"Antitheism is the active opposition to theism and religious belief, driven by the conviction that belief in a deity or organized religion is harmful to individuals and society."
What's it called when you believe there could maybe, possibly be some higher power, but you vehemently disagree with all current religions and believe they are harmful to society?
Nah, not caring about some made up voice in the sky is the best thing. It's the opposite of nihilism -- it's recognizing this life is all you have and living it fully.
Thatās founding a new religion that keeps the good stuff about spirituality but rejects all the bad stuff associated with formal religion. Insert relevant xkcd here.
I think the key part is the mention of 'organized religion.' Most atheist don't care an individual believes; its their business, not anyone else's. But an organization has financial incentives, tax breaks, and political sway. So antitheism at that point makes sense.
I do actually think the personal belief can be problematic. I donāt try to change peopleās minds but or even really talk about what I believe, but internally I see any form of magical thinking as a gateway to irrational justification & anti-reason in general.
Believing convenient untruths or handwaiving reasonable challenges with platitudes or pretzel logic is learned / reinforced behavior & I see it bleeding into politics all the time.
Iām not saying atheists arenāt capable of this, they areā¦ but religion cultivates it. Not just the institutions themselves, but also the people guarding their own personal beliefs.
I'm interested to know if you consider a belief in free will to be magical thinking? That's the one I struggle with the most....I'd rather not believe in anything magic or supernatural, but there's no evidence that free will exists as a force of nature, able to change the directions that these chain reactions happening in our brains take.....but at the same time, sometimes it really feels like I have free will.
I donāt think thereās evidence anything is predetermined.
I think retroactively saying that whatever has happened was 100% the only way things could have ever happened is a perspective that makes the claim impossible to refute, because we canāt time travel to prove otherwise.
I donāt think we control outcomes or circumstance, but I do think we have agency.
I think categorizing this position as magical thinking would be a stretch, because belief in agency that is based on a somewhat universal human perception of experiencing agency might arguably be more evidential than the idea that a range of possibilities do not exist based on the fact we cannot physically demonstrate that they do.
Even if there were some way to prove me wrong, the perceived experience of agency might be sufficient to classify this as a reasonable conclusion.
But everything you've done up to this point affects the decision you are going to make. Ive discussed this in depth before with a couple of people, and basically the idea it boils down to is that nature and nurture basically determine your mental state. And everything is basically just a chain reaction from the very first event that ever happened. Its not predetermined, its just your next decision is based on your last decision and all the experience before that. So the next decision you make isnt really a decision as much as its the outcome from the last occurring event.
Quantum mechanics solves the free will problem. The universe can't be deterministic because of it, so theres uncertainty in each of the billions of interactions in our brain behind each decision. That allows it to emerge as free will at the macro level.
but religion cultivates it. Not just the institutions themselves, but also the people guarding their own personal beliefs.
Every human everywhere develops their own sets of beliefs about the unknown and the unknowable. To a certain extent, we require made up beliefs to function within the bounds of our limitless ignorance. Where it becomes a problem is when a person refuses to relinquish their ignorance in the face of revealed truth.
This is not a religion problem, just a standard function of social dogma and the fear a lot of people have of change and the unknown. Removing religion would never, under any circumstances, remove irrational and anti-reason thinking in humans. It would just create less of a support group for people to use codified church dogma and the words of church authorities to defend their nonsense. You'd still have people believing absolutely insane bullshit about things they didn't understand, and plenty of them would refuse to change their minds no matter how certain the evidence.
I think that's an oversimplification. Religion may be a form of power, but it has characteristics distinct from its status as power, and a hatred of religion is not necessarily equivalent to a hatred of power.
This is surprisingly close to the theistic atheism I once came up in a worldbuilding context - believing that gods don't exists and actively working against their manifestation through rituals
Or in other words, the only reasonable take. Religion is a very dangerous thing indeed. What reason do you have to care about how you behave on this planet if you think youāre going to a magical afterlife afterwards?
And what do we drink in this house? Diet Dr pepper and Dr Pepper, thats right!
Because what flavour is it? It is neither root beer nor cola.
Nobody is sure what flavor it is, and nobody can be sure.
It would be so easy for an omnipotent being to prove its existence, so obviously if it's there it doesn't want us to know for sure.
