A Couple Of Things About Atheism

[mymistake]

I wanted to address a few points that have popped up in several different threads and blogs.  

 

1  Atheism isn't a religion.  Atheism is the opposite of god-based-religion.  Of course there are some atheist who have strongly held beliefs; perhaps sometimes even stubbornly held beliefs.  But stubbornness is not what makes an idea religious.  Most religions are based around the belief in one or more gods and a codified belief system based around that deity.  Atheists don't have a common creed.  What makes all atheists fit in that group is that we all lack one thing.

 

 

2  The problems with the No True Christian defense do not apply to atheism.  We have all heard the No True Christian defense.  Some pastor is caught embezzling or a priest is caught molesting children and all the Christians who hear about it instinctively play the No True Christian card.  Of course it is a fallacy.  The reason for following the logic is because it leads to the conclusion that Christianity contradicts itself so Christianity is wrong.

 

But atheism doesn't contradict itself.  General atheism is not the sort of thing that can be false.  Let's assume Joe is an average atheist.  If Joe doesn't feel compelled to believe in any god is this lack of motivation false?  You would have to look at the small minority within atheism - hard or strong atheism to find something that can be false.  I happen to be a hard atheist myself.  If our universe really was created by a being then my conclusion that humans created all gods is absolutely false.  However my false conclusion does not reflect on Joe.  Joe simply doesn't feel compelled to believe.  His lack of motivation doesn't contradict itself.

 

Joseph Stalin murdered millions of people and he didn't believe in any gods.  Does that make me responsible for what he did?  Nope.  There is no common creed.  I denounce his actions and find them to be horrifying.  Neither one of us claims to be serving an Antigod.  So his evil actions do not prove that belief in Antigod is contradictory therefore it is false.  Atheism does not have a sacred book that calls for genocide.  Atheists do not have to embrace that book or rationalize how it's genocide could have been ordered by a loving Antigod.

 

Anybody who does not have a god-based religion, theism, is an atheist.  But that doesn't mean we are responsible for each other.

[disillusioned]

In my opinion, what it boils down to is that Atheism isn't really a thing. It's the lack of a thing. As has been said many times before, it's a religion in the same sense that "off" is a tv channel.