I'm an anti-theist.

[Warren Stupidity]

I think religion is, on balance, a predominantly negative influence on world culture and we would be better off if religion just disappeared. I think that makes me not just an atheist, but an anti-theist.

[LostOne4Ever]

1. Although I do not consider myself an anti-theist

I do understand where you are coming from. There are things that religious people do that make me wonder if your position is right far more than I like to admit.

Every time I hear about a school girl getting shot by religious extremist because she wanted to go to school, or I hear about what happens to children in northern africa, or when hear about how this person or that person is beaten by religious extremists simply because they are gay or Trans I seriously wonder if your position is right.

[rrneck]

2. You can change it but you can never make it go away.

Religion is a tool that channels part of our humanity. It's there for a reason.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. I never said I could make it go away.

However:

Religion is a tool that channels part of our humanity. It's there for a reason.

I think that is nonsense. Whatever part of our humanity religion channels can be channeled by other means that do not require belief in utter bullshit.

[rrneck]

7. "we would be better off if religion just disappeared."

Sounds like go away to me.

Anything can become a religion. It becomes utter bullshit when it stops working in the real world.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. there is a huge difference.

You really think that there is no difference between stating "we would be better off if x" and "we should make x happen"?

[rrneck]

11. If you could make it happen, would you? nt

[Warren Stupidity]

13. no.

Not if "make it" involves any sort of coercion. If I could persuade people to abandon the idiocy of religion, I would do that.

[rrneck]

14. So you would make it go away through persuasion.

And if you could make it go away either by hook or crook, what do you think would happen? People would just forget about the concept? Something that is almost as old as the species would just blink out of existence? I seriously doubt it. I think religion and it's attendant deities are a marriage of two concepts: faith and infinity. We will always be able to imagine forever and the possibility of going there. Whether it's some dude with a white beard or string theory, humans will never relinquish the hope of forever. And we will always build a narrative to describe it.

It may be that the job of iconoclastic atheists is to simply ask, "how does your infinity work here and now?"

[Warren Stupidity]

18. yes i could easily imagine no religion. nt.

[rrneck]

19. I think you would have to imagine it.

Because it will never be.

Anything can be a religion. Anything.

[Warren Stupidity]

21. well if you choose to redefine "religion" to be "anything"

then of course there is no way that everything will disappear. But that it just a silly redefinition of the commonly understood term "religion".

You seem very hostile to the possibility that religion, as most people understand the term, could in fact wither away and eventually disappear.

[rrneck]

22. Semantics and tribalism...

People, including atheists, read fiction, watch movies, follow sports, profess faith in political and cultural leaders, and are generally entranced and inspired by things they cannot directly perceive with their senses. Do you understand quantum mechanics? I don't. But I believe in it because some dude with a white coat said so.

Is there any significant difference between singing the praises of God while we watch the church burn heretics and singing the praises of science while we watch our technology burn the planet? How many books has Richard Dawkins sold in the last ten years? How many times has the word "awesome" appeared along side the name Neil Degrasse Tyson right here? And you say I "seem hostile" to the possibility that religion will eventually disappear. Why would you find it necessary to put me in an opposing camp? That's just more faith driven tribalism.

So when religion "as people understand the term" finally withers away, what will replace it? Culture abhors a vacuum. It may be, if we don't destroy ourselves with technology, that the terms "atheist" and "Luddite" will become synonymous. What will it mean to be an atheist when god becomes some animistic natural process and scientists become its high priests? The seeds of that kind of thinking already exist.

What will it mean to be an atheist when God ceases to be? Do you think atheism will wither away as well? I doubt it. We will just be "anti" whatever god people happen to praise at the moment. It won't matter what kind of god it is. And I expect the only thing atheists have faith in is our own skepticism.

[AlbertCat]

25. But I believe in it because some dude with a white coat said so.

Well I don't.

I don't "believe" in QM or any science. I TRUST it....

Not because some guy in a lab coat says so...

but because:

LOOK AROUND.... science has been spectacularly successful in a very short time.

Plus Science has something Religion doesn't: things we could NEVER make up, like Relativity, and QM. They are hard to "get" because they involve notions that we don't and cannot experience. And they've been peer reviewed and replicated. They make predictions that later turn out to be true. Religion.... not so much.

