RE: Is atheism a belief?
March 12, 2019 at 9:16 am
(This post was last modified: March 12, 2019 at 9:53 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I'm an antitheist, pointing out how centuries of the theistic status quo have poisoned not only the minds of believers but the context of the discussion itself in the course of engineering cultural hegemony is kind of our thing. As others have meantioned, no one can make you identify -as- an atheist and I'm not particularly interested in making you do so myself. Only noting that when you describe yourself as an x-ist others will quite accurately conclude that you're talking about the same thing they are regardless of whether you choose to identify as such and no matter how strongly you object.
The reasons you give for that objection are what interests me, not your self identification. For example, the idea that you're a gnostic atheist (so much for not identifying yourself as an atheist, I guess....?) with regards to some gods but a pure agnostic not-an-atheist with regards to others isn't, at all, how the word atheism works. Atheism isn't a negotiation on which gods are believable, and if a person is an atheist -at all- they are an atheist regardless of which of histories endless parade of gods one refers to. Not believing in the christian god..in fact knowing that the christian god doesn't exist, won't actually make a person a gnostic atheist, or an atheist of any kind...as any muslim could tell you, though, ofc, that;s how theism under christian hegemony has described such people. Hell, it's how pagans described christians when they were in charge too. The historical trend of use as a pejorative runs deep and finds itself expressed in your own objections through the lens of "meaningless", which you justify as having something to do with unicornism and semantics and a sort of inauthenticity.
-and, for the other side of that coin, believing in a conscious universe (as your hypothetical example) isn't capable of making you a theist, or of somehow contradicting the status of your belief in gods as an atheist of any kind. I can also think of dozens of things, true things...not hypothetical, that explain why people believed in gods and what they were describing with the employment of the concept. This acknowledgement doesn't express a belief in gods or a change in the status of my belief, only that believers were misinformed about the object of their worship. In the same vein, if it turned out that the universe were conscious, then I would believe in...the universe, which is conscious. Perhaps some of the faithful were trying to describe that, I'd tend to argue otherwise..but even if both of these things were the case I would remain an atheist beause the contention has nothing to do with -gods- and the god believers were still wrong.
TLDR version, your fundamental understanding of atheism is inaccurate, and proceeding from that inaccurate understanding you justify novel employment of the concept and criticism of those who possess a more accurate understanding by invalid means. I can't help but strongly suggest that wondering about my "currency, bruh" is a way of deflecting a question that might be better asked of yourself.
The reasons you give for that objection are what interests me, not your self identification. For example, the idea that you're a gnostic atheist (so much for not identifying yourself as an atheist, I guess....?) with regards to some gods but a pure agnostic not-an-atheist with regards to others isn't, at all, how the word atheism works. Atheism isn't a negotiation on which gods are believable, and if a person is an atheist -at all- they are an atheist regardless of which of histories endless parade of gods one refers to. Not believing in the christian god..in fact knowing that the christian god doesn't exist, won't actually make a person a gnostic atheist, or an atheist of any kind...as any muslim could tell you, though, ofc, that;s how theism under christian hegemony has described such people. Hell, it's how pagans described christians when they were in charge too. The historical trend of use as a pejorative runs deep and finds itself expressed in your own objections through the lens of "meaningless", which you justify as having something to do with unicornism and semantics and a sort of inauthenticity.
-and, for the other side of that coin, believing in a conscious universe (as your hypothetical example) isn't capable of making you a theist, or of somehow contradicting the status of your belief in gods as an atheist of any kind. I can also think of dozens of things, true things...not hypothetical, that explain why people believed in gods and what they were describing with the employment of the concept. This acknowledgement doesn't express a belief in gods or a change in the status of my belief, only that believers were misinformed about the object of their worship. In the same vein, if it turned out that the universe were conscious, then I would believe in...the universe, which is conscious. Perhaps some of the faithful were trying to describe that, I'd tend to argue otherwise..but even if both of these things were the case I would remain an atheist beause the contention has nothing to do with -gods- and the god believers were still wrong.
TLDR version, your fundamental understanding of atheism is inaccurate, and proceeding from that inaccurate understanding you justify novel employment of the concept and criticism of those who possess a more accurate understanding by invalid means. I can't help but strongly suggest that wondering about my "currency, bruh" is a way of deflecting a question that might be better asked of yourself.
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