I find it odd that when filling out a form that asked me what my religion is one of the choices is Atheist.
What now? That is the that opposite of religion.
Philosophically, that’s true. But I understand putting it in the religion column for the purpose of statistics. And ‘none’ and ‘atheist’ are two different possible answers. You can have no religion but believe very fervently in a god of your own conception.
Wouldn’t that be an agnostic?
Wouldn’t what be an agnostic? “None” for religion? No, as I said, you can not adhere to any religion but still have a devout belief in a god.
Humans are so complicated
True. And unfortunately, things sometimes have to be simplified for the purposes of statistics.
Honestly, I would rather something like a census have an accurate count of atheists than leave it off the form because it isn’t technically correct to call it a religion.
No, agnosticism is more about the fact that God cannot be proven or disproven.
As for atheism being a religious choice: that’s exactly what it is, it’s a choice to not believe in any religion.
If you and I met on the street, and I were to ask you what your religion is, how would you answer me?
(My guess is you’d say you are an atheist. Same as that dropdown is asking you what your religion is.)
You can really go down a pretty deep rabbit hole here.
Strictly speaking, atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or gods. A-without, theism-belief in god(s)
There are religions out there that don’t have a figure you can easily identify as a god, certain types of Buddhism for example, and so you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in calling followers of those religions “atheists”
But that’s of course somewhat at odds with how we normally use the term atheism, and them prevent confusion we’d normally refer to these as “non-theistic religions” instead of “atheistic religions”
You can also get into the weeds about what even counts as a god, for example, certain types of taoism/daoism don’t really have any particular god-like figures, but they do have the tao/dao (roughly translating to “path” sort of a natural order the the universe that you should try to be in sync with.) Is the dao a god? It’s certainly not a personal god, something you can pray to and expect to get an answer back from, or that can/will intervene in the universe, it just sort of is and you’re either on the path or you’re not. You could certainly argue that it is a god, if an impersonal one, but it’s definitely not what most people would think of as a god.
You can also have religions that don’t really have anything they’d identify as a “god” but might have other lesser supernatural entities, things like spirits, demons, angels, ghosts, fairies, djinn, etc.
There’s also UFO religions, where aliens are the primary figures and often a lot of their supernatural abilities might be explained away as just very advanced science is centuries beyond our own capabilities.
Going the other direction, you could theoretically have someone who believes that there is some sort of god out there, but makes no attempt to pray to them, worship them, doesn’t take part in any sort of ritual or culture having to do with that belief, and pretty much just acknowledges that the god exists but that its existence has no particular impact on that person’s life or the universe in general. You could very well call that person a non-religious theist. Many deists would fall into this sort of category.
Something I wish got a little more attention in these sorts of discussions is ignosticism/igtheism/theological noncognitivism, which is the camp I put myself into when I’m feeling really nitpicky, and I like to sum up as:
Theism: I believe that there is a god or gods
Atheism: I do not believe that there are any gods
Agnosticism: I’m not sure if there is a god, and maybe we can’t ever know for sure
Ignosticism: What the fuck do you people even mean by “god.” No one has come up with a clear definition yet so this argument is pointless.
Whenever I’ve been asked I always say no religion
Atheism is not a religion or worldview.
Atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or God’s.
Many atheists including myself adhere to the statement of simply being unconvinced that there is a God or having no credible evidence to indicate a God’s existence.
Maybe the form we were filling out legitimately needed that information but typically outside of a very specific set of data. I don’t see why any form would ever ask you what your religion or lack of religion might be.
In the medical world plenty of religions forbid certain things… like blood transfusions. I can’t really think of other places but I’m sure there are other legitimate use cases.
But I usually just trike out stuff that is irrelevant. If they seem it relevant they can press the issue and explain why.
Just put Pastafarianism
In my country we have “Konfessionslos” -> non-denominational.
Non-denominational is still religious/spiritual here, like Christians that aren’t affiliated with a specific church.
Hm weird, I left religion and now I am labeled as “Konfessionslos”. Dont pay anything to a church or anything that has to do with this fairytale story.
It could be that atheiests are lumped in with people who aren’t members of an organized religion where you live.
Depends if you define religion as ‘act of worship’, or ‘belief aystem’, I guess. Bhuddism would fail the first, but not the second.
I usually think of religion as the belief in some sort of God or religious figure whether it’s the Christian God or Vishnu or Odin or whatever it seems that it’s more complicated than I had considered previously.
Yes, that’s fair - depends on how the definition of the survey is worded. So something like satanism wouldn’t be a religion to you? I get it confused with the church of Satan, but one or the other isn’t about the worship of Satan. My grasp of Buddhism is it’s about a belief system, one that believes following his example that leads to a better life/ inner peace, rather than straight worship, or asking him to use divine providence to make ones life better.
It’s all a bit vague, but one could say “Atheist is a religion and Agnostic is none, because Atheists believe there is no god or afterlife” but often Agnostic is considered a type of Atheist.
FWIW, you can have belief in the afterlife without a belief in some type of deity. For example, some forms of shammanism don’t recognize any form of deity, and instead focus on the spirits of ancestors or of the natural world, but not as a divine thing.
I’m fine with it on like a drop down or a form. No need to make things needlessly complicated. It’s basically ‘none’ except it’s clear. ‘none’ could be misleading, atheist is exact.
Doesn’t really bother me. I just thought it was kind of strange. Now that I’ve seen some of the responses here, I’m realizing that things are a little more complex than I thought, so I need to adjust some of my opinions.
There are different categories. I consider myself agnostic atheist. That pretty much means I don’t really know, but all this man made stuff is horse shit.
