Atheism is ideological when it assumes that all should share the same set of assumptions about the world and then draw the same conclusions, namely, there is no God.
Orwell's 1984 is a utopia, or, the logical end of what utopia is to do – create an environment of absolute sameness which can only be coerced to exist. Thus, it is a negative utopia since to achieve utopia individual freedom and identity must be subsumed to a collective ethos. The military to this degree functions like a utopia.
If atheists would allow religious people to get along and religious people would allow atheists to get along, then PZ Myers would have little to say regarding religion. Yet the consistent dovetailing of an atheistic epistemological preferred understanding of rationality with a rather clear political agenda of quashing religion in the name of freedom of the intellect for this mythic rationality to flourish and save humanity from religion is an obvious ideological persuasion. Otherwise, why would an atheist care if someone believed in God who really did not give a damn about an atheist's private disbelief in God?
Dawkins, Hitchens, and so many atheists of different flavors on Myers' blog who post comments parroting their very assertions are quite hard up to equate theologies with more liberal or flexible propositions regarding the unity of truth, with the self-sufficient boundaries of fundamentalist assertions of truth. They then bemoan the notion that they have an ideological agenda after making this unnecessary connection.
Not respecting someones belief and telling them so is a coercive and political action against that person. You are telling them that they simply do not stand on the same ground as you, and yours is the ground that "reason" would naturally prefer. Why then should one who takes this position respect any discursive act from one who claims a belief in God? This sort of division of one's attitude secures the God delusion in a tidy container protective of any sort of rationality a believer in God might exhibit. Thus, it is a striking inconsistency within an atheistic mindset to quarantine belief in God from other discursive acts. For no truly rational person can believe in God can they?
Therefore the secularist agenda that atheists like Myers put forth is indeed ideological precisely because it is political and values certain kinds of people more than others. It does not presume that coexistence with even those who hold tentative epistemological structures of belief in God is a good thing. Inherent to the position is that such persons are not very good because they perpetuate a belief that reinforces those who do indeed harm others in the name of God, somehow. While this ground-consequence assertion truly is absurd in its own right, even if we consent to it we are left with an inherently ideological frame. It is a frame with its own values and political agenda. The agenda places an atheist understanding of reason to be favored over the religious. It cannot exist with equal regard but is pre-emptive of the religious in order to fulfill a mythic vision of human reason.
An inability to co-exist with difference, even a difference that does not present an infringement of one's freedom of conscience not to believe in God, is inherently ideological. To propose the superiority of this frame over that of others and to hope that others would think the same way is inherently coercive. A coercive ideology is indeed similar if not in scope, yet in function of Orwell's "thought police."
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I think you've hit the nail right on the head. The immense intolerance that you describe permeates the militant atheist perspective of Myers and others. A few years ago, for example, Myers posted in his blog that he would have nothing to do with the movement within progressive churches to celebrate evolution on a day designated Evolution Sunday. He simply refused to make allies with those who share a common cause in the support of evolution, because he considered all religious people to be his ideological enemy, even if they wanted the same things he did in promoting a pro-science agenda on the matter of biology! This is an example of amazing ideological rigidity and intolerance. And you're right–the basic problem is that people like this cannot co-exist with difference. It represents an almost amazingly childish outlook, an inability to live and let live. Ultimately, it is a coercive ideology that lies at the heart of that kind of thinking.
You're kidding, right?
Atheists could care less what god you worship. We are NOT trying to stamp out religion. We find religious belief to be irrational and delusional, but we could personally care less what you choose to believe. What we DO care about is that religious people use their religious beliefs as a political platform. You lobby to turn your religious beliefs into laws that govern us all.
We also have a problem with indoctrinating your little kids into your delusions. Adults have the right to believe in whatever the hell they want to believe but to force those beliefs onto a child is wrong. Everyone should have the right to make up their own minds and form their own religious identity free of indoctrination of a specific ideology… even if that identity is non-religious.
So stop making your beliefs into laws and stop indoctrinating your children and we'll all coexist just fine and you can go about your merry way with your one-sided conversations with your imaginary friend and we wouldn't care.
You might want to stop proselytizing too. It's just annoying and for the most part a waste of time, both yours and ours.
So no, we don't want to eradicate religion. We just want you to keep it to yourself. Religion should be treated like masturbation… something you do for your own pleasure that no one else needs to, or wants to know about.
nice strawman. when you want to stop beating the crap out of it and post a comment telling us who you really are we have something to discuss. so many of the same stupid assertions here it's not even fun… (e.g. "indoctrinating", "proselytizing", "delusions", "beliefs into laws", etc. as if all religious people agree with any of this crap).
"Not respecting someones belief and telling them so is a coercive and political action against that person. You are telling them that they simply do not stand on the same ground as you, and yours is the ground that "reason" would naturally prefer."
Relativism is not a defensible position.
No, confusing disagreement with disrespect is not defensible. relativism is perfectly defensible if circumscribed properly. every argument has limits and it is the limits that make an argument reasonable. was newton irrational with his understanding of gravity even though it is totally wrong? no. his position was perfectly reasonable given its inherent historical relativism.
No, confusing disagreement with disrespect is not defensible. relativism is perfectly defensible if circumscribed properly. every argument has limits and it is the limits that make an argument reasonable. was newton irrational with his understanding of gravity even though it is totally wrong? no. his position was perfectly reasonable given its inherent historical relativism.