Please define “Atheism”
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If it were left to me to define Atheism, I would say that it is a belief that all things are derived from lifeless matter, and the world we find ourselves in is the result of blind-ass luck against some mind-boggling odds. When I listen to atheists speak about Atheism, though, I do not get the clear sense that my definition necessarily applies to them.
Atheists have a bone to pick with ancient religions, Christianity and Islam in particular. I tend to agree with those criticisms leveled at orthodox religion by atheists.
Listening to the first half of this clip of Sam Harris, noted author and atheist, I am struck by two things. Atheism mostly seems to be defined by its opposition to the primitive thinking of premodern religions born out of the Axial Age. Atheists are really agnostics who are monumentally fed up with religion and the juvenile conception of an Abrahamic God who arbitrarily doles out reward and punishment to all of us hapless Job’s.
My idea of what an atheist is was formed by a deceased uncle of mine. He was a devout materialist. He mocked and despised anyone who wasn’t an atheist (which was everybody), and made sport of suing people, two of whom was his only daughter and another uncle of mine. His superiority complex was legendary. No one attended his funeral with the exception of his third wife. Upon news of his death, the rest of us muttered, “About fucking time.”
His ethics (or lack thereof) was a product of a lack of belief in any spirituality whatsoever, which is logical. If it’s all dead matter and chemical reactions then there is no morality or ethics separate from the imagination. He was a disciple of the First Church of the Survival of the Fittest.
My friends who count themselves as atheists are nothing like my uncle, the dead bastard. I intend to go to as many of my friends’ funerals as possible, get snockered, cry a little and laugh a lot.
Are atheist really just agnostics who are fighting a deficient conception of God as characterized by The Bible and The Quran? Based on my observations, I believe atheism is rationality pushing back against a harmful irrationality, and that’s not a bad thing.
Oh, hell! Can anyone explain to me what Atheism is apart from an attitude and reaction to ancient thinking? It sounds awfully agnostic to me, tinged with Buddhism at times. I’m trying to understand here.
If Atheism is really all about losing one’s religion, fine. That makes sense. But, is that a stopping place? When is it time to move on?
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Mother Hen posted this enlightening video that sums it all up very nicely:
https://madmikesamerica.com/2010/10/you-asked-atheism-defined/
I’ve given up all hope of understanding exactly what atheism is. The best I can tell is that atheist are a vague clique of the like-minded, with whom I share more in common with than fundamentalists.
atheist[s] are a vague clique of the like-minded
Close enough. It’s a social group, after all, not an academic or philosophical school.
Do you believe god(s) exist?
If you do, you are a Theist
If you don’t, you are an Atheist.
It’s simple. What do you NOT understand?
The English language is a funny thing, especially to philosophers. “I believe a God exists,” is pretty straightforward, but when we add “not” to the equation, “I do not believe a God exists,” things get a lot more ambiguous. What precisely does the latter speaker mean?
She might mean, “If you (somehow) examine all my beliefs, you will not find among them the belief that God exists.”
She might mean, “If you examine all my beliefs, you will find among them the belief that some particular conceptions of God do not name any existing thing.”
Or, “If you examine… you will find the belief that no conceptions of God actually exist.”
Or, “… no conceptions of God could possibly exist.”
Or, “… no conception of God makes any sense.”
Or she might just mean, “All of you God talkers are just full of BS; I’m having none of it.”
(or variants on the above)
The problem is that English is strongly ambiguous about how “not” applies to a sentence. Usually, the context resolves the ambiguity; when we’re talking about prosaic things (“the car is not in the driveway”) there’s only one interpretation consistent with the ways that cars and driveways ordinarily relate. But when we’re talking about God, the context is no help, because there’s profound disagreements about how conceptions of Gods relate to conceptions of what it means to believe or “believe in” something.
(Similarly, linguistic prescriptivists have a reasonable case for the rigorous use of “only”. It’s obvious from the context that if I say, “I’m only going to go to class once,” that I “really” mean, “I’m going to go to class only once.” However, permitting sloppy usage when the context resolves the ambiguity makes it harder to use the grammatical form when the context doesn’t make the correct interpretation obvious. For example, if the doctor says, “I’m only going to operate on you once,” does he mean that he’s going to operate on you only once and then try something else? Or is he really only going to operate on you once; after that there’s nothing left to do?)
That outlines the issue nicely–better than I could have. It is not a cut and dry question to define atheism. I used to have one conception of what atheism is. It is more variant than one simple definition can support. I think that is proven by some of the comments here. Like you point out BFB, defining a negative can be sticky business.
theamazingoperaman and Pyxlated got it right. Break down “atheism” into “a” and “theism”. “a” means “a lack of”, so “atheism” is just “a lack of theism”. As an example; all infants are atheists, as they have not yet been indoctrinated.
Atheism is merely a lack of belief in gods. Agnosticism is the belief that such things are unknowable. While some atheists have formed loose schools of thought such as “New Atheism,” it isn’t really a cohesive group.
I don’t think Atheism is that hard to define; A lack of belief in supernatural deities. I’d probably add; and a belief that none is necessary.