Trusting science is not "believing in" it.

And having faith that, oh say, other drivers are gonna follow traffic laws is NOT the same as faith with a capital "F", or faith in magic.

[rrneck]

28. I don't think you trust quantum mechanics.

Unless you have conducted the experiments yourself and understand the results, you trust the people who have done so. So when the lights work and the fridge keeps the beer cold, there's no problem.

To believe means to have faith. Faith, when it comes to science, gives us intellectual predictability. Thus with science we can all agree about the specific gravity of water and the atomic mass of hydrogen or whatever.

Do you realize that religion, god and all the rest are peer reviewed as well? Of course, since they are fiction the reviewers, known as theologians, are basically literary critics doing religion. And when that peer review process is done believers have emotional predictability. If everybody feels pretty much the same way about life, the universe and everything they are more likely to cooperate to survive because, evolution.

And indeed science spectacularly successful in a short time. That is not necessarily a good thing.

Pick your poison.



People can and will fetishize damn near anything. We can't keep our feelings separate from our experience any more than we sequester our intellect. Science and religion are not in conflict. They are not even two sides of the same coin. They are analogous in the human experience and actually quite interchangeable. That's how we get stuff like sociology, anthropology, political science and all the rest of the soft sciences.

[AlbertCat]

33. I don't think you trust quantum mechanics.

No one does. I mean, QM is a fact of nature that nothing can circumnavigate or avoid. "Trusting" it is like trusting gravity or the laws of inertia. I don't. I know they are real because....y'know...evidence.

I trust the Physicists with degrees and years of work in their fields and I trust what they tell me their PROOFS on QM reveal.


Try to understand that. It's not faith.

[rrneck]

34. One can have faith in physical phenomonea as easily as a mythical god.

You can plant crops with faith that the rains will come. You can bargain for peace in good faith with others. Vindication of that faith fosters trust in the dependability of nature, both human and the the world. The concept of expectation without evidence is a fundamental part of the human experience. Our species didn't spread across the planet on rational peer review alone.

I think the problem is that we have allowed religion to unjustly claim faith as it's sole province. I am unwilling to relinquish the field on that score. The religious get to use science and technology whenever it suits them, but for some reason faith seems verboten to those who eschew religious faith. We walked out of the Olduvai gorge long before we thought up the concept of god, certainly the god of Moses.

Were it not for the guys in the white coats I wouldn't know about quantum mechanics. And for many were it not for their ecclesiastical leaders people wouldn't know they have the faith to face a new day. Social unity was, for millennia, another sort of proof. But times change and just as some science and technology is killing us, religions that once gave us unity are feeding off people's faith. And while gods come and go, there have always been atheists. Atheism is probably related to brain chemistry.

[Warren Stupidity]

35. "You can plant crops with faith that the rains will come."

You are deliberately misusing one meaning of the word faith in order to prove a point using a different meaning of the word faith. That is a dishonest argument.

Having faith that the rains will come is evidence based reasoning from prior experience with seasonal climate events. Here faith means "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". *

Having faith that there is a supernatural being with some connection to the physical universe is reasoning without benefit of evidence. Here faith means "Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof." *

*OED.

[rrneck]

36. Words mean what we want them to mean.

Do you know how dictionaries determine the meaning of words? Here's how. Scroll down to Prescriptive vs. descriptive.

faith
noun
1.confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2.belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

Merriam webster is no different. Your definition is the second listed in the OED. Both definitions are supported by the evidence that people put faith in other people, living things, and inanimate objects. You can watch it happen every day. Some call that evidence. Do you have faith in the Democratic Party? The president? If not, why vote?

The dishonest argument is the one that has convinced people religion is the sole arbiter of the meaning of faith. In times past it got people burned alive. We place faith in other social institutions nowadays.

[Warren Stupidity]

37. " Words mean what we want them to mean."

is babble.

