Why I Am an Atheist, and What Kind of Atheist I Am, by Allan Greene, May 28, 2013, Updated 06-19-2013

I am an atheist. Atheism literally means, without theistic belief or no theistic belief. Atheism does not mean the belief that there is no god. Rather, it means, without that kind of belief. You can be an atheist who emphatically, affirmatively denies belief in a god or goddess or spirit world, but most atheists simply dont have belief in gods, goddesses or a spirit world.

Denying belief in a god or gods is a kind of belief. Atheists of this kind, who tend to be a minority of atheists, are sometimes called, explicit atheists.

But most atheists, who mainly simply dont have the belief in a god or gods or goddesses or spirit world, simply dont have that belief in a god or goddesses or spirit world.

Such kinds of atheists the last kind mentioned are sometimes called, implicit atheists.

On one level, I am more an implicit atheist than an explicit atheist. Thats because I dont mainly argue, debate, polemicize with others, over religion versus non-religion. I also, unlike a brand of atheists who are more explicit and have gotten a lot of publicity in the U.S. and England and other countries in the past 13 or 14 years or so, who really think religion is the source of all evil in the world, dont believe that viewpoint. I think the viewpoint that religion religious ideas are themselves the main source of evil in the world misses too much and begs too many questions about other real world factors that are also key sources of evil in the world.

The view that real world factors of different kinds are the real source of evil in the world really must be called in philosophy what it is: materialism. There is a misunderstanding about what the word, materialism, means. People a lot of people who are indoctrinated into thinking the word, materialism, means greed for money and power, or some such notion, are actually mistaken on that fact. The word, materialism, actually means the view or the philosophy that there is no realm other than the realm of nature and people. If you reduce the rich traditions of the philosophy of materialism down to a couple key ideas, the key ideas

of materialism are 2: the world is made up of 2 parts, nature on one side, and people and peoples histories and societies on the other side. And I agree with that principle.

That also means, however, realms outside the realms of people on one side, and nature on the other side, simply dont exist.

However, and here is the key issue in why the kind of atheist I am is different from the kind of atheist which, say, more well-known atheists Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett are. I do not begin from the assumption that bad ideas make bad things happen. Rather, I begin from the assumption, things which have happened in either nature or peoples history have made the basis for making all kinds of ideas some wrong, some right which may then give the appearance of "shaping" or "determining" how and why what happens happens. But in reality (no pun intended), the material reality comes before the ideas about the material reality, and in that sense, determines the kind or kinds of ideas about the material reality people encounter and make ideas about. I share Karl Marx's view voiced in his sort of "summing up" of what materialism is versus what idealism is. Marx defined materialism as: "being determines consciousness." Marx defined idealism as: "consciousness determines being." Marx came down on the materialist side. And I agree with him.

In this sense, religion is an idea about material reality, much like there are other ideas about material reality about peoples histories and about nature and about peoples viewpoint(s) about nature.

So when some atheists make a hard argument that religion is the basis for all evil in the world, even though Im atheist myself, I think theyre philosophically missing the point. I think that viewpoint misses and begs too many questions. I think that viewpoint puts the cart ahead of the horse. I think that viewpoint makes the cause into the effect and makes the effect into the cause. And since I am a materialist in my thinking, I am a determinist in my thinking. And since I am a determinist in my thinking, I am a believer in the principle that cause makes effect, or determines effect.

That means, I share with the kind of atheist whose kind of atheism I share, dialectical materialism, Karl Marx, the viewpoint Marx summed up in this phrase in which he defined the kind of atheism and kind of materialism he endorsed: being determines consciousness. I agree with Marx on that phrase.

What is being?

Being means the complete, total set of things, if youll allow me to use that word, things, making up both nature and society, which at any given historical moment, make or determine the way people in such given historical situations think.

I dont think peoples thoughts drop out of the skies. I dont think peoples thoughts are made by divine godly order. That viewpoint is not mine. I start from the assumption theres no realms other than the realms of nature and people, nature and society. That means I start from the view there are no realms in which theres gods, or goddesses, or spirits, or divine beings determining how reality works. I think thats nonsense.

But that does not mean that ideas that are earlier or previously determined or made into the concepts in the heads of people which may be totally wrong ideas still do not or cannot often have powerful impacts on the real world activities of real world people.

