Atheism, Scientific Atheism and Antitheism

[tantric]

"Believing" in something has a bit of a double meaning in English - Believing in democracy isn't the same thing as believing in fairies. That being said, I don't fully understand the idea of 'absence of belief'. People have worldviews, whether they are well developed or not. Eschatology, epistemology, cosmology, ontology, theology, teleology - all of these can be phrased as questions (How do you know if something is true? What happens to you after you die?) and very few people will say "I've never thought about it". "I don't know" and "Nobody knows" are still positions. I used to call the summation of these views 'religion' but found that that makes some people very upset, now I call it your 'dharma', meaning both 'teachings' and 'inner nature'. Everyone has one, it's part of being self-aware. Although I personally support dharma based on the scientific method as being much more useful, I'm also interested in the function of one's dharma in terms of identity construction and sociology. I wish there were a better were a better word for it, though.