Who is the king of atheism?

Answer 1

The king of atheism is the same as of every person on this Earth. It's Jesus Christ.

Answer 2

I was not aware Atheism had become a monarchy...

When did that happen and why wasn't I sent the memo?

Answer 3

Captain Atheism
He's the guy in the pink leotards here in R&A.
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Answer 4

Here? I'm an Atheist.

Answer 5

*LOL* at your phalic avatar.... There isnt one! Thats what atheism is all about.... unless i read the athiest bible wrong in the class i took? .... o_O?

Answer 6

There isn't one and atheists don't need one.

Answer 7

ME!!

Now, bow down to me, my loyal subjects!

Answer 8

I dont believe in that guy.

Answer 9

Nobody.

Answer 10

There isn't one. Dawkins could be if he would only finish his arguments. In that case, he would be a nihilist, as this review of his brilliant book, The God Delusion, indicates:

Witty and erudite, Dawkins delights and entertains his atheistic brethren by bloodying theists' overly proud noses. It is a useful and profound contribution to the negative side of the religious dialectic. Kind atheists will learn new things but will not enjoy reading this book.

Agnostics and thick-skinned theists, who are still seeking understanding, may also learn a few things, if they have not already read the equally well-argued cases for atheism from Nietzsche and Russell. Unfortunately, thin-skinned theists, who are the majority and have the most to learn, will be too offended to learn anything. Dawkins' diatribe burns most bridges thin-skinned theists could use to cross over to the more intellectually mature position of atheism.

Dawkins' premise begs the theist's argument rather than refutes it. Dawkins' premise (Chapter 4) is Darwin's, sweepingly extended to the physical universe, namely that everything that exists evolved from something simpler. If god is defined as a being who created a workable world by most carefully selecting the appropriate physical constants and who can monitor every event in it, then god is indeed a complex being. The problem with `the god hypothesis' is that it derives the world from a being more complex than the world.

Dawkins has a tendency to be a little long-winded. Asked `Where did the world come from?' most atheists would just retort, `Who created god?' and leave it at that. If less kind, these atheists would sardonically add, `Invoking an inexplicable god to explain an inexplicable world is an obvious violation of Ockham's razor.'

This is a summary of Dawkins' question-begging atheistic argument, a logorrheic 47 page Chapter 4, and yet in 47 pages, Dawkins does not finish the argument. His premise also implies that the world most likely originated from an ultimate but not inert 'simple,'`non-being.' When the atheistic metaphysical argument is finished, it leads straight to the theory of intrinsically complex nihilism ("The Happiest Beings are Nihilists, Part I.")

The theistic retort is of course a denial of the sweeping universality of Dawkins' premise. If they so choose, theists can then agree with Darwin and Dawkins on all but one point. `Everything except god evolved from something simpler.' God may be defined as the exception to most every or every rule about nature. A being powerful enough to make the rules may not be subject to them.

Without giving it careful thought, Dawkins dismisses nihilism as nonsense (p. 214 and in a book, "Unweaving the Rainbow"), ironically just as religious people overconfidently dismiss atheism. Consistent with physics, which has been hollowing out matter since the 1900s, as physicist Ed Tryon has pointed out, nihilism is the mathematical limit to that process, and is hard to believe, but is hardly nonsense.

Is there another position besides nihilism that makes as much Ockhamic sense of the present universe? By assuming the present universe is a very complex zero sum state, it could have evolved by mechanisms unknown by the laws of conservation and the laws of probability from the simplest zero sum state, nothingness, which alone requires no further explanation for its nonexistence. This finishes that particular argument, based on Dawkins' sweeping universalization of the Darwinistic premise, and of course introduces new problems for research, particularly mechanistic ones.

Dawkins' unfinished argument leads to a critical error. Nihilism avoids one-sided positions such as `religion is wholly wicked and wholly wrong,' which Dawkins and his extremist followers sometimes approximate, especially when he repeatedly and unfairly tries to indict all of religion using fundamentalist examples.

In effect, nihilism says, `Extreme positions are self-refuting.' Nihilism has to be intrinsically dialectical to end up accurately modeling the well-balanced universe as a complex zero sum state.

