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Agreed. Everyone already has a philosophy (and a religion), though many people don't know it, and some would deny it. The question isn't whether to have a phi

Agreed. Everyone already has a philosophy (and a religion), though many people don't know it, and some would deny it. The question isn't whether to have a philosophy but which philosophy to have. EDIT: since some have asked what I meant by "everyone already has...a religion," I meant that even something like atheism is a religion. It has a story of the origin of the universe, various accounts for why and how you should live your life, and an eschatology (where the universe is headed). Many atheists think they don't have a religion because they don't worship a personal God, when in reality atheism holds that the universe itself is functionally an impersonal, all-ordering deity. In my experience, many atheists also seem to proselytize with a religious fervor as well (famously, Dawkins et al.).

randlet 6y ago
As someone who would deny having a religion, can you clarify what you mean by that?
- keiferski 6y ago
  Not the commenter you replied to, but I recommend the book A Secular Age by Charles Taylor as an 874-page answer to your question. The short version: modern secularity is really more like a new development, where new influences interact in a (still essentially) Christian, Western context, and not a mere subtraction of previous religious attitudes. Really fascinating book, I can't recommend it enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
  - randlet 6y ago
    It's still not clear to me how that implies I have a religion. Being influenced, consciously or subconsciously does not mean I have a religion, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Well, it basically comes down to how you are defining religion. The idea being that defining it as inherently supernatural is impossible and simply a linguistic reshuffling, when it's really more like "you've simply started calling your belief system something else, but it's actually still just Christian." Keep in mind here that Christianity, like all religions, is a really big tent. Put in other terms, the Western world in 2020 likes to act as if it reinvented itself afresh in the 1700-1800-1900s, but in reality, everything about "secular" knowledge has been formed in thousands of years of Christian culture. For example, the idea of universal human worth, human rights, and subsequently democracy (in the sense of every human being, not the Ancient Greek kind), is absolutely rooted in a Christian context. Had a different society had the industrial revolution first, things might be very different. Or to ask a different question: if your values and actions indicate you as a group of X, but you vehemently deny (only with words) being a member of X, what does that mean? Is expressed spoken belief the final decider? Or does action factor in too? This is a really long-winded way of saying that what "religion" is defined as is constantly changing. The book I recommended explains it much better than I can.
      - acqq 6y ago
        Attempting to redefine "religion" to include "all the values people have" is a poor trick in distraction. Exactly in the Western world "religion" really means the belief in a number of supernatural deities, at least one much more powerful than the others, and/or in some form of life after death and supernatural punishment, and the institutions and organizations supporting such beliefs, dependent on their active believers. Everything else is simply not "a religion." And I also have a whole book to cite: https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatible/dp/0143108263 https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatib... "Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible" by Jerry A. Coyne "Evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions." Also, Merriam-Webster Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion "Definition of religion 1a : the state of a religious (e.g. "a nun in her 20th year of religion") 1b(1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural 1b(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance 2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith" If you think "4" fits with the bad attempt to redefine the real meaning, it in to explain the use in the sentence like "rock'n'roll is his religion."
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    Secular humanisn owes a lot to ethical principles developed in a religious context, but it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion. Any attempt to push that proposition consistently is likely to devalue the overtly theistic aspects of the religion in question.
    - rrsmtz 6y ago
      > it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview, they weren't born from reason. Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. Why is that unreasonable? I've "adopted" the basic idea of Newton's gravity but deny the fundamental assumptions regarding the flat spacetime and "gravity as just another force" because general relativity showed those to be incorrect.
      - Nacdor 6y ago
        > Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview Animals behave ethically/morally and they have no religion. It's possible that ethics were first written within a theistic context but that has no bearing on how they were created.
      - FabHK 6y ago
        > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. Why? Are you saying that just because Islam stresses peace, hospitality, and philanthropy, that one cannot be peaceful, hospitable, and philanthropic without reasonably adopting Islam?
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview, they weren't born from reason. In many case, they were both; the existence of a theistic worldview does not prevent the application of reason. > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. But we do adopt the relevant foundational assumptions, just not the irrelevant ones, where the conclusions are shared. Of course, the conclusions are often different, because post-Enlightenment society often rejects substantive, morally significant elements of its precursors (in some cases, pre-existing religions have adapted to this and adopted, in whole or in part, Enlightenment values as well.)
