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Faith and Atheism don't seem to go together
A lack of faith seems to fit atheism better

faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept or thing. it is believed to be derived from the latin fidem or fides, which means trust.

Yes, it is true that in a theological context, faith is the belief in the supernatural, a transcendent reality or Supreme Being.

However, if you stick to the base definition, without attachment to the divine, then for atheism, it's belief and trust is in the statement/concept that there is no god. a disbelief in the existence of a deity means a belief in the nonexistence of a deity.

p.s. L is too cool.

Religion a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. ~ Dictionary.com
Atheist deny the existence of a god, BUT it does not answer the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe...
So using that definition, atheism is not a religion...

from my understanding. and please correct me if i'm wrong. i'm more than willing to learn.
atheism's belief concerning the cause: whatever it is, it does not involve god
atheism's belief concerning the nature: it is simply nature.
atheism's belief concerning the purpose: what purpose. you're nothing more than the product of your environment and natural laws. to say you have a purpose is also a product of this.

all i'm saying is. atheism has a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, whatever they may be. and usually and often do not mean always.

Yep
Meh, guess I wasn't well prepared to be the devils advocate...

lol. i actually wasn't prepared to enter into such a discussion either. 'twas fun
and much lol's to the manipulation of language to suit one's needs

lol at the nerd rage from someone saying they believe in God, have whatever beliefs as long as it doesnt involve hurting anyone ( although i hate that homophobic bullshit christians do)

What stranglove said is correct.

What defines a religion?

1. Belief in supernatural beings (gods). - Atheism doesn't
2. A distinction between sacred and profane objects. - Atheism hasn't
3. Ritual acts focused on sacred objects. - Atheism doesn't
4. A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods. - Atheism doesn't
5. Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in idea with the gods. - Atheism doesn't
6. Prayer and other forms of communication with gods. - Atheism doesn't
7. A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it. - Atheism doesn't, atheist do have the certain common idea that they have an absence of belief in a deity but other than that their philosophy on life may and will differ. If you want an example of a philosophy which an atheist may use, secular humanism
8. A more or less total organization of one's life based on the world view. - Atheism doesn't
9. A social group bound together by the above. - People in atheism may organized each other for the purpose of being social, but this does not mean they are religious. Would a group of democratic believers be a religion? No.

If atheism was a religion, then what is not a religion?

correct.

agreed.

anything can be a religion. using the definition from above, as long as there is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, there is a religion. let's look at your list.

1. belief in the supernatural is substituted by a belief in the natural
2. for that reason, there is no distinction between sacred and profane objects
3. because there are no sacred objects, there's no need for ritual acts
4. most atheists believe there is a moral code, though not sanctioned by gods. but as strangelove said, whatever ideas an atheist lives by are a result of personal ideologies, not atheism itself. the ones that don't, then they don't. that's their ideology.
5. bleh. i'm tired. what your whole list does is list the non-theistic aspects of atheism and it is accurate in doing so. however, religion and theism are not synonymous.

if being atheistic means you have a religion, i.e. "religion of having no religion"
then not collecting stamps is a hobby

lolol. panraider. you have a way with words. simplifying everything.

collecting stamps is not a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. it is a hobby. or not. but not a religion.

however, if in the strangest of ways it evolves into a state where it does have a set of beliefs concerning the aforementioned, then yes. collecting or not collect stamps is a religion.

Your definition of religion would be a worldview. Atheism is the result of a worldview, not is. The same reason anyone would be a-unicornist, a-magicist, a-vampireist, a-zombieist, and etc. due to their own worldview.

simplyified/abstract, whatever you might call it
but still not devoid of a point:

collecting stamps= doing something
not collecting stamps= not doing something

being religious= having a belief system based on supernatural things
being an atheist= not having a belief system based on supernatural things

2 pairs of opposite verbs as you might see.
It just depends on what the two things base themselves on.


here you just made both opposites take one side, i.e. doing something/having a belief system based on supernatural things.

religious people place their faith in metaphysical, supernatural,holy, infallible objects, refusing to question them or change anything about them (unless it is to their liking).
they say:
"we know there is a god, you'll have prove that he isn't there so we stop believing in him"

on the other hand of course ...athiests believe in something,
but when we talk about their "faith", we talk about faith in (mostly)physically applicable,empirical evidence, scientific facts which they choose to challenge and question and have no problem changing once they can prove that it is different.
they say:
"we know there is no god, you'll have prove that he is there so we start believing in him"

Atheists are spiritual people at most. The only thing connecting them to religion in that sense is the fact that they're against it.

