Why do you think its so hard for religious people to understand that Atheism is not a religion?
That seems to be their go to line these days. "If you think religions are bad why are you an Atheist?".. Not that any of their arguments are really valid or make much sense haha, but this one really bothers me. I just don't see how they think not believing in any god is a religion?
Am I wrong or what?
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Of course, atheism is a religion. Aren't you attached to a particular view that God doesn't exist?
Anyway, why isn't there a concept of anti-superman or anti-spiderman but there is atheism? To deny the existence of God, you should know the definition of God? Some people have inconsistent definitions of God and you are doing right by rejecting those theories. But, by saying that God doesn't exist and not wanting to know what it means by God (for an individual), you are no different to a person following a religion (bound to a viewpoint without a desire to examine). And that is unscientific and stupid.
btw, Mano, you said, "...you are doing right by rejecting those theories."
#1. Am I hearing you say that all religions other than yours are wrong?
#2. You misuse the word 'theory'. Religions are not theories. They are belief systems. If you want to call me, an atheist, unscientific and stupid, perhaps you ought to get your rubber duckies in a row and use that word properly.
Wikipedia definition of theory: Theory is a group of ideas meant to explain a certain topic, such as a single or collection of fact(s), event(s), or phenomen(a)(on). Typically, a theory is developed through the use of contemplative and rational forms of abstract and generalized thinking. Furthermore, a theory is often based on general principles that are independent of the thing being explained.
#2: First of all, I am sorry if I offended you in any way, CyberLN. I shouldn't have used the word stupid. I just want to get your perspective and share mine. I hope this to be a good learning experience for me. Thanks for your inputs.
I don't follow a particular religion and so, for me, all the religions and modern science are like theories which I may use to explain a certain phenomenon. If a religion or modern science is inconsistent then it is a bad theory, for me. When I use the word "theory", I mean the parts of the religion which say something about the qualities of God/spirit/whatnot and how the observable universe is affected by them. By thought experiments, we may then check the consistency of these hypotheses.
Hope I am clearer now. Your input would be appreciated here.
#1: As you rightly point out, the religions are belief systems. I would be more cautious to use the word from now on. But if you read the #2 above, you would get what I mean by theories in a religion. By saying that you are doing right by rejecting those theories, I want to say that you are doing "right" because the hypotheses(I mean hypotheses for you and me, beliefs for believers) in that particular religious text don't agree with an observed phenomenon which is known to be true.
I don't have much knowledge of "all" the religions to say that the answer to #1 is in affirmative.
Well, obviously, our definitions of the word theory are different. I apologize for my assumption that my definition (scientific theory) is the only one. It is very different from the definition you have.
You're fundamentally wrong. Sorry.
Atheism is not anti-theism. You clearly just don't have a handle on the language.
The "a" part of atheism means "without" not "against". Like atypical or asexual.
We are without a god, not against a god. Doesn't it all make much more sense now? It should.
Thank you ...I never thought of it that way and it does make more sense...Atheists are without a god not against it....As good moral people we do not have to hate those who believe in theism we just need to live with them peacefully...
And by the same token you have to live with *us* peacefully. Many religions, most in fact, seem to have a problem wrapping their heads around that.
Also, anti-theist doesn't mean "against god". It means "against belief in god"
The definition of religion is, "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."
In what way is that definition remotely close to that of Atheism, "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."?
To Begin with Atheism does not mean we deny the existence of god outright but we do not accept god exists. We are reasonable and logically thinking people who are just very curious.
Curiosity is a basic primal instinct of humanity making atheism not a religion.
We are just humans who do not have a religion.
To Begin with Atheism does not mean we deny the existence of god outright but we do not accept god exists. We are reasonable and logically thinking people who are just very curious.
Curiosity is a basic primal instinct of humanity making atheism not a religion.
We are just humans who do not have a religion.
Religion requires belief. Belief is the acceptance of something as true / real without empirical evidence. Atheism, on the other hand, is decidedly not a belief. It rejects those beliefs.
