Like, totally good question dude. But before I get to that, I want to thank all of you who stopped at our table on the Quad the other day, and am glad for the questions and great feedback. If you left with some unanswered questions, this post is meant to help a bit.
The USU part of the acronym is Utah State University, of course. The school’s most famous building, Old Main, is at the right. (Shout-out to the CS department on the 4th floor!) Established in 1888 as a land-grant institution in Logan, Utah, USU is a strong engineering school with long-standing ties to NASA, the Department of Defense, and aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Interesting fact: USU has developed the highest number of cooperative space experiments with NASA compared to any other university, and has been nicknamed “Space University” by NASA. Pretty cool.
SHAFT stands for “Secular Humanists, Atheists, and Free Thinkers.” I’m giong to break down what each of these means.
Secular Humanism (also called Scientific Humanism) is a philosophy that upholds reason, evidence, and a rejection of supernatural explanations as a basis for moral thought and decision-making. Tenets of the philosophy include:
- Reason, evidence, and the scientific method are better methods than faith, mysticism or authority for gaining an understanding of ourselves and the world, and for creating human solutions to human problems.
- A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that all knowledge is subject to revision and improvement as more evidence is gathered.
- Political, social, and religious beliefs ought to be tested by each individual and not simply accepted because of faith or tradition.
- A commitment to bettering this life through better understanding of ourselves, our history, and our human achievements.
- Building a better world for ourselves and our decendents through an open exchange of ideas, goodwill, tolerance and hard work. We understand that no one is looking out for us except us.
Atheism, in the broadest since, is simply the absence of belief in deities. It’s not really a position or developed philosophy on its own. The word originates from Greek “atheos” meaning no gods, and interestingly enough was originally applied to anyone who didn’t believe in the classic Olympians of ancient Greece. This included believers of other so-called false gods, or anyone with beliefs that went counter to doctrine. The term has narrowed somewhat to mean someone who has no belief in any god(s).
In practice, many atheists also reject any supernatural explanations or magical thinking, and do not believe in ghosts, leprechauns, psychic phenomena, souls, “magical auras,” or Tom Cruise. While the definition of “atheist” doesn’t strictly preclude any of these ideas, many of the same thought processes that lead to atheism leads to rejecting these others as well. I personally would prefer to simply say “I don’t know” rather than have an evidence-free explanation that doesn’t mean anything.
Finally, the “Free Thinkers” portion refers more or less to just a general open-mindedness. SHAFT has many members who are in fact religious, but value the free exchange of ideas and discussion that SHAFT attempts to produce. While this term is often used to refer to atheists alone, I prefer it to mean essentially “anyone who actually gets what freedom of speech is really for.” If you are religious and not offended or threatened by the mere existence of people who disagree with you, go ahead and claim yourself as a free thinker. And then come to SHAFT meetings.
Please feel free to ask any questions or say whatever else in the comments.
It seems that those who find the old atheist faith to be a little stuffy, and those who find the new atheist faith too fundamentalist are reacting just like Christians have acted for centuries. They’re spreading out like a web so as to cater to specific aspects of the belief system that appeals to various believers. For example, we now have:
Atheist 1- I don’t like the term atheist so much. It’s become too negative. That’s why I belong to the Humanist society.
A2 – Oh, to me, humanist is too old. The word smells like a basement in an old building. I prefer to call myself a Scientific Materialist.
A3 – I don’t find anything wrong with humanist, except that I think even spiritual people could be humanists. That’s why I make it clear that I’m a Secular Humanist.
A4 – Bah humbug! Call me a good old Sceptic. That’s what I am.
A5 – Well, I think the third atheist is the most correct. But it’s a little too general to just say that I’m a spiritual person. The fact is, while I am an atheist, I’m specifically a Buddhist. Last fall I even had Buddha rays come out my nose on three consecutive days.
