semantics, strong-atheism, weak-atheismRecently I asked a friend if he was an atheist, he replied he wasn’t. I asked him if he believed in god, and he said he didn’t. I told him that this means he’s an atheist, since an atheist simply means someone who doesn’t believe in a god, but he told me that atheist means someone who is actively against religion, not someone who is indifferent to religion even if he doesn’t believe in a god.
Similarly, I’ve seen that some people don’t want to call Australian PM Julia Gillard an atheist, although she has clearly said that she doesn’t believe in a god.
What does this mean? What’s the real meaning of being an atheist? And why do people so often automatically assume that being an atheist means you must be anti religion?
Very simply, an “atheist” is someone who “lacks belief in any gods”. A term often used to describe those who are actively anti-religion is “anti-theist”.
The literal translation of the two parts of the word are: a (without) theos (God). So Atheism is an -ism (suffix usually used for an Ideology) that is about having no God.
This is the literal meaning. What is means in everyday life is that an Atheist (a practicioner of Atheism) is secular (acts without taking any religious belief into account) and furthermore does not believe in the existence of a God.
Atheism is not anti-religious in itself, but many so called “new atheists” do oppose religion. But like I said, this is not because of them being atheistic, but because they want to convey their atheism and therefore attack religion.
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in any gods or the supernatural.
The active opposition to religion is called Anti-Theism. Some call it “New Atheism” (usually with reference to the group of authors who had a best-selling anti-religious or atheistic books in the last 10 years like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, etc.) although there is nothing new about it, or “Gnu Atheism” (the more general population of the recent wave of atheists who are anti-theistics).
Many religious or just uneducated people will claim that atheism is attack on religion and god, but this is very often a deliberate disinformation.
Edit: I removed my original opinion about “atheism vs. agnosticism”
Atheism is just the lack of belief in any god; simple enough.
A side effect of atheism is not being subject to the propaganda that goes with most religions. Most religions tell you to be good (or moral, if you prefer a more scholarly term), and then go on to praise themselves as founts of morality because they encourage being good. The idea that religious people are good, moral, respect-worthy people is pounded into churchgoers with the same kind of relentlessness and universality as the DeBeer’s campaign which convinced America that all men must buy their fiancés diamond rings.
Outside the smoke of these doctrines, atheists become aware that religions actually contribute a lot to societal problems. Discrimination against gays is a common problem that hurts up to 10% of society for no reason other than religion; the neglect of medical care in favor of prayer has killed a large number of children, as has religious endorsement of corporal punishment. Christianity’s ideas of original sin and eternal hellfire leave scars on the impressionable minds of many other children, and religious sexual repression ironically leads America to lead world statistics for STDs, teen pregnancy and abortion.
Some atheists choose not to take a side in the conflict between the secular and the religious, or to espouse the view that everyone is entitled to his own religious views. Others (like me, admittedly) feel that the damage to humanity caused by religions (and I hadn’t even started on Islam!) needs to be adressed, and an attempt should be made to either stop the religious from inflicting damage on themselves and others, or to let go of their erroneous beliefs. For propagating against religion, we are -rightly- called anti-theists.
I am just a plain old Atheist. Meaning I dont believe in Gods
However when I watch a video like the one below I actually feel sick i feel hate, despise and loath the people who would allow Ken Ham to do this to children. In my mind it is child abuse. My anti-religion is different from my Atheism as I am sure that are lots of religious people who are against this sort of behaviour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLeQkuTGSOs
PM Gillard likely doesn’t want to strongly identity as Atheist for political reasons. I think her publicist is scared of Atheist discrimination!
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