I have seen some hard core sports fans, with shrines and the who nine yards, so yes.
I will accept it is the super fan, the hard proselytizing atheist, etc who qualify.
I’m sure that if you stretch the meanings of both “gods” and “religion” far enough you can say “There are no atheists”…but then the statement will mean nothing.
Agreed.
In my mind for a cause or philosophy to be called “religion” it needs to involve an element of faith, i.e. the willingness to believe in something without requiring tangible evidence. That element alone may not be enough to call it a religion, but it needs to be there.
I’ll never understand what the goal is trying to label atheism a religion. It is to undermine the idea that atheism is “logical” because some believe religion is “illogical”? It is always the religious who keep trying to tell atheists what we are. It’s as rude as those who try to convince Catholics they are polytheists because of the Holy Trinity.
I believe in lots of things, including that the anti-vax movement and Lamarckian genetics are wrong. I espouse these beliefs to people who will listen to convicne them to see why these ideas are wrong. That I believe these ideas to be true does not make them a religion, and I’m not proselytizing by trying to encourage people to share my POV.
You are loosely applying words where they don’t belong to force a fit to a preconceived idea, which is that atheism is a religion.
And I’d go one step further, faith can require belief even in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs do not.
There’s no need to make this complicated: if you’ve given it thought, you’re different from a turnip, and that’s all I’m saying.
I DO NOT DOUBT THIS. I’m simply saying that the thinking you did about it is was distinguishes you from a playing card, and why I include thinking about and rejecting the idea of god (NOT CONSTANTLY, just once is enough) as part of the definition, so that you’re an atheist and a turnip is not.
And I say that I never rejected it. I just never accepted it. To me that is an important distinction.
Many people accept g-d without ever questioning their position, unless they have a crisis of faith. Does accepting g-d without consideration make them playing cards or turnips? Is it only atheists who have the burden of considered thought before they have a belief about g-d?
I literally see no difference at all–I think you may be using the word “rejected” in a different manner from me.
That’s impossible. Every infant has no conception of gods. They learn about them and change their understanding of the world to accommodate this new information. What happens when you gain this information creates your schema about the concept of God, especially how you categorize God on the “exists?” spectrum.
That categorization is what matters when figuring out whether someone is an atheist or not. It doesn’t require some minimum hours of thought, or ongoing recertification, or a minimum age limit, or a certain weekly purchase. All it requires is
- Having some schema about “gods”; and
- Categorizing the schema either in the larger “things that exist” or “things that don’t exist” schema.
Put it in the second category, and boom! you’ve rejected the idea of God after some consideration.
Thus, I strongly believe a ‘true’ atheist is a person who rejects any religious belief. And to prove I’m not alone in this, I’m going to quote encyclopedia britannica: “Atheism, however, casts a wider net and rejects all belief in “spiritual beings,” and to the extent that belief in spiritual beings is definitive of what it means for a system to be religious, atheism rejects religion. So atheism is not only a rejection of the central conceptions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; it is, as well, a rejection of the religious beliefs of such African religions as that of the Dinka and the Nuer, of the anthropomorphic gods of classical Greece and Rome, and of the transcendental conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Generally atheism is a denial of God or of the gods, and if religion is defined in terms of belief in spiritual beings, then atheism is the rejection of all religious belief.”
What difference are you drawing between “dismissed” and “rejected”? I’m using the words as functionally equivalent here.
I would like some clarification, please.
Are you asking atheists what they personally mean when they say they are atheists, or are you seeking out definitive meanings for the terms “atheist” and/or “True atheist”, or are you wanting us to accept definitions for these terms that you already agree with?
When doing pickle-backs (a shot thing) I often toast with “l’chaim”. Yet, I don’t have religion.
And when I stub my toe, I’ll scream, “Jesus fucking Christ!”. Yet, I don’t have religion.
Go figure.
Actually Larmarkism has been unfairly condemned.
The classic 'cut the tails off the mice" is bogus: “Science historian Michael Ghiselin also considers the Weismann tail-chopping experiment to have no bearing on the Lamarckian hypothesis:
The acquired characteristics that figured in Lamarck’s thinking were changes that resulted from an individual’s own drives and actions, not from the actions of external agents. Lamarck was not concerned with wounds, injuries or mutilations, and nothing that Lamarck had set forth was tested or “disproven” by the Weismann tail-chopping experiment.[19]”
And altho Larmarkism as the primary driving force is clearly incorrect, Epigenetic Lamarckism is a legit hypothesis with many scientific backers.
I am not, I am only used Czarcasms* very own cite.*
I accepted your cite.
Yes and I lecture on epigenetics. In fact as I stand here this minute I’m proctoring an exam on epigenetics. But that’s not what I’ll talking about here in my reference to Lamarckian genetics. That is different from epigenetics.
And bless me, but I’m not going to debate my area of expertise here on this thread.
- I didn’t give a “cite”, I gave my personal opinion.
- This does not answer the question I just asked.
Post 271:**Czarcasm ***
Merriam-Webster definition of “Religion”. I can see at least two of the definitions that would allow an atheist to be religious.
*
If by “cite” you are referring to the dictionary definitions of the word “religion”, I have already pointed out that there is more than one meaning. I told you which one I am using, then you pointed out another that you think means atheists can be religious. When you say that you “accept my cite” are you saying that you accept the definition that I prefer, or are you saying that you accept all the definitions…which would be rather silly, since it would mean that you think that atheism both is and is not a religion at the same time.
And the second issue, about the reason for this thread?
If I can call atheism “Schrodinger’s Religion,” this thread will have served its purpose.
This line of testimony appears to presume that dictionary definitions precede word usage, when the opposite is true. The dictionary has definitions that support a metaphorical use of the word “religion” because the word “religion” is often used this way - much as you are doing. You’ve got the cart before the horse, here.