What is Atheism?

Atheism and Agnosticism

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He doesn't believe it or not believe it. Finally, there is a group of atheists that I call militant atheists.

Arguments for Atheism - What Is Atheism?

They are, fortunately, few in number. They are usually highly insulting and profoundly terse in their comments to theists and particularly Christians. Their language is full of insults, profanity, and blasphemies. Basically, no meaningful conversation can be held with them. Atheist positions seem to fall into two main categories. The first is the lack-of-evidence category where the atheist asserts that the supporting evidence isn't good enough for him to affirm God's existence.

To simplify, one position says there isn't enough evidence to conclude that God exists, and the other position says the evidence is contrary to God's existence. For those atheists who simply lack belief and exercise no energy in the discussion, neither category applies because they are not involved in the debate. But, some of those who claim to lack belief in God are often involved in discussions where they are arguing against God's existence. A typical argument posed by an atheist to show why God does not exist is as follows: God is supposed to be all good and all-powerful.

Evil and suffering exist in the world. If God is all good, he would not want evil and suffering to exist. If He is all-powerful, then He is able to remove all evil and suffering. Since evil and suffering exist, God is either not all good which means he is not perfect and not God , or he is not all powerful and limited in abilities and scope. Since either case shows God is not all good and powerful, then He does not exist.

Of course, the problem is that the criticism is a false dichotomy. In other words, there are more than two possibilities; namely, God might have a reason for allowing evil and suffering; man's freedom might require the allowance of evil and suffering, etc. Presuppositions are important to us all. We look at the world through them. The atheist has a set of presuppositions, too.

As I said, there is no definitive atheist organization that defines the absolutes of atheism, but there are basic principles that atheists, as a whole, tend to adopt. I've tried to list some of them below. Please note, however, that not all atheists accept all of these tenets. The only absolute common one to which they hold is that they do not believe in a God or gods.

For the Christian, atheism clashes with many aspects of our faith. Some atheists openly attack Christianity--citing apparent contradictions in the Bible, perceived philosophical difficulties related to God, and what they consider as logical evidences against God's existence. But the atheists' criticisms are not without very good answers as you will see in the coming papers. Smart argued that the existence of God is not logically necessary. Naturalists and materialistic monists such as John Dewey considered the natural world to be the basis of everything, denying the existence of God or immortality.

Other leaders like Periyar E. Ramasamy , a prominent atheist leader of India , fought against Hinduism and Brahmins for discriminating and dividing people in the name of caste and religion. Atheist Vashti McCollum was the plaintiff in a landmark Supreme Court case that struck down religious education in US public schools. Curlett which banned compulsory prayer in public schools. It promotes the separation of church and state.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall , the number of actively anti-religious regimes has reduced considerably. Paul and Phil Zuckerman consider this a myth and suggest that the actual situation is much more complex and nuanced. A survey found that those identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics are on average more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths.

Nonbelievers scored better on questions about tenets central to Protestant and Catholic faiths. Only Mormon and Jewish faithful scored as well as atheists and agnostics. In , the first "Women in Secularism" conference was held in Arlington, Virginia. In the first atheist monument on American government property was unveiled at the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida: Dennett , Richard Dawkins , Victor J. Bush in , have been cited by authors such as Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Stenger, and Hitchens as evidence of a need to move toward a more secular society.

It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists in the world. Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between atheism , non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists. There are another four countries where the unaffiliated make up a majority of the population: According to the World Values Survey , 4.

According to a report by the Pew Research Center, 3. Atheists and agnostics combined make up about a quarter of this unaffiliated demographic. In recent years, the profile of atheism has risen substantially in the Arab world.

1. Definitions of “Atheism”

A study noted positive correlations between levels of education and secularism, including atheism, in America. By contrast, in underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. In a study, researchers found intelligence to be negatively related to religious belief in Europe and the United States. In a sample of countries, the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God was found to be 0. He doubts that religion causes stupidity, noting that some highly intelligent people have also been religious, but he says it is plausible that higher intelligence correlates to rejection of improbable religious beliefs and that the situation between intelligence and rejection of religious beliefs is quite complex.

