I would say it’s not a religion.
But I’d also say its often a largely academic distinction.
Strongly held unfalsifiable beliefs regarding the nature of the creation of the universe and death, which people are willing to fight about.There are people who believe in a God.
There are people who don’t believe in a God
There are people who believe there is no God.
The last two are not the same. It’s like the difference between “don’t like” and “dislike”.That’s a mighty thin distinction between those last two, because it’s only meaningful within the context of Christianity (I’m assuming from the capitalization). One must accept God as a valid concept in order to explicitly believe that He does not exist. Are Christians people who don’t believe in the Milorganite god, or are they people who believe that there is no Milorganite god?
Christianity holds that there is only God, so it would stand to reason that they believe that there is no Milorganite god. Except, Milorganite is a brand of fertilizer, not a demonym. “Milorganite god” isn’t a valid concept, so explicitly believing that it does not exist is, well, not exactly wrong, but quite the waste of one’s time. And that’s how, for an atheist, not believing in God and believing that there is no God are pretty much the same thing.
I personally have had a lot of atheists preach their beliefs to me… I am just saying, they write and read books about atheism. They gather in groups to talk about atheism. I just read a comment about agnostic atheism, so there are denominations of atheists depending on their level of belief. Hell, they love to belittle anyone who isn’t atheist.
Lack of believing in your supernatural God is not an ethos. Lol
U guys don’t even understand belief correctly. No wonder your “logic” leads you to nonsense like a genie in the sky.
First point proven correct. Thank you.
That was… particularly dumb
Last point proven correct. Thank you.
God, is this lemmy.ml?
People down vote you if you disturb their echo chamber, by taking anything besides a hard stance against religion?Like… I hate religion, and I know this is a community making fun of religion, but wow y’all have zero chill.
They’ll tell themselves anything to make themselves feel safe / right.
Atheism is a religion as much as being bald is a hair colour.
An atheist can be spiritual or whatever but like I hope this person doesn’t pull something with those mental gymnastics.
Ha.
After 5 president terms you’d think they’d get new material but it’s like the kid at school that claimed they invented yo mama jokes.
At that point nationalism is a religion.
They don’t understand the difference between belief and faith. I believe many things, but have no faith in them. I will take contrary evidence into account.
I’m on mobile so won’t type it super elaborately, but there is an interesting thing here about science education.
They don’t really have the background to do elementary experiments to prove things, and many schools have under funded labs. Further many textbooks don’t talk about the development of how we got to our current state; just how it works. More modern experiments require complex instruments; can’t just borrow the large hadron collider for a weekend. As such we depend on papers published. I think that could give a similar vibe to Sunday School.
This is so backwards it’s funny. We do those experiments in grade school all the way thru HS.
It’s more than that; they don’t understand the difference between belief and non-belief.
They got this part right though, since there’s no way to prove the existence of A god (this is the agnosticism principle, others would accept the fact that no one can prove thebexitence as rpoof of its nonexistence), atheists must believe that that’s the truth. Both theism and atheism are beliefs, and faith as I understand it in this context is a conviction based on belief, which again kind of applies.
Religion however is a faith system, the part where it’s organised by people and has a structure around it, that’s the part that atheism doesn’t comply.
there’s no wyantonrpove the existence of A god, atheists must believe that that’s the truth.
What you’re describing here is agnosticism, not atheism. Agnostics claim that the existence of God is either 1) not known, but certainly possible, or 2) unknowable to begin with.
Atheism, on the other hand,
is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.
We are getting into semantics and philosophical concepts and I do mostly agree with you, but just to continue with the conversation:
Im looking at things in a very theoretical “not practical for the real world” kind of way here, because that’s what all this discussion is about, conjecture and thought experiments. Although I agree that atheism is not a belief system, anything that we don’t have certainty with we believe in, in fact anything we have certainty in and itself a belief on the amount of certainty we have. There’s no absolute way of knowing anything with absolute certainty since in the real world there’s been several times when our perception of reality has been broken and remodeled.
Going into a very very extreme, even if a water faucet worked as we expected 3 seconds ago we don’t have absolute certainty that our water supply wasn’t cut right now or any issue arised, so we decide as humans to believe in the certainty that our last observation in reality provided us.
