What constitutes "a religious belief?" Does atheism fit those criteria?
Over in the Eucharist thread @Eirenist posed the question whether atheism is a religious belief. I've heard similar claims before. Let's hash it out here.
Have at it.
Have at it.
Comments
Though it might depend what you replace it with. I vaguely recall writing a paper in university about some philosopher's thesis that hegelianism stood on its head(aka marxism) is still a religious system. Or something.
Humanism is obviously a belief, predicated very modernly on atheism. Jesus was obviously a humanist.
Any attempt to level the playing field, make a:theism 50:50, is dishonest. To pretend that Gettier cases achieve that. Anybody want to try? To make a Gettier case for science and rationality not being knowledge, like religion? And therefore they are equal?
QM is the most tested, statistically sound model of reality by a country parsec, is it a religion?
Atheism is a combination of an empirical belief (there are no numinous entities that reward worship) with a negative subset of existential beliefs (you don't believe in God).
The meme that atheism is the absence of belief is misleading in a number of ways - beliefs aren't objects than can be present or absent. Also, it's like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens.
More to the point, everyone has some sort of existential beliefs. By existential beliefs I mean beliefs about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are.
Arnold's Dover Beach is the most explicit expression of a certain widespread atheist and humanist existential belief.
A religion I think we can define for present purposes as a set of existential beliefs that have formal communally recognised practices that aim to strengthen the link in the practioners' lives between how things are believed to be and how it is believed they ought to live.
(But I gather that say Greek or Roman worship was not under that definition a religion. But the category "religion" isn't one that they had.)
There are atheist religious beliefs: Buddhism, obviously, Taoism. But most Western atheist existential beliefs do not have any formal practices associated with them.
I thought you weren't going to engage with this any more ?; )
So for you the a:theism ratio is 0:100?
Humanism, I would say, is the religious end of atheism but doesn't encompass all the ways that atheists think. A very large number of atheists have no time for god-talk and don't think about it at all for most of their lives.
I would, however, dispute that one can talk about defining ideas in the way that one can use cladistics to classify organisms.
Does anyone actually understand this? It feels like a kind of code that I'm too stupid to understand.
“Tell us about your religious beliefs, cooking skills and any other relevant information”
I would think ‘beliefs about religion’ would be included in that. Although I suspect most will focus on the cooking skills!
On the contrary, I'm too stupid to communicate clearly. Is religious belief knowledge? Like science is.
I think the difference between science and religion is that science is built on experimentation.
There's a level of thought experimentation within religious belief, but it only works within its own boundaries.
I don't agree. Religion really doesn't need to say anything about a deity.
No; I don't, for one. On a very basic level, what is QM, please? I'm guessing in this context it doesn't mean Quality Management. Also, "parsec"?
That's not quite what I said.
The pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim would agree. His "functional" definition, written in 1912, says, "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them".
Atheism is not a belief about the existence of God the way theism is. They are not in the same definition of belief at all. There is no overlap.
Quantum Mechanics. Reality comes in moving bits, utterly unlike a snooker game also does.
Three and a bit light-years. Nearly to Proxima Centauri This explains it all.
The way poetry does.
Ah... Yes...Thank you...
A bit further than the corner shop.
Quite. Is Buddhism a religion? Along with physics?
It seems to me that many atheists are simply non-believers in the existence of a supernatural God - in which case I have met atheist church-goers.
Well (and I throw this in for relevant light relief) - when one joins the freemasons, one has to profess a belief in a supreme being (however the individual themselves defines it), and take a series of oaths on whatever volume of sacred law fits with that. I can think of at least one mason who took the oaths on the Principia Mathematica, on the grounds that for them mathematics was their supreme being that ordered the universe... Others have done it with Newton and physics.
So, depends who you're asking, but at least some people - and these tend to be university academics IMO - definitely personally say yes.