Atheists have not defined god(s). Believers have. Believers have defined lots of gods. There is no scientific evidence that any of them is real. It is not enough for me to accept something as true / real based on belief rather than empirical evidence, therefore I am atheist.
Perhaps religious folk call atheism a religion because they just cannot fathom life without belief. Belief is just too intoxicating for them to let go of. Fortunately, I can fathom it. I can fathom it precisely because I am not stupid.
"Perhaps religious folk call atheism a religion because they just cannot fathom life without belief." In this sentence you said exactly what I was going to.
You owned him lol
TheGreatSam wonders, "Why do you think its so hard for religious people to understand that Atheism is not a religion?"
I think it isn't so much that they don't understand, but rather that they have a sense of insecurity. They desperately want to say, "Hey, you atheists are just like us after all. It's exactly the same to NOT believe in X as it is to believe in it." Obviously, people making this argument lack fundamental understanding of evidence and probability, but that's likely the least of their worries. This reaction is born from the perception that many atheists come across as smug and disdainful - and of course some are. Obviously, it is nowhere near the same from an evidence-based probability perspective to believe in leprechauns as it would be to lack belief in leprechauns.
manoj0071991 asserts, "Of course, atheism is a religion. Aren't you attached to a particular view that God doesn't exist?"
You ask the question as if the answer had some relation to the assertion that precedes it, but it doesn't. Attachment to a view does not constitute a religion. I am as attached to the view that fairies do not exist as I am that your god does not exist, but that doesn't somehow make it my religion. If everything I DON'T believe in was my religion, I'd have an almost infinite number of religions. I suspect that you do not believe in Zeus. Is that your religion? Of course not. That would be, to put it in your terms, "unscientific and stupid."
"Anyway, why isn't there a concept of anti-superman or anti-spiderman but there is atheism?"
This should not be a difficult concept to understand, but maybe it is for some. Think about it: If there were people who invested lots of money, time, and effort into the notion that superman exists and wants you to behave a certain way, and those people often voted for laws to control your behavior and what your children are taught in school so that it is consistent with supermanism, then you would certainly see "anti-supermansim" spring into life. If people told me I couldn't marry the person I wanted to because Superman said I shouldn't, then hell yeah, I'd join an anti-superman movement in a flash. Obviously we don't have significant groups of people claiming to speak on behalf of Superman or Spiderman about how we should live our lives or telling us what will happen to our immortal souls if we don't believe. If that kind of activity starts, you will see the our consistency, because then we will have a need for it. For now, we do not, so why bother? Pretty simple.
"But, by saying that God doesn't exist and not wanting to know what it means by God (for an individual), you are no different to a person following a religion (bound to a viewpoint without a desire to examine)."
Who says we don't want to know what it means? What we are saying is that we are free from belief in any god concept to which we have been exposed. If you have one that includes testable physical evidence, let us know, and you will see that we are willing to examine the evidence. If your concept, however, relies not on actual evidence but only on an appeal to authority without evidence, then that looks to us exactly the same as believing in Isis would look to you (I assume you lack belief in Isis, but please correct me if I am wrong).
We ARE different from people following a religion, because our standard for belief requires testable, documented evidence. Your assertion without evidence simply does not confer the same level of respectability and logic as our lack of acceptance without evidence. Study the 'argument from ignorance' fallacy and Russell's Teapot analogy to understand why.
Your logic is really good, Spewer. I really am learning something from you. :) Thanks for existing in that unique arrangement of atoms which you are.
Wikipedia definition of religion: A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence... The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith, belief system or sometimes set of duties.
"You ask the question as if the answer had some relation to the assertion that precedes it, but it doesn't. Attachment to a view does not constitute a religion."
Isn't attachment to a view called a belief? Now, as CyberLN pointed out and as the definition above suggests, a religion is a belief system. So, a collection of beliefs would constitute a religion; do you agree? For example take Christianity: belief in Jesus, belief in the judgement day and believing that bible is holy doesn't make it 3 separate religions, but a single religion with these as the set of beliefs. Similarly, not believing in Zeus (watch out here! I am not saying not knowing Zeus, rather, not believing in him i.e. I already know the definition of Zeus but I reject that belief and consider the non-existence of Zeus to be true - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief ). Then non-believers of Zeus is a religion according to the definition (along with the other beliefs you have - remember the two words "belief system").
