I know I could be wrong, but I will venture to say that a vast majority of athiests have been raised in a predominantly christian culture and as a result are inherently anti christian rather than anti-islam or anti-hindu or anti-wicca. I just never hear of athiests in the third world except in communist countries. If I’m correct, then I would suggest that Christianity is the most tolerant of world religions.
I’m not “anti” any religion. I don’t beleive in god. Big difference.
On another note, I would suggest that your conclusion doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Not so- the majority of atheists were raised in China.
FWIW, the number of atheists in America and/or the west is probably outnumbered by the number of Buddhists in the world. Buddhism is, after all, an atheistic religion.
And, last but not least, it’s “atheist,” not “athiest.” It’s remarkable to me how many Christains make that mistake. After all, it’s not Methodests, Buddhests, Baptests, etc. so why “athiest”?
-Ben
Hmm…Very quasi-Freudian.
But the rule is “i” before “e” except after “c”
Don’t Buddhists worship Buddha?
Well, I don’t know - my girlfriend (as well as her family and a lot of her friends) is an atheist, and she’s Chinese - though she’s from Hong Kong, which is not Communist (or Buddhist). Maybe it’s just that you’re limited in the amount of non-caucasians (or atheists) that you meet.
You Christains! Always doing what the rules say without ever thinking for yourselves!
Seriously, though, just how much experience do you have regarding people who have not been raised in a Christain culture?
There are a lot of non-caucasian christians in Europe and Africa. I’d wager there are a few non-caucasian atheists aswell 
Every internet forum I ever see has someone claiming Buddhism is an atheistic religion… It’s a silly thing to say so stop it. Buddhism may be practiced in the United States without acknowledging a god, but that is not the rule throughout the history of the religion or it’s practice elswhere. I think the situation may be comparable to the US’s ‘non-denominational’ Christians - the idea would horrify Christians in rural Venezuala (for example).
Besides, to my mind a fairy tale is a fairy tale, whether it’s Yahweh or reincarnation. Siddarta had several miracles attributed to him and if that isn’t divine I don’t know what is.
Yeah sidharta specifically never mentioned gods. So people created them or elevated buddha to a god. The same reason why most atheists were raised in a christan setting is the same reason why american buddhists have no gods generally:)
http://www.religioustolerance.org/buddhism.htm
Buddhism is a religion in which people do not worship God; Buddhists are atheists. In some forms of Buddhism, people worship bodhisattvas, who are people who have decided to use their enlightenment to control the cycle of reincarnation rather than leave it, and hang around in order to help out the rest of us. They are “worshipped” in the sense that they are worthy of respect, and in that it is believed that they can intercede in human affairs. That’s why Buddhism has been described as “Catholicism without God”: some forms of Buddhism involve prayer to “saints,” but there is no God ruling over the universe.
As for my “misspelling” of “Christain”, it was a joke.
-Ben
I live on the west coast of Canada, where the influx of immigrants from of over the world is occuring at a pace unmatched(wrt base population) anywhere in the world. We pride ourselves with multiculturalism, rather than the melting pot of America. Just a guess, but I would assume that for every four caucasians I’ve gotten to know well,there is one non caucasian. A considerable number of caucasians have expressed their atheism to me, but I can’t recall any non caucasians doing so. Now I’m not talking about agnostics here which I’m sure are prevalent all over. There seems to be a lot of atheists around here, so how about it. Can any non caucasian atheists come forward?
I new a black atheist once.
Perhaps Ben, but in order to be an atheist, a lack of worshiping God is not sufficient. You must actively deny the existence of God.
grienspace, atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods. Strong atheists deny the existense of a god or gods, whereas weak atheists simply do not have a belief in god.
I know a considerable number of ‘non caucasian atheists’. How many would it take to convince you? 30? 300? 300,000?
And in what ways do bodhisattvas differ from gods? The Jews traditionally reject Jesus’ divinity because the OT warns against having other gods before Yahweh - so the Christians came up with the trinity. They get to have three gods and still call themselves monotheists. Isn’t it a similar step to replace Hindu gods with trancendant humans (even though many buddhists still honor the Hindu gods)?
Perhaps it’s a semantic point, but it’s strikes me as similar to saying the ancient Greeks or Romans were atheists because they didn’t believe in an all-powerful god pulling the strings of the universe by himself.
Call them saints, gods, sylphs, bodhisattvas, whatever - it’s just polytheism with a new PR department.
This brings me to an interesting point: There is no monotheistic religion. Christianity has the trinity. Judaism and Islam have angels and demons. All of them nonhuman spiritual beings revered by believers, which is the definition of deity. Just thought I’d bring that up.
To the OP: You were raised Bible-Thumpin’ Protestant, weren’t you? Never met many atheists, have you? I’m not insulting you, I’m just showing you how you come across. Atheists are not anti-anything. Atheists simply don’t take anything on faith. We question everything, including the concept of spirituality. We have found the evidence for a supernatural world sorely lacking, so we rejected it. That’s all being an atheist means.
By the way, what do you mean by Christianity being the most tolerant religion in the world? Christians have persecuted to death adherents of every major faith at one time or another, and they do a fine job of killing atheists like me as well. Are you calling them tolerant because they have so far not succeeded in killing all non-Christians?
Buddha SPECIFICALLY said that he was NOT to be worshipped! He was very clear on this matter, and to make his position known, he pointed at the moon and said: “That is the moon. Believe in the fact that what my finger points you too is the moon. As must you believe in the fact that I can point you to the truth. But you would be a fool to believe in the finger, for it is simply a pointing finger. As must you not believe in me.”
I don’t remember the exact wording of the translation I read, but I tried to recite it as accurately as I could. If anyone has the original text, please post it.
Now, there are of course very many different sects of Buddhism, and it’s hard to generalize about anything. However it seems to me that at least a Mahayana Buddhist would typically NOT believe in Buddha as a deity, but rather as a pointing finger from beyond the illusion of reality. I am less familiar with other practices. Generally though, the truth is yours to find, not to be given by a fatherfigure like deity. That is why I believe Buddhism should be classified as a “mainly athiest religeon”.
Oh, and sorry for continuing the hijack!
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I suppose it depends on your definition of “god”. Do you define Catholic saints as being “gods”? It seems to me that the difference, given the typical usage of the word “god”, is rather obvious- bodhisattvas are humans, they didn’t create the universe, etc., etc.
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Huh? Hindus believe in a multiplicity of gods which are all reflections of Brahma. As for “honoring” the Hindu gods, I believe the answer is no- in fact, when Buddhist monks introduced Hindu myths to Japan, they made all the bad guys into good guys, and vice versa.
Again, do you believe that the Catholics are worshipping Christopher, god of travellers, and Stephen, god of archers? Or is there a difference between saints and gods? It seems to me that you’re just quibbling over semantics. If you stretch the point far enough, you could say that atheists “worship” Bertrand Russell, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and therefore they are really polytheists.
-Ben