Again, thought experiment, but atheism is kind of the same is a more obvious way, there’s been no proof of godhoods both exitence and nonexistence in the history of humany, so any decision must be supported by the belief of it being certainty. Several people accept the fact that no proof of godhood has been provided as proof of the inverse (atheist gnostics) while some others don’t think that’s sufficient but also decide to believe in the nonexistence (agnostic atheists). In the same way, there’s people that accept of the existence of a superior power while saying that there’s no way of confirming it, which is why it’s a matter of faith (agnostic theists); while other people decide that stuff said in some transcripts is proof for them to be certain about the fact and their faith is not directed into the existence of godhood itself, but to the character or dogma of it, or to the things they decided are the source of their certainty (gnostic theists).
BTW, the link you provided is from the American Atheists association, and as all abstract concepts they get developed and accepted with different interpretations, most equally valid.
Why did I spout all this thought gibberish? because this is how theologists think. If we want to discuss atheism with theists, this is how their brains will understand better the concepts of atheism, since that’s how their brains think and accept belief and faith.
Between us atheists saying “I don’t hold a belief let me alone” is enough, especially the “let me alone” part xD, but that’s not going to shut up the pestering relatives, and I’ll admit that it’s fun to discuss of these concepts.
Yeah, I know that gnostic atheism is a theoretical position to hold, but I’ve never actually met an atheist that holds that view. The vast, vast majority of atheists ascribe to a scientific world view that is based around the concepts of evidence and burden or proof. As such, trying to argue belief in the non-existence of a non-existent being (i.e. “I firmly believe that God definitely doesn’t exist”) is not compatible with that logic, whereas “I don’t believe in God, because there isn’t enough evidence” is.
When it comes to explaining atheism to religious friends and family members, I’ve found the best approach to be this: Ask them if they believe in any other Gods except their own (Zeus, Ganesh, The Yellow Emperor, etc.) When they say no, you say “Ok, so my list of Gods I Don’t Believe In is one longer than yours.”
I’d say that, given what I explained, if your certainty based on the burden of proof, you are a gnostic by definition of the original word, gnosis (knowledge in Greek). You have a belief in the certainty of the proof, that if no knowledge exists of something, it doesn’t exist (or is not relevant enough to discuss it).
In fact, most atheists I know of are gnostic too, in the literal sense of gnosticism not the heretical movement that appeared in the second century of the Christian church that I had no idea existed. Most agnostic people I know of don’t subscribe to either atheism or theism, they just accept the uncertainty of the theos.
My relatives are way more annoying than that lol, getting into their theories and expanding on them usually hurts their brain and they leave me alone haha.
In any case, since this is mostly about the concepts of belief it will be hard to reach a consensus, so I’ll leave at this. It was a pleasure discussing with you.
Guys, not playing baseball is just as much of a sport as baseball.
Agreed, let’s skip gym class?
Lol, youre so naive. Skipping gym class is just like going to gym class.
Catch 22
See? You caught it. You’re playing sports right now!
Sure.
But routinely trying to take the basketball away from the basketball players shares a lot of similarities with a sportEsp when you’re walking by the court minding your own business, and they keep throwing it at you, insisting you play for your good, put statues of Jordan in courthouses, make you swear on your favorite team in school and courts and try to pass laws to make the rest of life just like basketball.
Right.
To say that some basketball players are belligerent about their sport doesn’t mean that nobody is belligerent about not playing the sport.
So there are people on the court trying to force you to wear their jerseys and the ball at you.
And there are people who try to take the jerseys off players, puncture the ball, and protest outside courts.I absolutely agree there are more belligerent religious people than there are belligerent atheists, what I’m saying is that belligerent people on both sides share a lot in common.
and protest outside courts.
Pretty sure those protests are inspired by basketball fans who try to shove their fandom down our throats. Please go away. You’re winning no supporters.
Oh, so you’re explicitly saying you were seeking an echo chamber.
Is that a whiff of belligerence I smell? Why yes, it is.
oh no he shredded my metaphor I better label him belligerent, shit all over the board and strut around like I won.
You absolute pigeon.
