Guys, not playing baseball is just as much of a sport as baseball.
Sure.
But routinely trying to take the basketball away from the basketball players shares a lot of similarities with a sport
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.
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.
Atheism is a religion like off is a channel on TV.
Like bald is a hair color
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.
No, it's not faith. If someone proves a god exists... I'll stop believing there are no gods.
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
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.
Held to with ardor and faith.
That's a belief, not a religion. I will admit that given that we have no way to prove that A god exists or not, we can only held beliefs of the fact, never certainty. Sure. It's not a fucking religion, a belief can be widespread without having an organisation that defines it and guides peo0pe around it, that's a religion.
Also, "one of the definitions of..."? So they cherry pick one of several definitions, understand it and apply it incorrectly and think that they won the thought experiment? Shaaame.
Now watch Kirk Cameron explain a banana.
Is that the one where he thinks a banana is proof of god because it fits in the hand nicely and some other stupid shit?
At that point nationalism is a religion.
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.
They'll tell themselves anything to make themselves feel safe / right.
There are an infinite number of non-beliefs. Only beliefs matter, and here's where many people lose their minds, non-belief is more accurately refactored into a belief and can therefore be aggregated as a religion, as a matter of sematics.
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.
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.
The capitalization is purely an artifact of autocorrect.
Just because a distinction is thin doesn't make it insignificant or unimportant, but it's not my intention to get into a semantic argument.
I think you misunderstood my point, I agree that atheism isn't a religion. But things can be similar yet distinct. Something can fill a similar role as religion without being religion.
I'm specifically talking about people who are beligerantly atheist. Who make it a large part of their identity, and who are eager to fight about it. An enormous part of modern religion is simply identity politics, and that is something that atheism can share with it. It's identity politics that drives modern (non-academic) discourse around religion.So in a practical manner, both religion and atheism can some of the most important traits when it comes to interacting with society.
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.
That was.... particularly dumb
Last point proven correct. Thank you.
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.
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.
