Atheism as a religion

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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This forum had been filled with pondering on the rationality of theistic religions but if we will follow the definition of religion as given in Wikipedia we will get with this rough description:“a social institution that includes a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people…”. Hence, from this description we could say quite frankly that Atheism is a religion.

Please do enlighten me on some of these points of modern atheism:

*Can full atheism be achieved totally or man would always look for a “god-equivalent” in his/her life?

*If most atheists are philosophers does it follow that atheism is rational?

*Does atheist refuse to accept God because the concept is only irrational or just because it requires quite a large moral and ethical investments?

*If it is not logical does it follow it is not true?

*Can atheism provide a proof that something does not exist?

*Does atheism affirms the infinite regress?

*Can man conceptualize something that he does not know like immortality or God?

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*Can full atheism be achieved totally or man would always look for a “god-equivalent” in his/her life?

When I see the notion of god-equivalences being raised, it is always by a theist looking an a nontheistic system. Those in a nontheistic system don’t think of things in these terms so the question doesn’t make sense unless someone outside of the system is trying to determine what the system is about. Generally, this boils down to “do atheists think things are important?” and the answer is, of course, yes. Whether or not those things are god-equivalences is harder to say.

*If most atheists are philosophers does it follow that atheism is rational?

Not necessarily, and I think you’ll need to define “philosopher” there. There are a lot of theists in philosophy departments.

*Does atheist refuse to accept God because the concept is only irrational or just because it requires quite a large moral and ethical investments?

Like anything else, it depends on the atheist but since atheists are no more criminal than any other class of people, it would seem to suggest “no” to the latter if laws are more-or-less in line with morality/ethics (a point which is always up for debate).

*If it is not logical does it follow it is not true?

No. Logic is a tool for understanding the truth but it oughtn’t be confused with the truth.

*Can atheism provide a proof that something does not exist?

It is difficult to impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist, especially if the believer is willing to go through a series of mental gyrations to keep said belief – skepticism is a bitch that way. But it is generally less about a proof of non-existence and more about alternate systems that the individual in question better models reality.

*Does atheism affirms the infinite regress?

Yes, but they don’t think that God solves it. However, since atheism is coming from a position of not-knowing, that is acceptable since they can just claim that we don’t have a good answer for that yet. Our understanding it limited, so it makes sense that there will be certain lacunae.

*Can man conceptualize something that he does not know like immortality or God?

The problem is, of course, that we do know things very much like each of these. Not having been dead, I have a pretty good idea what living is like so the continuation of that state isn’t too hard to imagine and likewise with gods we all have parents (and by-extension, authority figures we rely on) that are very much like gods in our childhood and especially in our infancy. “Our Father, thou art in Heaven . . .”

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Good luck with your life. :D/

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Atheism is not belief, it is lack of belief in God.
I think that there are many people alive today that will never look for ‘a God’ and are staunchly opposed to the idea. I’m one.

Rather, most serious philosophers are atheists.
But we are all philosophers. :slight_smile:
To not believe in something irrational (theism) seems a rational step to me.

WHAT!? People refuse the irrational concept of God for MANY reasons. I have no idea what moral/ethical investments are. For the sake of comfort, it seems that many would opt to be theists rather than suffer the wrath of the theists for opposing them. Atheism is a tougher stance that comes under attack from the majority, the theists. (At least in the USA)

If a concept is not logical or has vast inconsistencies, then it seems anyone would believe that concept to be false.

You cannot prove that ‘something’ does not exist.
In this sense, we are all agnostics. We cannot prove there is NOT God. Just the same as theists cannot prove there is. But taking examples like the tooth fairy, santa claus, and flying pigs we see that this point does not bode well for the concept of God.

We can always ask ‘Why?’ I suppose. It is a good thing. Infinite regress partly happens due to the limitations of language and being subjective beings.

We obviously have. But I can conceptualize of flying pigs too.

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“Staunchly opposed” = a belief. I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, or even that your belief necessarily has anything to do with the definition of atheism - I’m just pointing out the obvious.

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  1. Having achieved consciousness, Man IMO will always try to make sense of and give purpose to his life. The attempt to give sense and purpose to life is what led Man to create gods in the first place.

  2. Most atheists are not philosophers but I think you may have intended to ask “If most philosophers are athiests does it follow that atheism is rational?” so I’ll answer that question instead.

I think there is something to the fact that most leading members (professors, authors, contributors to peer-reviewed professional journals, etc.) of the two professional communities most practiced in the skill of critical thinking and rational argument (the philosophic community and the scientific) are atheists.

This alone, of course, isn’t conclusive proof that atheism is rational but it might be a useful premise in an argument which seeks to show that it is.

  1. I question the premise that belief in god requires a large moral and ethical investment. I don’t believe that it does. The better argument might be to say that to believe a particular religion is true and to follow that religion’s moral tenets requires a large moral investment – but frankly I don’t see any reason to believe that this argument is true, either. Most of the religious seem no better behaved than do the non-religious.

In any case, if one sincerely believed in the existence of a supernatural god who, let’s say, has the power to torture one for eternity for disobedience, then a commitment to do that god’s will as forthrightly as it is possible to do it should be the easiest thing in the world to do.

What would be extremely difficult to do is to sincerely believe that such a god exists and then to tell that god to go stick it. To do that one would have to be not just irrational but insane.

