the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’; I was always directed to a description of religious belief, so I went with ‘fundamentalism’ and extracted part of a sentence with adjectives:

Fundamentalism: “….rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views …..”

As for the other word ‘extremist’ I fared no better:
Extremist: “One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics”

Both ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘extremist’ could be used to describe the same person, (idea etc), my conclusion is that is depends on in what way the words are being used (what is being describes) and by who is taking in the information given.

p.s.
On a side-not, I would like to thank all the religious fundamentalists and extremists who have tried to destroy public education, (which I am a survivor of), for allowing me to spend the rest of my adult life using websites like Dictionary.com, (where I got the explanations from of these words), because of a poor understanding of the English language, spawned by their desire to take tax-payer’s money from where it should go; public education, and sending it off to a religious school that will teach fundamentalists and extremist religious views.

My answer would be pretty much in line with the others. A “fundamentalist atheist” would be someone who believes absolutely in the non-existence of god(s), with the same absolute faith of a fundamentalist theist. I would also add that in order to give the charged term “fundamentalist” I think they’d also have to show certain behaviours, like a frontal rejection of any holiday with religious connotations (refusing to even acknowledge Christmas to the point of taking offense at being told “Merry Christmas” for example) or any supernatural phenomena (hate of ghost stories or whatever).

An “atheist extremist” would be a fundamentalist atheist who goes a step further, trying to FORCE others to adopt the same worldview. Mind you, I don’t mean trying to restore the Pledge to it’s original text, I mean trying to ban religion altogether, forcing their children into their worldview through indoctrination and showing overt (violent or not) hatred of the religious.

All the above has to carry the caveat that I think the proper term would not be “fundamentalist atheist” or “atheist extremist” but “fundamentalist anti-theist” and especially “anti-theist extremist”. The term “fundamentalist atheist” could be applicable if it only describes an absolute conviction in the non-existence of god(s) but once you get into negative behaviours towards religion or the religious, you’re discussing anti-theism.

Stalin comes to mind. Not in an atheism-caused-Stalin kind of way, but in a Stalin-pushed-atheism-for-his-own-ends way (although he’s probably more accurately a nature-is-god type).

If someone claims pigs can fly I can’t prove that’s impossible because I’m not aware of all pigs that have ever existed or will ever exist. And yet I’m not going to advocate for the installation of roofs above pig stys “just in case”, and that’s based on the observable evidence at hand. Again, possiblity vs. probability

If I were to add a few items, and order them based upon available evidence from most-probable to least-probable, it would look something like this:

[Most Probable]
Pigs Don’t Fly.
Sun comes up tomorrow.
…
Sun does not come up tomorrow.
Pigs fly.
God Exists.
[Least Probable]

So if one was to classify ‘Pigs Fly’ as near-impossible, why would God-Exists be only Improbable?

For ‘God Exists’ to be more probable, this would imply that even if the only evidence for ‘Pigs Flying’ is that one day, evolution may allow it, then there must be even more evidence for ‘God Exists’.

Just one comment. A few people have said things similar to this, but I’m using Cannonball Jones’ wording:

There can’t be atheist fundamentalists in the sense of Christian fundamentalism as there are no fundamental writings of atheism.

The word “fundamentalist” or “fundamentalism”, historically speaking, refers to those who followed Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a set of essays published in the early 20th century.

Modern “fundamentalists” (and US-style evangelicals, who occasionally define themselves as “an evangelical is a nice fundamentalist”) generally don’t follow the Fundamentals, or emphasise things that the Fundamentals don’t even mention (e.g. homosexuality and Biblical literalism).

Conversely, if you think about those you would consider “fundamentalist”, there are more than a few “fundamentals” (e.g. the Golden rule, and the Islamic prohibition on killing innocent people) which they tend not to follow.

The point is this: Just because someone is a fundamentalist doesn’t mean they actually subscribe to or espouse the fundamentals of a religion. You can quite correctly be a “fundamentalist” without doing so and, indeed, most arguably don’t or, at least, carefully pick and choose which ones they will do.

The last three times this topic came up, I proposed a simple thought experiment: Would a 1st century Christian would recognise modern US evangelicalism as being in any way “Christian”?

Final point.

A moderate or liberal religionist, who uses the term “fundamentalist” as a derogatory term, has only one reason to call some Atheist a “fundamentalist”. Clearly they don’t believe that Atheists follow some hypothetical Atheist fundamentals. After all, they don’t think that Islamic fundamentalists actually follow the fundamentals if Islam, right?

So by the term “fundamentalist atheist”, what they mean is that the Atheist acts like a fundamentalist. Rob Knop made this point well.