They can.

The problem with the view that they are the central or primary maker of bad things happening in the world or people doing bad things in the world, however, is that that view disappears, so to speak, too very many other real world sources of making people have certain kinds of concepts about what kind of world they live in and perhaps then acting in that world in evil ways toward other people.

The very nature of material reality is, it is rich.

The word, rich, means, multi-faceted, or made up of too many varied, interacting, connected elements and parts and components constantly interacting in regard to each other to be able to be lifted out of the total material real world context if one wants to have a real model of explaining how actions, good, bad, in-between, of people happen or are done.

For instance: I entirely hate every kind of political politicized religious fundamentalism. I dont care whether its Christian, or Muslim, or Judaic (Jewish), or Hindu, or Buddhist, or whatever. I think it will be a better world when the people who today explain wrongly, in my view reality by resort to political (or politicized) religious fundamentalist notions will at sometime in the future have such a major change for the better in their lives

made that they will no longer do that, and will, instead, explain reality by resort to a rational, real-world, reality-based, materialistic, this-worldly approach to why reality is a certain way or why some part of reality is a certain way.

But I dont think it logically follows from that viewpoint of mine that you can reduce the evil and bad happenings in the modern world to the inspiration of the, to me, hideously stupid and wrong, notions and ideas of different kinds of political (or politicized) religious fundamentalism of no matter what kind. Instead, I think we have to realize that when people inspired by political religious fundamentalism do suicide bombings, or do indiscriminate terror against innocent civilians, or bomb abortion clinics, or murder abortion doctors, or gang up against health care workers and try to prevent vaccinations from helping children and others from getting certain preventable diseases in different parts of the world, or lobby to keep women second-class citizens, or commit violent terrorism against GBLT (gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgender) people, or give their imperialist aspirations a religious cover by telling us God told me to invade Iraq (something the last president of the U.S., G. W. Bush, actually said publicly) when such things happen, I think its necessary to look at all the material real-world factors which inspired such actions no matter how evil and stupid.

That also means that its necessary to look at the material real-world factors which determined at some different points in the history of humankind the very religious ideas to which some political (or politicized) religious fundamentalists currently today still resort to justify or sanction the action or actions theyre supporting or defending. That means weve got to study 2 kinds of history: peoples history or histories; and natural history, the history of earth, life on earth, the history of the universe. Looking at reality in historical terms and with a sense of a historical context is vitally important to me in trying to get at the root of why people act today the way people act today.

When the kind of atheist I am uses the phrase, dialectical materialism, to describe this kind of atheism, that kind of atheist means, roughly (and here Im reducing it to try to make it simple; but keep in mind, it is not simple at all), all-sided materialism. What do I mean by all-sided materialism? What I mean by all-sided materialism is, the philosophical sense that all of reality has a huge nay, an infinite number of different aspects, components, variables, to it. I will try to avoid a long digression here. But for instance: one of the great debates in scientific evolutionary theory in the past roughly 40 or 43 years sparked especially by 3 important American scientists the still-living Niles Eldredge, the late Stephen Jay Gould, and the still-living Elizabeth Vrba has been the debate over something in evolutionary theory called, gradualism, versus something in evolutionary theory called, stasis with punctuations leading to something called macroevolution. Historically, since Charles Darwins publication of his book, Origin of Species, in 1859, prevailing evolutionary scientific views have embraced the notion that all evolution of life on earth has historically (that is, in the natural history of the earth itself) been gradual. But from 1971, when Niles Eldredge first published a paper suggesting evolution occurred by a method called, punctuated equilibrium, after which Stephen Jay Gould teamed up with Niles Eldredge to develop this model of how evolution happened, and then, later on, after which Elisabeth Vrba also teamed

