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I don't understand the distinction this comment is making. Can somebody give examples to show why it's useful? If it's not something you can list off, examples

I don't understand the distinction this comment is making. Can somebody give examples to show why it's useful? If it's not something you can list off, examples of past heresies and non-heresies would be OK.

msla 5y ago
Some people seem unable to conceive of a human existence not ultimately founded on a religious belief system. They can accept the idea of people having different religious beliefs (that is, the heretics doomed to Hell) but the idea of people who don't have a religion at all apparently throws a massive error, which leads to them uttering such nonsense as the insistence that atheism is a religion, and their utter inability to separate the concepts of "not believing in their god" from "believing their god doesn't exist" in their minds. The more advanced cases are the ones who insist, as an apparent matter of dogmatic faith, that people who claim to not have a religion are Satanists who will rape and murder for lack of an explicit Commandment telling them not to.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  When people say that atheism is a religion, at least the ones I know mean something like this: First, atheism answers at least some of the same questions as religions answer, though it gives different answers and in different terms. Second, atheism isn't provable by scientific means. Some believe it more firmly than they have evidence for. Third, at least some atheists seem to hold their atheism in a religious way; that is, with a religious fervor and intensity. Some even seem to be "evangelists", determined to spread the "good news" of atheism. That's what (at least some) people mean when they call atheism a religion. They don't literally mean that atheists believe in some god; they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    > they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way And how many atheists actually do that? I think what GP meant was more about people who just somehow can't imagine being religionless (and "the more advanced cases" paragraph hints it very strongly), not about people who point out that some atheists hold their atheism religiously. Anyway, your points seem wrong to me. After Wikipedia - "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Absence of belief does not answer any questions by itself, and considering its provability doesn't even make sense at all. What you said may make sense for the less broad definition ("In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities"), but that's not what "atheism" usually means without any further qualifiers. For me, atheism is a natural consequence of realizing that I have no more reason to believe in existence of any particular god than any other fictitious being - and even if I did assume that a god exists, I would still have a hard time choosing which god is it, as there are many contesters and none of them has any obvious advantage when it comes to believability. There are many believable reasons why religions exist, but none of them implies that any religion is actually true (to the contrary, the history of some well-known religions seems to make it pretty clear that they were products of human culture).
    - isityouyesitsme 5y ago
      the post that is parent to yours explained someone else's psychological and epistemological understanding of atheists, and you answered as "nuh-uh!!" Take off your engineer hat for a minute and read it again with your anthropologist hat on. I think you may come away with a better understanding of some people. And yes, in other discussions, part of that may be an explanation of why some theists cannot fathom that atheists do not believe in a god. much of this is definitional. What atheists call "no god," some thesist call "a god of their own definition." And these two just continue to talk past each other. Perhaps they want it that way, they don't need to think on uncomfortable things, then.
      - msla 5y ago
        > What atheists call "no god," some thesist call "a god of their own definition." And that's wrong, just on a basic level, and it's part of those theists being incapable of understanding a worldview without theism. They can't understand my philosophy, so they're compelled to shove me into a box they can understand, and then refuse to listen when I tell them their worldview is making them comprehensively misinterpret what I'm saying. (And, no, a person can't dictate someone else's own philosophy to them. No matter how condescending that dictation is.)
        isityouyesitsme 5y ago
        Do you recognize that you're doing exactly the same thing in reverse? The thing is, you can stomp your foot and throw a fit all you want about others not using your definitions that flow from your worldview, but it doesn't change reality. You're approaching epistemological and psychological differences as though they're a battle of authority. You can claim authority over a lot of things, even legal authority, but you cannot force someone to "understand differently." This is what I mean by theists and atheists talking past each other. They each employ a form of ethnocentrism that frames every conversation as an argument. They do NOT want to understand each other. They want to WIN.
        5y ago

msla 5y ago

Some people seem unable to conceive of a human existence not ultimately founded on a religious belief system. They can accept the idea of people having different religious beliefs (that is, the heretics doomed to Hell) but the idea of people who don't have a religion at all apparently throws a massive error, which leads to them uttering such nonsense as the insistence that atheism is a religion, and their utter inability to separate the concepts of "not believing in their god" from "believing their god doesn't exist" in their minds. The more advanced cases are the ones who insist, as an apparent matter of dogmatic faith, that people who claim to not have a religion are Satanists who will rape and murder for lack of an explicit Commandment telling them not to.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
When people say that atheism is a religion, at least the ones I know mean something like this: First, atheism answers at least some of the same questions as religions answer, though it gives different answers and in different terms. Second, atheism isn't provable by scientific means. Some believe it more firmly than they have evidence for. Third, at least some atheists seem to hold their atheism in a religious way; that is, with a religious fervor and intensity. Some even seem to be "evangelists", determined to spread the "good news" of atheism. That's what (at least some) people mean when they call atheism a religion. They don't literally mean that atheists believe in some god; they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  > they mean that people hold atheism in a religious way And how many atheists actually do that? I think what GP meant was more about people who just somehow can't imagine being religionless (and "the more advanced cases" paragraph hints it very strongly), not about people who point out that some atheists hold their atheism religiously. Anyway, your points seem wrong to me. After Wikipedia - "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Absence of belief does not answer any questions by itself, and considering its provability doesn't even make sense at all. What you said may make sense for the less broad definition ("In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities"), but that's not what "atheism" usually means without any further qualifiers. For me, atheism is a natural consequence of realizing that I have no more reason to believe in existence of any particular god than any other fictitious being - and even if I did assume that a god exists, I would still have a hard time choosing which god is it, as there are many contesters and none of them has any obvious advantage when it comes to believability. There are many believable reasons why religions exist, but none of them implies that any religion is actually true (to the contrary, the history of some well-known religions seems to make it pretty clear that they were products of human culture).
  - isityouyesitsme 5y ago
    the post that is parent to yours explained someone else's psychological and epistemological understanding of atheists, and you answered as "nuh-uh!!" Take off your engineer hat for a minute and read it again with your anthropologist hat on. I think you may come away with a better understanding of some people. And yes, in other discussions, part of that may be an explanation of why some theists cannot fathom that atheists do not believe in a god. much of this is definitional. What atheists call "no god," some thesist call "a god of their own definition." And these two just continue to talk past each other. Perhaps they want it that way, they don't need to think on uncomfortable things, then.
    - msla 5y ago
      > What atheists call "no god," some thesist call "a god of their own definition." And that's wrong, just on a basic level, and it's part of those theists being incapable of understanding a worldview without theism. They can't understand my philosophy, so they're compelled to shove me into a box they can understand, and then refuse to listen when I tell them their worldview is making them comprehensively misinterpret what I'm saying. (And, no, a person can't dictate someone else's own philosophy to them. No matter how condescending that dictation is.)
      - isityouyesitsme 5y ago
        Do you recognize that you're doing exactly the same thing in reverse? The thing is, you can stomp your foot and throw a fit all you want about others not using your definitions that flow from your worldview, but it doesn't change reality. You're approaching epistemological and psychological differences as though they're a battle of authority. You can claim authority over a lot of things, even legal authority, but you cannot force someone to "understand differently." This is what I mean by theists and atheists talking past each other. They each employ a form of ethnocentrism that frames every conversation as an argument. They do NOT want to understand each other. They want to WIN.
        5y ago