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[Grakelin]

I do not understand why you continue to say that not believing something exists and believing that something does not exist is difference. Your analogies do not fit the description.

If the individual is uncertain, they are Agnostic, not Atheist. If you leave your piece of paper blank while the other person writes 'God', you don't just not have a belief system. You believe there is nothing on the page.

[Neruz]

Because the absense of an opinion is not in itself an opinion.

It's not saying "I believe that there is no God" it's saying "When you say there is a God, i do not believe you."

[Chris_24]

Wow.

Anyway, last time I was here Siquo said that all beliefs deserve respect. I'm wondering why, especially when those beliefs affect other people as much as lots of religious beliefs do (or theists trying to make them affect other people). Obviously respect their right to believe, but when people start talking about their beliefs shouldn't you (if you want to) tell them what you think, without having to worry about offending them? They brought it up, after all.

EDIT:
No, agnostic and atheist are on different axes (is that the right term?)
agnosticism refers to knowing, (a)theism to belief or non-belief.

Tell you what. Remember my last post where I talked about the scale of belief? Let's use this. Copied from the first site I found:

1.Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
2.De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3.Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4.Pure Agnostic: God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.
5.Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6.De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7.Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.

Most atheists are 6, most theists are 1.
Actually it probably won't clear up the atheism religion/non debate, but still...

EDIT 2.0: Meh, what Neruz said
On second thoughts, that scale doesn't really clear up the debate at all. Whoops.

EDIT 3.0: Not going to post again, but what Mr. Wiggles said below me

[MrWiggles]

Belief should be respect only so much you're allowed to have them. They however like all other philos, and ideas merit discussion and debate.

A respect that it shouldn't be discussed critically is silly.

[Cheeetar]

I do not understand why you continue to say that not believing something exists and believing that something does not exist is difference. Your analogies do not fit the description.

If the individual is uncertain, they are Agnostic, not Atheist. If you leave your piece of paper blank while the other person writes 'God', you don't just not have a belief system. You believe there is nothing on the page.

By the very name, atheism is a-theism. Not theism. It is not the belief there is no god. It is no belief in a god. It is the lack of belief in a god. An atheist is bereft of belief in a god. An atheist is not necessarily one who believes that there is no god, it is merely one that has no belief that there is a god.

[Ampersand]

By conflating Atheism with Religion, you cloud the meaning. It is a semantic argument that proves nothing and doesn't actually add anything of substance to the argument. If you personally feel that you must argue your points on the grounds that Atheism is a religion, then more power to you. I personally do not care, because 'Religion' is just a word, a label that can be arbitrarily applied to whatever you want it to apply to.

Even Neruz' definitions are flaws, as there are plenty of religions, such as Confucianism, Jainism, and some forms of Buddhism, hold no solid beliefs concerning the origins of the Universe.

I feel that a better definition of religion is, "an A priori set of beliefs and dogma" and stop there. The position of the atheist is simply that knowledge cannot be held prior to experience, the a posteriori position.

[MrWiggles]

Why? Even a few pages ago I said some sects of buddist, long with few other choice philo are atheistic. *shrugs*
There no issue with them have no gods and a none belief in god.  I dont see it contradictory.

Being an atheist is not self exclusionary of belief in general.

[Neruz]

Confucianism's state of being a religion is heavily contested, many feel that it is an ethical and philosophical system, not a religion. I'm pretty sure Buddism does postulate the cause of the universe being something along the lines of "The Universe exists because it does" and Jainism does indeed have beliefs about the cause of the universe, those beliefs being that the universe is cyclical in nature and has no beginning nor end.

Buddism would probably qualify as Atheism however, as i'm fairly sure that Buddist beliefs do not include God or Gods. Budda is powerful, but is ultimately a man, not a God.


Also, as Wiggles said, belief in God or Gods is not required for a Religion. Scientology is a religion, despite having no Gods in sight.

[Siquo]

Chris_24, that "scale of belief in a god" is so wrong it's not even false. Note that #1-#7 all have the same amount of belief, just in something different.

The discussion of whether atheism is a religion is kind of moot. Neruz' definition is clearly inadequate, many religions do not have all the qualities he describes. Science may be a religion (apart from being "Science", I'll call this Scienceism), atheism probably isn't. There are also atheists who don't believe in science, for instance. They have no shared rituals or other beliefs that define them as a group.