up with Eldredge and Gould on this issue to further hone it and hone their own individual respective ways of seeing this process, theres come to be a newfound respect for the hard data discovered by those scientists in the field of life science called, paleontologists (and paleontology is literally the study of old life, ancient life, from millions and billions of years ago). The hard data repeatedly found in the hard work of paleontologists all the time has repeatedly seemed to indicate that gradualism was not the rule, but the exception in how life developed on earth, and that, instead, stasis, often interrupted by abrupt branchings by a process called, cladogenesis, in the making of new species, tended rather to be the real rule in nature. This has led to a very interesting, rich, fruitful discussion among evolutionists both of the neontological type (evolutionists who study current life) and the paleontological type (evolutionists who study old life). And the real data-based, facts-based camp, so to speak, in this discussion has increasingly been shown to have been the people favoring the newer view the anti-gradualist view of how evolution occurred. In the newer view, branching or cladogenesis is, so to speak, scaled into deep (geological) time, and what's been repeatedly found in the fossil record is good evidence supporting the view that it truly is in what paleontologists call, "geological moments," when branching occurs, rather than along the line of classical Darwinian gradualism, and then, after the completion of species formation in the geological moment of branching, stasis then seems to be the prevailing rule found again and again and again. And if science operates, it must operate on the basis of the hard facts the hard data as its bottom line, then the repeated findings confirming this standpoint cannot be ignored. While anagenetic gradualism (also called phyletic gradualism) - the classical gradualist model - does sometimes occur and is sometimes found, the prevailing finding is not that. That has given great power to the people who increasingly endorse the view of punctuated equilibrium, as the view originated by Niles Eldredge, and then cooperatively developed among him, Gould, and Vrba, starting in 1971, and proceeding from there through into the next roughly 43 years. The fact all the scientists who developed this concept were some of the hardest of hard data-based evolutionists gave importance and power to their view, because if the data dictates one way of seeing how reality works, then the real scientist is duty-bound to go where the data leads, not to ignore the data and then set up some ideological model that does not explain well how reality operates.

A theory that says it explains reality is a model explaining how reality works. And for a scientist, it must have as its basic bottom line facts data and a huge number of facts and data. It cannot beg more questions than it pretends to answer. Furthermore, it must be able to be tested. There is among evolutionists a discussion and conversation about the testability of the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. The late Stephen Jay Gould in his great, last, master magnum opus book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, published the same year Dr. Gould died of cancer, 2002, acknowledged openly there seemed to be some greater problems with the testability yardstick for the punctuations aspect of the theory of punctuated equilibrium than with the equilibrium or stasis aspect of the theory, but Gould went into this issue with great care and made important points about how different paleontologists in their field had been able to develop means of testing the model, and apparently have done so successfully. What has been dramatic in the actual real world and data-based findings of real world paleontologists scientists who study old or ancient life is, just how incredibly frequently indeed, in a huge majority of cases they always seem to find in fossil records evidence that, in the actual way evolution of life on earth occurred, there seems to be stasis in the form and structure of species of life whose remains are found in the fossil records of rock strata over periods of time which very often extend from the start of the

species on earth to the moment in the history of nature when the species becomes extinct or dies off. Gould in his book, however, provides what, in his view, is a rather sophisticated and interesting model for how the punctuations part of the theory of punctuated equilibrium might be testable, and goes into detail on this to help out his colleagues.

Testability of a theory, and basis in facts and data, are key yardsticks which, for scientists, make a theory a scientific theory.

But if a theory is not testable, and if theres literally no ability to show a real data-based or facts-based determination for how reality happens, and if, therefore, the claim (or claims) for how reality happens is really a claim that literally has nothing under it, or as its basis then, literally, it is a non-scientific theory or hypothesis.

There is in the debate among evolutionists a debate over the relative frequency of gradualism in how life -species - evolve on earth versus according to the model of abrupt branchings from older parent species to make new species. And the reason this is a real debate among real scientists is, all of them rigorously base themselves on found data. But what paleontologists seem to find a lot is that gradualisms occurrence(s) are non-directional, and within certain limited parameters that do not markedly change the structures and forms of previously made new species during the time of said species on earth, from start of said species to end of said species. So Darwins theory of evolution by means of natural selection works, but in a different sense from that Darwin had originally thought. Darwin thought that all evolution occurred more or less extrapolating from small changes very gradually in species over long periods of time to where new species emerged from accumulated changes. But instead, paleontologists seem to find that variation in individual species occurs in a more limited sense, in geological moments by the aforementioned process of cladogenesis (branching), and that natural selection occurs, but in the sense of not being necessarily all the time what makes for new species. It seems instead to have a more limited impact, and only on the microevolutionary level among organisms within populations or within a given species, whereas something that Gould called, species selection, seems to more definitively determine and shape most broadly the way in which species originate, and this seems a macroevolutionary process on a macro kind of level. And that implies that when abrupt branchings into new species occur, something else is possibly or probably making them occur. Natural selection, Darwins key mechanism for explaining how evolution occurs, seems to operate on a lower or micro-evolutionary level. It creates variations that may be quite favorable to a given individual organism of a given population of a given species, or even to an entire species, but said variation or variations may then later on end up being changed backwards even from the nature of the change originally, so the original nature of the organism emerges again, so to speak. Or, the variation may be completely detrimental to the given organism or species. So in this sense, natural selection is not necessarily directional i.e., there seems not to be a kind of direction built into evolution on this microevolutionary level. Rather, directionality in evolution of populations and species seems to occur rather on the macro-evolutionary level by branching, geologically speaking abrupt "punctuations," followed by lengthy periods of stasis in form and structure of species.