Religion is perhaps more accurately modeled as a self-cancelling entity, a metaphorical dragon that consumes itself with fire. Extremely complex, religion is nearly a zero, with lots of good and lots of bad. Ironically, religious people do the greatest evils while trying too hard to do the good as they too narrowly and too self-centeredly see it.

Rather than treat religion as wholly negative, we need to extract its workable ideas to promote a happier society, as done atheistically in "The Gospel of Jesus and Mary." There a fictional, patient, self-controlled, lovable, diplomatic, very polite and kind Jesus delivers a practical nihilistic message focused on happiness, an atheistic, secular humanistic message, somewhat similar to Dawkins', to which religious people are willing to listen. Since the diplomatic Jesus did not bruise the sensitive egos of thin-skinned religious people, their minds and their eyes were wide open. They were able to see the logic, the science, and the potential social benefits.

It will not do to simply reject all ideas in the Bible as false, even though many of the true ideas in the Bible did not originate with the Bible.

One of the good principles in the Bible, egalitarianism, did not come from Christianity and true enough, religion often violates its own principle ("the chosen people"). But the principle did receive significant support from Christianity, most profoundly expressed in Jesus' words, `Whatsoever you do unto the least of my brethren, you do unto me,' and more lamely by Paul in Galatians 3:28, where he could not quite muster the Christian love to extend the equality to non-Christians. Politically, it made its way into the American 'Declaration of Independence.' Mathematical modeling suggests this principle may be fundamentally but not exactly true (Chapter 25 of "The Happiest Beings are Nihilists, Part I.").

Ironically, Dawkins criticizes `the god delusion' without realizing that there is another powerful and more ancient delusion, likely the psychological source of the god delusion, pointed out repeatedly by tragedians, which nihilists call `the ego delusion.' Every tragic figure believes he is completely right and invincible until he falls and takes many others with him.

With descent and modification, humble Socratic ignorance has evolved into today's scientific and philosophical skepticism. If we clearly state and politely question both our views and those of others, we wisely follow Socrates' lead, and we may achieve some wisdom.

When we lambaste opponents as delusional, uneducated fools and criticize their intolerance and their morals, Socrates might ironically observe that we are not acting as if we were particularly wise, tolerant, or moral. Allowing them to save face, Socrates politely asked questions that led people to realize the folly of their own positions. Occasionally, Socrates realized his own initial position seemed insupportable. How fortunate, then, not to have begun by assuming he had absolute truth.

Unwittingly and ironically, in attacking opponents, we are trying to make a religion out of science, which is by nature skeptical and self-critical. Without those characteristics, science could not continue to make its own theories more comprehensive. Consider that Darwin introduced evolution as a function of three variables while current evolutionary biologists have added three more.

Simple truths about a complex world are hard to come by. Religion is complex. All statements by religious folks are not simply evil and deliberately and completely untrue. If we approximate that attitude, we will end up creating essentially a mirror image of religion, which will have mirror image contradictions and errors. We want to create a system as free of contradiction and error as possible. To do that, some propositions found in the Bible, even ones also violated in the Bible, will make the cut empirically.

The more emotional comfort people need, the more delusional they tend to become, and some modern psychologists have contended that people go insane to find a comfort (in non-reality) that others denied them during their sane period.

This process of becoming delusional increases with the need for comfort, up to the point of hearing voices and having visions, `the god delusion' of religious folks, and the siren call of `the ego delusion' of the non-religious, who appeal to our vanity to take a bite of the same apple. In reality, are we all so emotionally weak that we suffer more or less from the ego delusion?

If so, how ironic. Without giving credit, Dawkins reiterates Nietzsche's criticism of religious people for being emotionally weak and needing too much comfort. Yet, Nietzsche's egoism (ego delusion) suggests he needed just as much comfort as we do, and he sought his in the propositions of his own egoistic philosophy, to which nihilism is the humble antidote, as one may proudly note with even greater irony. Is it any surprise that the most egoistic philosopher of modern times went insane? Demanding so much recognition of his considerable abilities as a thinker, who could give Nietzsche his due? In madness, he probably found that everyone agreed with him.

Contradictions and the ironies they serve up are unavoidable in our well-balanced, nihilistic universe. `Balance' is the boring watchword of boring and balanced nihilism. Inspired by emotional imbalances, extreme positions are indeed self-refuting, but do contribute, positively or negatively, to the dialectic of that subject.

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