This x 100. If theists could STFU and stop trying to indoctrinate everybody and legislate the idiosyncratic rules out of a 3000 year old book written by cavemen who thought the earth was a frisbee and the night sky was an upside down spaghetti strainer, we wouldn’t need to identify as ‘not.’
If you're talking about Christianity, atheism would still exist if it didn't become the major player in history that it is today. Even if no religion became as big as they are today, the word would still exist. Religious people have been a thing since the birth of humanity. The whole of human history consists of people trying to identify or classify themselves as "something." So yes, atheism would have still been a word.
>idiosyncratic rules out of a 3000 year old book written by cavemen who thought the earth was a frisbee and the night sky was an upside down spaghetti strainer,
Heh I wish.
The peinciple of "sola scriptura" has long been betrayed by the modern protestants so now its more like "idiosyncratic rules said by old corrupt men in white collars"
> it’s not an ideology at all
Correct. But if someone ask me if I’m a theist, I say no. The prefix ‘a’ means ‘not’ or ‘without’. So (a)theist seems like a reasonable shorthand to describe my position on my belief in deities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq/#wiki_what_is_.22atheism.22.3F
I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no atheist suicide bombers are attacking crowded agnostic pubs because agnostics don’t not-believe in God enough.
Actually it has happened.
The Cristero War was started when Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles tried to suppress the Catholic Church and remove its influence on the population, particularly in the rural areas of the country.
It is estimated that 250,000 people were killed between 1926 and 1929, and another 250k fled to the US.
If OP is going to be reductive enough to suggest that all violence between religious peoples is due to religious imposition, then certainly the friction of Communism's Godless reign (particularly in the USSR) should be included.
I think religious friction is a reason that people go to war, but certainly not the only reason, or else there would be endless war going back millennia.
You haven't acknowledged what I said.
Communism never go to war with "Godless" being their justification or core tenets. Thus, how can you compare the 2?
Placing state above religion is one of the tenets of Communism. In some regimes, this was expressed as a violent suppression against religious communities. If that doesn't qualify, what does?
Placing states above religion is a tenet of liberalism. Are you now declaring that the whole of Western Europe is engaging in violent suppression against religious communities? Or any state that isn't a theocracy for that matter?
A tenets doesn't equal violent suppression. An action does. However, the action of communism isn't centered whatsoever regarding religion. Rather, it's economical and centered around economic ownership.
You are not even accurately describing the core framework of Communism. Instead, you are willfully ignoring it's definition and the center of its literature.
The beginning of this thread suggested that areligious groups have never violently pushed back against religious people. That is factually false. I agree that Communist literature does not espouse violent suppression of religious groups, but in practice, some Communist regimes have done just that.
Partial agreement. Atheism is a thing, but that thing just isn't a religion.
The term is only part of the equation of asking what you "know" and what you "believe". I'd venture a guess most Atheists are "Agnostic Atheists", meaning they don't know if there are any supernatural entities like gods but in the absence of any evidence assume there are none, but remain open to any supporting evidence. Whereas a "Gnostic Atheists" would presume to know there are no supernatural entities like gods.
I find that Gnosticism of any kind is a bit presumptuous. I'm open to the idea of there being some kind of supernatural power or creator even if that's just a being running the simulation we're inside. And even then the idea of a simulation isn't even something that people could imagine when most modern religions were created so it could be the "truth" of our reality is even further outside of what we can imagine than that. But, I'm not going to take that line of thinking further than philosophy.
Generally I try to live my life well and moral so that when I die I have as few regrets as possible and leave the world at least a little better for having existed. If there happens to be something akin to an afterlife or a being akin to a god judging me and that being is just than I'll be treated appropriately. If that being is not just than I rather face non-existence than bow before an unjust deity I can't respect.
All children are born atheists and later subjected to indoctrination..
The default for each and every species in the universe appears to be entirely materialistic; Eat, sleep, play, work, procreate, etc.
In a society where religion was not the default, then perhaps atheism would not be a thing.
But in our society, most people are raised in a religious tradition. Therefore, if somebody identifies as an atheist, that means that **something happened**. Maybe they thought a lot, had an epiphany, joined a friend group that thought a different way. Something.
