Atheism and its negative stigma...
 

I am an atheist.

I don't know what the community is like as far as religion goes here, but it seems wherever you, atheism has a negative stigma. If you proclaim you're an atheist, it's generally followed by the association that you must be a morally-corrupt, hedonistic libertine who has no conscience.

Why is it that an agnostic can just be an agnostic, and you can even simply "not believe in god," but yet when you assert yourself as an atheist it almost always provokes a negative response?

Richard Dawkins made this same point in The God Delusion, so this is obviously not entirely my own argument, just to point that out now.

Thoughts?

I've been openly atheist since 8th grade ~'99 and I have never felt bad about it or treated differently by others who know. Maybe I'm just oblivious.

How is one absolute statement any better than another? To be honest, I think most of the stigma about atheists is the same kind of stigma about the religious: that they impose their belief and deny alternative points of view.

I'm not citing the behaviour of anyone in particular, but to be honest, I don't think perceived hedonism is responsible for modern negativity so much as absolutism is.

EDIT: And regardless of my beliefs, I think Richard Dawkins is an *******, so there's that figurehead atheists have going for them. :laughing:

@Pedestrian - Thoughts on Christopher Hitchens?

Well, I understand your point, but I didn't necessarily plan to say that first. My whole point was to be forthcoming for the purpose of the topic. I don't want you to get the impression that I would walk into a party, stand on a chair to make announcement, and say "Attention, everybody! I would like you all to know that I am an atheist!"
I guess my whole choice of words with "assert yourself" is the fact that many Christians it seems do the same with their religion. (Hence the mannerisms of their faith, from deliberate word choice all the way to bumper stickers.)

I think a lot of the negativity comes from people not understanding what the word means. There are a lot of people out there who associate the word with all kinds of unrelated shit from satanism to communism. And, of course, there are others who associate it with some kind of absoluteism even though it's only absolutist in the sense that any opinion can be described as absolutist. On top of all that, you have the whole "in your face" aspect wherein people in the dominant group think that smaller groups are being "in your face" simply by existing, like straight people who get in an uproar about "in your face" gay people because those people are doing things that straight people do all the time like holding hands.

There some things that atheists believe are 100% correct because, well, they are. We know the world isn't 8,000 years old, for example. I will tell anyone that believes that sorry, but that is not the case (although I'm not particularly likely to try to have that conversation as it is nearly always a waste of time, but if pressed I will say what I *know* is true).

" Atheism and its negative stigma..."
I think it comes from guilt from association, which happens not only atheist, but even to theists as well.

lmao at comparing the two as if you can't choose your religion like you can't choose your orientation. straight ppl...

Do you ever stop trolling?

I saw the name, and knew immediately that Sansa's reply would have nothing to do with the topic save using it as a springboard to be offended about one of her pet issues.

Atheism has no direct stigma. Nor is it, as asserted before, about denying an alternative viewpoint as such. Atheism has no dogma, no tenets, no rules beyond "Take the position that god does not exist."

It is entirely possible, and preferable, to therefore allow your opinion the possibility of change while still taking the solid position.


To my knowledge, logically, the majority of atheists simply adopt the position that the various competing religious belief systems construct potential realities for themselves that are unrealistic and incredibly unlikely.

Having reached this point of argument, as an atheist I take the further position that the historical failure of ALL religions save those still practiced, points towards the existence of a higher power being unlikely. Until proof is presented to the contrary I will therefore posit that religious belief is flawed and that god does not exist.

Unlike any other belief system, atheism does allow itself the possibility of being wrong - it simply asks for is initial position, the null state where the inexplicable is not blindly assumed to exist - to be disproven.

The stigma comes from people being *******s and/or poor debaters around this fact, along with the self interests of religious institutions to discredit our position in lieu of being able to disprove it.

The stigma comes from militant atheists that are similar to radical Christians(IE. Westboros) in the sense that a handful of the group make the rest of the entire ideology look bad.

Some people just decide to take at face value what is always thrown in their face by the loud minority.

A perfect metaphor wasn't the point. The point was that people who are already prejudiced against a group will often take offense at the very sight of that which they disagree with.

It seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the stigma could exists from non-atheists being called out as *******s. I would like to see a scientific inquiry to provide statical information maybe even a Venn Diagram to clarify at what percentage they are truly being *******s.

Do you feel like people are being *******s to Sansa? I am not choosing sides, and picking who is right and who is wrong in this matter, but in the manner it was handled, it seem like being a little *******-ery the way Sansa's response was replied to, no?...could I be wrong?

For your point to make sense she would have had to, as a theist, attack atheism, and we would have then had to respond in a confrontational manner. She did not attack atheism, and we did not attack anybody's position as a theist. She came in with a confrontational, off-topic post and was called on it without any name-calling. I don't see how we're being *******s.

FTFY.

