this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, but it's what I would pick on a form in the "religion" spot if I had to.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd put "none". Just as "not collecting postal stamps" doesn't go into the "hobbies" field.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

But not collecting postal stamps is one of my favorite hobbies.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Exactly. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a deity; anything extra is just personalized spices.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ackshually.. it's a lack of theism. Technically deists are atheists.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol yeah. “We live in a simulation created and observed by an unpaid intern” vs “we live in a test world where a supreme being keeps changing the rules and then will judge whether you get to live in his resort or the bad hostel once you die”

[–] Isoprenoid 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Atheism is the belief that there are no deities. Atheists have a burden of proof of a negative. Only agnostics get the "not a belief system" card.

Fight me.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Atheism is a lack of belief. Basically we are not convinced there is a god. There is no burden of proof because we are not claiming there isnt a god, just that we are not convinced one does.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I...don't need to fight you. It's not about burden of proof; it's about the definition of the word. Atheism is—as we agree—merely a yes/no classification of the belief in a deity; it is not a belief system in itself. As such, someone can be an atheist while still having a religion, which is a belief system, one that may or may not involve a deity.

Burden of proof only applies if one is making a claim in an objective context, not when one is making a claim in a subjective context.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Also worth noting that the onus of proving a claim lies with whoever does claim a thing. It is always more difficult to prove a negative and nobody just assumes everything that hasn't been specifically debunked. Hilariously wrongheaded of them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Easy, gods used to do devine interventions all the time. Didn't sacrifice to Neptunus before your sea journey? His mood storm sinks your ship. Didn't please Mars before your battle? You fight at bad weather and the enemy has surprise reinforcements.

Modern day gods? They left a secretary or something. Buhbuh you did something bad, I put you on the naughty list but I'm a weak noodle so your punishment will have to wait until after your death. When your soul which is not your body but has all senses asif it were because we antromorph everything, gets hurt.

If you can bomb a kids hospital without getting struck by lightning, there are no gods. There are millions of people praying for peace and the save return of their children in the ukraine war on both sides, nothing happens. I claim that the presence of a god would be obvious if they took their job description seriously. Like a managers/auditors presence can be felt in the office without seeing him.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can't prove a negative.

Prove to me there isn't a teapot floating around Saturn, or that Gravity isn't a panda in the centre of every planet pulling on invisible strings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well if you say, for example, Christianity is faith based, then you could argue that atheism is faith based as well. Faith that there is no god.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Agnostic-atheists are honest. Nostic-atheists are hubristic, fools.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

As always, people use those words with the most absurd meanings linked to them.

But you are technically correct. What is the best kind of correctness, and all that...

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is a form of faith based aproach. If you don't believe in something you believe it doesn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

No, if you ask an Atheist if they believe in something spiritual, they would say "no". They wouldn't say "I believe that god doesn't exist".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Neither is cubo-futurism.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Agnosticism isn't a religion. Atheism is. You have to have faith to "know" something doesn't exist with certainty.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.

Atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of deities.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your definition of atheism is not my experience with pretty much every atheist I've ever met. It's not absense of belief, but belief that God doesn't exist. There was never anything nuanced about the definition.

Now we can say absense of belief for the sake of discussion, but then it becomes an issue of semantics, as there is overlap with agnosticism. But it doesn't match my experience at all. Most atheists will call you names for suggesting anything but the idea that the laws of physics are a complete description of reality. Teenage edgelords mainly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Atheists aren't claiming to have positive proof of the nonexistence of God.

The term means that someone has not seen convincing evidence for God's existence.

Likewise, I wouldn't say I'm agnostic about Russel's Teapot or any mythical idea because that terms tends to imply that you find the existence and nonexistence of the thing to be comparably likely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Mhhh well this is a difficult question. Atheists believe there is no God. So there is no point in religion. From a Atheists point of view atheism is not a religion. From a neutral pov you may argue the believe in no God is a religion of its own.