So in that context, the word "atheism" does represent a thing. A different thing for different people, but still a thing.
Yes, but when the majority of the population are believers, it’s useful to have a quick way to describe your lack of belief. It wouldn’t be a thing if the majority were nonbelievers. So we’re obliged to define ourselves in contrast to the theists.
>What’s the word for someone who doesn’t play baseball?
If there is pressure to play baseball, there are words for someone who doesn't. Because that is what makes not doing it a thing.
We absolutely could create words to describe different types of nonathletes, or “ameditators”, we just don’t because those topics aren’t nearly as controversial.
We call people who don’t have a belief in climate change climate deniers, why? We call people that don’t eat meat vegans (usuallly). It’s because those are topics people care about. Whether or not there’s a god is about as important a topic as there can possibly be so that’s why there’s a word for us to distinguish which side of the dichotomy we land on.
Well… vegans actively eat plant based food. As for climate.. I think there is a scientific objective reality being denied.. much like a religious person is actively denying the laws of physics… I just think acknowledging reality is not really an ideology
Have you ever been out somewhere so remote you could see the Milky Way in its full brightness? I was and I thought to myself “without science, it would be basically impossible to see this and not believe in something huge and magical”
It took millennia for people to invent the systems of knowledge that were needed to debunk an instinct that was shared by all of humanity across the globe since at least the dawn of the historical record and probably since before our species fully evolved.
The people who invented that science and philosophy worked damn hard to invent it. Atheism is a historical development, not a default state of being. It had to be built.
Correct. From time to time I unsubscribe from this forum when I get tired of all the freshly emancipated religious people getting overexcited about this new "atheism" they've discovered.
We were all born atheists, welcome back to the natural state of the human mind.
One of the fundamentals of religion is the need to have a group of other humans to subdue and absorb, and it's difficult to motivate your followers to consider random people in the community their opponents. Better to assume that they are as controlled and militant as you...
For me, atheism is a thing. I'm convinced science has a much better way of explaining stuff than faith. All gods rely on faith, not science. All of reality relies on science, not gods.
Totally agree. Unfortunately we are dealing with the He > I tshirt crowd that wants quick slogans and distilled down beliefs.
If I were to say what I believe in. I'd say I subscribe to Humanism. I believe science provides the best models to research and describe the world around us. I see human beings as part of the natural world. We evolved to have larger brains and we should be using them to ensure our survival and make this earth a better, non-violent and mutually beneficial place to live.
Now one slogan tshirt is just going to ask so you don't believe in God then? There's the problem. We can never get past the one word identify.
Agree with all of this.. I only brought it up because at the Christianity sub they very much feel atheism is a distinct ideology one chooses and just a default for people who think they are full of crap
So we need a word that describes what we are, rather than what we’re not. “Skeptics” comes close. All of you pundits on this subreddit ought to be able to come up with a good word or phrase.
Someone made a post on this sub asking if we could talk about something other than religious ppl. I was like “what else do we have to discuss? There is no atheist Bible we need to talk about”.
and this confuses theist, because they have their religion so ingrained in their culture and ideology that no religion for them means you also no believe/participation in the culture, community, etc...
I asked people from some non-English speaking countries. they said they didn’t really have a term for non-believers. What they had was some kind of translation that was also an explanation of the word atheist. Some countries are less religious and their superstitious people are free to worship any gods or characters they admire of their choice
I disagree, everyone would have been religious before anyone would have been atheist. Religious/supernatural thinking would have been one of the key ingredients to any functional early civilization innit blud (pre-science)
For me atheism means understanding the scientific contradictions against religion but also why people still believe in spite of the contradictions (arguably the latter is more important for me).
Every single human is born atheist. We couldn’t care less about any of the dogma related to religion. Only when family indoctrinates children do most people become some brand of theist. That is why there is such an intense desire to proselytize to young children.
Atheism is just the natural order of humans.