Anyway, to expand my point slightly - Atheism provides no reason to deny yourself the opportunity to change faiths. There is no directive in atheism that says you shouldn't simply decide one day that you've been wrong, and go adopt a faith.

This stands in stark contrast to every other religious system ever to exist, which all state that leaving the religion will result in some form or variant of divine punishment, either before or after death.

your constant and creepily persistent hate boner for me rivals that of dirty lmao


either way if you want to really know why atheists are hated, it's much like vegans. you're not any better than anyone else and if you use such a stupid thing to feel superior to people you are probably.... nah you gross doe

And for your second post in the thread, you've still managed to not actually be on topic.

I said my piece and I'm pleased with it. now kindly hop off my ****ing dick for once in your life

You'd think that if it weren't for you repeating it in every other post, we'd actually forget how pleased with yourself you are.

I think that this is true, but that it's also not related to the root of why atheists take a lot of heat. Atheism as a principle may not explicitly prevent people from changing their minds, as religious doctrine may, but it is at its core the limited view that there is nothing of a higher order than science. The acceptance or support of anything else puts it into the realm of agnosticism, does it not?

I think that most negativity surrounding atheism is a product, not of the belief, but of the vocal minority which plays fast and loose with its opinions.

I'm just grateful I live in the UK where this is a complete non-issue. I think of my religion (totally agnostic at the moment although I do have a few Buddhist wristbands) as a completely personal thing that's nobody else's business - the culture I live in allows me that freedom and it's one of the things I'm most grateful for.

It's been said a million times but part of the negative stigma definitely comes from people just being rude about their beliefs/lack thereof.

To me, unless I'm understanding it wrong, atheism seems a little closed minded. I'd be utterly shocked if any religion has ever gotten anything right about the afterlife or whatever but that doesn't mean their couldn't be an afterlife or supernatural being(s) outside of what's been described by human beings. I mean, even we can alter and almost create non-human life from scratch. For that reason I describe myself as agnostic, with extreme doubts about religion.

^ there are a few main types of things I'm definitely closed minded about. I am not open to the idea that the world < 10,000 years old, that is a non-negotiable. Less provable is the idea that some deity is going to punish you for not adhering to some scripted doctrine, but I refuse to believe that as well. That seems so obviously a sales pitch by humans.

Oh no, I totally agree. I'm just saying that completely writing off the idea of their being more to life than is understood by science because most ideas about what else might be out there are completely inane is, well, also inane.

I think anyone who claims to understand all of existence, with mankind as a species basically still being in childhood with limited understanding and ability, is a cocksucker. Zealots of any kind are stupid and annoying.

Atheism isn't taking itself to have evidence of the nonexistence of god.

It is about saying that in the complete and total absence of any kind of genuine evidence of god, it makes rational sense to assume the nonexistence of god.

Put more succinctly by logic professor Irving Copi - "In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence."


Religion, makes the direct claim that not just "something" but a specific, defined something, with defined properties and identifiable characteristics of which we are already aware, DOES exist, and that that thing is responsible for literally the entirety of the universe. That's a very much more bold claim than can be taken under the axiom "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - That position wouldn't apply to something so vast and completely self-evident that it could create the universe.


As a result, we're left with the burden of proof - Many Atheists, myself included, take the position that to prove the nonexistence of something like god would require, in itself, god-like or even god-exceeding, knowledge of the entire universe, sufficient to be able to say without room for error, that god was not present within it.

That's a much bigger task than a religious person making a bold claim, then being asked before we treat this claim credulously, that he provide valid evidence to back that claim up.



To use an analogy - if I am told that a glass jar contains a liquid indistinguishable from air, by virtue of having the same refractive index and colour, then I cannot be sure of this statement. Air is far more likely to be in there than some obscure chemical creation, so I will probably take the position that this is poppycock unless the person making the claim can show me evidence of this liquid. This would be easily done by that person say, wetting a tissue with that liquid. Being possessed of evidence, then I could logically change my position and be at no fault.

The problem with the argument for god, is that this evidence seems to be impossible to provide. So until this evidence is provided, I will take the position that the observed universe, having yet to provide any evidence of god, probably does not contain one.

Science is our best possible understanding of the world from a given point in time, but it's also important to remember that there was a time when science, valid science, told us the world was flat. I love science. I'm dedicating my life in part to science, but science is a process, not an end. Science knows it doesn't know everything, or it'd stop.

To me, there's no point in making a decision about something science can't address, which is why I'm agnostic.

I put it in italics the first time around...

I will say that I do have a complete disbelief in doctrine as prescribed by organized religion. I am by no means advocating an organization's perspective. I'm open to the idea that we don't know everything about our world, but I'm quite closed to religion as written by man and unproven by science. As I see it, the Bible is basically history's longest game of telephone.

That's exactly what I'm saying except written fancierly.