I hope I am clearer now.
"This should not be a difficult concept to understand, but maybe it is for some."
You are right. I was sentimental and premature in writing that statement about supermanism and spidermanism. ;)
"Who says we don't want to know what it means?"
I guess, if you are willing to examine then you neither believe nor disbelieve in God and hence you are not an atheist but an agnostic. Pardon me if you don't agree with the definitions on Wikipedia (Atheism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism , Agnosticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism ). I may be wrong with the terms here. Please correct me. I don't know about Isis (heard the name for the first time), so there is no point of belief.
"I don't know about Isis (heard the name for the first time), so there is no point of belief."
Isis is an ancient Egyptian goddess. If you do not believe she exists, then I just added to your vast collection of religions. :)
"So, a collection of beliefs would constitute a religion; do you agree?"
Sometimes, but it has to be a collection specifically related to theistic subjects to qualify in my book. Not just any collection or system of beliefs would fit my definition of religion. I may well not agree with the mighty Wiki in this regard, but I'll try to clarify below.
"Then non-believers of Zeus is a religion according to the definition (along with the other beliefs you have - remember the two words "belief system")."
My opinion is that a definition of religion that broad ceases to have meaning. Everybody on the planet would have hundreds, maybe thousands of religions. We would have to start using a ridiculous number of qualifiers to sort out what we were talking about. Mass confusion ensues, or at least it would for me. This is why we parse out religions as a particular type of belief in the first place. We are trying to simplify the communication process. The definition you favor would have the opposite effect.
"I guess, if you are willing to examine then you neither believe nor disbelieve in God and hence you are not an atheist but an agnostic. Pardon me if you don't agree with the definitions on Wikipedia"
I don't necessarily agree with Wiki. That's not to say I'm out there making up my own language, but rather that I agree with a different definition that is common among many of us. To me, this simple distinction between the two terms makes the most sense:
Atheism is a statement about belief. Agnosticism is a statement about knowledge.
Hence, I am both: I'm an atheist because I am free from belief in any deity concepts in my awareness. I'm also an agnostic, because I lack the ability to know with certainty.
You could make a legitimate case that the distinction between belief and knowledge is artificial. It's really more a continuum based on how confident we feel about something. I can't argue with that, but it renders all statements about knowledge hypothetical and makes us all agnostics. Taken to that extreme, the term agnostic becomes so broad as to lose meaning. We apply categories to facilitate communication, even if they are not completely accurate. That's the same reason I don't like referring to every possible collection of beliefs as a religion. It complicates our ability to communicate effectively.
As a matter of fact, there are about 4200 religions out there (ref: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=qZrTbY77g3oC&printsec=frontcover#v=on... ). I guess there is a mass confusion. What you understand by the term religion may not be the same thing for someone else. For instance, in Buddhism, the word for religion is dharma, which is not a correct translation because dharma literally means "set of duties". I guess this is not relevant to the topic, so I will leave it to that.
Thanks for stating the definition of atheism and agnosticism that these communities hold. I am sorry, I presumed that atheism means rejection of the concept of God without any desire to examine. This is why I thought it to be completely unscientific.
You have gained respect in my eyes :) .
Anyway, here is a news worth considering http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/681034-3-year-old-remembers-past-life-id...
How do you explain that with current scientific understanding of the working of our universe.
"What you understand by the term religion may not be the same thing for someone else."
Indeed, and that is equally true for every term in my vocabulary. This is part of the human condition.
"Thanks for stating the definition of atheism and agnosticism that these communities hold."
Just to be clear, I do not speak for this community or any other. Many on this very site and elsewhere disagree with me on a regular basis. :)
"I presumed that atheism means rejection of the concept of God without any desire to examine."
