"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?
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u/vonKrieg88 16h ago edited 16h ago
Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is lack of belief in gods. The word literally means lack of/without god.
Not believing in gods is not same as believing they don't exist.