(July 10, 2013 at 7:55 am)Esquilax Wrote:(July 10, 2013 at 2:58 am)fr0d0 Wrote: OK I found an interesting article. perhaps this warrants a new thread.
Some Varieties of Atheism:
William James: There is no atheism, as religion is defined to include any fundamental perspective on life.
a-theism : ‘Narrow’ atheism, involving only the rejection of monotheism.
atheism : ‘Broad’ rejection of the possible
existence of any and all divine (supernaturally
powerful) beings.
philosophynow.org/issues/78/The_Varieties_of_Atheist_Experience
Kind of a useless thing to talk about though, isn't it? I mean, fine, if you want to reclassify all these things so they're in the same basket, whatever. But where does it get us? At best all that can be said is now we've broadened the scope of one word to be an umbrella over many individual concepts. The thing is, those individual concepts still mean things on their own, so what has actually been accomplished?
No atheist is going to buy into calling every world view religious. Nor is there any need to when we can already talk about what is similar and different in our world views without blurring what is meant by calling something a religion.
It may be true to say that everyone holds certain values or ideas to be paramount. But that alone doesn't seem reason enough to say everyone is religious. On the other hand if someone holds some beliefs to be sacred, or essential to a meaningful life, then I think something about religion has crept in.
If religious experience is defined so broadly, then the question of gods or deities are not even necessary to the definition. I wonder though whether anyone holds the nonexistence of gods in such high regard. If atheists can be described as religious in regard to anything, I don't think it will be in terms of gods. If we hold anything to be sacred it won't be that gods do not exist.