You mean the tired sports metaphor that I’ve been absolutely shitting on all over this section and nobody has yet produced a single reasonable response to, because it is clearly a silly metaphor that nobody was ever meant to take as seriously as y’all are taking it?
I’m trying to have a reasonable discussion with y’all but all you can say is
bUt SpOrTs 😭😭😭
Like… I agree with his assessment.
But you are too fucking blinded by your holy conviction to even consider that they can both be true at the same timeI swear y’all are Republicans.
When did my dismissing your silly beliefs count as me actively trying to rob you of them? If your faith is strong, you shouldn’t pay any mind to what others think of it.
It doesn’t.
And that’s also clearly not what I was talking about.To be clear, I count myself as atheist. I’m talking about how both religion and atheism play into identity politics, and how identity politics informs modern discourse.
Not everyone is like you, refusing to engage in discussions about the beliefs of others; some people take an active role trying to tear down the beliefs of others.
And also to be clear, I don’t disagree with the people who tear down the beliefs of the religious, I simply also acknowledge that the identity politics at play has significant overlap with the identity politics of religion.
“Please don’t base our laws on the rules of basketball, because some of us choose not to play.”
“wHY ArE YOu TRyiNg tO TaKE aWAy mY BAsKeTBaLl?!?!”
You’re making a false dichotomy, those aren’t the only two options.
I fully agree that there are some absolutely unhinged religious people, and religious people are far far more likely to take extreme action than atheist are.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any passionate and loud atheist who try to take away religion from others.
I am absolutely not trying to say “both sides are equal in their absurdity/extremism/authoritarianism”, I’m saying that the identity politics involved makes passionate people on both sides behave in similar ways.The religious have far more people who are passionate about their religion than atheists have people passionate about their atheism; but when you look at people who are similarly passionate on both sides, their identity as religious/atheist can often make them behave in similar ways when interacting with the public (or each other, at least).
I’m trying to make a far more nuanced point than you’re representing.
No, it’s not faith. If someone proves a god exists… I’ll stop believing there are no gods.
I don’t care if someone thinks atheism is a religion or not.
Nice.
But it does have real world implications for you, if the idea gains traction and enough people believe it. Just take as an example, how poorly we controlled the corona virus because a large enough number of people believed conspiracy theories about it.
As long as they’re going to insist on giving religions special rights, then yeah, sure man, atheism’s a religion. I’m very devout.
Simple answer to this:
If your imaginary friend can provide proof of its existence, I will accept that it exists. Until such time; I will go with the null hypothesis; your god doesn’t exist.
But don’t feel special, because I believe that no gods exist.
I think the distinction is between people who don’t believe, and the people who beligerantly don’t believe. If you make your non-belief a big part of your identity, it’s not religion but it shares a lot in common
If you make your non belief belligerent, it becomes faith. If you organise people in your non belief structure, create a congregation to talk about your non belief, and make it your mission to spread the word of non belief, it becomes a cult. With enough people following that specific non belief doctrine, it becomes a religion.
Iirc, the satanic temple is a cult/religion about atheism, with a given doctrine and a specific belief system. Atheism itself can’t be a religion just how the concept of theism isn’t either.
If you make your non belief belligerent, it becomes faith.
umh … what? No it doesn’t.
This is simply false. By definition.
I said several things, can you point which one of them is false? I’m not sure of the satanic temple thing, I might be remembering incorrectly.
I feel the belligerent non believers are the ones who feel they have been hurt by religion and feel strongly that others should be saved from the same harm
I didn’t disagree with them. At the same time, it shares a lot in common with religion. Both can be true at the same time
What they lack is a belief in something. It’s like someone who so hates tennis that not only do they not play they tell others not to play either
You’re not going to call that person a tennis player
I get that. I understand the analogy, and as an analogy, it’ll only get you so far. It’s hard to have a good faith (lol) discussion with you if you don’t actually read what I wrote; when you just repeat the same analogy that I already responded to, but with a different sport, you’re not helping me understand or telling me anything new.
I agree I wouldn’t call them a tennis player, but I might call them an obnoxious spectator who streaks onto the court, smashes the rackets, punches the ref, and hurls insults at players. If you insist on continuing the silly stawman analogy, anyways.
