On Certainty and Faith: A Perspective on Dogmatic Atheism and Religiosity

This essay, called "On Certainty and Faith: A Perspective on Dogmatic Atheism and Religiosity" by John Paul Baumheier, presents a philosophical perspective on dogmatic atheism and religiosity. For a better understanding, terms such as the two already aformentioned will be clarified or even defined. It will be analyzed on whether dogmatic atheism and religiosity meet the metaphysical objective of not being dogmatic and if not so, it will be examined on how far they are from reaching this objective. With the analyses a comparison of both dogmatic atheism and religiosity, from a perspective focusing on what is better from a metaphysical point of view focusing on not believing in absolute truths, will be presented. Following the analyses and before the comparison a phenomenological account for each will be presented to show different perspectives dogmatic atheism and religiosity can be perceived as, this later being used to compare both from a point of view focusing on which has more positive effects on the emotional world or feelings of someone. Thereafter a more or less subjective perspective on both religiosity and dogmatic atheism (or the later added simliar term dogmatic materialism) will be presented. The conclusion of this essay is that certain types of religiosity do fulfill the objective of metaphysics to not believe in absolute truths, whilst some do not do so and dogmatic atheism as the term suggests is quite contradictory to this objective. The conclusion on whether or not one of both makes someone feel better or makes him more satiesfied with life has come to the result that religiosity does indeed have a positive effect whilst dogmatic atheism can have both, a positive and a negative effect.