Atheism and dogmatism

Concering atheism and dogmatism, research shows that atheists are less open-minded (see: Atheism and open-mindedness).

The abstract for the 2017 journal article Are atheists undogmatic? published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences states:

"Previous theory and evidence favor the idea that religious people tend to be dogmatic to some extent whereas non-religious people are undogmatic: the former firmly hold beliefs, some of which are implausible or even contrary to the real world evidence. We conducted a further critical investigation of this idea, distinguishing three aspects of rigidity: (1) self-reported dogmatism, defined as unjustified certainty vs. not standing for any beliefs, (2) intolerance of contradiction, measured through (low) endorsement of contradictory statements, and (3) low readiness to take a different from one's own perspective, measured through the myside bias technique. Non-believers, at least in Western countries where irreligion has become normative, should be lower on the first, but higher on the other two constructs. Data collected from three countries (UK, France, and Spain, total N = 788) and comparisons between Christians, atheists, and agnostics confirmed the expectations, with agnostics being overall similar to atheists."

Richard Granville Swinburne

Psychology Today indicates:

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Dogmatism has usually been related to low levels of openness to experience, the latter being an indicator of one's interest in new and non-traditional ideas. Dogmatism has mostly been studied in relation to religious beliefs but some recent research has looked at dogmatism among non-religious people. One surprising finding was that among self-identified atheists, higher levels of openness to experience were actually associated with greater dogmatism, contrary to the usual pattern. This suggests that the personality dimension openness to experience might not be a marker of open-mindedness as such but more of a preference for unconventional and complex ideas. Perhaps there needs to be a distinction made between humble versus arrogant forms of openness to experience.

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The argument from religious experience is the argument that because people have reported religious experiences of God, therefore God exists. See also: Swinburne's argument from religious experience

The journalist Marjorie Steele states:

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I’m not so much saying atheists as individuals are dogmatic, as I am that atheism is, as an ideology. Atheism takes a firmly negative stance on anything supernatural, asserting it does not exist, which is very different from asserting that it’s unknown. That premise alone makes atheism as dogmatic as religion.

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The essay The Dogmas and Failure of Rational Atheism by Carl Olson say about the new atheist Sam Harris:

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For example, Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith, writes that there “is no reason that our ability to sustain ourselves emotionally and spiritually cannot evolve with technology, politics, and the rest of culture. Indeed, it must evolve, if we are to have any future at all.” If that isn’t an overt statement of dogmatic faith —in the necessity and inevitability of some sort of evolution — what is?

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New Atheism is a contemporary form of militant atheism. Using special text analysis software, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that new atheists very often wrote in dogmatic terms in their major works using words such as “always,” “never,” “certainly,” “every,” and “undeniable.” Of the 75,000 words in Sam Harris's The End of Faith, 2.24% of them connote or are associated with certainty.

Social science research indicates that antitheists score the highest among atheists when it comes to personality traits such as narcissism, dogmatism, and anger. Furthermore, they scored lowest when it comes to agreeableness and positive relations with others.

The essay The Parental Deity and The One To Be Realized declares:

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Atheism is the ultimate form of denial of the Parental "God". Atheism is not founded on real observation of the ultimate facts of the universe. Rather, it is a kind of adolescent development of the human species. What characterizes the doctrine (or dogma) of atheism is not a discovery that there is no "God", but a refusal to acknowledge every kind of parent (or parent-like authority), including (therefore) the Parental "God" of childish "religion".

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Quote

"Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. . . . Trees have no dogmas." - G.K. Chesterton, Heretics