But I have violated my original hope of avoiding a long digression on this issue. I will get back to my main point.

Any claim is a kind of hunch or kind of hypothesis, and to be scientific, it must be able to be tested, and it must be data-based facts-based.

And more than that, if its to achieve the respectability and legitimacy in science of being a full-blown scientific theory explaining better how reality or some aspect of reality happens, the factual nature the data-based nature of the theory must previously have been shown not by self-serving people alone who themselves were the creators of the theory, but by all kinds of independent scientists in the field investigating how this aspect of reality happened. If lots and lots and lots of independent scientists keep coming up with similar results and similar outcomes, over time, the hunch turns into a much more respected and legitimate theory in science better explaining how reality operates. This is not to say scientists don't have biases. They do. Denying that they have biases is, in fact, a kind of bias itself. Gould was above all one of the most honest of scientists, and, repeatedly, in his magnum opus, he refers to his biases. But he also constantly refers to the work and data of scientists in his field with innumerably different interpretations and models from his own.

Scientific theories are not limited to theories about how the natural world operates.

They include theories about how the social world of people operates.

And I have long defended the proposition that Karl Marxs theory of history of and development of capitalism both in each capitalist country and of world capitalism successfully explains better than any other theory or model of explanation the how and why of the way current (todays) social reality of the lives of billions of human beings worldwide and in each country are.

Marx held that capitalism had a history, and that, in fact, other economic and social and political systems also had a history.

And, Marx held, capitalism had a beginning, which was more or less its period of rise, then a period of maturing, and then, he predicted that after he had himself died, capitalism would begin its period of decline or decay.

Marx died in 1883. In the period of the 20th Century, important Marxists who further developed Marxs insight about capitalism were Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, 3 of the key Marxists who developed further Marxs concept of the nature of capitalisms development.

But again, the issues for a scientific theory are, testability, and its basis in data, and, with that, if lots and lots of independent observers find similar findings in the data about the system. I think in Marx's theory of capitalist development, for instance, the primary moving force is, the rate of profit of the major corporations, banks, industries, taken together. Marx's model held that over historical time, as the non-human source of production gradually displaces and supplants the human source of production (labor), the rate of return on equity capital or invested capital - what Marx called the rate of profit - is cut into over time, tends to fall, and this drives the entire organism of the system into a dead end over time.

And I have long thought Marxs theory of capitalisms development and eventual decay and decline met those scientific yardsticks. The reason is, repeatedly looking at the most eminently respectable business journals and periodicals from the world of capitalist business itself from many capitalist countries repeatedly demonstrates, if one looks at the rate of return on invested or equity capital as a historical process, a general long downward trend. And this is known by major business economists in all major capitalist countries. It's long been known by them.

Marxs kind of atheism was not only called, dialectical materialism.

It was also called by him and Engels, Marxs co-creator of his system of thinking, historical materialism.

And that is because in Marxs and Engels model of explanation, history played a central, key, defining role in predicting how capitalism would later in its development operate.

