Friday, July 02, 2010

Is atheism an organized religion?

     I would say that atheism (the belief that there is no god) is not organized. But I would also say that the collection of people who want to insist that it means "lack of belief" are becoming increasingly organized. So, there is an organized group that consists exclusively of atheists. I can see where some people might confuse that group with atheism in general.
     So why are these people trying to impose a dishonest definition? Not being a mindreader, I can't say for certain. However, I can make an educated guess based on the circumstances in which it first cropped up. The phoney definition was used to say "oh yeah, even babies?" when a negative statement was made about atheists. The existing, standard definition was accepted for positive statements. It would appear that the purpose of the redifinition is to deny a simple term to describe those who believe there is no god (a category people actually want to use at times) to critics and claim that any statement made by critics must be applying to a useless catch-all category of which no general statement can be made about the members.
     How do I know they are being dishonest with their definition? The inherently useless nature of catch-all categories is highly suggestive. But these people will slip up. In making positive statements about atheists, they need a term. And that term is "atheist." Their statements cannot meaningfully be applied to infants either.

3 comments:

ChrisEB said...

I will say this. I hyave atheist friends who are against the idea of atheist organizations because to them it turns it into a religion. To me this seems to be a very loose definition of religion. Many groups of people sharing a common view gather and organize that are not religious.

Whateverman said...

How do I know they are being dishonest with their definition? The inherently useless nature of catch-all categories is highly suggestive.

Christian: one who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

That's just as all-encompassing and useless as a lack of belief in God(s).

Pvblivs said...

Whateverman:

     "Christian: one who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
     "That's just as all-encompassing and useless as a lack of belief in [g]od(s)."
     No, it is not so all-encompassing. The definition of "christian" does not, for example, try to claim that infants are christian by default. Now, if someone were to redefine "christian" to mean "someone who lacks the belief that Jesus was not the son of god," that would be just as useless a definition as "lacking belief in gods." The definition of "christian" as "someone who believes Jesus is the son of god" is as specific as the definition of atheist as "someone who believes there are no gods."