[rrneck]

38. I included links for a reason.

Here, let me help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary

Lexicographers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. Noah Webster, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of some words. This is why American English now uses the spelling color while the rest of the English-speaking world prefers colour. (Similarly, British English subsequently underwent a few spelling changes that did not affect American English; see further at American and British English spelling differences.)[20]

Large 20th-century dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Webster's Third are descriptive, and attempt to describe the actual use of words. Most dictionaries of English now apply the descriptive method to a word's definition, and then, outside of the definition itself, add information alerting readers to attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused.[21] Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or nonstand (nonstandard). American Heritage goes further, discussing issues separately in numerous "usage notes." Encarta provides similar notes, but is more prescriptive, offering warnings and admonitions against the use of certain words considered by many to be offensive or illiterate, such as, "an offensive term for..." or "a taboo term meaning...".

Because of the widespread use of dictionaries in schools, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, with even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, the meanings of words in English are primarily determined by usage, and the language is being changed and created every day.[22] As Jorge Luis Borges says in the prologue to "El otro, el mismo": "It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature."

Hey, watch this. "George W Bush is an asshole." If we say that enough maybe someday the 43rd president will become synonymous with an anal orifice.

[Brainstormy]

3. I am anti-theist also

if it's interpreted to mean "against religion." As another poster commented, it may never go away, but we can hope, we can fight it with reason, and we can try to minimize its influence.

[mr blur]

5. Me, too.

In the same way that I'm anti-racist, ant-sexist or anti- anything else which promotes bigotry, discord and divisive and often dangerous behaviour. And I don't care how caring, selfless and fair religious people try to be, they still believe in infantile bullshit that make the world a worse place to be.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. I am as well, insofar as they keep injecting their shit into the public square.

Once they stop confuddling religion and politics, I'll be un-motivated to give a shit about their beliefs enough to be 'anti'.

But as long as they do, it's on like donkey kong.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. well yes, if religion weren't a problem it wouldn't be a problem.

[Vashta Nerada]

10. I'm as anti-theist as I can get.

I agree with your OP.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. I'm with you.

[Curmudgeoness]

15. I have never considered anti-theism before,

but it does describe the way I feel about religion. I have always felt that religion has done more harm than good, and I am deeply concerned about the path that we are going down at this time in history as well. So yes, I would also be an anti-theist....maybe more than I am an atheist.

[TxDemChem]

16. I think it can be a great emotional support to those who are in need,

but I see it doing more damage these days. Between the hobby lobby SCOTUS case, the westboro baptist church, all churches that sexually prey on children, the anti-blood transfusion, pray the gay away coherents and those who pray rather than give or allow a child needed medical treatment, it's like the world has gone mad, especially here in the US. I can't believe I ever believed in that shit. They seem to have kicked it up a notch in the last 20 years. Moral majority my ass. Oftentimes, they are the immoral majority.

[Arugula Latte]

31. "these days"

Think about the horrors religion has caused over the past several centuries. If we're talking just the U.S. just in recent history, the Catholic Church's hatred for gays and it's war on women, birth control and abortion and the widespread child rapings and cover-ups have caused untold misery -- and that's just a small slice of religious horrors in one country in one slice of recent time from just one Christian sect.

[TxDemChem]

32. You're absolutely right.

I think living through it has given me a narrow peep into what others have watched for more than a millennium. They've chosen some terrible leaders too. I guess God was too busy to monitor the goings-on of his faithful.

[uriel1972]

17. I'm good with it, "ANTI-THEIST" yes.

It has a nice ring to it. I have often felt humanity achieves it's best when it fights against gods or at least the ideas of gods.

[LiberalAndProud]

20. I am anti dogma, anti religion, anti unthinking tradition.

Does that make me an anti-theist?

[Jgarrick]

23. I suppose I am in the same sense I'm anti anything irrational.

[AlbertCat]

24. Once upon a time....

..... religion was very very important and I'd say even necessary. But those ancient times where magic was supposed to be real and the human race was profoundly ignorant of many things are long gone.... and that type of religion is now destructive, not just quaint. Religion needs to evolve into something useful for today. A good 1st step is to eliminate all supernatural gobbledygook. I mean, you can take out every miracle and magical notion of the supernatural from Jesus' story and his secular message is fine. It's basically a message about how to treat others. No redemption or ritual worship required.