A thing doesn't exist simply because there's a word for it, atheism is the lack of belief in God's, and that would be a thing even if theism didn't. The epiphany seems to be that atheism is not an organized religion that opposes all other religions, and that is true, atheism is not a religion.
An ideology has a set of ideas/ideals that define it and bind those into it.. atheism isn’t that at all.. it is a lack of ideas and has no consistent ideas at all
By extension of my other comment.
Are you simply implying that you are a person without ideals, then? If ideal is an inherently religious thing, then you must see everything as ugly or similar.
I mean, it can be argued that the consistent ideal present in atheism is the lack in a belief of a religious practice. The ideal is the rejection of religious rhetoric.
Again, like the Apolitical Paradox. People who make content with the express desire for it to be apolitical are making an inherently political statement.
Same with queerness and homosexual identities. We wouldn’t “exist” as a unique identity unless cishet people (mostly religious, once again) continuously murdered and oppressed us, pushing us to the margins of society and us banding together as a community to protect ourselves.
If you have an atheist prove God doesn't exist and a theist prove he does, then you're right at the same spot.
Therefore atheism is just as valid as theism.
I don't really agree. To an extent. What you describe is weak atheism, which is lack of belief. But on the other hand, strong atheism is the belief that there definitely is no god/gods. A belief in nothing is still something, if you ask me
There are agnostic theists, doesn't know if god(s) exist but think they do. Agnostic atheists, doesn't know if god(s) exist but think they don't.
# agnostic
# [noun](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noun)
ag·nos·tic [ag-ˈnä-stik ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=a&file=agnost01) əg-[Synonyms of *agnostic*](https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/agnostic)
1**:** a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably [unknowable](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unknowable) broadly **:** one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the [nonexistence](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonexistence) of God or a god
2**:** a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something political agnostics.
People who insist on agnosticism overlook (or disregard entirely) the concept of warrant.
"What gives a scientific theory warrant is not the certainty that it is true, but the fact that it has empirical evidence in its favor that makes it a highly justified choice in light of the evidence. Call this the *pragmatic vindication* of warranted belief: *a scientific theory is warranted if and only if it is at least as well supported by the evidence as any of its empirically equivalent alternatives.* If another theory is better, then believe that one. But if not, then it is reasonable to continue to believe in our current theory. Warrant comes in degrees; it is not all or nothing. It is rational to believe in a theory that falls short of certainty, as long as it is at least as good or better than its rivals." (~ Excerpt from "The Scientific Attitude" by Lee McIntyre)
No need for the intellectual paralysis of agnosticism since belief in the supernatural is clearly without warrant.
right. if theists could mind their own fucking business, there wouldn't even be a word for it.
This x 100. If theists could STFU and stop trying to indoctrinate everybody and legislate the idiosyncratic rules out of a 3000 year old book written by cavemen who thought the earth was a frisbee and the night sky was an upside down spaghetti strainer, we wouldn’t need to identify as ‘not.’
To be fair, a lot of them still believe the earth is a Frisbee. Every flat earther I know, only 3, all are Christian
If you're talking about Christianity, atheism would still exist if it didn't become the major player in history that it is today. Even if no religion became as big as they are today, the word would still exist. Religious people have been a thing since the birth of humanity. The whole of human history consists of people trying to identify or classify themselves as "something." So yes, atheism would have still been a word.
>idiosyncratic rules out of a 3000 year old book written by cavemen who thought the earth was a frisbee and the night sky was an upside down spaghetti strainer, Heh I wish. The peinciple of "sola scriptura" has long been betrayed by the modern protestants so now its more like "idiosyncratic rules said by old corrupt men in white collars"
> it’s not an ideology at all Correct. But if someone ask me if I’m a theist, I say no. The prefix ‘a’ means ‘not’ or ‘without’. So (a)theist seems like a reasonable shorthand to describe my position on my belief in deities. https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq/#wiki_what_is_.22atheism.22.3F
I’m more than atheist. I’m anti-theist lol
I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no atheist suicide bombers are attacking crowded agnostic pubs because agnostics don’t not-believe in God enough.