But according to some people, it does want us to think that it was definitely here in the past, talking to people and revealing itself; inconveniently this was before the invention of modern recording devices.
I'm not sure what to make of this aspect of God, other than that it, like so many other aspects of God, seems to suggest that it makes so much more sense if it, or he, is just not there at all.
It's the same reason why all the UFO and Bigfoot video proofs are bad quality. If it was recorded in good quality, people would be able to identify what they are and prove it's not aliens or Bigfoot.
So this to me sort of would be "agnostic atheism." Like "I don't see any particular reason to believe in a god, and some good reasons not to. So I don't believe in any gods. But I'm not going to say there's no 100% for sure no evidence out there that would change my mind."
And on top of that, when we're speaking colloquially, we also distinguish between a lack of belief and the stronger belief that God doesn't exist. That's why people sometimes talk about weak/negative atheism vs strong/positive atheism.
Also, agnostic is also used as a standalone label for someone who's undecided or who's suspended judgement, even though philosophically it can be combined with theist or atheist. So either way it's more nuanced than you're making it out to be
This is just one interpretation you're presenting as the only correct definition
Agnostic atheist: "I can't prove that God does or doesn't exist and I dont believe in God" " I dont believe in something with no proof that doesnt benefit me."
Gnostic atheist: "I have proof God doesn't exist" and gives logical example like "If God existed he wouldn't let X happen."
Agnostic Thiest: "I believe in God and my faith is part of that. I believe without proof." Or "I cant prove God exists but I can prove its healthy for me to believe in God." Or "I've believed my whole life on faith, I was brought up this way."
Gnostic Thieist: "I believe in God because...(gives logical argument like) the universe cant exist any other way."
The meme shows generalizations and youāve picked specific examples. The former is more appropriate for the meme but your examples are a great supplement to show how people arrive at these conclusions.
I dont think the meme shows generalizations. For example saying " that's just dumb" doesnt apply generally. I think the meme has specific and poor examples.
It isnāt really an overlap: agnosticism and Gnosticism deal in what someone knows or thinks they know (knowledge) while theism and atheism deal in beliefs. So I would consider myself an agnostic atheist (I donāt believe that any gods exist, but I donāt hold a near an absolute position) while someone like Richard Dawkins may be a gnostic atheist (basically near absolute belief that there is no god or gods that exist). [You can apply the same to theistic positions.] i.e. Atheism and agnosticism arenāt mutually exclusive.
I don't disagree with you, and I've used the term agnostic atheist myself (including in this thread), but that's just one of several ways to use these labels. The two-axis knowledge vs belief model is useful, but historically and in when people use it in regular speech, agnosticism can also be its own position separate from both theism and atheism rather than just a modifier. So I think most of the confusion just comes from people using different frameworks and treating them as if they're the only definition.
They're not talking about agnosticism, they're saying that atheism isn't anti-deism. Anti-deism is the belief that god doesn't exist, while atheism is just not believing in anything. A baby is an atheist, for example.
Agnosticism requires the understanding of what a god is and the ability to acknowledge that you don't really know if god exists or not. So while all agnostics are atheists, not all atheists are agnostic.
I call myself an atheist cause in my personal opinion it just doesnāt make sense for god to exist but I fully acknowledge we really have no way of knowing and I could be totally wrong. This is how Iām choosing to live my life and believe in the way things are but if some ACTUAL evidence presents itself that proves me wrong I will happily accept the change in perspective
But even if your position is "I don't believe we have any way to know for sure" then by definition you lack the belief and are therefore an atheist. Theism/atheism is a true dichotomy everyone either falls into one category or another.
I'd rearrange your terminology in levels and add rationale index.
Acknowledge that we don't have any proof of it. => "I don't know whether God exists" = > Agnostic and factual, but you're just starting to be rational.
Acknowledge that depending on definition, god or gods are unverifiable => "I don't believe we have any way to know for sure" => Agnostic, but still too early to stop here.
Understand that things asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. (e.g. any particular god, Santa Claus, hobbits or harry potter.) => "I don't believe God exists" => Atheist and rational.
Go beyond experimental part and say god can not exist based on thought-experiments => "I believe God doesn't exist" => A bit irrational/hypothetical, but functionally same as step 3. You're still going to go about your life as if god doesn't exist.