I reject anything supernatural. The supernatural is superfluous. Therefore I also reject religion.

[Rob H.]

26. I'm anti-theism more than anti-theist

mainly because theism causes people to embrace and promote ideas about reality that would be considered ludicrous if they really sat down and thought about them for a bit instead of blindly believing whatever they're told, creationism being just one example, the idea that religion is never, ever, never, ever, ever responsible for anything bad anywhere on the planet being another. "But slavery was sanctioned in The Bible!" you might say, only to be met with something along the lines of, "But the only people advocating for the elimination of slavery were religious people who used the The Bible to do so!"*

It also leads people to defend organizations that (one hopes) they'd never defend if the organization were secular, like when people say it's impossible for them to leave the RCC even in the wake of pedophilia scandals. If you can't leave when you find out that your church has not only been protecting men who rape children, they've been moving them to unsuspecting parishes where they can continue to rape children, what, exactly, is it going to take?

*Note: this claim is 100% bullshit, obviously, but to read some of the posters in that other group I suspect some of them actually think this way. And how does that make it better, anyway? They used their holy book to advocate ending something that their holy book advocated for in the first place. Their book got one of the most fundamental questions humanity has ever faced--"Is owning other people immoral?"--WRONG. It's as if you were to go to the doctor and he stabs you with a scalpel, then stitches up the wound he inflicted on you and expects you to be grateful that he treated something that wouldn't have happened in the first place if he hadn't done it!

And don't even get me started on the idea that we should respect everyone's beliefs, because some beliefs--like exorcism and demon possesion, which, amazingly, some in the other group are defending--are laugh-out-loud stupid. People's right to believe whatever they want should be respected, but the beliefs themselves? Sorry, no.

/rant

[Warren Stupidity]

27. well that is a good point. What I am against is the negative

effect of religious propagandizing on people and society. That is done by both religious institutions and by cultural conditioning. I am not just opposed to institutions like the RCC, but also to the religious cultural indoctrination that is done explicitly and implicitly by many institutions.

[Rob H.]

40. Sorry for the delayed response but

I agree completely. I'm down here in the Bible Belt so I see those negative effects and influences all the time.

[trotsky]

29. Yes, this.

When most people claim the label "anti-theist," they are doing so because they are a person who opposes the idea of theism.

However when most people who don't like to see any criticism of theism (or religion) use the term, they clearly want it to mean someone who opposes believers as people, because they gain a rhetorical advantage.

This has been one of the main points of contention in that other group for a very long time - the distinction between opposing/criticizing ideas, and opposing/criticizing people.

Stifling the criticism of theism and religion directly enables the idiots running Hobby Lobby, to give just one example.

[onager]

39. This is a very good point.

And one I need reminding of occasionally. Well, probably more like "constantly."

Sometimes I'm about to post an attack on "religion," then I stop and think that it sounds more like an attack on religious people. As you note, we shouldn't do that.

Then there's the problem of the word "anti-theism" itself. Fairly or not, it is a real "gotcha" term. A very loaded word, useful for shutting down a conversation almost immediately.

Soon as that word is used, someone will drag out all our favorite memes: "French Revolution! Stalin! Mao!" Etc. etc. The distinction between "anti-theism" and "anti-theist" gets lost in the shouting, hair-splitting and usual bafflegab.

But having said that, here's something I almost never see discussed: whether it's France in 1789 or Mexico in 1915 or Russia in 1917...why is it that revolutions so often target religion?

Is it because all the revolutionaries woke up one morning suddenly hating the local parish priest?

As most of us know, it's because the Church worked hand-in-glove with the State, sometimes for centuries, in helping to oppress people who finally stood up and said "Enough!" And while the local priest may have been a perfectly nice human being, he's suddenly carrying a lot of symbolic baggage.

That shouldn't happen, but we human beings have a nasty habit of creating scapegoats. Also, the believers often seem unwilling to discuss any historical wrongdoing by their side. "Nope, revolution happened, churches burned, priests killed...and it was all the fault of those damn atheists!"

[mr blur]

30. I stand corrected - you are 100% correct.

I don't despise any of the idiots in other groups, just the dangerous nonsense that they defend.