---

/tldr: even with 1 thing in common between theists and atheists we have opposites.

unfortunately sir zing, that first statement is incorrect.
true. any particular religion or set of beliefs (theistic or not) is an example of a worldview. a worldview, however, is not a religion.

religion can play a major aspect in your worldview, but religion is not a worldview in itself.

but before i make too many assumptions, please. enlighten me. how is religion as defined from previous posts synonymous with a world view?

and panraider.


exactly right.
so before i go any further i must state that the religious ones who place their faith in are wrong.
they should approach everything in this manner:

but like i stated earlier. very few religious people actually challenge, question, and test their religion for the truth. the ones who do and see it work stick to it. the ones who do and see it fail abandon it. so as i said before, i don't care what your religious or ethical affiliation is, you simply go wherever the evidence leads you.

unfortunately, many of the religious ones who test and see their religion work become fanatical and anti-everything else failing to realize that they were once on the same journey of discovery.

this is most difficult for those who were born into a religion and therefore have not been on this journey of discovery but simply stick to what they have been told and never question. they become super fanatical without understanding why they believe what they do. they are unable to provide reason for their belief and this should not be the case.

man. i'm ranting. sorry. i'll stop for now. just that. i intend to change belief without reason to belief with reason in my lifetime.

Worldview doesn't mean religion, although a religion is one. Those definitions I gave you was from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Your argument isn't new. People had argued that atheism is a religion because they claim it is a worldview.

Either atheism is a religion in the theistic sense or it's a religion in the worldview sense. And it is neither.

Atheism isn't theistic at all (therefore not a religion), nor is it a worldview (therefore not a possible religion). Buddhism is an example of an atheistic religion. It isn't a religion simply because it's atheistic, but is because of its worldview. Buddhism is a religion. Atheism isn't a worldview, it is a conclusion from a worldview.

What is a world view?

The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

I've only repeated what strangelove said, which you agree with. Can you clarify?

re-read my response. i never said worldview and religion were synonymous.

but. hmmmm. you have a point in saying that i agreed with strangelove's statement. because of that. i will say this.

atheism, in itself, is not a religion. but. it can become one. as stated with collecting stamps.

and by the way, buddhism is not atheistic. it simply does not believe in an omnipotent god who is the creator and ordainer of the world. there are a significant number of spiritual beings (or gods) in buddhism. that is undeniable.

a quick google search yields THIS in regards to buddhism.

a more appropriate example of an atheistic religion is scientology.

nevertheless, if you want to make a religion out of (with) atheism, then it'd become something else. Which religion you create will have inherent the lack of belief, but nothing more. You could see it has an ingredient in a food product ... an ingredient that doesn't exist

On a side note, I detest Scientology. I refuse to label that thing as a religion

lol. unfortunately, scientology is a tax-exempt religion in the U.S., which is where i live. but i don't know anything about it so i can't really make claims about it.

and yes. you are right. whatever you make of out of atheism, the only inherent thing is the lack of belief in gods. atheism is not what the general public has been fed. what we see is what has been made out of it. the same can be said of islam, christianity, and everything else.

and here I though GD was safe from the kind of threads



Guess not, might as well join in though




ALLAH IS ALL!, KILL ALL WHO DONT BELIEVE IN ALLAH LALALALALALALALALALALALALA

all I hear is durka durka muhammad jihad lol

lololol. gaigemasta. that is ignorant B.S.
btw. i wonder what happened to the original poster.
is kori coming back???

When we talk about 'Atheism', doesn't the concept feel a little bit weak? We define a whole way of living by the things it is not, rather than the things it actually is.

I might be rehashing other people's arguments here, I'm sorry if I do. I can't be bothered to look for such discussions, and participate in them, if I don't happen to stumble across them in familiar places, like SRF is.

So, what an atheist does is detach himself from the idea of 'God', and any possibly associated ideologies. He lives his life by his own principles, and, generally, using heuristic approaches to the problems he is confronted with. Read that through your mind a couple of times.

Quite often, atheists accuse religious people - especially Christians - of using circular logic to 'prove' their points. e.g.: "The Bible is the Word of God because in the Bible, it says, that God inspired the Bible", etc. There is no point in elaborating here, plenty of examples can be found.

