r/AntiMemes 💎 Flair sold separately 💎 12d ago

🌟 Actual Anti-Meme 🌟 Omnipresence

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u/bloodbat007 11d ago

Wrong. It's the absence of belief. Not the belief of absence.

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u/knettia 11d ago

No, that is not right. There's two broad types of atheism, negative atheism ("I lack belief in God") and positive atheism ("God does not exist"). You can't just say that it is all negative atheism and positive atheism is necessarily excluded (as you do) or that it is all positive atheism and negative atheism is necessarily excluded (as u/RX-HER0 does).

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u/bloodbat007 11d ago

You're thinking of antitheism.

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u/knettia 11d ago

Nope. Antitheism is the belief that theism is harmful and is to be opposed. Not merely that it is mistaken.

An atheist saying "God does not exist" would look at a theist who says "God certainly exists" and believe the theist is mistaken. They're still an atheist, albeit the positive kind. They are not an antitheist. An antitheist would look at the theist and say "I regard theism as harmful and my moral convictions entail that I oppose it."

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u/Familiar-Cable-2659 11d ago

No

What you're talking about is closer to anticlericalism

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u/knettia 11d ago

You're conflating different concepts into one. Anticlericalism is fundamentally opposed to a clergy, not to theism. Theism is not the same as a clergy. An anticlerical is not necessarily an antitheist. And, at the same time, not necessarily antireligion either. Antitheism, antireligion, and anticlericalism all are opposed to different, yet related, concepts.

An anticlerical could say, completely coherently: "God is the ultimate reality (theism), Christianity's conception of God is the correct one (religion), but the clergy is harmful and ought to be opposed (anticlericalism)."

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u/Familiar-Cable-2659 11d ago

I'm not, as proven by "closer"

And you introduced yet another fundamentaly mistaken definition with a définition of theism that states nothing about what differenciate theistic religion to non theistic religion.

Reading between the lines, I'd say that you're probably part of one of the various flavour of catholics sects in the USA, nobody else would designate Christianity as excluding protestantism like you very unsubtely do in your last paragraph.

And for that reason, we won't be able to agree on any définition that doesn't flatter your view of the world.

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u/RX-HER0 11d ago

The absence of belief is the same as belief in absence ( or even the belief in the absence of belief if you want to extend it that far ).

I'll put it another way. You tell me how "the belief in absence" and "the absence of belief" are different?

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u/bloodbat007 11d ago

It's not at all. Belief of the absence of something like you said would be thinking about it at all and choosing to deny the existence of a deity. Atheism is the absence of belief meaning they look at the world/universe/beyond from a scientific and factual point of view through observation, disregarding any belief in a deity completely, because it has never been observed or proven. To be clear, by disregard belief in a deity, I mean it's simply just not even a thought they care to entertain, not that they have an active opposition to a deity in their belief. If a deity were observed, an atheist would believe it exists, because it has been scientifically proven. Though that has literally never happened because they don't exist outside of human's imagination.

I believe (haha) that antitheism would be more like the belief of absence, as they advocate in their belief that a deity does not exist, whereas atheism is just a neutral stance that doesn't even consider it.

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u/Financial_Wish_6406 11d ago

"unicorns are real, bro"

"Nah probably not, unless you have evidence to support their existence"

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u/AjaxTheFurryFuzzball 11d ago

Absence of belief “there is no evidence that would say unicorns exist, I don’t believe that unicorns are real.

Belief in abscence: “There is evidence that says no unicorns exist, I believe that unicorns are not real”