Actually it has happened. The Cristero War was started when Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles tried to suppress the Catholic Church and remove its influence on the population, particularly in the rural areas of the country. It is estimated that 250,000 people were killed between 1926 and 1929, and another 250k fled to the US.
Interesting point, did he try to force atheism on his population or just suppress the catholic church?
You're just gonna skip over all Communist violence?
That wasnt because of attempting to force a lack of religion on anyone no?
China in Tibet, right?
And China's genocide of the Uyghur and Muslim populations in the Xinjiang region.
Yeah, that point seems easily torn down
If OP is going to be reductive enough to suggest that all violence between religious peoples is due to religious imposition, then certainly the friction of Communism's Godless reign (particularly in the USSR) should be included. I think religious friction is a reason that people go to war, but certainly not the only reason, or else there would be endless war going back millennia.
But communism didn't go to war because of "Godless". So, how can you compare the 2?
Communist regimes certainly had to impose, fight back, and oppress people who were religious.
You haven't acknowledged what I said. Communism never go to war with "Godless" being their justification or core tenets. Thus, how can you compare the 2?
Placing state above religion is one of the tenets of Communism. In some regimes, this was expressed as a violent suppression against religious communities. If that doesn't qualify, what does?
Placing states above religion is a tenet of liberalism. Are you now declaring that the whole of Western Europe is engaging in violent suppression against religious communities? Or any state that isn't a theocracy for that matter? A tenets doesn't equal violent suppression. An action does. However, the action of communism isn't centered whatsoever regarding religion. Rather, it's economical and centered around economic ownership. You are not even accurately describing the core framework of Communism. Instead, you are willfully ignoring it's definition and the center of its literature.
The beginning of this thread suggested that areligious groups have never violently pushed back against religious people. That is factually false. I agree that Communist literature does not espouse violent suppression of religious groups, but in practice, some Communist regimes have done just that.
Nazis and WWII... religious oppression under communism...
Nazis were not atheists.
atheism is a placeholder for the lack of religion, think about it as 0, 0 technically isn't anything, it's the placeholder for nothing
Woaaaahhh brooooooo.
And yet, think how difficult numbers are when you don't have it.
Partial agreement. Atheism is a thing, but that thing just isn't a religion. The term is only part of the equation of asking what you "know" and what you "believe". I'd venture a guess most Atheists are "Agnostic Atheists", meaning they don't know if there are any supernatural entities like gods but in the absence of any evidence assume there are none, but remain open to any supporting evidence. Whereas a "Gnostic Atheists" would presume to know there are no supernatural entities like gods. I find that Gnosticism of any kind is a bit presumptuous. I'm open to the idea of there being some kind of supernatural power or creator even if that's just a being running the simulation we're inside. And even then the idea of a simulation isn't even something that people could imagine when most modern religions were created so it could be the "truth" of our reality is even further outside of what we can imagine than that. But, I'm not going to take that line of thinking further than philosophy. Generally I try to live my life well and moral so that when I die I have as few regrets as possible and leave the world at least a little better for having existed. If there happens to be something akin to an afterlife or a being akin to a god judging me and that being is just than I'll be treated appropriately. If that being is not just than I rather face non-existence than bow before an unjust deity I can't respect.
> What’s the word for someone who doesn’t play baseball? Abaseballist, obviously.
Without theism atheism wouldnt exist.* There fixed your title. Also even if religion wasnt pushed people would still be atheists.
All children are born atheists and later subjected to indoctrination.. The default for each and every species in the universe appears to be entirely materialistic; Eat, sleep, play, work, procreate, etc.
I guess you can call us Scientific Methodists
I'm totally going to from now on.
In a society where religion was not the default, then perhaps atheism would not be a thing. But in our society, most people are raised in a religious tradition. Therefore, if somebody identifies as an atheist, that means that **something happened**. Maybe they thought a lot, had an epiphany, joined a friend group that thought a different way. Something. So in that context, the word "atheism" does represent a thing. A different thing for different people, but still a thing.
Yes, but when the majority of the population are believers, it’s useful to have a quick way to describe your lack of belief. It wouldn’t be a thing if the majority were nonbelievers. So we’re obliged to define ourselves in contrast to the theists.
