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.
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.
It depends how you define “religion”
Atheism is a belief. You have a belief that there is no supernatural being or power. A lack of belief in anything is agnosticism, not atheism.
If you define religion as a belief (I would) then there you go. If it’s a set of practices and dogmas, then technically Christianity isn’t a religion and it’s denominations are as they practice things differently and some have added dogmas or different interpretations, even though they believe in the same God and have the same fundamentals.
Then I’d have to assume your religion is also not-believing-in-unicorns and round-earthism, as well as humans-need-oxygenism.
Agnosticism is not a lack of belief, it is a stance that one doesn’t know whether a god exists or not. Frequently, the “belief” would be that it’s impossible to know, which, by your definition, would also make it a religion.
The argument does not hold up.
You’re correct by your first paragraph, though.
No, it’s not. Theism the belief in a higher power, put the prefix a- on it and you get “doesn’t believe in a higher power”
Atheism is literally the lack of belief. It doesn’t make a positive statement that there’s not something there, it just means they don’t believe
The lack of belief is agnosticism. Atheists believe that there is no god, which is an active belief
Nope agnosticism is the lack of knowledge.
It’s two different and somewhat independent axes.
You’re just wrong, as I explained
It’s amazing how often Jesus freaks will assert they know about other groups and then get their information 110% wrong because they only learned what their in group says about them
In your opinion, is there a god or god(s)?
Nice irrelevant question, I’ll answer it just to show that I know what I’m talking about because I’m actually part of the group being discussed, not some outsider pinning definitions on things incorrectly:
If there is/are they have 0 impact on the world as we interact with it by my own observations so I live as a gnostic atheist, though if any actual proof were ever to show itself I wouldn’t exactly be shocked to find there was something beyond our comprehension out there
So you’re uncertain- This sounds more like what I would refer to as agnosticism
You would only be partially correct, as previously explained
I do not actively believe there is a higher power, so I am atheistic
I am open to the potential, so a fairly accurate simple description would be “agnostic atheist”, or “someone who doesn’t know whether or not there’s a higher power and lives assuming there is not”
You’ll notice that despite atheist being in there I’ve not only not made the positive claim that there’s no god, I’m even open to the idea of something of that nature existing, because that’s not what atheism is about
That is interesting. I guess not all atheists could be categorised as a religion then. Thanks for sharing!