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.

  • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    Atheism is a belief

    No, it’s not. Theism the belief in a higher power, put the prefix a- on it and you get “doesn’t believe in a higher power”

    Atheism is literally the lack of belief. It doesn’t make a positive statement that there’s not something there, it just means they don’t believe

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      The lack of belief is agnosticism. Atheists believe that there is no god, which is an active belief

      • weker01
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        2 months ago

        Nope agnosticism is the lack of knowledge.

        It’s two different and somewhat independent axes.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        You’re just wrong, as I explained

        It’s amazing how often Jesus freaks will assert they know about other groups and then get their information 110% wrong because they only learned what their in group says about them

          • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            Nice irrelevant question, I’ll answer it just to show that I know what I’m talking about because I’m actually part of the group being discussed, not some outsider pinning definitions on things incorrectly:

            If there is/are they have 0 impact on the world as we interact with it by my own observations so I live as a gnostic atheist, though if any actual proof were ever to show itself I wouldn’t exactly be shocked to find there was something beyond our comprehension out there

            • Flax@feddit.uk
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              2 months ago

              So you’re uncertain- This sounds more like what I would refer to as agnosticism

              • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                2 months ago

                You would only be partially correct, as previously explained

                I do not actively believe there is a higher power, so I am atheistic

                I am open to the potential, so a fairly accurate simple description would be “agnostic atheist”, or “someone who doesn’t know whether or not there’s a higher power and lives assuming there is not”

                You’ll notice that despite atheist being in there I’ve not only not made the positive claim that there’s no god, I’m even open to the idea of something of that nature existing, because that’s not what atheism is about

                • Flax@feddit.uk
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                  2 months ago

                  That is interesting. I guess not all atheists could be categorised as a religion then. Thanks for sharing!