I find it odd that when filling out a form that asked me what my religion is one of the choices is Atheist.
What now? That is the that opposite of religion.
Philosophically, that’s true. But I understand putting it in the religion column for the purpose of statistics. And ‘none’ and ‘atheist’ are two different possible answers. You can have no religion but believe very fervently in a god of your own conception.
That sounds more like “Other” than “None”.
Why? If you worship a god but don’t subscribe to any dogma, accept any scripture or listen to any religious authority, you have no religion. You’re just a theist.
I guess it depends on your definition of religion. To me, it sounds like a personal religion, even if just one person believes in it. There are any number of religions too small to be included in their list, probably, so they should have an “Other” option, and that seems like the best fit for someone who has a personal set of religious beliefs that do not align with a listed religion.
Or you could just keep it how it’s always been for the purposes of easy tabulation.
I suspect Satanists and others on the left hand path would disagree but I agree you’re functionally correct
I would suggest that various flavors of Satanism have a dogma, and more than one version has scriptures, be they LaVey’s book or the Satanic Temple’s tenets.
I can understand why the Satanic Bible might look like dogma, I don’t agree that it is. And religions like the Setians specifically don’t have any dogma.
I think your point generally holds true largely due to the reality of the world, in principle and philosophy though, totally possible to find counter examples.
Why? If you worship a god but don’t subscribe to any dogma, accept any scripture or listen to any religious authority, you have no religion. You’re just a theist.
Except atheism is literally a lack of belief in a god or deity. If you believe in some type of deity, you’re not an atheist. by default.Edit: I missread that. Sorry. Too much coffee and not enough sleep can cause halicuinationsThat was my point.
Wouldn’t that be an agnostic?
Wouldn’t what be an agnostic? “None” for religion? No, as I said, you can not adhere to any religion but still have a devout belief in a god.
Humans are so complicated
True. And unfortunately, things sometimes have to be simplified for the purposes of statistics.
Honestly, I would rather something like a census have an accurate count of atheists than leave it off the form because it isn’t technically correct to call it a religion.
No, agnosticism is more about the fact that God cannot be proven or disproven.
As for atheism being a religious choice: that’s exactly what it is, it’s a choice to not believe in any religion.
If you and I met on the street, and I were to ask you what your religion is, how would you answer me?
(My guess is you’d say you are an atheist. Same as that dropdown is asking you what your religion is.)
If you asked me what my religion is, I would answer that you have already pre-supposed that I have one. Even though I would know what you’re actually asking, I would answer that way to bring more popularity to the idea that not having a religion is normal. Yeah I know, I’m fun at parties.
You can really go down a pretty deep rabbit hole here.
Strictly speaking, atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or gods. A-without, theism-belief in god(s)
There are religions out there that don’t have a figure you can easily identify as a god, certain types of Buddhism for example, and so you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in calling followers of those religions “atheists”
But that’s of course somewhat at odds with how we normally use the term atheism, and them prevent confusion we’d normally refer to these as “non-theistic religions” instead of “atheistic religions”
You can also get into the weeds about what even counts as a god, for example, certain types of taoism/daoism don’t really have any particular god-like figures, but they do have the tao/dao (roughly translating to “path” sort of a natural order the the universe that you should try to be in sync with.) Is the dao a god? It’s certainly not a personal god, something you can pray to and expect to get an answer back from, or that can/will intervene in the universe, it just sort of is and you’re either on the path or you’re not. You could certainly argue that it is a god, if an impersonal one, but it’s definitely not what most people would think of as a god.
You can also have religions that don’t really have anything they’d identify as a “god” but might have other lesser supernatural entities, things like spirits, demons, angels, ghosts, fairies, djinn, etc.
There’s also UFO religions, where aliens are the primary figures and often a lot of their supernatural abilities might be explained away as just very advanced science is centuries beyond our own capabilities.
Going the other direction, you could theoretically have someone who believes that there is some sort of god out there, but makes no attempt to pray to them, worship them, doesn’t take part in any sort of ritual or culture having to do with that belief, and pretty much just acknowledges that the god exists but that its existence has no particular impact on that person’s life or the universe in general. You could very well call that person a non-religious theist. Many deists would fall into this sort of category.
Something I wish got a little more attention in these sorts of discussions is ignosticism/igtheism/theological noncognitivism, which is the camp I put myself into when I’m feeling really nitpicky, and I like to sum up as:
Theism: I believe that there is a god or gods
Atheism: I do not believe that there are any gods
Agnosticism: I’m not sure if there is a god, and maybe we can’t ever know for sure
Ignosticism: What the fuck do you people even mean by “god.” No one has come up with a clear definition yet so this argument is pointless.
I would say I don’t have one. Atheism is not a religion it is a description of a single attribute, lack of belief in any gods. People seem to think it means a lot more than it does.
Whenever I’ve been asked I always say no religion
Atheism is not a religion or worldview.
Atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or God’s.
Many atheists including myself adhere to the statement of simply being unconvinced that there is a God or having no credible evidence to indicate a God’s existence.
Maybe the form we were filling out legitimately needed that information but typically outside of a very specific set of data. I don’t see why any form would ever ask you what your religion or lack of religion might be.
In the medical world plenty of religions forbid certain things… like blood transfusions. I can’t really think of other places but I’m sure there are other legitimate use cases.
But I usually just trike out stuff that is irrelevant. If they seem it relevant they can press the issue and explain why.