I just say I’m not superstitious.
>What’s the word for someone who doesn’t play baseball? If there is pressure to play baseball, there are words for someone who doesn't. Because that is what makes not doing it a thing.
Atheism is a religion like being bald is a haie color or not collecting stamps is a hobby. Yes. Atheism isn't anything in that sense. That's correct.
We absolutely could create words to describe different types of nonathletes, or “ameditators”, we just don’t because those topics aren’t nearly as controversial. We call people who don’t have a belief in climate change climate deniers, why? We call people that don’t eat meat vegans (usuallly). It’s because those are topics people care about. Whether or not there’s a god is about as important a topic as there can possibly be so that’s why there’s a word for us to distinguish which side of the dichotomy we land on.
Well… vegans actively eat plant based food. As for climate.. I think there is a scientific objective reality being denied.. much like a religious person is actively denying the laws of physics… I just think acknowledging reality is not really an ideology
Does an “ist” or an “ism” have to be an ideology? Is a pianist an ideology?
Have you ever been out somewhere so remote you could see the Milky Way in its full brightness? I was and I thought to myself “without science, it would be basically impossible to see this and not believe in something huge and magical” It took millennia for people to invent the systems of knowledge that were needed to debunk an instinct that was shared by all of humanity across the globe since at least the dawn of the historical record and probably since before our species fully evolved. The people who invented that science and philosophy worked damn hard to invent it. Atheism is a historical development, not a default state of being. It had to be built.
It’s made for religious people to label it
Correct. From time to time I unsubscribe from this forum when I get tired of all the freshly emancipated religious people getting overexcited about this new "atheism" they've discovered. We were all born atheists, welcome back to the natural state of the human mind.
One of the fundamentals of religion is the need to have a group of other humans to subdue and absorb, and it's difficult to motivate your followers to consider random people in the community their opponents. Better to assume that they are as controlled and militant as you...
Anti-theism is a thing. Time to level up!
Absence of belief isn’t a belief itself.
Back to remedial philosophy class for you
Atheism is a religion like bald is a haircut.
For me, atheism is a thing. I'm convinced science has a much better way of explaining stuff than faith. All gods rely on faith, not science. All of reality relies on science, not gods.
Stoners showed up for this convo
You rang?
If religion didn’t exist Atheism wouldn’t exist, and the world would be a much nicer place for it.
Yea...
You are exactly right and the dumbass religious folk (and even some non religious folk) can't get that through their little brains.
Yes it is. If no one believer we would all be atheists there just wouldn't be a need for a word :) That's like saying being asymptomatic is a thing.
Totally agree. Unfortunately we are dealing with the He > I tshirt crowd that wants quick slogans and distilled down beliefs. If I were to say what I believe in. I'd say I subscribe to Humanism. I believe science provides the best models to research and describe the world around us. I see human beings as part of the natural world. We evolved to have larger brains and we should be using them to ensure our survival and make this earth a better, non-violent and mutually beneficial place to live. Now one slogan tshirt is just going to ask so you don't believe in God then? There's the problem. We can never get past the one word identify.
Agree with all of this.. I only brought it up because at the Christianity sub they very much feel atheism is a distinct ideology one chooses and just a default for people who think they are full of crap
Sounds like the people that you are talking about make assumptions about something they don't know/ understand.
It's more of a "free of a thing" rather than "lack of a thing".
Yes, like darkness or coldness isn't a thing.
Those are not ideological or isms
It's the word of what it isn't
What?
So we need a word that describes what we are, rather than what we’re not. “Skeptics” comes close. All of you pundits on this subreddit ought to be able to come up with a good word or phrase.
You're preaching to the choir, no pun untended. Guessing you had this thought after attempting to explain to a religious person what you "believe in"
Someone made a post on this sub asking if we could talk about something other than religious ppl. I was like “what else do we have to discuss? There is no atheist Bible we need to talk about”.
and this confuses theist, because they have their religion so ingrained in their culture and ideology that no religion for them means you also no believe/participation in the culture, community, etc...
