As to the definition - a pretty good working definition is ‘a community created by a shared belief in reality greater than that that perceived by the individual self that is not believed in by those outside of that community, or not in the same way’.
My reasons for this definition:
Individual beliefs may be ‘religious’ or ‘spirtual’, but I don’t think they are “religions”. Religions require a community.
Such communities are characterized by a shared belief.
The shared belief can’t be simply anything, or you can’t differentiate a religion from (say) a political party, or a tribe. A belief in “god or gods” is too restrictive - some religions don’t have them (say, Taoism or Buddhism of the non-theistic variety, or some forms of shamanism). Hence, a belief in a “greater reality”.
That belief must be particular to the religion - otherwise, religion could not be distinguished from (say) astronomy.
Considering all the religions I’ve heard tell of, I think Jainism has to get the highest score for atheism, or the lowest score for theism, whichever. Jainism has not veered off into worshiping deities the way most strains of Buddhism and Taoism have done. Jainism has always been firmly atheistic - and is no less religious for that.
If the Ethical Society were a religion, that would certainly top out the atheistic meter. But it isn’t a religion; it’s a club to give atheists a chance to socialize on Sundays when the Christians are all at church. Not a church, but a replacement for church in one’s social calendar. It mimicked just enough of the mechanisms of religion for it to function organizationally, but not so much as to become a “religion.”
I studied Buddhism for several years and have more than a passing acquaintance with Taoist thought. I’ve seen a pattern where idealistic and literate westerners read the foundational texts and conceive of them as atheistic or rather non-theistic philosophies, not at all what we call religion. All this without ever meeting the peoples in Asia who practice these faiths.
I will never forget the lesson I got decades ago as a student of Buddhism when I went to see a documentary film about Tibet. One of its scenes showed a Tibetan villager making his morning prayers to Buddha. The way he gazed at the Buddha image with his palms placed together, the look shining in his eyes was unmistakably one of pure devotion and profound reverence that most religious people only wish they could achieve. It forced me to review and rethink my concepts of unreligious Buddhism derived solely from academic textual sources, i.e. book-learnin, instead of lived experience. Non-theist doesn’t necessarily mean not devout.
Buddhism can’t exactly be called atheist. It accepts that the gods exist. Where it differs from pretty much else is that the god’s ultimately don’t matter anyhow. The rule that everything disintegrates applies to the gods and their heavens too. In the Bhavacakra (the Wheel of Existence), a pie chart of existence is divided into six realms: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell. The realm of the gods is on top and their life is luxurious, but no matter how impressive it is it will eventually disintegrate like everything else in the long term. Buddha appears in each of the six realms to help liberate the beings there according to their level of understanding. In the heaven of the gods, Buddha plays guitar. I kid you not.
I’m not sure what your quotes mean. The original was spelled correctly “definite statements”. In any case an atheist makes the definitive statement that god does not exist or I believe god does not exist whichever is your take.
That is one take on it. More commonly agnosticism is thought to be “I don’t know …” though I guess that’s a definitive statement about the “I” if not about the god.
I’m not familiar with Dillahunty, but I’ve always gone by the definitions espoused by Thomas Huxley and Bertrand Russell – that “atheism” (a- = without, the- = god) is the definite belief that there is no God or gods, and “agnosticism” (a- = without, *gnos- *= knowledge) is an absence of belief, or the belief that there can be no definite knowledge of whether or not there is a God or gods.
Actually, I think agnosticism is a subset of atheism. Atheism can be positivist, as in “there is no deity”, indifferent, as in “I see no reason to believe that there is or might be a deity”, ignorant, as in “‘god’, what is that?” or pragmatic, as in “even if there were some sort of deity, what difference would it make?” Agnostics, by definition, lack a belief in any deity (until proof is provided), so they are, by default, atheists.
And the other “religions” that are atheistic have a set of beliefs and principles beyond lack of belief in a god. I doubt they’d let you get the benefits of a religion with a group that solely lacked god belief.
A weak atheist simply lacks belief in any god. A strong atheist believes that there are no gods. While many atheists would claim to “know” in the weak sense that specific gods do not exist (theists too) in 40 years of on-line discussion of this I’ve seen only one or two people who claim to know that no gods of any type exist.
The admittedly prevalent belief that atheists state this mostly comes from theists who are either constructing a strawman argument or are honestly confused.
How does the court determine the sincerity of a religious exercise, other than taking the adherents word for it? If I say that a running a Brothel is my sacred duty as a high priestess of the Reformed temple Ishtar, who are they to say that this isn’t a sincerely held belief on my part.
Absolutely not, though I am an atheist (in that I don’t have a belief in any god or gods) I make no definite claim at all on their existence. There has been no evidence presented thus far and the world seems to make perfect sense without the need of the supernatural.
I have no belief in aliens either but I make no claim as to whether they truly exist or not.
Courts decide questions involving a determination of people’s internal motivation all the time. For example courts regularly have to decide if something was done accidentally or on purpose.
It’s not easy and I’d be the last to say that courts always gets it right, but the exercise isn’t unusual.
There can be objective evidence that will assist circumstantially with determination of such issues. For example what if I could prove that despite you saying you had held your belief consistently for 20 years, there was a period of five years during that 20 year period during which you could have but didn’t run a brothel; and that those five years co-incided with you inheriting some money such that you didn’t need income?