Surely atheism is the belief in the lack of a god. Agnosticism is the lack of belief in a god.
Sorta, break down the roots of the words. Atheists activly deny that there is are gods (anti-theism), Agnostics (a-gnostic) are those who dont know, are unconvinced or those who simply dont care. If you really want to be pedantic (annoy your religious friends), point out that most theists are also atheists in a sense as they deny all gods, except for their own.
Exactly. Lack of belief in gods is not the same as actively denying that there are gods.
The issue is that in conversation its hard for theists to tell the difference between the two. To them it dosen’t matter if I say “I think your wrong” or “I simply dont care”, a lot of them will see someone who needs to be “saved”. A non-zero number of them will be very annoying about that or be obstructive because of it, so its best to handle all religion based conversations with kid-gloves.
Sure. I was just trying to make a slightly pedantic joke to mechoman444.
Atheists activly deny that there is are gods (anti-theism), Agnostics (a-gnostic)
Wild to me that you would put these so close. A-theist, as in “not a theist”, you got it right with gnosticism
The etymology of the word through French, Latin, and to Greek all mean that, too, “godless”, not “against god”
Atheist is tangential to religion, you have religious theists or atheists as religion is about a system of philosophy and ethics while theism is about belief in gods.
Irreligious, ‘none’ or ‘does not apply’ might be better.
I appreciate the surveys that just say “doesn’t apply”.
Just put Pastafarianism
The closest I have to religion is naturalist, which is to say based on the data I have, I can’t find any evidence anywhere of supernatural effects, and while I haven’t personally done the looking, the scientific consensus is that there’s nothing, even when it comes to religious investigators actively looking for evidence of the stuff they expect to see.
To date, there are some pretty high bounties on evidence of various kinds of spooky shit that remain unclaimed.
Of course, I don’t know this to be the case. The simulation hypothesis has not been ruled out, which would allow for effects we cannot detect. It doesn’t stop me from worshiping my cat. (Cat-huffing. It’s a thing.) And it raises questions whether we are the same person when we wake up after non-REM sleep, or a new iteration of the identity. (The transporter paradox). But so far, the most likely explanation is we’re material girls living in a material world.
In my opinion, if somebody states that there’s something spooky going on, then the onus is on them to provide evidence and prove what they’re saying. I don’t have to do anything.
“isn’t it spooky how all the evidence just ups and dissapppears when you look at it?!”
That experiment made my brain hurt
Sorry.
Lol 😂
Don’t we have spooky quarks? I know we have strange ones, and charm quarks… Feels like we should have spooky quarks.
We do have spooky action at a distance
We have quantum entanglement, basically magic
Anything not fully understood by science is magic
Yes, and since we’ll never have understood everything there will always be magic :)
In my country we have “Konfessionslos” -> non-denominational.
Non-denominational is still religious/spiritual here, like Christians that aren’t affiliated with a specific church.
Hm weird, I left religion and now I am labeled as “Konfessionslos”. Dont pay anything to a church or anything that has to do with this fairytale story.
It could be that atheiests are lumped in with people who aren’t members of an organized religion where you live.
It’s interesting.
Does the word literally mean “confessionless”?
Could it literally mean either a person that doesn’t take part in the Christian tradition of Confession? Or maybe a person that doesn’t profess any beliefs?
Depends if you define religion as ‘act of worship’, or ‘belief aystem’, I guess. Bhuddism would fail the first, but not the second.
I usually think of religion as the belief in some sort of God or religious figure whether it’s the Christian God or Vishnu or Odin or whatever it seems that it’s more complicated than I had considered previously.
Yes, that’s fair - depends on how the definition of the survey is worded. So something like satanism wouldn’t be a religion to you? I get it confused with the church of Satan, but one or the other isn’t about the worship of Satan. My grasp of Buddhism is it’s about a belief system, one that believes following his example that leads to a better life/ inner peace, rather than straight worship, or asking him to use divine providence to make ones life better.
Since ‘atheism’ means ‘without religion’ it’s the same as putting in “none.”
imho
If you’re in the United States, the current situation decided by the judges is that Atheists have to argue as if they’re a religion as well.
A lot of work will be needed to fix this error.
Can I use the Flying Spaghetti Monster
If you and your friends can argue that you have a prayer meeting spot for the spaghetti monster.
It’s like a cheat code to get a judge to actually listen to how Christians are discriminating against your religion.
Hail pasta!
There are different categories. I consider myself agnostic atheist. That pretty much means I don’t really know, but all this man made stuff is horse shit.
I’m fine with it on like a drop down or a form. No need to make things needlessly complicated. It’s basically ‘none’ except it’s clear. ‘none’ could be misleading, atheist is exact.
Doesn’t really bother me. I just thought it was kind of strange. Now that I’ve seen some of the responses here, I’m realizing that things are a little more complex than I thought, so I need to adjust some of my opinions.
It’s all a bit vague, but one could say “Atheist is a religion and Agnostic is none, because Atheists believe there is no god or afterlife” but often Agnostic is considered a type of Atheist.
FWIW, you can have belief in the afterlife without a belief in some type of deity. For example, some forms of shammanism don’t recognize any form of deity, and instead focus on the spirits of ancestors or of the natural world, but not as a divine thing.
People get very caught up in the definition of atheist and agnostic. It can mean very different things to different people.
Technically atheist is “without belief”, and agnostic is “without knowledge”.
