I agree, so dumb.
I’m thinking this was made by a religious person who has no idea what Atheism is.
I mean, at least they nailed the “atheist isn’t one thing” part…
Religious people physically can’t comprehend non religious thinking. If I didn’t have Christianity shoved down my throat every day, I wouldn’t think about religion at all.
I mean that’s not likely. Humans have spiritual needs. I suspect what’s more likely is that the constant aggravation of Christianity being shoved down our throats massively distorts our idea of what religious thought and practice even is, and we don’t recognize our own needs and practices as being religious in nature.
In psychology, spirituality is thought of as how you relate to the Universe. Do you think it is a good place where positive things can happen? Do you think it is a bad place where suffering outweighs any potential value? One has to find a way to feel that existing in this Universe is tenable. That right there is religious thought.
We all have many needs of religious thought.
Exhibit A
I just want to do my hobbies, travel, and eat good food. I don’t have “spiritual needs” and this armchair pseudo psychology is right behind Christianity in terms of “shit I’m tired of hearing.”
It turns out I don’t have any spirituality then. I don’t think the universe has any connection to good or bad things happening.
I think you are hinting at this, but let’s be clear: spirituality and religion are two different things.
gives you the deeply suspicious gaze of a born nihilist
joins with a deeply sarcastic eye roll of an absurdist
That’s just philosophy. Last I checked philosophy is not inherently religious
What utter crap.
The universe is mostly empty space with the occasional rock and ball of plasma. Assumptions of universal morality are just the result of an overactive tendency for our brains to find patterns in things. I do good things because I like doing them. This is likely the result of a bunch of evolved tendencies as well, but A) I am not making appeals to superstitious nonsense, and B) I can intellectually recognize that this feral drive I feel results in other sentient beings having a better life.
Taking all of that and saying, “YoU hAvE sPiRiTuaL nEeds!” is so completely absurd I don’t even have words for it.
He didn’t say YOU have spiritual needs. He said humans have them.
You’re the exact type of person the image posted is about.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. It’s an interesting viewpoiny. However, I believe religion was invented to fill the void. To explain what we couldn’t understand. Scientific advances has mostly filled that void, so there is no practical beed for religion. The only religion that is still useful is when people have to deal with difficult times, like the death of a partner or a child. People seem to genuinly find comfort in religion than. Every other aspect of religion is obsolete due to the changes in modern society and science.
I don’t think spirituality and religion are the same thing. Religion is a pre-defined set of rules that are forced upon you (or maybe you choose it freely, but not often). Spirituality is a highly personal feeling and indeed what you discribe, how you feel about your place in the universe. Religion defines your spiritual thinking for you. Non-religious people define, discover or learn their own spirituaĺ identity. This an be based on fiction, emotion, social identity, science, whatever. In all cases it is completely decoupled from religion though.
Atheists are neutral
Who is saying this?
Literally nobody. This is confusing atheism with agnosticism.
Or, if I’m being charitable, they’re confusing the starting position and the conclusion. If you start from a position of neutrality and follow evidence-based reasoning, the conclusion is either atheism or agnosticism.
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive terms. The first refers to belief and the second one refers to knowledge. It’s perfectly possible not to believe in the existence a given god (belief) and at the same time not know with certainty whether it exists (knowledge).
I’ve always understood the colloquial meanings in practice today to be that atheism is active disbelief where agnosticism is essentially choosing not to choose (for lack of information).
I understand your point, linguistically and philosophically, but I don’t really think that’s how most people - even atheists and agnostics - use the terms today.
Maybe. It’s worth defining terms before you discuss. I always try to make it clear I view myself as an agnostic atheist.
Through not choosing, agnostics are atheists. Agnosticism is just a subcategory of atheism, and since it derives from the binary of knowing or not knowing, the only other alternative is gnostic atheism.
Which itself is pretty irrelevant since it implies knowledge of the nonexistence of divinity, which implies it’s possible to empirically disprove divinity, and since it’s not possible to actually prove a negative, gnostic atheism is impossible. Therefore all atheists are agnostic (and all agnostics are atheists).
Whether you identify as atheist or agnostic is irrelevant then, since both are shorthands for “agnostic atheist”
Nah there are a lot of agnostic theists. It’s even relatively mainstream.
If you start from a position of neutrality and follow evidence-based reasoning, the conclusion is either atheism or agnosticism.
I’m sure you can find some Ontological Arguments to the contrary. Regardless, its weird to suggest atheists - who have clearly staked out a philosophical position - are “neutral” on the subject of religious belief. It reeks of the terminally online conservatives who would scream “Not An Argument” at anyone they disagreed with, to shut them up.
Evangelical atheism is a subset of atheism that gives the whole bunch a bad name.
Evangelical atheism is a subset of atheism
Sure, fine, whatever. But what does this have to do with “neutrality”? Is he confusing atheists and agnostics?
I’m not saying you’re wrong.
