Three broad types of Atheists?

Question

Do you think there are three broad categories of atheists and which category would you say you belong to?

Methodological Naturalist: the long standing convention in science of the scientific method, which makes the methodological assumption that observable effects in nature are best explainable only by similarly natural causes, and with irrelevance to the assumption of the existence or non-existence of supernatural elements, and so considers supernatural explanations for such events to be outside of science.


Nietzschean: No ultimate, absolute or eternal truth of any kind. What is described as Truth is a product of power effects centering on the human body.

Buddhistic: An ultimate organizing principle exists but it is not supernatural nor is it personally concerned either with Man nor with men.

Have I missed a category. What do you think?

BTW I'm a mixture of Nietzschean and Naturalistic Atheism.

If you're a smartass I'm betting you're a Nietzschean...

Answer 1

These categories aren't really very descriptive. "Buddhistic" is malformed and doesn't really describe the views of Buddhism--Buddhists aren't known for believing in an "ultimate organizing principle". What you're describing is closer to Deism or Pantheism than to Buddhism. Moreover, the vagueness of the term "ultimate organizing principle" seems to me to render it useless, as to one person it might simply represent the way things are and be compatible with the Nietzschean, while to another it might represent some sort of universal morality and be sharply incompatible. "Nietzschean" also should simply be renamed to "Nihilist".

I'd divide most atheists into these "sliding scales", with all atheists falling somewhere between the two extremes:

Skeptic - Dogmatist: A skeptical atheist rejects God because of a lack of reliable evidence, and is open to revising his views as new evidence arises. A dogmatic atheist rejects God for any of a number of reasons (including simply because an authority told him so), and refuses to revise his views based on new evidence.

Agnostic - Gnostic: An agnostic atheist does not claim to have certain knowledge that God does not exist, while a gnostic one claims such knowledge.

Naturalist - Supernaturalist: A naturalistic atheist rejects not only God, but all supernatural entities. In contrast, a supernaturalistic one might believe in any number of supernatural entities aside from God, such as "nature spirits" or ghosts.

Nihilist - Absolutist: A nihilistic atheist rejects the idea that anything has meaning or value in the world, while an absolutist considers all things to have an absolute, objective meaning. The overwhelming majority fall between these two extremes, with those closer to nihilism falling under ethical relativism, and those closer to absolutism falling under ethical universalism.

Apatheist - Zealot: An apathetic atheist (or "apatheist") is one who simply doesn't care whether or not God exists; it doesn't concern him. In contrast, a zealous atheist is extremely concerned with whether God exists, and is more likely to be out in the open about his views, and to try to push them on others or find support for them.

Answer 2

I am not sure of how broad these may be. If you want to associate atheists to the people, religions and science as you did that is fine. I am an atheist and I am glad to say that you can't pigeon hole my approach which is no approach at all. Nietzchean is associating me to a person that I am not impressed with, Buddhists believe in levels of hell, science is full of crap just like religion. I can't relate to these types of your stereotypes. Sorry to disappoint you. I just don't believe in a little jewish guy floating around in space that knows everything and made everything. I don't believe in fairy tale religions, fairy tale concepts of science and neo-political losers like Nietzscheans. Do you know how many broad types of sheep there are that believe in the concepts you use? baaa-baaa

Answer 3

Too much thought- hurt my brain. I'm the kind of atheist who doesn't believe in god and doesn't care if I'm right or wrong or if anyone cares. I don't dig too deep in things- My boyfriend took a physics class and he was trying to tell me why everything happened- like why water freezes and stuff- and my answer to him was- who cares? Water will continue to freeze whether I know it does or not so lets just let it freeze and learn more about being kind and helping each other and the world and less about why things that will happen no matter what happen. So I guess I'm just a free spirited atheist- my motto is- Who cares?

Answer 4

I think you mean "philosophical" naturalism rather than "methodological." All scientists are methodological naturalists, including Christians, as are deists and pantheists like Einstein. Philosophical naturalism is the a priori belief of no supernatural activity rather than using naturalism as a mere method of inquiry.

And Nietzschean atheism contradicts philosophical naturalism, because the latter has certain truth claims the former rejects as possible to even know. Truth, in this view, is a "mobile army of metaphors" not an immutable scientific product.

There are many forms of atheism, at least in the west. There are skeptical forms like that of David Hume and critical realist forms of Bertrand Russell. There are pseudo-positivist forms like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and post-analytic forms like Richard Rorty.

Answer 5

That's interesting.

Answer 6

I would consider myself taoistic - very similar to the buddhistic approach, but a lot more positive.

There is an organising principle or force or even perhaps intelligence, and it does tend to organise things in positive ways if you let it. But it is not a person, and does not really have a personality.

Answer 7

Broad types? What's this need for labels? I don't get it.

_()_

Answer 8

I think I am mostly a combination of Methodological Naturalist and Buddhistic. Is that possible?

Answer 9

Possibly.

But you DO understand YOUR OWN admission indicates a 4th branch! Hybrids!

Answer 10

I am a combination of Buddhistic and Methodological Naturalist. I think you nail it pretty well.