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Non-religious is a good choice in some circumstances because it can cut off questions from busybodies and is also true. People believing in a god but not wanting to have any sort of formal worship fall under this category too, but seem somehow to be more acceptable to the godly than we are.
I’m Unitarian, and that really throws people for a loop here in the Bible belt. LOL! Yeppers, non-religious it is… 
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If you don’t believe in God, you’re an atheist. That’s what the word means. It’s the best descriptor there is.
If you are apathetic, an apathist, then you are an apathetic atheist.
If you reject all supernatural explanations, then you might be a physicalist, which is a kind of atheist.
There are all sorts of atheists, just like there are all sorts of theists, but regardless of your other beliefs and attitudes, if you don’t believe in God, then you are an atheist.
I don’t understand the reluctance of people to assume the label. I guess it has to do with the word “atheist” having so many negative connotations, and an underlying feeling that being an atheist is somehow rude. “I’m not…I’m not one of those people.” Sorry, but you are. Welcome to the club.
Meaning you do something and get “7 years of bad luck”.
I don’t mean the word luck when it refers to the concept of chance. I mean luck as in the gambler who believes he’s on a lucky streak and can’t lose, or a person who thinks bad things are happening to him because he’s cursed with “bad luck”.
It’s another bullshit concept.
That’s the same exact thing.
Wow, two people convinced of their world view, arguing over an untestable belief. That’s a useful way to spend your time. Hopefully they don’t do anything like join the straight dope.
There’s no need to make an argument. It’s irrelevant. Let people believe what they want about supernatural beings as long as they do not cause harm with it.
So it’s generally irrelevant to you then. An apatheist would find the topic irrelevant as well.
Well that’s basically what the thread was about. The OP presented possibly the most extreme form of what I viewed the question to be about. Personally, I would want him to find a word for his view that theists have an invalid opinion. It would be preferable if the term also usefully distinguished his thought processes from other atheists that took a more live-and-let-live approach.
No, they aren’t.
Atheists do not necessarily claim to know there is no god.
All that is required is the absence of a belief/conviction that there is a god. Many atheists go much further than this of course (especially WRT the many gods that have an inconsistent definition), but the term is not defined that way.
Many people upthread have mentioned how they don’t like to lecture people about what to believe in and consider it none of their business etc.
I feel the same way, but…I wonder if I’m being a bit hypocritical in that.
When a friend recently mentioned buying some homeopathic “medicines”, I told her that there’s no evidence they do anything and were a waste of money. I didn’t badger her about it; it was literally one sentence.
Now…my friend is also Muslim. Why do I feel compelled to say something in one instance, and not in another?
The apatheist’s position is basically that that is simply not going to happen. That all the pillar-of-salt type stories are just fantastical mythology. You can spout what-ifs all day long, but the sun will still set upon a big stack of what-ifs. Jesus, or the 12th Imam or Fenris is not coming round to bring about/end the apocalypse, if you believe that, that part of your belief system is about as valid as claiming that Han Solo will arrive in the Millenuim Falcon real soon to set things right.
The apatheist perspective is not exactly the same thing as pure indifference, it kind of declares the faithful, praying for the winning touchdown, to be delusional, in much the same way as the atheist view. Religious people claim to have special insight into metaphysics, apatheists say, “Blah, blah. Based on what?”
Atheists deny the existence of deities. This conviction would completely overlap with the absence of belief.
Homeopathy is a useless therapy and could result in a person not getting treatment for a disease.
Being a Muslim is a perfectly healthy thing to do and does not have negative consequences for the believer.
A friend of mine always describes his religion as “Independent.” It has a nice “American” sound to it. A little like “Freethinker.”
So an apatheist is an atheist, since I don’t care what a nonexistent god does either. By your definition, there can be no such thing as a theistic apatheist, except perhaps for the small subset who believe in a god who never comes near us and doesn’t care what we do.
Glad that’s settled.
Except, perhaps, for lack of bacon.