Quite the opposite, Most of us arrived at our atheism *precisely because* of our desire to examine, and examination of supernatural claims always seems to make them fall short.
"How do you explain that with current scientific understanding of the working of our universe."
I don't explain it. I simply lack information that I would consider unbiased. The Druze in the story accept reincarnation as a given. It's part of their culture, so they expect it. The author is a doctor whose career prominently featured "spiritual healing," which tells me he would be more predisposed toward acceptance of "spiritual" explanations than I would. No actual evidence is provided in the story. The good doctor died years ago and is not around to elaborate further. We do not have any names or independently verified information, so my inclination is to withhold belief without further evidence. Obviously I cannot be certain the story is false, but I can say I would need more specific evidence than was provided to believe this is anything besides a cool story from a culture already inclined to accept such claims at face value.
Everything else is fine, Spewer. I would just like to say something on the desire to examine.
You said that, "I would need more specific evidence than was provided to believe this is anything besides a cool story from a culture already inclined to accept such claims at face value".
By the way, there are several books written on many such evidences (NDEs and children remembering past lives). I guess that you wouldn't have read any single one of them and we just disregard any such evidence as a "cool story" because we are afraid that we will drift from the "scientific track".
But I know that when a scientist comes up with a proper theory to explain a magic, "we scientific people" take pride in it, while we had ignored the same phenomenon (asking for more evidence without examining the already available evidence) before the explanation.
I agree that the burden of proof lies with the person claiming something to be true. But being a curious creature I would still look for a flying teapot or a spaghetti monster if someone claims that to be true, and more so, if a thousand people claim that to be true!
It isn't as if atheists have never looked for evidence of God. I spent a good 5 years trying to think of every reason I could why atheists are wrong and why God is definitely real. But I couldn't think of a single piece of solid evidence. NDEs and children remembering past lives are not evidence. They are claims, and you have to find evidence for each claim to be true. If and when you can confirm each case to be true, you can evaluate what caused these events to occur, and you will need more evidence to support these new hypothesis. This is similar to saying that the "intelligently designed" universe is evidence for an intelligent designer. Unfortunately, we lack any evidence that the way the universe is makes it intelligently or otherwise "designed". There are other explanations for why the universe is the way it is without supposing intelligent design. If we can ever prove that the universe is designed, maybe then we can get to discussing what designed it.
"If everything I DON'T believe in was my religion, I'd have an almost infinite number of religions." I love that line, almost as much as I hate it when people try to define things in abstract. It's just awkward and innefficient.
They always ignore the fact the majority of atheists were theists so the know about religions. Also many of us searched first for a religion we could accept desperate to avoid the truth.
There are some atheistic religions, but that's not what they mean.
Ah this good old, frustrating, dead-end argument. Which, in my opinion has gone waaay more technical than need be.
.. As I once heard it put; Atheism is no more a religion than 'off' is a tv channel.. All you have to do to end this debate is think about it. Atheism is the non-belief in religion, so how could it possibly be one?! It's an opposite. A non-religion if you will. If theism didn't exist, atheism wouldn't either.
.. I dream of a day I am not forced into a category and simply able to just.. be
Like I say to people, I'm only an Atheist to Theists. To Atheists, I'm just another person :)
I like that analogy, it's quite fitting.
I like it too
No manoj u are wrong an atheist is someone who dose not believe in anything other than logic and reason............ and reason is ehind everything including emotion and even morality so we are NOT A RELIGION
Simple fact is we are atheist if we say we are not a religion they should accept that like we have to accept the crap they believe.
Someone today told me there are atheist churches in usa he wouldnt cite any evidence so anyone else hears this?
Turns our atheism is now a religion damn americans!
I see why they want to get the same rights as religious people.
Atheists are starting to want to form scho college and university clubs but the institutions are proving resentful and stubborn despite the fact these places all have religious clubs.
So declaring atheism a religion will help these people struggling for equal rights.
Unfortunately this gives theists ammunition i would suggest patiently explaining the reason when that fails (notice i said when not if lol) drop it.
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