A6 – All of you clowns are a bunch of cowards. We’re all atheists and our biggest enemy is religion. If we don’t show the world a unified front of Anti-Theists like me, then how are we ever supposed to nail down definitions for important things like whether we’re people who deny that god exists, or people who are non believers in god? This is crucial to our cause folks. Somebody get me a drink.
A7 – Yes, there’s truth in what all of you are saying. Of course, I’m not saying that truth actually exists. It’s just that none of those other atheist denominations really express what’s most important to me and that’s that I and people like me are Free Thinkers. If that’s not the part of us that we define clearly for seekers, then people will just think that we are atheists because our parents were atheists. And even though my parents were atheists, denying god’s existence is my own idea. No really! It is! That’s why it’s important to me to show exactly who I am, a free thinker.
A8 – You see, that’s what I can’t stand about those of us who are atheists. I don’t believe in Creator God, as the Christians do. But I can’t rule out the mysterious either. That’s why I’m a Pantheist. And don’t even start with me about how pantheism goes against all that we know scientifically, at least regarding origins. So does all the rest of our atheist dogma. I like to take a little bit from the free thinkers and that means that I’m free to believe what I want about the universe and damn the scientific evidence. As long as I deny that God exists I can come up with anything else that I want to believe in. Give me back my teddy-bear.
A9 – I’d like to know from the second atheist what’s wrong with old. We Marxists had it right way back when. And I say that if something was true then, it’s still true now. That doesn’t count for religious truth, of course, but it sure is correct for Marxist truth.
A10 – I’m sure all you people mean well, but most of you have taken what seems to me to be positions that are too confrontational. The group that I belong to simply identifies ourselves as Non Theists. We aren’t anything regarding religion or God. We’re just, you know, not theists.
@makarios
It seems odd that you would expect unification from a notion of athiesm. You incorrectly label it an athiest faith, when the only unifying notion within athiesm is a lack of faith. It is the default catch all, the end of the case statement when no other option fits. To be athiest in general is not to belong to something, but rather to be defined as NOT belonging to something.
That particular categories within athiesm have arisen is of no surprise, since it is human nature to identify with others that share a particular and specific point of view. The social evolution of various faiths are as much defined by the human need to belong as they are the human need to seek answers and it would be absurd to think that rejection of a supernatural mechanism is similarly a rejection of the compulsions that powered aforementioned social evolution. Given that athiesm itself is simply the lack of belonging to any of the categories of faith, and given the same behavioral urges, it isn’t particularly surprising that specific groups have arisen within athiesm to provide a similar sense of belonging to a particular defined mode of thought.
So yes, within the broad category of “people defined by their lack of faith” are scores of particular perspectives and people who identify with said perspectives. I would find it exceptional if that were not the case, as it would imply that athiests both reject faith and reject similar behavioral urges, which would be far more noteworthy and imply an actual biological rather than psychological component of athiesm.
I really hope humanity arrives at caring, thoughtful, peaceful, healthy living in their local and global communities. I don’t care how they arrive at that good living. It matters little whether they are theist, spiritist, humanist, atheist, mythist, ist-ist, or different brands of the list. To me it does not matter whether they arrive at good living through parables, myths, reason, or illogical leaps.
Wise people who pursue peaceful healthy living (Shalom) on our planet are my allies. People who pursue peaceful healthy living but may not agree with me on the specifics of how to do it are not my enemies. My ‘enemies’ are those who strive to seek selfish gain through the destruction of community, human lives, and our living environment. But I have to treat my ‘enemies’ with kindness, but I also have to act wisely to limit their destructive behavior.
Perhaps that puts me in the FT parts of SHAFT.
Vince – I wonder if your wording here is too strong. I agree – we should ally ourselves with people of different stripes insofar as we agree on the pursuit of peaceful and dignified human communities. I am all for that kind of engagement. But do you really “not care” how they arrive there? In other words, are you putting the good and the true in tension, and focusing exclusively on the good while not caring about the true? This might be a good practical principle (in terms of political engagement), but I don’t know that it is a good theoretical principle (particularly if you think goodness and truth are, in some fashion, convertible terms).