Peter Berger, for whom I have a lot of time saw religion as "the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established". Sacredness can be attributed to objects (eg stones), animals (eg emperors), deities or even the entire cosmos. "The cosmos posited by religion both transcends and includes man. The sacred cosmos is confronted by man as an immensely powerful reality other than himself [sic]. Yet this reality addresses itself to him and locates his life in an ultimately meaningful order".
@Martin54, I do not understand why, if you meant "brains" you didn't simply write "brains" instead of "our least Carboniferous limbic systems"
What is the point in being deliberately obtuse?
I ask this as a bear of little least Carboniferous limbic system.
Yes, that's true (though not always recognised). Similarly Humanism is a post-Christian belief system, IMO it would have been very different if it has arisen in (say) a Hindu context.
Surely you mean a carnivoran mammal of the Ursidae family? Just sayin' ...
Very good, and very Zen. Never mind your beliefs, can you make a healthy meal for 40 people? The famous Zen teacher Irmgard Schloegl used to quiz people on how well they did their job.
@Martin54 , if @ChastMastr wants to contribute to this thread, he will. Please do not attempt to "drag" people into threads.
Host hat off
North East Quine, Purgatory host
This makes sense.
Related I think: I recently heard a claim in a Bible study that atheism gives reference to God by its very name. I (foolishly, in public) pointed out that the name we theists give to atheism assumes god/God; the atheist would not.
The brains we derive from our common ancestor with reptiles, 350 mya, had well developed limbic systems, involved in lower order emotional processing. Our beliefs are built on that, from below the cerebral cortex. Which makes up stories to justify what we feel.
Sorry re and to @ChastMastr. I thought the issue was all relocated to this thread and couldn't be continued on the other.
What sort of reptilian emotions did they have to process?
Why would evolution result in emotion-processing reptiles?
That sounds to me an argument for Creation?
Could you unpack it a bit for me?
They have similar physiological components as those emotions in humans.
Are emotions in fact our post facto rationalisations of our reactions to events, those reactions being in fact the outplay of our evolved instinct? Is our disgust at a pile of what dogs leave behind our making sense of our animal brain saying "stay away! Disease risk!"
Excellent. Even the term non-believer has negative connotations, next door to infidel. Perhaps realist?
The limbic system in all tetrapods, at least, and monkeys like us, and other bipedal creatures, all process emotion at a low level. We're nothing special. Emotion will be common to fish, insects, molluscs. Emotions are real handy behaviour modifiers, as @KarlLB pointed out. Fight, flight or frolic. How is that any argument for creation?
This one isn't. I know.
Interesting, @Eirenist .
How would you address your original point, which was a question, asking whether atheism is a religious belief?
I'd say humanism is a belief system along with religions, politics and others. Humanism doesn't usually have supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements, religion usually does.
In my experience, I'm afraid, one defining characteristic of avowed atheist colleagues (and I had quite a few) was arrogance. Oh, and they didn't like poetry! Bit like fundamentalistst evangelicals. Except these were more easily teased!
They arise directly from society. No one at church knows I'm an atheist. I don't avow it. Why would I? Many wonder why I don't come on a Sunday, but never ask. Only obliquely, rarely. And I do very occasionally. It does my head in and breaks my heart. Especially as I can't take communion. I have the same golden rule as all higher animals.
I love poetry. I haven't gone to a humanist meeting yet, doubt I ever will. Groucho and clubs and all that. Thanks to all the believers here and elsewhere, and excellent emergents like Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Oprah, the Patheos crew, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Richard Rohr, Peter Rollins, Rob Bell once upon a time, et al, etc, and above all Steve Chalke, I do not want to be arrogant; there is no justification for it whatsoever.
But I can't help knowing that matter is all there is.
And here I can avow it.
Re “Any attempt to level the playing field, make a:theism 50:50, is dishonest,” no, it’s not. You can say that someone who believes that is wrong, but dishonesty is something else, very specific, and an attack on their moral character.
