Atheism is not anarchy

During my university days in Swansea (you know, when dinosaurs and pterodactyls were still commonplace), I occasionally bumped into anarchists.

Being anarchists they did not have a society (that sounds like a structure). Rather they had a federation.

I never quite did get how their philosophy worked, but a load of things had to go - governments, capitalism, communism, all the associated laws usw. People were born good, society corrupted them into taking evil actions, so you had to remove all the rules which breed the tools of tyranny usw.

Well-meaning in a lot of ways, and never likely to work in the proverbial month of Sundays (any anarchist reading this, please enlighten me if your philosophy has been misinterpreted above, I would be intrigued to know how it is supposed to work). Of course nobody would go round hitting people on the head and stealing things. Young kids would never feel the need to go round stealing old ladies' handbags usw.

Well there may be many shortcomings with the social structures that we have, but I am unlikely to subscribe to that sort of philosophy, mainly as I do not have this faith in people being absolutely good, any more than I subscribe to us all being greedy (see my previous item on that).

One curious thing that I get though when discussing religion is that many believers (particularly fundamentalist Christians AND Muslims) seem to think that that is what atheists believe.

Which is a total misconception. Atheists can be anarchists - a small number are. They can also be communists, free-market neo-liberals, social democrats, traditional conservatives, extreme nationalists, in fact anywhere on the political spectrum - with the exception of anywhere where religious restrictions are the guiding light. Atheists are by propensity individuals with their own commitment to a secular society, very often they will not share the same opinions as other atheists (review what I had to say about Pat Condell elsewhere on this blog for example).

They will though normally be committed to the civil law. You have one shot of this life, living in an ordered society makes sense. And no waiting for the "next life" to be punished for anything that you have done wrong. Do something wrong now - you get punished now! Being locked up for 30 years in jail for murder does not sound a very satisfactory way to be spending your one shot at this existence, with nothing to follow. All the more reason to be a "good person"! 

And if you do not like how things work, you can advocate to get things changed. No silly restrictions though based upon some ancient text written by members of nomadic tribes wandering round the deserts of the Middle East at a time when nobody understood how vast the cosmos was or how it operated. The world has moved on, and so have the laws that govern us. "Thankfully", I would be inclined to confirm, but I doubt that most anarchists would think that we have moved anyway near far enough.