In a study, it was shown that compared to religious individuals, atheists have higher reasoning capacities and this difference seemed to be unrelated to sociodemographic factors such as age, education and country of origin. Statistically, atheists are held in poor regard across the globe. Non-atheists, and possibly even fellow atheists, seem to implicitly view atheists as prone to exhibit immoral behaviors ranging from mass murder to not paying at a restaurant. Pew furthermore noted that, in a U. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Atheist disambiguation. Humanistic Metaphysical Methodological Religious. Implicit and explicit atheism. Negative and positive atheism. Agnostic atheism and Theological noncognitivism. Arguments against the existence of God , Problem of evil , and Divine hiddenness. Evolutionary origin of religions , Evolutionary psychology of religion , and Psychology of religion.

Atheism and negative theology. Atheist existentialism and Secular humanism. Atheism and religion , Criticism of atheism , Secular ethics , and Secular morality. Agnosticism and Atheism , in Flynn , p. The first takes the privative a both before the Greek theos divinity and gnosis to know to mean that atheism is simply the absence of belief in the gods and agnosticism is simply lack of knowledge of some specified subject matter. The second definition takes atheism to mean the explicit denial of the existence of gods and agnosticism as the position of someone who, because the existence of gods is unknowable, suspends judgment regarding them The first is the more inclusive and recognizes only two alternatives: Either one believes in the gods or one does not.

Consequently, there is no third alternative, as those who call themselves agnostics sometimes claim. Insofar as they lack belief, they are really atheists.

Moreover, since absence of belief is the cognitive position in which everyone is born, the burden of proof falls on those who advocate religious belief. The proponents of the second definition, by contrast, regard the first definition as too broad because it includes uninformed children along with aggressive and explicit atheists. Consequently, it is unlikely that the public will adopt it. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ed. Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none. Sometimes thought itself to be more dogmatic than mere agnosticism, although atheists retort that everyone is an atheist about most gods, so they merely advance one step further.

Archived from the original on 13 May Atheism in this sense means "not theistic". The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion.

So an atheist is someone who disbelieves in God, whereas a theist is someone who believes in God. Another meaning of 'atheism' is simply nonbelief in the existence of God, rather than positive belief in the nonexistence of God. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama. Archived from the original on 14 May Atheism in Pagan Antiquity. Atheism and atheist are words formed from Greek roots and with Greek derivative endings. Nevertheless they are not Greek; their formation is not consonant with Greek usage. Not till later do we find it employed to denote a certain philosophical creed. Atheism in the Ancient World. New Histories of Atheism".

In Hunter, Michael; Wootton, David. Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. The Legacy of the French Revolution. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. The Secular Web Library. God and the Burden of Proof: Plantinga, Swinburne, and the Analytical Defense of Theism. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Naturalism and Physicalism , in Martin , pp. Martin, Michael T, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Archived from the original PDF on 21 October Retrieved 1 October Archived from the original PDF on A World of Atheism: In Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism.

Persons professing atheism, skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion, including the militantly antireligious opposed to all religion. Persons professing no religion, nonbelievers, agnostics, freethinkers, uninterested, or dereligionized secularists indifferent to all religion but not militantly so. Directorate General Research, European Union. Archived from the original PDF on 30 April The term as generally used, however, is highly ambiguous.

Its meaning varies a according to the various definitions of deity, and especially b according as it is i. As to a , it is obvious that atheism from the standpoint of the Christian is a very different conception as compared with atheism as understood by a Deist, a Positivist, a follower of Euhemerus or Herbert Spencer, or a Buddhist. However, this common contrast of agnosticism with atheism will hold only if one assumes that atheism means positive atheism. In the popular sense, agnosticism is compatible with negative atheism. Since negative atheism by definition simply means not holding any concept of God, it is compatible with neither believing nor disbelieving in God.

There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one. Agnosticism , in Flynn , p. Since agnostics do not believe in God, they are by definition negative atheists. This is not to say that negative atheism entails agnosticism. A negative atheist might disbelieve in God but need not. I usually reply with a question like, "Well, are you a Republican or an American? Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief.