But aren't atheists guilty of the same mistake, but on a different, more fundamental level? Their whole existence is based on an ideological self-perpetuation, which, however, can not have a certain accurate foundation. A Christian is God's Child, a muslim is Allah's servant, a Buddhist is a follower of Buddha. An atheist is nothing but himself. No atheist can really offer a rigorous explanation / definition of who he is and what he believes in.

When you live only by your own ideology, and only consider of real value the experiences you have gathered yourself, you are making yourself your own God, in a sense. There's the circular reasoning, again.

I might lack the eloquence needed to elaborate on this topic. It is 4 A.M. here. However, I hope that what I say is understandable, and that it makes at least some sense.

When you define things by what they are not, you run into all sorts of problems. By the logic atheists so vigorously advocate, they should judge themselves also.

I don't know where to begin, Stress. Is this a rant? I feel so insulted

lol. yes. i believe it was a rant.
did this discussion ever define anything by what it is not? (i tend to forget things so i'm always open to correction)


they can. and it varies by much ground from individual to individual.

wrong. you are simply making yourself yourself.

btw. i make those statements simply because i just don't like being un-reason-able. i'm really a Christian. as far as religion, i choose to live by two mantras: one that only a fool says in his heart (not head or mouth) that there is no God and because no man knows the heart of another, i am not in the position to judge. and two. that, as a christian, i must study to show myself approved and give REASON for my belief (II Tim 2:15 and I Peter 3:15).

other than that. it's whatever. when my religion stops working for me, i'll find something else. but it has worked so far. i follow wherever the evidence leads me, whether it is empirical or based on personal experience.
the end.

@Ch4otik

is TheForsaken still up and is Rukerr still the gm? I know Omea left though

That was not a rant, at all.

I am not a Christian; I, too, am an 'atheist' in a certain sense of the word.



I agree. I was trying to underline the fact that the line is very thin. I know many so-called 'atheists', who are, unconsciously, just as theistic as any other religious person.

My post was merely a call to rigorous definitions and self-awareness. It was no rant, by any means. I'm sorry if it sounded that way.



If you can offer perfectly accurate explanations and make perfectly accurate statements, you have to be some sort of 'God'.



That defies the purpose of a religion. You can't call yourself a Christian when you need other things than Christianity in life, to work for you. I can offer countless verses from the Bible to support this. One question my pastor used to put quite often was: 'Would you marry a woman, who would be all yours 364 days of a year, and would go off with another man one day of the year?'. Those kinds of principles are the principles Christians follow. If you call yourself a Christian, Christianity has to be everything to you. Otherwise, you might just renounce calling yourself a Christian altogether. Forget the shapes, the names, the dogmas. Does what you live comply to the WHOLE Christian teaching? I don't think any one can claim that. Following a religion, as in really following it, completely, with no concessions, is the hardest thing for a man. And here, exactly here, does Christianity turn everything around. The Bible tells you that, of course, you can't live a perfect - by Christian standards - life by yourself. And that's were God comes in and helps you. This is the core of the Christian teaching. And, as you can see, it is circular.

God helps you live a perfect life; perfect, according to his own standards. But for this, you have to give yourself up completely. But why did you have the need to live a 'perfect' life anyways? Because you thought your life was imperfect. But how did that come about? The Bible, what the call God's word, tells you so.

There, you find the circle I was talking about. But here, we're talking about some 'God' who tells us what to do.

I hunt down such circles in my own reasoning, all the time. The circle is what kills people. It's what destroys them, and sends them into unending, empty, self-perpetuation. They die inside, in misery. Just as I did, once.

This post isn't directed at anyone, when I say 'you', I'm referring to no specific person.

Um you are the one who copied pasted a quote from somewhere (probably wikipedia) and said the universe apparently came from nothing. you are the one whole posted the quote, you should be the one explaining it, which I am sure you can't since you just copied pasted or paraphrased that sentence

UnbeatableDevil, I thought you knew something about what I had said, and were calling me out on its because what I said was wrong (since you know about it (M Theory)). But now you're really just saying "I'm assuming you don't know anything, so you don't."

Okay.

M Theory is the theory that which explains that our universe isn't the only one. The reason for this theory was because of subatomic particles were never in the same spot. So these particles could never be pinpointed and physicists couldn't understand why this was happening. So subatomic particles could be in more than one place at one time. The reason? These particles flip in and out of existence in multiple universes - the amount of universes are said to be infinite. M Theory is thought to be the theory which Einstein attempted to form but didn't. The 'theory of everything.'

Remember String theory? Oh wait.. I'm still paraphrasing and/or copypasta.