- shoreofwonder 6y ago
  Every decision you make is made under a great deal of uncertainty. A person typically holds overarching beliefs that govern those decisions. For example, how much value do you put into close relationships versus distant ones? Is charity worthwhile if it helps someone who can't help you back? Maybe someone who doesn't even know you?
  - randlet 6y ago
    How does that imply I have a religion? Doesn't religion have some element of the supernatural by definition? edit: reworded.
    - narraturgy 6y ago
      No, it doesn't. While the discussion of the definition of religion would result in its own holy war, suffice to say that defining religion based of the involvement of the supernatural is cyclical logic used to discredit any opposing religion. "Pagans believe in the supernatural, the sun isn't a mythical being! Only belief in my God is grounded in reality" is not functionally different from "Theists believe in the supernatural, there is no mythical God! Only my belief in the lack of anything beyond my current understanding is grounded in reality."
      - randlet 6y ago
        If we can't agree on a definition for religion, then saying I belong to a religion is a fairly meaningless statement no?
        animal_spirits 6y ago
        Linguistics are the crux of all philosophical discussions
      - username90 6y ago
        Atheists don't believe they know everything, they just believe that people are full of shit when they talk about Gods or similar. It doesn't require any belief in the existence of or lack of supernatural things, just figuring out that it is much more likely that people are manipulative liars than that they got some profound message from some higher being.
- NikolaNovak 6y ago
  My personal, perhaps cynical perspective: religious people expanding definition of "religion" into meaninglessness. In most languages, "religion" will imply an ordered belief in a supernatural entity and set of accompanying practices. It is NOT a synonym for all belief, philosophy, ethical framework, world paradigms, etc. If it does become a synonym, then we'll simply need a NEW word to distinguish between "belief in supernatural entity" vs "no belief in a supernatural entity"
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Interestingly free will is one such supernatural entity. If you don’t believe we are zombies you hold a supernatural belief.
  - brlewis 6y ago
    >In most languages, "religion" will imply an ordered belief in a supernatural entity and set of accompanying practices Buddhism is considered a religion and does not fit that description. Your emphatic capslock notwithstanding, there's no single defining element. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
    - jhbadger 6y ago
      How so? Reincarnation is every bit as supernatural as Christian Heaven, and there are accompanying practices that are supposed to influence the outcome of that via karma.
      - brlewis 6y ago
        I did not think impersonal entities were what the gp post was talking about; apologies if they were. But even including impersonal supernatural entities, the wikipedia page I cited shows that's not a defining characteristic.
        mannykannot 6y ago
        It does not follow, from the claim that belief in supernatural entities is not a defining characteristic of religion, that the rejection of supernatural entities is a religion. You might be able to argue that they are orthogonal issues, but then a lot of religious people would disagree vehemently with you!
avs733 6y ago
“cannot claim to have no epistemology. Those who so claim have nothing but a bad epistemology” ~Bateson, 1991, Sacred unity : Further steps to an ecology of mind Owen Barfield calls it 'the residue of unresolved positivism'
ElFitz 6y ago
Being an atheist doesn’t imply belief in the Big Bang, evolutionism or any way of life. One could be an atheist convinced that dinosaurs are a fabrication, nothing more than funny looking rocks some weird junkie decided to give some absurd meaning to, that the universe has always been the way it is, that the Romans never existed, and that we should all live in the mountains, only eating whatever we find in some specific dark caves filled with the appropriately colored glowing mushrooms. All for no other reason than that it makes them feel good.
vcxy 6y ago
So, you seem to have only met a certain kind of atheist. I don't really want to say more about that in particular because it feels like I will be accused of proselytizing. What I will say is that I think you're reading too much into what not believing in deities may or may imply about someone. Edit: I should also ask, from your edit, what do you mean by "deity" and "universe" when you say that atheism holds that the universe is a deity?
goto11 6y ago
> my experience, many atheists also seem to proselytize with a religious fervor as well That is a total non-sequitur since lots of religions does not proselytize. So clearly this is not a defining quality of religion but rather a characteristic shared between some religions and some non-religious movements and ideologies.
FabHK 6y ago
> many atheists also seem to proselytize with a religious fervor as well Could that be availability bias? You don't hear from the many that don't proselytise. > even something like atheism is a religion That's nonsense, a rhetorical subterfuge to defend religion ("oh, but you too have a religion.") maybe. Atheism has none of the things you claim (origin story and eschatology, prescriptions on how to live). Some (atheistic) sciences indeed give us the former two, and some (atheistic) Weltanschauungen (such as humanism) the latter, but that doesn't bestow religious status on atheism itself.
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  Hmmmm isn't climate change and enviromentalism in general the eschatology of the average modern atheist? And they do proselytize quite a bit. The average atheist is as separate from the process of science as the average NFL fan is from actually scoring a touchdown. They're both spectators under a similar set of illusions regarding their claims as to their relevance in each ones game. Go TEAM SCIENCE!!!
  - redler 6y ago