In a nutshell, I worry that Vince is falling into the trap of radically privatizing religious belief, thus giving the public square over entirely to the secularists.
Archbishop Chaput strongly critiqued this move a few days ago (on the anniversary of JFK’s Houston speech on his Catholicism). Read his remarks here:
http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/3489
Kleiner,
No, not privatizing exactly. Rather, I am radically applying Jesus’ statement, ‘You shall know them by their fruits. ‘ How one thinks does matter to some degree, but only because it eventually comes out as an action. However, if two people live equally caring and equally kind lives, but their living originates from very different views on metaphysics, then the ‘thought differences probably don’t matter much. … thus, I am a radical Jesus-ian.
Arguing metaphysics seems less useful to me now than discussing what is ‘godly behavior’. Discussing metaphysics is merely interesting. This way of thinking is particularly Jewish, in that, one can chose to follow this rabbi or that rabbi. Either rabbi is trying to teach one how to live properly in the community.
A very compelling perspective, Vince. And an excellent ecumenical principle. As you know from the usuphil blog and past discussions with Mike, I don’t like to over-inflate the theoria-praxis distinction. So I can sign on to what you said, though there is little doubt that I make allowance than you for discussions of orthodoxy rather than just orthopraxy. This is, in part, because at the end of the day I think practical wisdom depends on theoretical wisdom (we’ve got to do some metaphysics of man after all). Sorry Levinas, I do have my sympathies with you but I am not ready to jettison “first philosophy”. And sorry to the new natural law theorists, who also want to say otherwise.
Speaking of which – Vince, you might find the new natural law to be an interesting coming together of your ‘ethics as first philosophy’ view and an important part of Christian tradition (natural law). See Germain Grizez, Robert George, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis. It tries to work out the natural law without explicit appeals to metaphysics.
I do wonder if the Theology of the Body will present things in a way you find more compelling. It does not do “metaphysics”, but it does start by trying to articulate an “adequate anthropology” (worked out through phenomenological/personalist meditation on Genesis). I could weaken my above claim to say: ‘I think practical wisdom and orthopraxy depend on an adequate anthropology’. While Jewish thinkers like Levinas and Buber might not want to come out and say that, I think such a claim is implicit in their work. (Sidenote: JPII speaks very highly highly of both Levinas and Buber).
Here is where Vince and I will find common ground – and some SHAFTers too (I am thinking in particular of Aaron). We all want a relational ontology. With a relational ontology some of the ‘evils’ of metaphysics are diminished, and you can begin to collapse the divide between ‘what is god’ and ‘what is godly’ questions.
This is from JPII’s book ‘Crossing the Threshold of Hope”:
“One cannot think adequately about man without reference, which for man is constitutive, to God. Saint Thomas defined this as actus essendi (essential act), in the language of the philosophy of existence. The philosophy of religion expresses this with the categories of anthropological experience. The philosophers of dialogue, such as Martin Buber and the aforementioned Lévinas, have contributed greatly to this experience. And we find ourselves by now very close to Saint Thomas, but the path passes not so much through being and existence as through people and their meeting with each other, through the “I” and the “Thou”. This is a fundamental dimension of man’s existence, which is always a coexistence.”
I am very agreeable to these comments. It is of great benefit to Christianity, theism, and -isms in general to have the shift of thought move from ‘my acting’ to ‘our relating’. The ‘essential act’ without relational reference is meaningless. Saint Thomas would agree I am sure.
If the focus of thought considers ‘essential act’ as a quality of private existence, then arrogant self-ness becomes the danger for the theist, atheist, absolutist, or relativist. The grand inquisitor can justify prosecution of the free-think who offends hegemony. The radical existentialist can justify prosecution of all community tradition because the individual is “condemned to be free”.
“What is the USU SHAFT, really…?”
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