Paarsurrey, just when I thought I would not be surprised by your threads, here you come to prove me wrong.
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Is Atheism based on superstition?
- Thread starter paarsurrey
- Start date
Altfish
Veteran Member
Yes, they look to science for answers to questions that theists look to religion for answers.
btw I never said atheists were reasonable.
How we behave when we think that no one is looking is what matters. An intellectual atheist may be moral through their actions, and that is better than an immoral person who claims to be moral. Lawlessness is based upon superstition I think. With that statement I would agree.
SkepticX
Member
This idea falls squarely in the calling not collecting stamps a hobby category.
SkepticX
Member
Atheism is about not believing there are any gods or believing that there are none. Full stop.
An attitude toward science may be a concomitant variable but that doesn't make it part of the same thing any more than hospitalization causing of death or roads causing travel. Hospitals are what they are, and death nor disease are a hospital. Travel is what it is, and roads are not travel. Many atheists may be informed by science, but atheism is not in any way interdependent on science. Science is not part of atheism. They may be frequently combined, but that doesn't make either somehow part of the other. So saying atheists look to science for answers may describe most atheists, but even if it described all atheists it wouldn't be part of what atheism actually is. It would be perhaps part of the process or the social structure (if there were such a thing as an atheist social structure), but to say that atheists are informed by science would be the same error as saying theists are informed by the Bible, or by the Koran, etc.
Atheism does comport well with science.....
If something cannot be disproven, then it is not useful.
So to us, belief in gods is not useful.
This is the opposite of superstition.
Correct on both counts.
We need be neither reasonable nor interested in science.
And I don't want to be left out!
But there's something relaxing & satisfying about such threads
They're easy to respond to, & the OP might get something from us.
Correct. The discussion of atheism would be a topic of philosophy.
When I was in public elementary school (back in the middle ages),
we were taught to believe in God. I already knew better.
Resistance was not futile.
If the story "Nineteen Eighty-Four" taught us anything it's that people are indoctrinated to believe in negatively posed propositions as well as positive ones.
I don't follow. Can you elaborate?
Altfish
Veteran Member
Why? Please explain.
Atheism is a term without meaning in the context of this thread. There are only believers and unbelievers in the Koran. It is assumed by the OP, so they ask if atheism is a kind of superstition. The Koran also says that not everybody who claims to be a believer, is. Its obvious then that not everybody who thinks they are an unbeliever is one. So I think what they are asking is whether someone who claims to be an atheist may simply be a superstitious believer.
Put it this way. Suppose you are a practicing Muslim but have doubts. You may well wonder if your doubts are superstitions.
Nontheism, like science, is based on observation, evidence, and reason. But Nontheism is not "based on science", much less superstition.
Something you don't seem able to understand is that not everyone feels a need for human authority to validate their beliefs. Religious people pick a prophet or Scripture or something like that. Some human authority to validate their world view.
I don't. I look around me and see a bunch of people believing in things, like God or afterlives, because some fallible human taught them to Believe. But those Beliefs don't match the reality I can see for myself, so I don't Believe.
It certainly has nothing to do with superstition.
Tom
SkepticX
Member
Hemorrhoids?
I was taught in a religious school until I graduated from High School. Religion was literally a core course.
But they also taught me how to think. I figured out early on that somebody was making all this up.
Tom
SkepticX
Member
Atheism/nontheism is "based" upon not believing, period.
Many non-believers come to atheism/nontheism through the means you describe, but what's based upon science, observation or evidence and reason even in those cases is the given atheist's/nonbeliever's decision to accept atheism as the end result. The end result still isn't the process.
A cake is not its recipe, even if the recipe describes and results in a cake. There are other means of coming up with a cake. You don't even have to bother with baking it yourself.
SkepticX
Member
Kind of ironic how that can work--eh?
Bob Altemeyer did some research, probably ten years ago or so now, on "Amazing Believers" and "Amazing Apostates" (those who were raised strongly toward one inclination or the other) along with just ordinary converts to and from religious beliefs. One of the strongest patterns he discovered in Amazing Apostates is that we bought the truth ethic of our religious upbringing, and we just took it more seriously--we took more responsibility to make sure we complied with it, whereas most of us if not all were told there should be an arbitrary end at which the vetting is done because we've arrived at the truth. Those of us who took the truth ethic more seriously didn't buy into the arbitrary end point--in fact we tended to find that no different than any other failure to respect the ethic. So we apostatized ... and many of us may not have if our religious communities didn't require this kind of arbitrary selective application of rigor and reason, and strict adherence to given doctrine (that all sounds a lot more harsh than it was in my case for sure--at least it does to me).
I can't tell for sure if we are agreeing or not. Maybe we are disagreeing on the meaning of the word "based" in the context?
To me, Nontheism is not based on not believing. Nontheism IS not believing. Not believing is based on recognizing that religion is fiction. There's undoubtedly far more to Creation than we puny humans know about, but the stories and stuff invented by primitive people and sold to the gullible aren't helpful.
Tom
Jedster
Well-Known Member
Just as baldness is a hair colour.