I still stand by my previous point, atheism is a belief. There is no word for none-belief because that is neigh to impossible to achieve for a conscious mind. Descartes tried that, but failed miserably, in my opinion.
What he did was:

• Clear his mind of all that he knew through meditation.
• Wander in his empty mind.
• Saw that he himself was wandering.
• There was thought, where there was nothing else, therefore, he was.
• He could analyse his thoughts and see them.
• He could also see flaws in his thoughts.
• But if he could see flaws, he could also imagine flawless.
• If he can imagine flawlessness from nothing, then flawlessness must exist.
• Therefore God exists.
• 
• Profit!

He kept on believing, even when he tried to empty his mind of all beliefs.

[Cheeetar]

I don't get it.

[dreiche2]

Science may be a religion (apart from being "Science", I'll call this Scienceism)

No, it's not. Any definition that would lead to science, in general, being classified as religion, would lead to so many things being classified as a religion that the term would totally lose its common meaning.

I do not understand why you continue to say that not believing something exists and believing that something does not exist is difference. Your analogies do not fit the description.

If the individual is uncertain, they are Agnostic, not Atheist. If you leave your piece of paper blank while the other person writes 'God', you don't just not have a belief system. You believe there is nothing on the page.

By the very name, atheism is a-theism. Not theism. It is not the belief there is no god. It is no belief in a god. It is the lack of belief in a god. An atheist is bereft of belief in a god. An atheist is not necessarily one who believes that there is no god, it is merely one that has no belief that there is a god.

I think you guys are having a discussion about a red herring here. I'm actually with Grakelin in that atheism, in any form but agnosticism, does imply a statement of belief, namely "I believe there is no god", or "I believe there is no god relevant to me", or "I believe that the Christian (etc.) god does not exist".

However, the crux is that belief, in general, does not imply religion or faith or whatever:

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

There.

I can believe that string theory is true (despite lack of evidence), I can believe that special relativity is true (with evidence, but that doesn't mean the theory can't be false), I can believe that the moon is smaller than the earth, or I can believe that Obama is better for the world than Bush, and none of these statements have anything to do with religion.

[Siquo]

There, dreiche2 said it. That is almost what a belief is. I'd like to rephrase that:

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true or false.

Note that I did not say Science is a religion or can be viewed as such, I say that there are lots of people in the world who treat Science as if it were a religion. Some mystical set of rules, destined to find the Absolute Truth of the universe.

I absolutely love Science. Therefore, whenever someone treats it as a religion (ie: having All the Answers), I get upset and start beating them to death.

[dreiche2]

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true or false.

No reason to rephrase it. Saying a statement is false is saying the negation of the statement is true, so that's covered already.

Note that I did not say Science is a religion or can be viewed as such, I say that there are lots of people in the world who treat Science as if it were a religion. Some mystical set of rules, destined to find the Absolute Truth of the universe.

Well, it kind of makes sense as a comparison/metaphor, but it's still a little bit of a hyperbole I reckon. Accepting something unquestionably does not imply a religion, although one might associate such behaviour with religion (and it is surely against the spirit of science). As for striving for Truth or something, I guess that's just a form of idealism.

No, if many people would really treat science as a religion, then it would be a religion.

[Siquo]

No reason to rephrase it. Saying a statement is false is saying the negation of the statement is true, so that's covered already.

Only in logic. Greek orthodox tradition, for instance, sais you can only describe God in double negatives:
You cannot say that God does not exist.
Language is a lot richer than logic is.

No, if many people would really treat science as a religion, then it would be a religion.

No. Science as a philosophy itself has pretty much ruled out a lot of things it could cover, it can never answer a "why" because that's just out of scope. It cannot describe certain things because it limits itself. This is pure Science and it's beautiful.

There are however a lot of people who do believe that Science holds All Answers, and treat it as a religion. To differentiate, I call that Scienceism. It is a corruption of the ideals of pure Science, and a foothold for abberrations such as Intelligent Design, and for Christian fundamentalists who feel threatened by this newfangled "religion". Truth is that Science shouldn't and can't ever replace any religion.
Believing in the dogmas of science (such as uniformity of law and uniformity of processes across time and space, that there is a real world irrespective of our senses) does not automatically make you a Scienceist, by the way. It does limit your worldview, however, in my humble opinion.

[Sergius]

I am not an Atheist, as I have stated several times in this thread.

You seem to feel very strongly against being an Atheist. Why is that? Maybe, it is because you really don't like atheists?

I do not understand why you continue to say that not believing something exists and believing that something does not exist is difference. Your analogies do not fit the description.

The same reason that NOT HAVING a driving license, is not the same as having a license to NOT DRIVE.