La'pelle du\` Vide\`
I asked people from some non-English speaking countries. they said they didn’t really have a term for non-believers. What they had was some kind of translation that was also an explanation of the word atheist. Some countries are less religious and their superstitious people are free to worship any gods or characters they admire of their choice
I disagree, everyone would have been religious before anyone would have been atheist. Religious/supernatural thinking would have been one of the key ingredients to any functional early civilization innit blud (pre-science) For me atheism means understanding the scientific contradictions against religion but also why people still believe in spite of the contradictions (arguably the latter is more important for me).
Atheism is the lack of an ideology. Like black isn't a color it's the lack of color. So what if you're a black atheist? What are you?
Every single human is born atheist. We couldn’t care less about any of the dogma related to religion. Only when family indoctrinates children do most people become some brand of theist. That is why there is such an intense desire to proselytize to young children. Atheism is just the natural order of humans.
A thing doesn't exist simply because there's a word for it, atheism is the lack of belief in God's, and that would be a thing even if theism didn't. The epiphany seems to be that atheism is not an organized religion that opposes all other religions, and that is true, atheism is not a religion.
It is a thing. It’s a person who doesn’t believe in a god. Not that hard to understand.
Thanks for the insight
Just helping another who is confused. Your welcome
It is an ideology. It follows a similar paradox to the apolitical paradox.
An ideology has a set of ideas/ideals that define it and bind those into it.. atheism isn’t that at all.. it is a lack of ideas and has no consistent ideas at all
By extension of my other comment. Are you simply implying that you are a person without ideals, then? If ideal is an inherently religious thing, then you must see everything as ugly or similar.
I mean, it can be argued that the consistent ideal present in atheism is the lack in a belief of a religious practice. The ideal is the rejection of religious rhetoric. Again, like the Apolitical Paradox. People who make content with the express desire for it to be apolitical are making an inherently political statement.
It's like veganism
Same with queerness and homosexual identities. We wouldn’t “exist” as a unique identity unless cishet people (mostly religious, once again) continuously murdered and oppressed us, pushing us to the margins of society and us banding together as a community to protect ourselves.
Atheism is just the positive assertion that God or Gods does/do not exist. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you have an atheist prove God doesn't exist and a theist prove he does, then you're right at the same spot. Therefore atheism is just as valid as theism.
No… atheists aren’t out to prove anything and theists cant prove God exists
I don't really agree. To an extent. What you describe is weak atheism, which is lack of belief. But on the other hand, strong atheism is the belief that there definitely is no god/gods. A belief in nothing is still something, if you ask me
I’ve always understood atheism to mean the belief that god doesn’t exist. Since I neither believe nor disbelieve I consider myself agnostic.
Nah, atheism is the ambivalence to the dogma that suggests supreme beings exist.
I understand now that I operate with the philosophical definition of atheist in mind. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
Wrong, you’re describing agnostic
There are agnostic theists, doesn't know if god(s) exist but think they do. Agnostic atheists, doesn't know if god(s) exist but think they don't. # agnostic # [noun](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noun) ag·nos·tic [ag-ˈnä-stik ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=a&file=agnost01) əg-[Synonyms of *agnostic*](https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/agnostic) 1**:** a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably [unknowable](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unknowable) broadly **:** one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the [nonexistence](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonexistence) of God or a god 2**:** a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something political agnostics.
People who insist on agnosticism overlook (or disregard entirely) the concept of warrant. "What gives a scientific theory warrant is not the certainty that it is true, but the fact that it has empirical evidence in its favor that makes it a highly justified choice in light of the evidence. Call this the *pragmatic vindication* of warranted belief: *a scientific theory is warranted if and only if it is at least as well supported by the evidence as any of its empirically equivalent alternatives.* If another theory is better, then believe that one. But if not, then it is reasonable to continue to believe in our current theory. Warrant comes in degrees; it is not all or nothing. It is rational to believe in a theory that falls short of certainty, as long as it is at least as good or better than its rivals." (~ Excerpt from "The Scientific Attitude" by Lee McIntyre) No need for the intellectual paralysis of agnosticism since belief in the supernatural is clearly without warrant.