Worshipper
Active Member
I don't think you've defined atheism correctly here. It's not just the absence of belief in God. It's denying the existence of God claiming that there is no God. That is, it's belief in the absence of God.
Is it a religion? Not on its own, no. No more than theism is. But I was responding most particularly to a person who used the word atheism as a shorthand reference for a kind of scientific atheism where science takes the place of scriptures and such. That particular set of beliefs, that he used the word atheism to describe, is a religion.
Not really. As I understand it, many forms of Buddhism are atheistic. I don't think anyone would think I was stretching if I called those forms of Buddhism religions.
But to call the kind of scientific atheism that the other fellow was describing a religion is hardly a stretch at all. It comes ready-made with a mythology, an ethical code, a priestly class complete with a process of ordination, initiation rituals, and on and on.
The hypothetical child you mention wouldn't be described by anthropologists of religion as an atheist but as irreligious. As for you, they wouldn't describe you as atheist but as agnostic.
But we already have words for those.
"strong atheism" = atheism
"weak atheism" = agnosticism
Here's a good quote from the OED: "The Agnostic neither denied nor affirmed God. He simply put Him on one side." That's from a bishop, so the obvious theistic bias in the quote is not hard to understand. Nevertheless, if you don't deny the existence of a god, but also don't believe in the existence of a god, you're agnostic. That's what the word means. That's how it's been used since it was created. Atheism is a strong stance to take. Those who don't take that stance but who, like atheists, don't believe in God, are agnostics.
The way you word it, it's like you think agnostics are wishy-wishy or wafflers or something. That's simply not true. They are not weak in any way. They just don't believe in anything beyond the material world.
Remember, I was responding to a scientific atheist, a person who uses atheistic science in place of religion.
Holy text, or scripture, is a fluid kind of word. Not all people who use scripture use it the same way. To say that a group of people have scriptures is not to say that they respect those texts the same way that Bible-thumping KJV-only literalistic evangelistic Christians do. Not even all Christians take that extreme approach to scriptures.
If a text is given special respect and is treated as especially authoritative in relation to other texts, then it is scripture.
As for a priestly class, it is clear that there is a certain group of people who are authorized to introduce new scripture into the canon of atheistic science. There are only certain people authorized to instruct and initiate others. There are certain people who are authorized to interpret the existing scripture and traditions of the religious body. The more degrees from accredited institutions you hold, the higher you rise in the priestly class. The more prestigious the institution that grants your degree, the higher you stand in the priestly class.
And it's not just an issue of who is most knowledgeable. An unordained person who is more knowledgeable than a properly ordained person is overlooked their findings don't matter until they've been duly ordained. Once they've been ordained, they can repeat the same words they said before ordination, and suddenly they're ground-breaking. Until they've been ordained, they're ignored. This is the hallmark of a priestly class.
You misunderstand theism. It is not necessarily faith for faith's sake. A person can believe in God because of receiving empirical evidence of God's existence. Many theists do.
It's true that some theists believe only because someone said so. Some scientific atheists believe only because someone said so.
Some scientific atheists believe not just because someone said so, but because a properly ordained person said so in a journal reviewed by a group of ordained priests and provided data affirming actual observations and explaining conclusions drawn from those observations. The believer has not confirmed the data, nor perhaps even thoroughly examined the methodology for reaching the conclusions. But he has made observations of his own in unrelated areas and has made conclusions based on observed phenomena enough, and has read or heard the words of the priests enough, to have faith in the system. That faith leads him to believe anything the system produces.
In a similar manner, some theists have had enough direct experience with God and have talked with enough priests to have faith in the system. So when a given priest makes a statement about God or God's will, their faith in the system leads them to believe the new statement.
A very few scientific agnostics (and here I can't say atheist) believe only what they confirm themselves. Then they know. Some theists are the same way.
As for the varying degree of faith placed in various statements made by the priestly class, you find that in all religions, not just scientific atheism. Some Christians believe everything they read in the Bible. Some believe only portions of the Bible. Some think the Bible is basically irrelevant. Some scientific atheists believe everything that comes down the pike. Some are more skeptical.
One person's lack of faith in global warming doesn't erase the fact that thousands believe firmly in anthropogenic global warming solely because the idea bears the seal of approval of their chosen priests and they change their lives as a result. Your lack of faith in global warming just confirms that there is variety in every religion.
You'd still be eating vegetable food. Is religion the orange or the food? Anthropologists of religion would say it's the food. They would use a more specific term for the orange.
If, on the other hand, you decided to forgo eating altogether, then I'd say that was equivalent to forgoing religion.
I didn't say they were meant to fulfill the same thing. I said science gets used to fulfill the function that the things you and I both call religions are meant to perform. That function is not to explain the unknowable (though science does get used to do that, too). It's more complex than that. To put it kind of poetically, it's supposed to give meaning and direction to life at the root of your soul. Lots of people use science for that end.
To sum up, I know that atheism per se isn't a religion any more than theism is. I was referring only to the kind of scientific atheism the earlier poster spoke of. That ideology is a religion in the sense that anthropologists of religion use. One might prefer a name for it like Sciencism or something, but atheism was the word he used, so it was the word I used. Whatever you call that religion, though, atheism is an important part of it, just as theism is an important part of, say, Islam. I think that some people of that religion could be agnostics rather than atheists they'd still be of that religion. Not all people who use science do it religiously. However, most people who claim to use science in place of religion do.
In addition, I recognize that not all people who are atheists use science in place of religion. Some ideologies that are colloquially classified as religions are atheistic, like some forms of Buddhism. In addition, some people use things other than science as their religion sports, money, movie stars, fashion, sex, whatever. Most people feel a need for religion. Only a very few don't. The ones who reject conventional options for religion select alternatives. Those alternatives are religions, even if they're not colloquially defined as such.
