No, I never said that. Stop twisting words. You cannot really do anything in the name of "Atheism" because there is no single entity or organization called "Atheism". "Atheism" is not the counterpart to "Christianity" and "Islam", it is the counterpart to "Theism". It is a broader heading. Secular humanists are atheists.
Scientific materialists are atheists. Most (or at least many) communists are atheists. Wrongs have been done in the name of those ideologies, but the blame is on those ideologies, not on the nebulous broader term "atheism".
QUOTE]- I believe, were I underlined is true. Here is a bit more on it.
David H. Bailey
1 Jan 2017 (c) 2017
Introduction
Recently several books written by prominent authors have been published that attack religious belief as merely a natural phenomenon at best, and a pernicious delusion at worst. The four most prominent authors are Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who collectively are often called the "new atheists" [
Dawkins2006;
Dennett2006;
Harris2006;
Hitchens2007]. One of the key criticisms that these authors level against religion is that it cannot withstand a withering investigation by the methods of modern science. Richard Dawkins mentions "the great prayer experiment," a 2006 study where prayers were offered on behalf of patients undergoing surgery at several U.S. hospitals, but failed to find any significant difference in outcome, as proof positive that no God exists [
Dawkins2006, pg. 85-90]. In this same vein, Daniel Dennett, asks for a "forthright, scientific no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many" [
Dennett2006, pg. 17].
It is worth pointing out that many creationist and intelligent design writers, who on virtually every other principle are at opposite poles from these atheist scholars, implicitly presume the same underlying tenet that religion must be empirically testable -- much of their literature consists of attempts to "prove" that God (or some supernatural entity) exists and created the world.
Scientific materialism
This common underlying worldview is known as "scientific materialism" or "scientism." As defined by twentieth century philosophers William James and Alfred North Whitehead, for instance, scientific materialism is the belief that physical reality, as made available to the natural sciences, is all that truly exists [
Haught2010, pg. 48]. It is clear that there is little room for religion in this philosophical system, since religion involves faith in unseen and presumably empirically untestable entities.
But religion is not the only victim of this worldview. If we fully accept scientific materialism, we would also have to discard art, literature, music, and many other fields of human endeavor that are essential aspects of our modern world. More importantly, we need to ask what is the status of scientific materialism itself under this worldview. As John Haught observes [
Haught2008, pg. 45]:
But if faith in God requires independent scientific confirmation, what about the colossal faith our new atheists place in science itself? Exactly what are the independent scientific experiments, we might ask, that could provide "evidence" for the hypothesis that all true knowledge must be based on the paradigm of scientific inquiry? If faith requires independent confirmation, what is the independent (nonfaith) method of demonstrating that their own faith in the all-encompassing cognitional scope of science is reasonable? If science itself is the only way to provide such independent assessment, then the quest for proper validation only moves the justification process in the direction of an infinite regress.
Along this same line, we could ask what are the scientific materialist underpinnings of the scientific ethic for seeking knowledge. Scientists presume and often assert that truth seeking and academic honesty are not merely locality- and time-dependent ethical standards, but instead are binding on all people at all times. But what makes this standard so universally and absolutely imperative? What "experiment" can one perform to deduce this universal principle? [
Haught2010, pg. 116-117].