The premise is that the mythological depiction of jehovallah does not mesh with the concept of an omnimax deity. The omni properties of a universal singular deity do not yield an interested, proactive being that lends itself to anthromorphisization: a god suitable to monotheism (or the odd hybrid that the judeo-christian mythology describes) cannot, by definition, be directly involved in human affairs. Hence, if some form of god-thing were to be shown to exist, it would either be irrelevant or it would not be omnimax (some form of super-being, with powers that are indistinguishable from unimaginably advanced technology).
An atheist would tell you that your holy book is a shabbily written compilation of fairy tales; an apatheist would tell you the same thing. You probably would not be able to tell one from the other without a lot of probing, assuming you could manage to keep them engaged on such a boring subject for long enough.
I think that many or most Buddhists might qualify as well, since as I understand it it’s part of their philosophy that if gods exists, they don’t matter.
Free Thinker was exactly what I was going to suggest. I had no idea that it was coined by Mark Twain or commonly used in his time.
For me, I got labelled with it in Singapore. I was filling out forms to obtain an ID and there was a box for “Religion”. I wrote in: “None”.
I considered myself an atheist, but that is not a religion, so I didn’t write in atheist, just simply; “None”.
I guess they have to put something in there so I got labelled as a “Free Thinker”.
At first I thought, well in that case, maybe just put in atheist. But then I realized, well it still under the label “Religion”, so it wouldn’t apply.
Then I started thinking about it and it is actually quite appropriate.
It doesn’t specifically indicate that you reject the gods, all it does is to indicate that you do not belong to any religious organization.
It make sense in Singapore too, since there are so many religions here and the government does all it can to ensure religious harmony between the groups.
“Free thinker” would be relatively harmless in that situation whereas “atheist”, could be considered antagonistic, especially to the Christian and Muslim communities in Singapore.
On another note, I have also found “free thinker” appropriate, because it does indicate that my mind is emancipated, whereas those under the religious yoke still have minds enslaved by fear and superstition.
That moment of epiphany that people feel when they realize the truth is a freeing sensation. The emancipation of the mind.
So, I vote for free thinker.
No. There are multiple definitions of “atheist” around (and maybe that’s why some people don’t like the term), but arguably the most used, and the most respected by lexicographers is it means “without theism” i.e. absence of belief.
Now, that is of course the superset of positions like the conviction that there are no deities.
But it would be wrong to claim, as you did, that they are the exact same thing.
In my friend’s case all homeopathy was doing was wasting money – she was taking it in addition to regular medicines.
Her religion, if nothing else, absolutely wastes a lot of money.
TBH though, I was trying to provoke discussion and feel I know why the two situations are different. Telling her what I think of homeopathy won’t lose her as a friend and is unlikely to radically change her life. Saying what I think of religion OTOH is opening a whole can of pandora’s boxes. So it’s a combination of the easy life plus not wishing to offend/upset anyone.
I cannot stand people who are totally hung up on labels. You don’t understand people who don’t want to be labeled? That’s because you don’t know how to think for yourself, to be an independent free thinker. I don’t care what people think about atheists, if they think it is negative or not. I don’t need to explain my beliefs to anyone or justify them or be compelled to fit into some little box that has been created by the overly anal. In fact, this thread is already totally tiresome.
If you don’t believe in God, then you are an atheist by definition. You can shout “Don’t fit me into your box, Man!” till the cows come home, it won’t change things.
And I still don’t get the big deal. Just be what you are. You don’t see sports fans or vegetarians or record collectors getting so pissy when people identify them as such.
Sir! I am a discophile! 
My book? Your reading comprehension needs some work. If you look at my around 10,000 posts on this subject, you would be enlightened. Some of them even show that the state of being omnimax is logically contradictory, and so omnimax deities can be disproved logically.
If this so-called philosophy is just not caring about things that don’t exist, it is rather trivial. I don’t care much about teapots orbiting Jupiter either. It is just as trivial if it is about not caring about things which can’t possibly affect us. I don’t much care what goes on beyond the event horizon of the universe myself.
I can only conclude that this label is just one more used by people afraid to acknowledge that they are atheists. Because it makes no sense.
Although I saw Camus mentioned, how did nobody suggest ‘existentialist’?