The agnostic says, "I don't have a knowledge that God exists. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic. Why Should Atheists Be Persecuted? Till that proof comes he remains, as his name implies, without God. His mind is open to every new truth, after it has passed the warder Reason at the gate. On the contrary, I, as an Atheist, simply profess that I do not see sufficient reason to believe that there is a god.

I do not pretend to know that there is no god. The whole question of god's existence, belief or disbelief , a question of probability or of improbability, not knowledge. As such, it is usually distinguished from theism, which affirms the reality of the divine and often seeks to demonstrate its existence. Atheism is also distinguished from agnosticism, which leaves open the question whether there is a god or not, professing to find the questions unanswered or unanswerable.

Critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or divine beings. Unlike agnosticism, which leaves open the question of whether there is a God, atheism is a positive denial. It is rooted in an array of philosophical systems. But dogmatic atheism is rare compared with the sceptical type, which is identical with agnosticism in so far as it denies the capacity of the mind of man to form any conception of God, but is different from it in so far as the agnostic merely holds his judgment in suspense, though, in practice, agnosticism is apt to result in an attitude towards religion which is hardly distinguishable from a passive and unaggressive atheism.

Archived from the original on 12 May The Religious Philosophies of Mankind. I must begin by stating what sense I am attaching to the word "atheism," and how I am construing the theme of this paper. I shall understand by "atheism" a critique and a denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism. Thus, a child who has received no religious instruction and has never heard about God, is not an atheist — for he is not denying any theistic claims.

Similarly in the case of an adult who, if he has withdrawn from the faith of his father without reflection or because of frank indifference to any theological issue, is also not an atheist — for such an adult is not challenging theism and not professing any views on the subject. I propose to examine some philosophic concepts of atheism Angeles, Prometheus Books, Agnostics are distinguished from innocents, who also neither believe that there are gods nor believe that there are no gods, by the fact that they have given consideration to the question whether there are gods.

Innocents are those who have never considered the question whether there are gods. Typically, innocents have never considered the question whether there are gods because they are not able to consider that question. How could that be? Well, in order to consider the question whether there are gods, one must understand what it would mean for something to be a god. That is, one needs to have the concept of a god. Those who lack the concept of a god are not able to entertain the thought that there are gods. Consider, for example, one-month-old babies.

It is very plausible that one-month-old babies lack the concept of a god. So it is very plausible that one-month-old babies are innocents. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter. The Review of Politics. Archived from the original on 13 November The true default position is neither theism nor atheism, but agnosticism The Case for Agnosticism".

What do atheists believe?

Archived from the original on 20 May In the absence of any good reasons to believe these outlandish claims, we rightly disbelieve them, we don't just suspend judgement. This is because when we have a lack of absolute proof we can still have overwhelming evidence or one explanation which is far superior to the alternatives. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Pressley, Sue Anne 8 September Archived from the original on 22 May Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?

Commit it then to the flames: Internet Infidels , Secular Web Library. Language, Truth and Logic. In a footnote, Ayer attributes this view to "Professor H. Gunasekara, "The Buddhist Attitude to God". Archived from the original on 2 January In the Bhuridatta Jataka, "The Buddha argues that the three most commonly given attributes of God, viz.

Two Main Types of Arguments from Atheists

Mother Earth Publishing Association. Archived from the original on 21 May Claydon, David; et al. Although Neo-Pagans share common commitments to nature and spirit there is a diversity of beliefs and practices Some are atheists, others are polytheists several gods exist , some are pantheists all is God and others are panentheists all is in God. One online information source indicates that depending on how the term God is defined, Neo-Pagans might be classified as monotheists, duotheists two gods , polytheists, pantheists, or atheists.

Hinduism, a way of life.

Select a book of the Bible

For the thoroughgoing atheist, the path is extremely difficult, if not lonely, for he can not develop any relationship of love with God, nor can he expect any divine help on the long and arduous journey. Archived from the original on 27 September The Ineffable, Inconceivable, and Incomprehensible God. Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology". Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity. Religion and Politics Worldwide. National Conference of the American Academy of Religion lectures.