I would interpret neutrality as not being “for or against” anything. I’d say most religious, nonreligious and atheist people are not preaching their religion or opposing others. So actually I would say most people are “neutral”.
For any group, there will be a subset of evangelicals who are “for” their stance in actively trying to convert others to their ideology. A further subset of this, is those who are “against” any other ideology and actively campaign others. I would say all in these categories are no longer “neutral”.
So every group will have a majority of neutrals and subsets who aren’t. I agree, I don’t see how anyone can argue that atheism = neutrality. This comic is a deliberate effort to categorise atheists as: all being anti-religion. This strikes me as something a religious anti-atheism aunt would share on Facebook.
I’d say most religious, nonreligious and atheist people are not preaching their religion or opposing others
Most successful religious movements are explicitly evangelical. And it isn’t as though religious debate is uncommon in society.
The number of hard core missionaries and zealots are in the minority, but their success is predicated on a large financial and political base back home.
So every group will have a majority of neutrals and subsets who aren’t.
For any group, you’re going to have a “standard” view which will be the baseline. And you’ll have deviation from that baseline by degrees of orthodoxy or heresy.
But standard doesn’t mean neutral. You can have a predominantly Catholic or Hindu or Taoist community with very staunch beliefs and taboos. You can also have a very segregated religious environment, where Pakistani Muslims and Chinese Buddhists or Afghan Muslims and Soviet Atheists or Chinese Falun Gong and Chinese Confuscians both hold to their views rigidly, while feuding over public policy as a result.
The majority doesn’t have to be neutral. There may not even be a majority, in a significantly pluralist community.
This comic is a deliberate effort to categorise atheists as: all being anti-religion.
A lot of the staumcher atheists I know are people who were raised and then rejected a family/community faith. I don’t think that’s an unfair conclusion, but it ignores the cause (social structures that produce a hard divide between these cohorts).
We’re not all neutral. There’s a lot of intense feeling around religion
Buddhists in SriLanka vs Buddhists in Thailand.
There is a big difference between “neutral”. And it varies based on beliefs.
It’s a theist’s articulation of an agnostic atheist’s explanation of their view. The real issue here is that they’re conflating gnostic atheists with agnostic atheists.
I knew a few people like this Like I’m an atheist but I don’t really care to pressure others into it or actively disrespect other people’s religion
It goes both ways tho, don’t force your religion
Don’t force your viewpoint onto others.
I’m curious about the Jesus Was Wrong sign.
Seemed like a pretty cool dude, and I probably wouldn’t have a problem with people who follow him, if they actually followed his teachings.
he told people to kill their family if they didn’t believe in him. better to kill them yourself then have god do it I guess. Jesus is not the cutesy communist that some want to paint him as
What?! Where do you get that?
Deuteronomy 13:6-11
6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
Jesus said that all OT laws would be upheld here:
Matthew 5:17-19
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
it may not have come directly from him as i misremembered, but there ya go
That is such an overly simplistic and reductionist take. I’m not even sure the most control and fear oriented, “OT” Christians would accept that interpretation. I’m not even sure that there are any hardcore Jews that would accept that interpretation.
From a Christian perspective, Jesus is evidently non-violent and encourages non-violence (“those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and his refusal to start a riot in Jerusalem when he’s being tried.)
Also, I’d take your Matthew quote as Jesus seeing himself as in conversation with the Jewish corpus of teachings, not divorcing himself from it. He’s evidently NOT ok with the blind implementation of OT teaching. Anyway, I’ve got to clarify that the translation of Torah as “law” misses a lot of nuance. “Teachings” might be a better translation. “The Law and the Prophets” is basically shorthand for what Christians would call the “Old Testament”.
He obviously interpreted and prioritised Old Testament teachings to place love, mercy, and redemption at the heart of interpretation, so to say that, “Jesus wants you to kill your non-Christian family,” is absolutely disingenuous.
Still better than Trump. 🤷🏻♂️
Let’s see anyone limbo under that low bar.
The United Church of Christ is largely aligned with the teachings of the man Jesus and concerns itself little with the centuries of dogma that typically comes along with it. It’s refreshing.
He had some hits, but also stuff like slaves obey your masters, faith healing, and substitutionary atonement.
If religion doesn’t like opposing viewpoints, it can always stop proselytizing and stfu, otherwise if they wanna stand on corners to talk about their voodoo hoodoo beliefs to whoever listens then be prepared for others to do the same.
This is, in my opinion, a side effect of encountering atheists online vs in real life.
In real life, unless someone is proudly broadcasting their religious views, you have no idea if or what they believe.
Online, you can only interact with what they’re broadcasting. You encounter more vocally atheist and religious people here because if you’re here you’ve got to talk about something.
They’re neutral, slamming the top 300 religions of the world about the same.
But, from the narciss-uh, monotheistic point of view, it’s gonna feel like they’re targeting you.
“They’re mocking you sweetie.”