In Marxs idea, the dialectic played a role in the sense that reality is, indeed, all-sided or, in other words, dialectical. But the dialectic also played a key role because the dialectic is, in a

certain sense, a concept of reality developing by a series of sharp breaks from the past. Marx got from his philosophically idealistic predecessor, G. W. F. Hegel, particularly from Hegel's works on dialectical logic, the concept of reality as a process proceeding by a kind of accumulation or build-up followed by sharp breaks leading to new paradigms, so to speak. The kind of logic of dialectics is not the kind of logic of, say, formal kinds of mathematics (plane geometry, for instance). Rather, the kind of logic of dialectics is an explosive kind of logic in which reality is seen in terms of its development by abrupt changes from longer periods in which reality seems less tumultuous. (Here, by the way, we can see some similarity to Marxs dialectical and historical materialist view about history, and the view of how evolution operates of punctuated equilibrium-based theoretical models of evolution created by scientists like Niles Eldredge, Steve Gould, and Elisabeth Vrba. I found it interesting in Gould's book, for instance, that he paid some respects to Hegel.) Marx and Engels also called their kind of dialectical materialism historical materialism. But they viewed history of peoples human history as happening by a series of sharp breaks over time. And in that vision, the making of tools, and, more than that, the progress of humans in the making of tools leading to significant improvements and advances for humankind and human societies was itself a central red thread, so to speak, in how history proceeded for Marx and Engels in the making of newer conditions for advances of human societies. It was this progress over time that led to the significant bases for fundamental changes in what Marx called the productive forces of society such that the older "envelopes," so to speak, keeping said productive forces "leashed" were sooner or later exploded by social revolutions in the actual property relations of society, in turn leading to new forms of property relationships more easing and facilitating of human production on a much expanded and much higher level.

The word, technology, means the same, roughly, as the two-word word, toolmaking. And it is not enough and not sufficient for a species to make tools to have conferred on such a species the label, hominid. The word, hominid, means, roughly, humanlike. And theres been, it is now known, pretty ample (big) numbers of hominids living on earth going back upwards of at least 2 million to even possibly 3 million years or so. Theres been different varieties or species or kinds of such hominids existing. And theres fascinating discussions and conversations and debates among anthropologists, archaeologists, geneticists, different varieties of scientists from different scientific fields, about such fascinating topics as, for instance, whether our given specific species of hominid of human called, homo sapiens, beat out an earlier species of hominid in Europe called, Neanderthal, by interbreeding with Neanderthal, or, alternatively, simply out-competing Neanderthal. New evidence based on DNA and the actual genome of Neanderthal gotten from DNA drawn from material of older Neanderthal bones, and DNA drawn from modern humans (homo sapiens), by scientists associated with the Max Planck Institute, and also by some American colleagues of these Max Planck Institute scientists, for instance, now seems to show there was significant interbreeding of the earlier kind of human, Neanderthal, with the more modern homo sapiens who encountered Neanderthal in Europe when homo sapiens came into Europe about 40 thousand years ago particularly in Europe itself. It appears that most of the small amounts of DNA in common between Neanderthal and homo sapiens seems to be geographically limited to those areas of the world in which homo sapiens did, in fact, encounter Neanderthal, such as, parts of Europe primarily. So, for instance, there seems to be little or no evidence of Neanderthal DNA among homo sapiens of African-American ancestry, since there seems not to have been meeting(s) (encounters) of earlier homo sapiens who remained in Africa with the mainly European-based Neanderthals. But those homo sapiens who migrated to Europe did,

in fact, have sex with European Neanderthals, and did have offspring. From 40 thousand to about 28 thousand years ago, Neanderthals, who had lived in Europe for anywhere between 200 thousand and 500 thousand years, were essentially wiped out. The issue is, were they wiped out by being interbred out, or were they wiped out by superior competition from the homo sapiens varieties of humans. And the new evidence seems to point to the previous explanation, not the last explanation, which had long prevailed.

But tool-making technology and important and successful kinds of tool-making, which for a long time had been supposed to be the monopoly of our species, homo sapiens, are now known to have been created by other kinds of humans, including the Neanderthals, who apparently created a method of creating spear tips and affixing them to wood to make spears involving a significant amount of serious technological expertise and effort, with some real industrial sophistication. This had not earlier been known, but now apparently seems to have been confirmed by significant numbers of facts-based, data-based scientists doing real work in the field.