Edit: ok it wasn’t you who used the analogy before, it was someone else. But it’s such a common and silly analogy, you have to know it’s not really a good argument.
I’m sure I’m about to get trolled for saying that I agree. The universe is mysterious, and athiest have to make assumptions like spiritual people do. Why are we here, what is going on? The answer “the universe is because it is” is not super satisfying. It could easily be a simulation - why are there no aliens, why has no consciousness already colonized everything in the past? There are theories, but no facts
The most honest answer is “I have no idea what’s going on”
You can be an agnostic atheist, though. Saying you don’t know, and that you reject the claim that a specific god, or gods, exist. Atheism isn’t believing that there are no gods, it’s just an absence of belief in specific god or gods.
Atheists have to make assumptions, yes, but there’s that old joke about how people have thought up thousands of gods, and atheists are almost the same as monotheists—they just believe in only one god fewer. So, do Jews, Christians, and Muslims center their thoughts and religious practices around explicitly, actively disbelieving in, by name, say, Ahura Mazda, Xolotl, or the rainbow serpent? Or are these gods just part of the background noise of believing that there is no god but YHWY/Allah? As far as I can tell, it’s the latter.
Well, for me, anyway, YHWY/Allah is part of that same background noise. An assumption that it doesn’t exist, yes, but not a consequential assumption. It’s as much a religion as not going to Tsogt-Oovo today is a travel plan.
I understand where you’re coming from, but as a poster upthread commented, this confuses faith and belief.
The truth is, there are atheists who are religious and atheists who aren’t— just as there are theists who are religious and theists who aren’t.
Religion is about following a social cultural system that includes designated behaviors and usually has related icons and texts.
It’s possible to not believe in an alien being who created the known universe and its laws and also not adhere to a system of belief that such a being doesn’t exist — and it’s also possible to be someone who aggressively self-identifies as an atheist who can quote Dawkins chapter and verse and takes every opportunity to blame theists for all the world’s ills.
Likewise, there are both people who believe in some sort of god who don’t necessarily practice a related religion, and there are those who are religious who don’t actually believe, deep down, that there is a power higher than them.
And this doesn’t even get into the complicated mess that is science and religion.
As for “I have no idea what is going on” — that sums up agnosticism quite well.
Downvote all you want, I’m an atheist, but some of you absolutely treat atheism like a religion
Atheism is not a religion, but most explicit atheists largely share a worldview.
Yes, but with a reason.
No-one has committed atrocities like genocides in the name of atheism, no-one justifies crimes with atheism, no-one tries to ruin lives with atheism.
Religion, any religion, cannot claim the same
I don’t really care for your reasoning, it’s still zealotry and it’s just as annoying as some evangelist
How many atheists have tried shoeinv their dicks down your child’s throat in the name of jesus?
How many atheists have murdered or started wars in the name of <insert your favorite god or messiah here>
Howmany atheists have tried controlling your sex life?
How many atheists have required you believe in the almighty unicorn?
How many atheists have come to your door to bring you the good news?
How many atheists have raped and stolen only to then ask forgiveness the next Sunday?
How many atheists would quite happily assault, rape, or murder people whose only crime is loving someone of the wrong gender?
I could go on a while, but yeah, you’re right, atheists are worse than Christians or Muslims or whatever, we’re the worst.
See what I mean? Annoying AF. Bad take, you make us look bad.
me gives actual factual reasons
You: see? You’re annoying with your facts and all!
Yeah, great argument dude
Jeez two weeks later huh?
Uh huh
The difference is that evangelicals hold positions that are necessarily harmful. They’re homophobic and transphobic, they don’t believe in women’s bodily autonomy, and they promote anti-science teaching in schools.
The problem with evangelicals isn’t that they evangelise. It’s what they evangelise.
Again, really don’t care about the reasoning behind it, my stance is, without any ambiguity, this “I find devout athiests to be as or even more annoying than devout Christians/catholics”
This is only possible in an environment where religious people are causing harm. Because “devout atheists” (which is just a nonsense statement. Perhaps you mean “vocal atheists”?) only become so as a direct reaction to the harm caused by religious beliefs.
