I find it odd that when filling out a form that asked me what my religion is one of the choices is Atheist.
What now? That is the that opposite of religion.
I find it odd that when filling out a form that asked me what my religion is one of the choices is Atheist.
What now? That is the that opposite of religion.
Atheism is not a religion or worldview.
Atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or God’s.
Many atheists including myself adhere to the statement of simply being unconvinced that there is a God or having no credible evidence to indicate a God’s existence.
Maybe the form we were filling out legitimately needed that information but typically outside of a very specific set of data. I don’t see why any form would ever ask you what your religion or lack of religion might be.
In the medical world plenty of religions forbid certain things… like blood transfusions. I can’t really think of other places but I’m sure there are other legitimate use cases.
But I usually just trike out stuff that is irrelevant. If they seem it relevant they can press the issue and explain why.
Surely atheism is the belief in the lack of a god. Agnosticism is the lack of belief in a god.
Sorta, break down the roots of the words. Atheists activly deny that there is are gods (anti-theism), Agnostics (a-gnostic) are those who dont know, are unconvinced or those who simply dont care. If you really want to be pedantic (annoy your religious friends), point out that most theists are also atheists in a sense as they deny all gods, except for their own.
Exactly. Lack of belief in gods is not the same as actively denying that there are gods.
The issue is that in conversation its hard for theists to tell the difference between the two. To them it dosen’t matter if I say “I think your wrong” or “I simply dont care”, a lot of them will see someone who needs to be “saved”. A non-zero number of them will be very annoying about that or be obstructive because of it, so its best to handle all religion based conversations with kid-gloves.
Sure. I was just trying to make a slightly pedantic joke to mechoman444.
Atheism is, in point if fact, a world view.
There is a world. You have a perspective on that world. The assumptions you make and the things you believe, rational and irrational, are a world view. The concept that there is (or is not) credible evidence that gods, or planets, or whatever fundamental facets of existence, imaginary or otherwise, are either a world view themselves or are deeply rooted in your world view.
Q: does your world include unicorns? A: i don’t know.
The answer stems from having a world view that does not categorically include nor exclude unicorns. But more to the point, when answering questions like:
Q: what is most likely the source of existence? A: <anything you damned well please>
The answer, if actually responding to the question, is a world view, or deeply tied to a world view.
As to forms: forms are often limiting and don’t include information we consider relevant, or do include information we consider irrelevant. So it goes. In any case, they would ask that information precisely because world views provide broad but effective indicators about an individual. Knowing that a large incoming group of hotel guests is Christian, for example, can be a useful metric, because you’ll know that your hotel will make above-average pay-to-watch porn sales that weekend.