    Climate change can be extrapolated, through science, to a potentially very challenging future environment. Eschatology is about religious constructs like judgment by deities, prophecies, life after death, "end times", and the like. Believe in the latter if you like, but the former is about evidence, statistics, logic, and reasoning.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    No more than climate denial is the eschatology of Christianity.
    - dpoochieni 6y ago
      At least we are getting somewhere now :)
  - FabHK 6y ago
    It might be, for many (not for me, for example), but it certainly isn't a defining or necessary feature. Future atheists, for example, with entirely different concerns (and eschatology) would still properly call themselves atheists if they're without belief in some deity. The average liberal might like their caffè latte, but neither classical nor progressive liberalism contains a commitment to certain beverages.
leftyted 6y ago
I understand what you're saying but I disagree: atheism is not a religion. The verb "is" does not mean "fulfills the same function as". Just because atheists have to answer the same questions as theists does not make atheism a religion. If you want a word to describe what atheism and religion have in common, I'd go with "spirituality". Not in the sense of "burning incense" or "believing in ghosts" but rather in the sense of holding beliefs that are not rational and deciding to care about the world and about humanity in particular.
- spijdar 6y ago
  I'd offer this idea in return -- religion may be the collective, social expression of individual spirituality, usually fuzzy and generalized beyond an individual's own specific beliefs in order to promote social harmony and cohesion. Just as some people have "religious" beliefs that are very eclectic and isolated from organized religion, a sort of personal spirituality, I think there are atheists with particular and non-social views. I also think many atheists, sharing similar "spirituality", find a similar kind of comfort in "communing" with other "believers", and socially expressing their beliefs with other "believers". Regardless of the specifics of said spirituality, I believe we do see some commonalities between "theists and atheists".
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    This way of looking at it takes all the theology out of the issue. That's fine by me, so long as this isn't the motte position in a motte-and-bailey argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
philippoi 6y ago
I've been thinking about this issue of unknown, unacknowledged, or perhaps subconscious religion a lot lately. I grew up religious but am now an atheist, and though I haven't sought to replace it component-wise, I've been observing de facto beliefs in myself and others that wouldn't normally be recognized as such because they aren't packaged as a lot. What makes me note similarities between acknowledged religious beliefs and unacknowledged ones is their function. If you look at the desired effects, they have the same aim: guidance in making decisions, association with a group sharing a particular view, value judgments both aesthetic and moral. The religions we created are a reflection of our psychology and physiology, and often the tensions between those two. It seems to me at least that a name brand religion often fills a life module that's required for a human to operate. The fact that it might be unlabeled might make it more difficult to identify, but it doesn't nullify its existence.
ADayOnEarth 6y ago
You have a strange view of atheism.
sreque 6y ago
Spot on about atheism. If any belief system is not a religion it would be agnosticism; atheism is as much a religion as any other.
eivarv 6y ago
You can't be serious. Actual religions have sets of ideas (rules, creation-myths, alternative epistemologies, etc.), whereas atheism has none. The term literally means "without god(s)" (which was a defining feature of religions by those who coined the term). It is an absence of belief (at least in the way the term is commonly used; There are "atheistic religions" in the sense that they don't have a deity). Atheism is to religion as being silent is to speaking – and you're essentially claiming it's just another way of speaking.
- thisiszilff 6y ago
  The charitable interpretation is that most people -- even atheists -- will have a belief system that is functionally equivalent to a religion. > Atheism is to religion as being silent is to speaking – and you're essentially claiming it's just another way of speaking. Another way of saying it is that religions (as we know them) are answers to questions, you can get rid of those answers, disagree with them, etc. but the questions will remain and you will implicitly provide answers to them. Those answers will constitute what your religion is -- albeit one might not examine their answers in any detail.
  - dlkf 6y ago
    You're just redefining "religion" so that the claim is a tautology. You could do this with anything: "Everyone has a God (where 'God' means 'favourite thing')" "Everyone believes in the existence of Hell (where 'hell' means 'being unhappy')" "Everyone believes in the possibility of "salvation" (where 'salvation' means 'self-improvement')" Redefining words so that the original sentence is correct is a tad too "charitable", particularly when the new definition is completely at odds with how everyone uses the word.
  - eivarv 6y ago
    Even this charitable interpretation doesn't make much sense: The only thing "atheists" have in common is that they have a lack of belief – we have no idea what they actually DO believe (people come with various philosophical persuasions, after all). The other way you propose of defining religions is so general and vague that it borders on meaningless, and doesn't deal with the fact that different people have different questions, formulated differently, using different assumptions and caring about the answers to different extents.
msla 6y ago
> I meant that even something like atheism is a religion. This is incoherent because it presupposes "an" atheism, as opposed to a broad range of philosophies which only hold lack of religious faith in common. It's like saying "non-strawberries" is a useful and enlightening category of food.