  1. No. But if an argument is not logical (in the sense of its being invalid) then the argument gives us no reason to believe that the conclusion is true. The conclusion of an invalid argument may be either true or false but we have no reason to believe anything about the truth value of that conclusion solely on the basis of the invalid argument itself.

  2. Yes, in so far as anything nonexistent can be said to be proved nonexistent. We “prove” things to be nonexistent by finding not a trace of evidence for them after a methodical, thorough (although not exhaustive), well-done search for evidence.

This is all we can do. We cannot prove what exists by ruling out every possibly existent but actually nonexistent thing because there is an infinity of possibly existent but actually nonexistent things. Instead, we prove what exists by finding evidence that it exists. Everything else we assume does not exist. This doesn’t mean that these nonexistent things CANNOT exist. It means only that AFAWK they DO NOT exist.

This, for instance, is how we proved the ether to be nonexistent. [But remember, this doesn’t mean that the ether cannot exist. It means only that we have no reason to believe that it exists. Maybe tomorrow evidence will be discovered which suggests that it does exist after all.]

  1. I’m not sure what question 6 asks but it doesn’t seem to be the case that the existence of a god can be an answer to whatever it asks. If a god is said to have no beginning then the same thing can be said about the universe.

Remember, the Big Bang is not a theory about how the universe began so much as it is an account of how the universe came to be what we observe it to be today after the physical laws that we observe today began to affect it. The Big Bang says very little or perhaps nothing at all about the very beginning of the universe in the sense of “universe = all that is.”

  1. Sure, Man can conceputalize immortality and god and unicorns and ethers and lots of other nonexistent things. The question is which of these things exist in external reality and which are only human concepts?
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This is messing with different uses of the word belief. This is very important to see. To not believe in God is a belief, but do you see how these are different? I could say that I believe God does not exist. But this is not equal to saying that I believe in God. Do you see?

Almost every post concerning Atheism lately has concerned this game of semantics.

Atheism is not a belief IN SOMETHING. You are NOT believing in the belief or concept of God. So you see?

Maybe that is a good way to put it.

To call Atheism a ‘belief’ is a roundabout way of making belief in God, equal to disbelief in it. They are not equal, the are simply different.

Belief in a belief is position (or belief). But disbelief in a belief is not a position (or belief). It is simply disbelief in that particular concept.

For example, we don’t go around saying, “I’m an ‘A’-Santa Claus” or "I’m an ‘A’-Unicorn, etc etc. To call disbelief in something a belief is mixing two uses of the word belief. Under this, we would have to state every single idea or concept that we do not believe in, exists as a belief. Disbelief is simply not belief in a particular concept. We do not have to make it a ‘position’. Which is why atheism is such a funny word. We have made it into some kind of belief or religion or creed or something. It is plain and simple disbelief in something.

It is very important to see that disbelief is not belief… but it is a position held (a belief). The green usage is different than the red usage of the word.

Many believe in belief in God, but don’t actually believe in God. Do you see how the two are different things? :sunglasses:

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I understand what you’re saying. Maybe it’s just that you sound a bit hysterical so I’d say for you it’s Belief with a capital B. You sound like you’d be willing to fight over it. I think we often give ourselves away, despite what we profess.

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But Belief with a capital B is what you turned it into. :confused:

I wasn’t aware that I appear hysterical. It is funny that the word ‘faith’ has such positive cogitations and yet no evidence. And my position which I strongly believe in, which is solely based on searching for evidence, is looked upon as hysteria. I guess I do get hysterically upset that asking for something so simple, evidence, is made to seem ridiculous. It is as boring, simple and straight forward as anything could be. I’m just asking for evidence… show me something I can see, that science can test, verify and continually test. Is that so crazy? :confused:

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Not so crazy at all. :slight_smile:

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I didn’t mean to change the direction of the thread Iosepusmagus.
Please respond to my and Reality Check’s answers when you can.

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Well wikipedia isn’t you know, the authority on the definition of religion or what constitutes one. Disbelief in dragons or say, trolls isn’t a religion.

People may look for idols but thats different then being totally convinced there is a supernatural power being the universe or one that engages with your life.

I don’t think its fair to say that most atheists are philosophers, most atheists are just regular people, but atheism is rational.

Its irrational, plenty of atheists have huge moral and ethical obligations/investments.

No, nothing can. We determine things as facts when the evidence for them is overwhelming, if there is no evidence that somthing exists we most think of its statistical probability, and think of reasons for why it should be true that don’t violate bayesian logic.

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It seems that Cyrene, Reality Check and I are basically singing the same tune. These are the responses I would expect. Are they the responses you expected Iosepusmagus?

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Define social institution.

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I’d be careful with how specific you made “common beliefs and practices” since Protestantism has fragmented Christianity pretty effectively. The sort of empty formalisms that would define some of those splinter sects as a religion (let alone the entirety when viewed as such!) could be used to indite atheism as a religion. It would also probably render most philosophical doctrines religions. That’s why I think a “pornography” definition of religion suits religion best: I’ll know one when I see one. Atheism, in my mind, is not a religion though some atheists do take atheism to a bigoted extreme. That people use those atheists taking the bigoted extreme as an example of religiosity is telling, not so much about atheists as those who would label them as “religious”.

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Clark Adams - “If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.” :sunglasses: