Augustus
…
Have you got any objective evidence that it is ALWAYS counterproductive and by its very nature harmful and that all irrationality is harmful?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Antitheism?
- Thread starter Jeremiahcp
- Start date
Have you got any objective evidence that it is ALWAYS counterproductive and by its very nature harmful and that all irrationality is harmful?
At this point I'm trying to understand what metrics the religious use. I have made no claims (so far) as to actual statistics. So, for example, if cancer X is 15% fatal, can we say it's "dangerous"? How about if a cancer is .00001% fatal, is it stlll dangerous?
Augustus
…
It's not 'a stance' though, it covers multiple stances which are often very different.
Violent antitheism is as much a part of antitheism as violent fundamentalism is a part of various theistic religions though. There is no One True Antitheism.
What's your definition of antitheism and what are examples of these violent antitheists? Once again, I simply do not agree that history's fascists and/or totalitarians should be considered antitheists.
Curious George
Veteran Member
the point is that your view is internally inconsistent. I do not think you have a clear definition of bigotry.
This is what you need to back up. I said they believe the practice is harmful. You turned that into hatred. That is fine. No need to delve into a side tangent on what is harmful and what is hatred. We can use your equivalency and say then that you bear a hatred of tribalism, authoritarianism etc. I would imagine you feel bigotry is harmful as well. Thus, antitheism is harmful, thus you have a hatred of antitheism. Great. Now show how this is internally consistent.
Last edited:
Anti-theism is based on evidence. Your definition starts to veer towards when people who are critical of Islam are called islamophobic.
Now we all have biases, but anti-theism is about as logical as a stance can be.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/drt/2012/962860/
Am I safe to assume "hard evidence" means "material evidence?" There are many plausible arguments out there for gods, it's just a matter of you rejecting them for whichever reasons. Theists present evidence and arguments all the time, but because materialism is presumed the arguments are rejected off the bat.
That isn't really a fair comparison since religion isn't a disease and can and does have healing properties for the plight that is being human.
I can agree that spirituality can help people achieve well being. But I also think we can be spiritual without being religious.
I'm not claiming that religion is a disease, I was drawing a comparison concerning the use of metrics and statistics.
That said, I never said that there are no benefits to religion. But now that you've brought it up, I would say that I think spirituality can be beneficial, AND that we can be spiritual without the need for religion.
History says without a doubt that religion can result in negative aspects however that is not a fault of theism. Its like saying atheists have no morals cause they need god. Or they tend to have no morals.
Are you now backing out of Antitheism?
Not at all. I simply don't think spirituality has to be associated with theism.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
An atheist has found no reason to believe in God(s). An anti-theist thinks that believing in religion is dangerous. Though I don't take a strictly anti-theist position, I think that there is plenty of evidence that religions certainly can be dangerous.
Neither does religion. Besides that theism is just an answer to a question, not a theological system of morality.
Deathbydefault
Apistevist Asexual Atheist
Material evidence works best, but not only that is necessary.
God/s is/are extremely powerful, of course. A demonstration of that would also suffice.
I'm not interested in arguments for the existence of god(s), not unless they have evidence attached.
Curious George
Veteran Member
No it is most certainly not a system of morality. And I don't think any of the antitheists who posted claimed such. There belief is that believing in a non-existent god is harmful. It would be a much more interesting thread to hear why and debate that reasoning than if people keep assuming that their beliefs are just focused on things which I haven't seen claimed.
• As far as I can see, atheism is lack of belief in any deities, and it doesn't necessarily imply active opposition to others' belief in a deity or deities. Someone can be an atheist while not caring about the fact that others believe in a god or gods, or only oppose specific concepts of deity that he or she believes are harmful. Anti-theism, on the other hand, is opposition to the belief in any deities rather than merely a subset of god concepts, and by default, it requires one to be an atheist. So all anti-theists are atheists, but not all atheists are anti-theists.
• I personally don't find anti-theism to be a rational or beneficial stance in general. I highly sympathize with opposition to religion, at least the more mainstream religions, but there are many concepts of deity that don't have rigid dogma attached to them. While a subset of religions use theism as a springboard for spreading hateful, harmful teachings, that doesn't mean theism itself is the problem. Rather, dogmatically influenced theism is the issue, not theism as a whole.
From what I've seen, many anti-theists equate theism as a whole with mainstream (i.e., usually dogmatic and highly anthropomorphic) Abrahamic monotheism and proceed from this faulty premise to condemn all types of theism, even ones they know little or nothing about. Since anti-theism is, by definition, rejection of all of theism rather than a subset thereof, it follows that most anti-theists inevitably oppose concepts of deity that they're not even aware of.
Another reason I find anti-theism to be an irrational stance is that I believe theism can be arrived at from very personal experiences that can't be communicated to others. For instance, many people state that they have had "mystical," "spiritual," etc., experiences that led them to theism. How could someone else possibly tell them that their experience is absolutely invalid as a reason to be a theist when said experience is entirely personal and incommunicable to anyone else?
Blaming someone for arriving at theism for purely personal reasons would be similar to blaming a person for liking apples after tasting them and finding their taste pleasant. Could the taste be conveyed to anyone else? No. Is there anything wrong with finding apples tasty without preaching that people who don't like apples are evil? Still no.
So, I think anti-theism misses the point—or overdoes it in a sense, to be specific—and throws the baby out with the bathwater by condemning theism rather than just harmful religions and dogmas. That's not what makes a rational position, as far as I can see.
No but I seen it insinuated that theistic belief can somehow define a religion as negative.
Curious George
Veteran Member
Yes. The antitheist is certainly posing a moral question (or at least their argument leads us to the moral question): ought we have religion in society? What is missing from this thread is a clear argument for why believing in any god is harmful. I think that the arguments that we would find given would center around obstruction of progress or the the potential harm in leaving open and unquestionable a clear deviation from any testable basis on which to ground future decisions.
But this too is just me interposing my assumptions about their arguments. In order to address their actual arguments we would need to ask and to research.