Don Stewart :: What Is Atheism?

Archived from the original PDF on 4 March Nonbelief has existed for centuries. For example, Buddhism and Jainism have been called atheistic religions because they do not advocate belief in gods. Archived from the original on 16 April The Gospel of Christian Atheism. Archived from the original on 29 September The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. According to Hinduism, the path of the atheist is very difficult to follow in matters of spirituality, though it is a valid one.

Brother Ivan Fyodorovich , Chapter 4 there is the famous argument that If there is no God, all things are permitted. All things are lawful then, they can do what they like? This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams That problem was brought home to us with dazzling clarity by Nietzsche, who had reflected more deeply than any of his contemporaries on the implications of godlessness and come to the conclusion that a fatal contradiction lay at the heart of modern theological enterprise: This, in Nietzsche's mind, was an absurdity.

It amounted to nothing less than dismissing the architect while trying to keep the building or getting rid of the lawgiver while claiming the protection of the law. Morality "has truth only if God is truth—it stands or falls with faith in God" Nietzsche , p. The moral argument for the existence of God essentially takes Nietzsche's assertion as one of its premises: Like other mid-nineteenth-century writers, George Eliot was not fully aware of the implications of her humanism, and, as Nietzsche saw, attempted the difficult task of upholding the Christian morality of altruism without faith in the Christian God.

Beyond Belief Session 6 Conference. Salk Institute , La Jolla, California: Cohen notes particularly that Plato and Aristotle produced arguments in favour of slavery. Koba the Dread ; London: Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Altemeyer, Bob; Hunsberger, Bruce International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Archived from the original on 16 May In a world riven by ignorance, only the atheist refuses to deny the obvious: Religious faith promotes human violence to an astonishing degree. Ethics for a Brave New World. Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Catholic Education Resource Center.

Word Pictures in the New Testament. Atheists in the original sense of being without God and also in the sense of hostility to God from failure to worship him. See Paul's words in Ro 1: American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. English recusant literature, — The Psalmes of David and others, with J. The Atheistes which say.. The auncient ecclesiasticall histories of the first six hundred years after Christ, written by Eusebius, Socrates, and Evagrius. The opinion which they conceaue of you, to be Atheists, or godlesse men.

Atheism , retrieved , First Known Use: Athisme, that is to say, vtter godlesnes. Godd would not longe suffer this impietie, or rather atheonisme. The later and now obsolete words athean and atheal are dated to and respectively. The Oxford English Dictionary Second ed. The Anatomy of Melancholy. His opinion concerning the difference between the Church of England and Geneva [etc. To have said my office..

An universal etymological English dictionary. The true intellectual system of the universe. Chapter V Section II p. A clear distinction is rarely drawn in modern writings between these two definitions, but some archaic uses of atheism encompassed only disbelief in the singular God, not in polytheistic deities. It is on this basis that the obsolete term adevism was coined in the late 19th century to describe an absence of belief in plural deities.

India, that is, sidd. A history of Indian philosophy, Volume 1. A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. Philosophy East and West. Atheism in Antiquity , in Martin , pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Everyday Life in the Birthplace of Western Civilization.

A Contribution to the History of Ancient Atheism. Comments and English text by Richard D. Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College, , p. Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy. In particular, he argues that the claim he is a complete atheist contradicts the other part of the indictment, that he introduced "new divinities". Testimonies, especially in the context of polemical criticism, are found e.

In McBrayer, Justin P. An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism. Backgrounds of Early Christianity second ed. Past and Present Inquisition from Its Establishment to the Great Schism: Schriften und Materialien , p. The System of Nature. God, Locke, and Equality: Atheism and Agnosticism in Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. A Very Short Introduction. The Origin and Nature of Secularism.

A Short History of Christianity ; Viking; p. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism.

Dalits in Modern India. It's a milestone for the often-vilified but financially strong group, which has seen its membership grow to an all-time high". Archived from the original on 30 July Archived from the original on 21 November Archived from the original on 22 August Archived from the original on 8 April The Four Horsemen of New Atheism reunited". Archived from the original on 22 April Religion, Law and Tradition:

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