randlet 6y ago

As someone who would deny having a religion, can you clarify what you mean by that?

keiferski 6y ago
Not the commenter you replied to, but I recommend the book A Secular Age by Charles Taylor as an 874-page answer to your question. The short version: modern secularity is really more like a new development, where new influences interact in a (still essentially) Christian, Western context, and not a mere subtraction of previous religious attitudes. Really fascinating book, I can't recommend it enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
- randlet 6y ago
  It's still not clear to me how that implies I have a religion. Being influenced, consciously or subconsciously does not mean I have a religion, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Well, it basically comes down to how you are defining religion. The idea being that defining it as inherently supernatural is impossible and simply a linguistic reshuffling, when it's really more like "you've simply started calling your belief system something else, but it's actually still just Christian." Keep in mind here that Christianity, like all religions, is a really big tent. Put in other terms, the Western world in 2020 likes to act as if it reinvented itself afresh in the 1700-1800-1900s, but in reality, everything about "secular" knowledge has been formed in thousands of years of Christian culture. For example, the idea of universal human worth, human rights, and subsequently democracy (in the sense of every human being, not the Ancient Greek kind), is absolutely rooted in a Christian context. Had a different society had the industrial revolution first, things might be very different. Or to ask a different question: if your values and actions indicate you as a group of X, but you vehemently deny (only with words) being a member of X, what does that mean? Is expressed spoken belief the final decider? Or does action factor in too? This is a really long-winded way of saying that what "religion" is defined as is constantly changing. The book I recommended explains it much better than I can.
    - acqq 6y ago
      Attempting to redefine "religion" to include "all the values people have" is a poor trick in distraction. Exactly in the Western world "religion" really means the belief in a number of supernatural deities, at least one much more powerful than the others, and/or in some form of life after death and supernatural punishment, and the institutions and organizations supporting such beliefs, dependent on their active believers. Everything else is simply not "a religion." And I also have a whole book to cite: https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatible/dp/0143108263 https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatib... "Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible" by Jerry A. Coyne "Evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions." Also, Merriam-Webster Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion "Definition of religion 1a : the state of a religious (e.g. "a nun in her 20th year of religion") 1b(1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural 1b(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance 2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith" If you think "4" fits with the bad attempt to redefine the real meaning, it in to explain the use in the sentence like "rock'n'roll is his religion."
- mannykannot 6y ago
  Secular humanisn owes a lot to ethical principles developed in a religious context, but it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion. Any attempt to push that proposition consistently is likely to devalue the overtly theistic aspects of the religion in question.
  - rrsmtz 6y ago
    > it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview, they weren't born from reason. Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. Why is that unreasonable? I've "adopted" the basic idea of Newton's gravity but deny the fundamental assumptions regarding the flat spacetime and "gravity as just another force" because general relativity showed those to be incorrect.
    - Nacdor 6y ago
      > Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview Animals behave ethically/morally and they have no religion. It's possible that ethics were first written within a theistic context but that has no bearing on how they were created.
    - FabHK 6y ago
      > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. Why? Are you saying that just because Islam stresses peace, hospitality, and philanthropy, that one cannot be peaceful, hospitable, and philanthropic without reasonably adopting Islam?
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview, they weren't born from reason. In many case, they were both; the existence of a theistic worldview does not prevent the application of reason. > Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable. But we do adopt the relevant foundational assumptions, just not the irrelevant ones, where the conclusions are shared. Of course, the conclusions are often different, because post-Enlightenment society often rejects substantive, morally significant elements of its precursors (in some cases, pre-existing religions have adapted to this and adopted, in whole or in part, Enlightenment values as well.)
shoreofwonder 6y ago
Every decision you make is made under a great deal of uncertainty. A person typically holds overarching beliefs that govern those decisions. For example, how much value do you put into close relationships versus distant ones? Is charity worthwhile if it helps someone who can't help you back? Maybe someone who doesn't even know you?
- randlet 6y ago
  How does that imply I have a religion? Doesn't religion have some element of the supernatural by definition? edit: reworded.
  - narraturgy 6y ago
    No, it doesn't. While the discussion of the definition of religion would result in its own holy war, suffice to say that defining religion based of the involvement of the supernatural is cyclical logic used to discredit any opposing religion. "Pagans believe in the supernatural, the sun isn't a mythical being! Only belief in my God is grounded in reality" is not functionally different from "Theists believe in the supernatural, there is no mythical God! Only my belief in the lack of anything beyond my current understanding is grounded in reality."
    - randlet 6y ago
      If we can't agree on a definition for religion, then saying I belong to a religion is a fairly meaningless statement no?
      - animal_spirits 6y ago
        Linguistics are the crux of all philosophical discussions
    - username90 6y ago
      Atheists don't believe they know everything, they just believe that people are full of shit when they talk about Gods or similar. It doesn't require any belief in the existence of or lack of supernatural things, just figuring out that it is much more likely that people are manipulative liars than that they got some profound message from some higher being.
NikolaNovak 6y ago
My personal, perhaps cynical perspective: religious people expanding definition of "religion" into meaninglessness. In most languages, "religion" will imply an ordered belief in a supernatural entity and set of accompanying practices. It is NOT a synonym for all belief, philosophy, ethical framework, world paradigms, etc. If it does become a synonym, then we'll simply need a NEW word to distinguish between "belief in supernatural entity" vs "no belief in a supernatural entity"
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Interestingly free will is one such supernatural entity. If you don’t believe we are zombies you hold a supernatural belief.
- brlewis 6y ago
  >In most languages, "religion" will imply an ordered belief in a supernatural entity and set of accompanying practices Buddhism is considered a religion and does not fit that description. Your emphatic capslock notwithstanding, there's no single defining element. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
  - jhbadger 6y ago
    How so? Reincarnation is every bit as supernatural as Christian Heaven, and there are accompanying practices that are supposed to influence the outcome of that via karma.
    - brlewis 6y ago
      I did not think impersonal entities were what the gp post was talking about; apologies if they were. But even including impersonal supernatural entities, the wikipedia page I cited shows that's not a defining characteristic.
      - mannykannot 6y ago
        It does not follow, from the claim that belief in supernatural entities is not a defining characteristic of religion, that the rejection of supernatural entities is a religion. You might be able to argue that they are orthogonal issues, but then a lot of religious people would disagree vehemently with you!