I would define Humanism as proposed by the various groups that make up Humanist International (which was International Humanist and Ethical Union [IHEU] until 2019) as a religion though many humanists might prefer 'life stance' (Norwegian 'Livssyn' where it is a legal term and puts the Norwegian humanist organization on par with recognized religions). In Scotland (and the US) Humanist celebrants perform weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies (they still aren't allowed to do legal weddings in England). In Norway the Humanists have a civil confirmation course and ceremony (see https://www.human.no/seremonier/humanistisk-konfirmasjon/humanist-confirmation) since confirmation is big part of Norwegian culture. Approximately 19% of Norwegian youth (pre-pandemic) do the civil confirmation (you don't have to be a Humanist to go through the process).
(a)/' What? By whom? Where? How?
(b) Atheism does not have to be defined by any negative, by any belief. And it is not a belief to say that there are no numinous entities that reward worship. It is a fact. It is true. It is knowledge. So yeah, it's a JTB etc, but it's not a belief in the same ballpark as religion. It is not a fact, it is not true, it is not knowledge to say that there are. It is a mere (UF)B.
(c) My atheism is part of my absence of beliefs, (apart from JTB+'s). Aren't beliefs experience by subjects? How is my knowledge like classifying vertebrates into legged and legless vertebrates and assuming that swimming or slithering just happens?
(d) Again I have knowledge about the nature of existence and the sources of the good or the valuable or the worthwhile, that connect claims about how one ought to live to claims about the way things are. No beliefs about them whatsoever, apart from the ought of the golden rule, of the Rogerian.
(e) Superb.
(f) Where how things are believed to be involves supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Otherwise what you described is morality.
Again , where are the supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements? It's colloquially fine to say that physics is my religion of course. Like the GI in Pacific when asked what his beliefs were, '...ammunition'.
Law, business, trade, international relations, education is something organized and/or codified in some way. "Religion" implies something organized and/or codified in some way with supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.
And @ChastMastr. It's fundamentally intellectually dishonest, with no moral implication whatsoever, apart from blowing morality out of the water and sinking it below the waterline. We all do it, all the time. It's a fundamental part of morality, as Hume 110% rightly declared "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." It's what makes us human more than anything else. Our triumph and our doom. To the point where belief utterly corrupts intellect.
Is a tomato a fruit, or a vegetable? Why are you asking? If you want to know the scientific categorization, it's a fruit. If you want to know how it's usually used in cooking, it's a vegetable. If you want to know which drawer in the fridge to put it in, I don't remember but I think it's a vegetable. If you want to know where in the grocery store to find a can of them, it's a vegetable. And so on.
If you are looking at religions as bodies of believers grouped around ritual practices, or required beliefs, or any of those other criteria (I think this was discussed above), then atheism is not a religion. It isn't a body of people, it has no ritual practices, and it has no required beliefs, or any other thing I can imagine a definition of a religion to include. Atheism is at heart merely lack of belief in any god/God/gods.
Digression: Some will define atheism as a belief thatthere is/are no god/God/gods, although I think that's combining two usefully-kept-separate things (belief in God (yes/no), and strength of belief in one's belief (certain/allowing doubt)). "Allowing doubt" is often called "agnostic" and in these conversations "certain" is usually called "gnostic," as unfortunate as that may be. Thus you can be a gnostic atheist, a gnostic theist, an agnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist. Digression ends.
If on the other hand you are filling out a form say for the military to tell them what to do with you religious-wise when you're dying (send a priest, send a different kind of priest, send a rabbi, whatever), then "Atheist" is a reasonable thing to put in the "religion" field. If you're making a chart of world religions with number of adherents throughout the world, then "Atheist" would be treated as a religion. (Or rolled up into the newfangled "nones"; not sure how many atheists would cavil at being lumped into that heading.)
There's Sunday Assembly, which doesn't see itself as religious. (Mystery Worshipper: Sunday Assembly, Belfast.)
Or, in contrast, Religion of Humanity.