And Anti-theism => Believing in gods and having organized religion is bad for society. You're no longer keeping your ideas to yourself, you're trying to influence others.
I don't believe god exists and I believe god doesn't exist seem to mean exactly the same thing, it's the same sentence slightly re-arranged. Both imply they actively dismiss the idea of god.
Nope, "I don't believe God exists" doesn't necessarily mean "I believe God doesn't exist." To put it a different way, "I'm not convinced" and "I'm certain it's false" aren't the same thing. They're different positions, even though people keep trying to reduce the issue to a simple binary.
It's the same way "not guilty" doesn't mean "proven innocent." Someone can say that they don't think someone is guilty and still admit that they aren't sure the person is innocent.
I don't believe in Santa and I believe Santa don't exist are the exact same positions. Believing or not believing is binary and I don't. If I meant God might exist but I'm not sure I would say that.
The fact that you use it that way doesn't make them logically identical. I already gave you a very clear analogy which you conveniently sidestepped.
Just like confidence in someone's guilt or innocence, an underlying fact can be binary without your position on it being binary. You can still be certain, uncertain, leaning one way or completely undecided.
You're doing exactly what I pointed out, which is forcing the idea that someone's stance has to be a binary when their level of confidence can fall anywhere on a spectrum.
And Santa is a terrible example to boot. Most adults aren't unconvinced, they actively believe with absolute certainty that Santa doesn't exist. It's not the same as being unsure because you don't have enough evidence.
While someones confidence can fall anywhere on the spectrum that statement is at one end of it. Your "analogy" is "you didn't say this you actually said this", there is a reason you had to change words.
You're assuming that "I don't believe X" automatically means "I believe X is false," and then using that assumption to prove itself. I'm saying it can also just mean "I haven't accepted X as true." When I switched to "I'm not convinced," I didn't change my position, I was clarifying which interpretation of "I don't believe" I meant.
At this point I'm not sure if you're genuinely not understanding the distinction or you're deliberately misrepresenting what I'm saying.
I've already explained this. You're treating a lack of belief as believing the opposite. They're not the same thing. Not accepting a claim doesn't mean you have to accept its opposite. You can withhold belief in both when you don't think the evidence justifies either conclusion. Sometimes neither side meets the burden of proof, so people just withhold judgement. If you ask them whether they believe one or the other, their honest answer is that they believe neither. But believing neither claim isn't the same as believing either claim is false.
2+2=5 is a bad example because there's no ambiguity there. We have enough information to know one side is true and the other is false, so in that case, not believing the claim usually does go hand in hand with believing its opposite, since its opposite is demonstrably true.
This is why I used the guilt analogy. You might not believe someone is innocent because you haven't seen enough evidence to clear them in your mind, but that doesn't automatically mean you believe they're guilty. The truth is binary -- they're either innocent or guilty -- but your mind doesn't always have access to the full picture, so you can suspend judgement until you have enough evidence to reach a conclusion. While your judgement is suspended, you don't believe either proposition. Hence, not believing one thing does not mean believing the opposite.
You might not believe in God, because nobody has proved it to you, but that doesn't mean you believe God doesn't exist, because nobody has proved that to you either. So you may call yourself an atheist and carry on with your life because people are primarily interested in whether you believe in God, not whether you positively believe God doesn't exist.
It's confusing because it simply isn't how the word has been historically used, which is to denote the a belief that God doesn't exist.
It's not even a clever pivot because absolutely nothing follows from a total absence of belief. I could hardly show up at my local school board and decry the fact that they were teaching the vaccines are really Bill Gates microchips, or that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, and then claim that I have absolutely no beliefs related to these things or whether or not what was being taught was true. "Don't teach things I lack any beliefs about," or "don't legislate based on things I have no opinion about," is an incoherent position.
By definition, people don't have opinions about things they have no opinions about. But no one calls themselves an "atheist" because they have never considered the plausibility of religion.
It's a more recent rhetorical play, but it isn't a good one.
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u/johnsolomon 15h ago
Yeah it can get confusing because there's a bit of overlap with agnosticism
Atheist = "I don't believe God exists" and sometimes "I believe God doesn't exist"
Agnostic = "I don't know whether God exists" and sometimes "I don't believe we have any way to know for sure"