avs733 6y ago

“cannot claim to have no epistemology. Those who so claim have nothing but a bad epistemology” ~Bateson, 1991, Sacred unity : Further steps to an ecology of mind Owen Barfield calls it 'the residue of unresolved positivism'

ElFitz 6y ago

Being an atheist doesn’t imply belief in the Big Bang, evolutionism or any way of life. One could be an atheist convinced that dinosaurs are a fabrication, nothing more than funny looking rocks some weird junkie decided to give some absurd meaning to, that the universe has always been the way it is, that the Romans never existed, and that we should all live in the mountains, only eating whatever we find in some specific dark caves filled with the appropriately colored glowing mushrooms. All for no other reason than that it makes them feel good.

vcxy 6y ago

So, you seem to have only met a certain kind of atheist. I don't really want to say more about that in particular because it feels like I will be accused of proselytizing. What I will say is that I think you're reading too much into what not believing in deities may or may imply about someone. Edit: I should also ask, from your edit, what do you mean by "deity" and "universe" when you say that atheism holds that the universe is a deity?

goto11 6y ago

> my experience, many atheists also seem to proselytize with a religious fervor as well That is a total non-sequitur since lots of religions does not proselytize. So clearly this is not a defining quality of religion but rather a characteristic shared between some religions and some non-religious movements and ideologies.

FabHK 6y ago

> many atheists also seem to proselytize with a religious fervor as well Could that be availability bias? You don't hear from the many that don't proselytise. > even something like atheism is a religion That's nonsense, a rhetorical subterfuge to defend religion ("oh, but you too have a religion.") maybe. Atheism has none of the things you claim (origin story and eschatology, prescriptions on how to live). Some (atheistic) sciences indeed give us the former two, and some (atheistic) Weltanschauungen (such as humanism) the latter, but that doesn't bestow religious status on atheism itself.

dpoochieni 6y ago
Hmmmm isn't climate change and enviromentalism in general the eschatology of the average modern atheist? And they do proselytize quite a bit. The average atheist is as separate from the process of science as the average NFL fan is from actually scoring a touchdown. They're both spectators under a similar set of illusions regarding their claims as to their relevance in each ones game. Go TEAM SCIENCE!!!
- redler 6y ago
  Climate change can be extrapolated, through science, to a potentially very challenging future environment. Eschatology is about religious constructs like judgment by deities, prophecies, life after death, "end times", and the like. Believe in the latter if you like, but the former is about evidence, statistics, logic, and reasoning.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  No more than climate denial is the eschatology of Christianity.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    At least we are getting somewhere now :)
- FabHK 6y ago
  It might be, for many (not for me, for example), but it certainly isn't a defining or necessary feature. Future atheists, for example, with entirely different concerns (and eschatology) would still properly call themselves atheists if they're without belief in some deity. The average liberal might like their caffè latte, but neither classical nor progressive liberalism contains a commitment to certain beverages.

