Atheism

About

Atheism is the belief that there is no such thing as a deity (most commonly referred to as "God"), or that the existence of such is unlikely enough that it can be ignored when making important decisions. Atheism is the opposite of theism, which holds that the existence of one or more deities (and, usually, the supposed views and intentions of that deity) is an important factor to consider in at least some major real-world decisions.

Atheism is compatible with agnosticism, the belief that it is not possible for humans to know whether any deities exist.

In practice, atheism equates to a rejection of dogma, especially where it is religious in nature, and an embrace of rationality as a guiding principle for making decisions based on real-world evidence.

Arguments and Opinions

Theists often ask atheists to defend their non-belief, which is silly; people are not normally required to explain their disbelief in things which cannot be proven either way. The only necessary response to "Why don't you believe in God?" is "Why should I?".

Whether or not God actually exists, however, answering that "God did it" does not actually explain anything.

Related Pages

• organized atheism
• troll phrases:
  • atheist bigotry
  • atheist intolerance
  • atheist supremacy
  • atheist religion (or atheism is a religion)

Notes

An argument often used against atheism is that atheists have been among the worst perpetrators of atrocity, with the prime examples being Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and/or Pol Pot. The implication that Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were atheists, however, is actually untrue; Hitler was a very vocal Catholic, Stalin was born, raised, and educated in Russian Orthodox Catholicism, and Pol Pot was born, raised and educated Catholic. (More sources needed.)

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia
  • see also: ignosticism, theological noncognitivism
• Conservapedia has a rather distorted view (no surprise); e.g. "Since atheism is denial of the existence of God or gods, it is important first to identify in which God and/or gods the atheist denies." The word "atheism" means belief in no god(s).
  • This article is locked for editing, and therefore cannot be collaboratively corrected.
  • Public Awareness of the Atheism Article: "Conservapedia wishes to increase public awareness of its atheism article to counter the many atheist websites targeting young people."
  • Debate: should atheists be barred from Conservapedia?: some interesting claims about atheism
• RationalWiki
  • Conservapedia:Atheism: A point-by-point discussion/refutation of Conservapedia's Atheism article
  • Conservapedia has blocked, via their spam filter, the posting of any mention of RationalWiki.
• LessWrong Wiki redirects to religion (as of 2009-11-23; confirmed 2010-07-13)
• dKosopedia
• SourceWatch: no equivalent article (as of 2008-04-26)

News

• 2008-03-23 [L..T] PZ Myers: The Elvis Presley of atheism? «The Information Age must be frightening to parents who wish to keep their children insulated from the scary outside world. All a child has to do is type the word “atheism” into a search engine, and they’ll find millions of pages dealing with the subject. For young people who subscribe to the stereotype of the atheist as the unhappy, god-hating local crank who tries to get nativity scenes removed from people’s lawns, the internet probably does a lot to shatter some myths about atheism. .. To counteract all this information, some religionists have taken to Defending the Faith by shooting the messenger, so to speak. Why bother refuting atheism or providing evidence for Intelligent Design when it’s so easy to attack a biology professor in Minnesota?»

Groups / Projects

• Daylight Atheism
• Goosing the Antithesis blog: "We promote rational individualism, and are opposed to those who assert incoherent supernatural claims."
• the evil Atheist conspiracy: difficult to categorize; appears to be a collection of videos on various atheism-related topics. Longer on presentation than content.
• The OUT Campaign
  • introduction by Richard Dawkins
• Whole Valley Church of Sanity and Reason: videos, quotes, and other atheism-related resources
• Local:
  • Atheists of Utah

Blogs

• Atheist Planet: mostly videos

Documentaries

• The Atheism Tapes: 2005 BBC TV series by Jonathan Miller
• The Root of All Evil?: 2006 British TV series by Richard Dawkins (the title was not Dawkins's choice, and he insisted on adding the question mark)

Facts

• 2006-12-24 10 myths - and 10 Truths - About Atheism by Sam Harris

Opinion

• 2007-03-12 Why I'm not a "friendly" atheist
• 2007-03-11 Why I'm Not An Angry Atheist
• 2006-11-16 Why Are Atheists So Angry?: this is actually the first part of a well-written multi-round dialogue between atheist Sam Harris and believer Dennis Prager. Unfortunately, Prager's responses seem to be mostly diversionary, including an ad hominem attack on Bertrand Russell [W] which does nothing to answer Harris's posing of Russell's celestial teapot [W] analogy. He does seem to get more real about the dialogue towards the end, however.
• 2006-08-15 The Language of Ignorance by Sam Harris: answers the religious arguments in Human Genome Project head Francis Collins's book The Language of God
• 2006-02-08 An Atheist Manifesto by Sam Harris
• The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos by Sam Harris

Discussion

• 2007-01-02+: Rationalism, not atheism: forum discussion on the value of the term "atheism" and various alternatives

Related Articles

• Most religion supposes the existence of one or more gods (theism), and hence is diametrically opposed to atheism.
• Atheism and religion often come into conflict, for obvious reasons.
• Active atheism is a movement which holds that atheists should not refrain from attacking religious irrationality.
• Blake's Law considers anyone who suggests atheism is a religion to have automatically lost the argument.

Related Concepts

• Deism
• Agnosticism (Wikipedia)