Probably my favourite colloquial definition; Believes in one less God than most Christians…
I believe in the possibility of life after death and ghosts, but I am still an atheist because I don’t believe in a God. I don’t believe that there’s an all-seeing, all-caring being that have created us, tracks our every action and will judge us at the end of our lives. I don’t believe that I’m required to worship any spiritual beings or that any events in our world are necessarily caused by such beings. I think it’s highly impractical to assume that there is a God, or even life after death or ghosts, to be honest. I think it’s fine to believe in whatever, but for the same reason that one shouldn’t live the life that would, could or should have been, it’s not good to live a life thinking that you might go to heaven or hell, or be reincarnated. Things you do matters even if there’s no one to judge you, because you are part of an eco system and you are a living, breathing, conscious piece of the universe. If you appreciate life, you should honor it by doing good and contribute in a positive way. You don’t need a God in order to do that. An atheist simply believes that God is unnecessary.
Your definition, “..a belief that all things are derived from lifeless matter…”, is the definition of philosophical materialism. Materialists are necessarily atheists because theism is defined by the belief in one or more super natural entities, which is at direct odds with the view that all things are physical/natural and there is no room for the super natural.
So yes, many of the atheists you interact with (directly or indirectly) are materialists because all materialists are atheists, but not all atheists are materialists.
Atheism is pretty simple – one who doesn’t believe gods exist. Technically it has nothing to do with rationalism.
We could live in a world where Zeus and Odin run through the trees launching lighting bolts at Horus and Dionysis while Ra and Zoroaster have fun conjuring new life forms, and an atheist would still be one who doesn’t believe in god(s), except in this scenario it would seem fairly irrational.
By describing the existence of the universe without gods as the result of blind-ass luck against mind-boggling odds you are limiting yourself and not allowing for any other possibilities that could govern the formation of the universe as we know it.
How do you validate that the only two options are god or blind ass luck? Could it be possible that no luck and no god were required for everything to come into existence? Who came up with the mind-boggling odds? Maybe they are 100% wrong and the odds are incredibly high.
Atheists simply reject claims that are unsupported by empirical evidence.
There, at last, a definition. Thank you, William. Actually that is how an old philosophy professor of mine put it, but he called himself a “skeptic.”
This is not the definition of atheism. There may be a strong correlation between skeptics and atheists, but the absence of belief in god(s) does not a skeptic make.
I know atheists who wallow in their non-belief, like some Christians writhe around in faith. Not all atheists are dogma free, they should be, the opportunity is there to set their minds free, I guess it may be part of a process.
I believe atheism is rationality pushing back against a harmful irrationality, and that’s not a bad thing.
Yeah, that’s about it.
Are atheist really just … fighting a deficient conception of God as characterized by The Bible and The Quran?
Pretty much, yes. Keep in mind that the conceptions of God in the Bible and Allah in the Quran are at least definite, in contrast to the wooly-headed vacuities and disingenuous double-talk of “modern” theology.
If it’s all dead matter and chemical reactions then there is no morality or ethics separate from the imagination.
What do you have against the imagination (not to mention reason)? Why should a morality and ethics based on imagination and reason be anything but superior to one based on lies and superstitions?
He was a disciple of the First Church of the Survival of the Fittest.
You do not yet understand biological evolution; what hope do you have of understanding its application to social behavior?
BFB,
I have nothing against the imagination. I rely on mine constantly.
“You do not yet understand biological evolution; what hope do you have of understanding its application to social behavior?”
Not sure what you mean by that. I was describing another person’s character with my literary imagination; not making a statement about biology nor evolution. I like evolution. I believe everything is constantly evolving.
One cannot, of course, talk about the literal truth of a literary metaphor. However, “survival of the fittest” as a metaphor for assholy behavior is as literally inverted as the metaphor of a “meteoric” rise. (Meteors of course do not actually rise; they fall.)
Additionally, the context of this metaphor:
His ethics (or lack thereof) was a product of a lack of belief in any spirituality whatsoever, which is logical. If it’s all dead matter and chemical reactions then there is no morality or ethics separate from the imagination.
is poorly informed. Materialism does not entail any particular set of ethics or no ethics at all: no statement of ethics — even nihilism — “logically” follows from materialism unless you beg the question with the premise (or enthymeme) that ethics is by definition supernaturally normative, e.g. the “Kantian” view that a moral act is by definition an act with no benefit whatsoever to the actor.
That’s the point I was trying to make. That uncle was a nihilist, and an immature prick who saw everything in zero-sum terms that agreed with his own conception of atheism. I was trying to illustrate his reasoning and state of mind in juxtaposition with my many friends, and wife, who are atheists, but not selfish human beings. The point of this post was to prompt atheist to define “atheism,” which only williampinn has done. Sometimes I get the feeling that one can accumulate as many different definitions of atheism as there are atheist, if they would be so kind as to provide a definition. It appears to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
I’m definitely willing to accept that it was your uncle who was poorly informed.
Atheism means exactly one thing: an atheist does not believe that any god actually exists: start with everyone, exclude all the people who believe that at least one god exists, and everyone who’s left is, technically an atheist. Whether and why one publicly self-identifies as an atheist, how a person comes to not believe that any gods exist, and what conclusions they draw is probably different for everyone.
Can’t argue with that. Thank you for the explanation, Barefoot.
CH?! WTF? Who did we hire? Wait! We have an open door policy. Welcome CH and your “first” post is as good, if not better, as earlier posts written by a guy called “The Lawyer.” 🙂 🙂
Who is that “The Lawyer” guy? I like his shit.
C.H.
Regarding our mindmeld – a rationalist or agnostic would say “Great minds think alike”.
A religious person would say “It’s a miracle!”
Cue up the spooky music.
I believe in vodka?
At least vodka is clear. There is never any doubt what is inside a bottle of the potato sauce.
Good continuation of your previous post and my most recent as well, C.H.
You make the “rational reaction to ancient irrationality” very well ma.