A Question on Atheism
So, I got a question via my Facebook page because the person didn’t have a Tumblr account and I have anonymous questions turned off. (Maybe I should turn it on for the future? I dunno.)
I thought everyone else would enjoy seeing the answer, because I would’ve answered it publicly if I had had the chance. Here is the question:
I would like to ask - given the current militaristic wings of atheism and their ‘bibles’ (the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, for example) on top of the fact that many atheists now celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday like a kind of Christmas, is atheism now by default a religion? I invented my own version of atheism just in case, but I would like to know the opinions of the Weird Shit Blog.
I’m not any kind of authority on religion, except that I’m fascinated by it. I’m just some dumbass internet comedy writer (and that should be remembered in light of the opinions expressed forthwith). Here was my answer:
I think atheism counts as a religious belief, because the default human position is agnostic, as in we simply don’t know. (Gnosis meaning knowledge, so a-gnosis would be not-knowledge.) We can’t know if there is or isn’t a God because, like, how can we? Our knowledge of the vastness of the universe is infinitesimally small in comparison.
So, atheists kind of take it on faith that, because we have yet to find conclusive evidence of God or Allah or gods or what have you, we never, ever will. Sure, it seems unlikely, but we just don’t know everything yet, so it’s technically a leap of faith to just say “fuck it, there’s nothing.”
Adding organization to it is just another layer. That’s totally fine. That’s not a big deal. Lots of people with similar beliefs like to meet and celebrate together. It makes people happy and brings them together. I hope those hardcore atheists who are completely anti-religion (instead of just holding their own personal beliefs) understand and acknowledge the implications of that.