Right. I just like to discuss stuff, but nobody's interested in airing their minds with me. :laughing:

I'm confused. My first post on this page was directed at GB.

What is going on?



I think I'm too stoned for this.

You might be. I was jumping in and clarifying my feelings because you made a point I agreed with and felt I could elaborate on.

Hoookay. Gotcha. S'all clear n gravy now :)

The thing is, the concept of a higher being is a human concept. Its weighed up on its own merits. To ascribe the responsibility of explaining it to some nebulous higher being is to miss a key part of the puzzle - at some point, man created religion. Why?

Historically there have been two answers. Delusion or political leverage. Not one religion in all of history has ever been born lived and died without being either explained as the ramblings of a madman, or the tool of a political leader. It lets madmen tell themselves they understand the world, and it lets rulers tell their subjects they understand the world.

If neither of those things were factors, and if religions of the past had ever had a valid explanation for things science has subsequently disproven (Apollos chariot for example), the there might be an argument for it. But as far as i'm concerned, religion is a human tool created for human reasons. To address it as if humans have simply stumbled upon something by accident stretches things in my view.

Terror Management Theory suggests that religion (and culture) developed as a tool to comfort the human mind when confronted with its own mortality; the idea is that being a species that can foresee our deaths and be preoccupied with the prospect, religion was developed to help keep us from coming unglued about knowing we're all going to die.

It is of course a theory, but studies indicate that feelings of mortality and one's strength of beliefs are linked; if subjects have their mortality made salient in an experiment and are afterwards prompted openly or covertly about their thoughts on other cultures, people tend to feel stronger in their own beliefs and feel more threatened and closed-off by those of anyone else.

Anything is possible, but that doesn't mean we have to treat those ideas seriously if they haven't provided any kind of compelling evidence. For instance, we don't treat the ideas of Flat Earthers seriously. Why should we? There beliefs have been proven to be nonsense. But for all we know there may be some great, all-encompassing conspiracy that may be tricking us believe that the Earth is round, or some deity may be pulling some kind of hoo doo on us. You can't prove otherwise with one hundred percent accuracy. It's impossible. But since there is no evidence to believe this is true we don't treat this idea with any seriousness. The only real difference with religion is that there are a bunch of people that do treat the idea seriously without any better evidence, so we live in societies where believing in this idea without evidence lacks the same stigma as does the belief that the Earth is flat.

The reason I'm willing to make the logical leap that God actively doesn't exist, as opposed to simply not having a belief that he/she/it exists is that humanity has shown a willingness to see agency in everything from the changing of the seasons to the spilled intestines of ritually sacrificed cows that is so extreme and nearly uncontrollable that without any compelling evidence as to his existence I think it is logical to come to the conclusion that the whole idea was made up by people who just can't help but see faces in the leaves.

I used to play video games with at a friend's house when I was a little kid. We both have a tendency toward gamer rage, so we often ended up yelling and cursing at the screen. We even claimed that the game was "cheating", though we obviously knew that an inanimate object wasn't capable of cheating and that there was little chance that the game programmers had designed it to cheat for no apparent reason. It almost seemed like there was some intelligence that was feeding off of our frustrations in order to piss us off ever further in ways that felt premeditated.

Nonsense obviously, but come on, you know you've felt it too. Don't lie.

We even came up with little rituals about it. Don't scream at the game. You'll anger it. Apologize for your temerity and praise the game. Nonsense obviously, but I swear to the Lords of Kobol that we half believed it. It just felt so natural to appeal to something that showed even the slightest signs of unexplainable agency, no matter how much we knew otherwise. It didn't require any kind of legitimate doubt in what we knew to be true, all that was required of us to pray to a deity was the slightest nugget of irrationality.

A very succinct way of pointing out that one of the main reasons we even have this debate, is that religion is something people invest greatly into, and therefore it's very difficult to actually enter into a discussion about it where it doesn't come to a match of who can simply shout the loudest.

Well my point was more that people have been acculturated into thinking that god belief is at least a somewhat logical thing to believe in, so they don't treat it the same way they do other things that really aren't any more seemingly ludicrous. Even atheists probably subconsciously feel that god belief is at least worthy of consideration merely because they've been raised in a majority theist society, even if intellectually they don't. What's inherently more logical about a god then a flat Earth or a zombie apocalypse or Harry Potter being secretly a documentary? There's no more legitimate evidence for any of them, and the concepts are all equally ludicrous enough that quantifying which might be more likely is pointless. I mean I think George Romero has actually provided a more convincing case for a worldwide epidemic turning people into animated, flesh-eating corpses than anybody has water being turned into wine or that a being so powerful that he may as well be magical who created the universe and everything in it actually exists. And yet people still say, "What if?" about god, but would openly mock anyone who tried to warn them of the coming hordes of the undead.