The existence as well among some homo sapiens populations, primarily European-based, of small amounts of DNA in common with Neanderthal may also give to medical science help in prevention or cure of certain diseases, since it now seems that at least some of the DNA Neanderthal passed to European-based homo sapiens (mainly; some homo sapiens from other homo sapiens peoples, including in rarer cases peoples of African and Asian heritages, do have genetic indications their own ancestors may from time to time have encountered Neanderthals; but it is rarer and the DNA from Neanderthals in such cases rarer than among European homo sapiens) had helpful and successful effects in terms of preventing certain serious kinds of illnesses, like what today is called Epstein-Barr syndrome, or cancers associated with it, and this is therefore obviously medically interesting to medical researchers seeking ways of successfully treating illnesses of these kinds among different members of homo sapiens (us).

Tool-makings progress had the effect, apparently, of sufficiently altering nature so as to constantly create and then re-create new conditions for our hominid ancestors, and said new conditions each time may have therefore led to enhancements in brain sizes neuronal (brain cell) growth. Its known now that there seems to be a relationship between neuronal (brain cell) growth on one side, and, on the other side, the more enriched nature of environments. Children raised in more enriched environments simply speaking have it better than children raised in less enriched environments.

And this seems to have been an evolutionary fact for hominid brain size development.

But here again, the fact of development by means of tool-making progress preceded came before later bigness in brain growth and in brain cell development and growth. Thats philosophically here the point in this essay on the kind of atheist I am. In reality, reality material reality precedes the thoughts about material reality and the different (and very rich and varied) kinds of sense people try to make about material reality at any given historical moment in time.

And yet, of course, there is an ongoing reciprocal relation between tool-making progress (development) on one side, and, on the other side, the ideas or concepts peoples improved brain sizes enabled them to develop about material reality. More complex ideas emerge as more complex kinds of tool-making emerge earlier. And here, we can begin to speak of something called, culture, being an outcome of earlier improved tool-making in humans. Culture has its source or base in tool-makings having gotten to a point at which it has enabled humankind to make substantially better conditions for developing of more involved, complicated, complex, and sophisticated ideas about the society and the natural environments in which humans find ourselves.

So theres a back-and-forth, reciprocal relationship, and it never really ceases.

In any case, this is the kind of atheism which is endorsed by a dialectical and historical materialist. This kind of atheistic materialism sees not one or another factor in the totality of variables comprising material reality as being the "only" or "prime" factor, but, rather, sees the totality of interacting variables - factors - as being what does, so to speak, the determining and shaping, of everything. Ideas people have about reality are determined by the everconstant reciprocal interaction and residence within reality by people. But the reality - the interaction of reality with people and vice-versa - or what Marx called, "being" - comes first.

And that is the kind of atheist I am.

--Allan Greene 05-28-2013 Updated 06-19-2013

PS: The findings also lend weight to the point Steve Gould in his book made that the gene is, in fact, not a true unit of selection, but the organism, in classical Darwinist natural selectionist terms, is. Rather, the gene appears to be the bookkeeper or accountant of nature reflecting, so

to speak, the more complex totality of interactions of cell, organism, and environment. Additional science associated with epigenetics also seems to bear this out particularly in findings related to "tag" or "marker" "cells" or "genes" that act as intermediaries between the "inside" genes of cells and, on the other side, the environment on the outside. (A fascinating Public Broadcast Corporation documentary on epigenetics, "The Ghost In Your Genes," of a few years ago, brings this information out.) Additionally, to harden up this point, the finding of the human genome project that, in fact, the human genome was NOT, as originally had been predicted, comprised of between 80 thousand and 120 thousand genes, but, rather, of a number of genes numerically LESS than the genome of a tomato plant or an ear of corn (23 thousand genes) ALSO seemed to show that something else was going on. The original prediction was based on the notion of the gene as determinant of all human actions, and since the diversity and scale of human activities is huge, it was therefore supposed the numbers of genes "determining" them would, likewise, be huge. But since the number was found to have been much smaller than was predicted, this, as evolutionary biologist, Olivia Hudson, said, "humbled" us. In another fascinating Public Broadcasting System documentary, "What Darwin Never Knew," of only a couple years ago, again, scientists went into some of the latest science pointing to the role of, not genes, but, for instance, embryological development and relation of embryological development to environment in which the given organism resided, and seemed to find significant correlations and correspondences here. So again, this seemed to vitiate the simplistic "genetic determinist" or "genetic reductionist" perspective.