leftyted 6y ago

I understand what you're saying but I disagree: atheism is not a religion. The verb "is" does not mean "fulfills the same function as". Just because atheists have to answer the same questions as theists does not make atheism a religion. If you want a word to describe what atheism and religion have in common, I'd go with "spirituality". Not in the sense of "burning incense" or "believing in ghosts" but rather in the sense of holding beliefs that are not rational and deciding to care about the world and about humanity in particular.

spijdar 6y ago
I'd offer this idea in return -- religion may be the collective, social expression of individual spirituality, usually fuzzy and generalized beyond an individual's own specific beliefs in order to promote social harmony and cohesion. Just as some people have "religious" beliefs that are very eclectic and isolated from organized religion, a sort of personal spirituality, I think there are atheists with particular and non-social views. I also think many atheists, sharing similar "spirituality", find a similar kind of comfort in "communing" with other "believers", and socially expressing their beliefs with other "believers". Regardless of the specifics of said spirituality, I believe we do see some commonalities between "theists and atheists".
- mannykannot 6y ago
  This way of looking at it takes all the theology out of the issue. That's fine by me, so long as this isn't the motte position in a motte-and-bailey argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

philippoi 6y ago

I've been thinking about this issue of unknown, unacknowledged, or perhaps subconscious religion a lot lately. I grew up religious but am now an atheist, and though I haven't sought to replace it component-wise, I've been observing de facto beliefs in myself and others that wouldn't normally be recognized as such because they aren't packaged as a lot. What makes me note similarities between acknowledged religious beliefs and unacknowledged ones is their function. If you look at the desired effects, they have the same aim: guidance in making decisions, association with a group sharing a particular view, value judgments both aesthetic and moral. The religions we created are a reflection of our psychology and physiology, and often the tensions between those two. It seems to me at least that a name brand religion often fills a life module that's required for a human to operate. The fact that it might be unlabeled might make it more difficult to identify, but it doesn't nullify its existence.

ADayOnEarth 6y ago

You have a strange view of atheism.

sreque 6y ago

Spot on about atheism. If any belief system is not a religion it would be agnosticism; atheism is as much a religion as any other.

eivarv 6y ago

You can't be serious. Actual religions have sets of ideas (rules, creation-myths, alternative epistemologies, etc.), whereas atheism has none. The term literally means "without god(s)" (which was a defining feature of religions by those who coined the term). It is an absence of belief (at least in the way the term is commonly used; There are "atheistic religions" in the sense that they don't have a deity). Atheism is to religion as being silent is to speaking – and you're essentially claiming it's just another way of speaking.

thisiszilff 6y ago
The charitable interpretation is that most people -- even atheists -- will have a belief system that is functionally equivalent to a religion. > Atheism is to religion as being silent is to speaking – and you're essentially claiming it's just another way of speaking. Another way of saying it is that religions (as we know them) are answers to questions, you can get rid of those answers, disagree with them, etc. but the questions will remain and you will implicitly provide answers to them. Those answers will constitute what your religion is -- albeit one might not examine their answers in any detail.
- dlkf 6y ago
  You're just redefining "religion" so that the claim is a tautology. You could do this with anything: "Everyone has a God (where 'God' means 'favourite thing')" "Everyone believes in the existence of Hell (where 'hell' means 'being unhappy')" "Everyone believes in the possibility of "salvation" (where 'salvation' means 'self-improvement')" Redefining words so that the original sentence is correct is a tad too "charitable", particularly when the new definition is completely at odds with how everyone uses the word.
- eivarv 6y ago
  Even this charitable interpretation doesn't make much sense: The only thing "atheists" have in common is that they have a lack of belief – we have no idea what they actually DO believe (people come with various philosophical persuasions, after all). The other way you propose of defining religions is so general and vague that it borders on meaningless, and doesn't deal with the fact that different people have different questions, formulated differently, using different assumptions and caring about the answers to different extents.

msla 6y ago

> I meant that even something like atheism is a religion. This is incoherent because it presupposes "an" atheism, as opposed to a broad range of philosophies which only hold lack of religious faith in common. It's like saying "non-strawberries" is a useful and enlightening category of food.