Religion
Related: About this forumNo Religion? 7 Types of Non-Believers
Religious labels help shore up identity. So what are some of the things non-believers can call themselves?
By Valerie Tarico
June 3, 2012
Catholic, Born-Again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist . . . . Religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious or spiritual labels offer a way of defining who we are. They remind adherents that our moral sense and quest for meaning are core parts of what it means to be human. They make it easier to convey a subset of our deepest values to other people, and even to ourselves.
For those who have lost their religion or never had one, finding a label can feel important. It can be part of a healing process or, alternately, a way of declaring resistance to a dominant and oppressive paradigm. Finding the right combination of words can be a challenge though. For a label to fit it needs to resonate personally and also communicate what you want to say to the world. Words have definitions, connotations and history, and how people respond to your label will be affected by all three. What does it mean? What emotions does it evoke? Who are you identifying as your intellectual and spiritual forebears and your community? The differences may be subtle but they are important.
If, one way or another, you’ve left religion behind, and if you’ve been unsure what to call yourself, you might try on one of these:
1. Atheist. The term atheist can be defined literally as lacking a humanoid god concept, but historically it means one of two things. Positive atheism asserts that a personal supreme being does not exist. Negative atheism simply asserts a lack of belief in such a deity. It is possible be a positive atheist about the Christian God, for example, while maintaining a stance of negative atheism or even uncertainty on the question of a more abstract deity like a “prime mover.” In the United States, it is important to know that atheist may be the most reviled label for a godless person. Devout believers use it as a slur and many assume an atheist has no moral core. Until recently calling oneself an atheist was an act of defiance. That appears to be changing. With the rise of the “New Atheists” and the recent atheist visibility movement, the term is losing its edge.
2. Anti-theist. When atheist consistently evoked images of Madeline Murray O’Hare, hostility toward religion was assumed. Now that it may evoke a white-haired grandmother at the Unitarian church or the gay kid on Glee, some people want a term that more clearly conveys their opposition to the whole religious enterprise. The term anti-theist says, “I think religion is harmful.” It also implies some form of activism that goes beyond merely advocating church-state separation or science education. Anti-theism challenges the legitimacy of faith as a moral authority or way of knowing. Anti-theists often work to expose harms caused in the name of God like stonings, gay bating, religious child maltreatment, genital mutilation, unwanted childbearing or black-collar crime. The New Atheist writers including Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins might better be described as anti-theists.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/155685/no_religion_7_types_of_non-believers_/
If you don't want to read it, these are seven types propounded by this skeptic.
Atheist
Anti-theist
Agnostic
Skeptic
Freethinker
Humanist
Pantheist
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KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)Enlightenment is easier without such walls.
rug
(82,333 posts)
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)
Walk away
(9,494 posts)The two large churches near me downsized to one and then set about attracting recent immigrants from other areas to fill their seats and coffers. After demonizing birth control in every form, it should be no time before they are both filled to the brim again.
rug
(82,333 posts)I far prefer that to a room filled with comfortable people complaining about student loans and the stock market.
I'm sure you didn't mean people who cannot afford an education are stupid.
mr blur
(7,753 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)
Give my regards to Her Majesty.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)I'd rather schools be filled with the uneducated and the poor.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)In the immortal words of Bono: "The God I believe in isn't short of cash."
djean111
(14,255 posts)I don't define myself by any one thing. That's silly and limiting.
get the red out
(13,460 posts)The message presented with this seems to be that people have to have a label rather than the positive in having freedom from labels that separate us from one another.
rug
(82,333 posts)
This one is from a British organization that calls itself frethinker.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)How outrageously unreasonable! Vicious anti-theists!
rug
(82,333 posts)
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)Sounds like you might be mellowing. Good for you.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I don't think any mellowing is going on.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)I'm not an anti-theist. Like you say "anti-theists are vicious and unreasonable". I love everyone trotsky, including you.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)
If I'm an "anti-theist" because I don't think Fred Phelps or the pope should be allowed to hide behind their faith to judge what others are doing in their lives, then I'll embrace the label, and I'll take whatever amount of judgmental bullshit you want to throw my way because of it.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)Last edited Tue Jun 5, 2012, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Talk about broad brush bigotry. Let's attack every person of faith because a few are assholes. Very mature.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I said nothing about hating people. That's all you.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)Must've had something caught in my gullet at the time.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I said nothing about "attacking" people of faith. That's all you.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)You little remark about the pope and Fred Phelps. No straw man there, eh?
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Unless you can show exactly where I advocated "attack(ing) every person of faith."
If you can't do that, the civil thing to do would be to retract your statement about me and apologize.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)I hope you learned something about launching nasty attacks on people based on false accusations. That will go a long way toward improving the civility here.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)I am often wrong and grateful when people point it out. Helps me deal with any tendency toward arrogance. Looking forward to more and more civility.
djean111
(14,255 posts)which is still, evidently, quite relevant:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Oh, and I don't challenge religion - I disregard it.
rug
(82,333 posts)But you should read some of the exchanges between atheists and agnostics. Not to menion the exchanges between atheists and anti-theists.
daaron
(763 posts)Sheila Berry: Why do I need a label?
BlueTigress: So the religionists know exactly how much to hate you.
------
I call myself an "agnostic Christian", and here on DU is the only place I haven't caught either flack or confusion for it (thx, DU!). The Q&A comments above resonated with me because only other believers have ever given me flack for the label, but less flack than my dad gets for calling himself an atheist (he's become a bit of a pariah in my home town). No atheist has ever expressed more than confusion.
To your credit, I've only ever encountered confusion here on DU, and little enough of that.
Maybe this Religion forum is making some headway, after all. Maybe that's why I keep coming back. This has been the most productive of any online dialoguing I've engaged in, bumps and warts and all.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)and want to force you to take one of them.
What one is or where one stands in terms of religious beliefs is highly personal and, IMHO, the more available categories, the better.
Plus, it is often fluid and there is nothing wrong with that either.
Rob H.
(5,349 posts)It's Madalyn Murray O'Hair, not Madeline Murray O’Hare. If she's going to be brought up as an example, the very least the author could do is spell her name correctly.
intaglio
(8,170 posts)Essentially the whole article is about redefining words to suit the author's preconceptions.
Try no god humanoid or otherwise. Atheism can be strong or weak strong is the absolute denial of any deity weak admits the possibility that a deity might, one day, be revealed; this segues seamlessly into agnosticism
The foolish subdivision of atheism into "positive" and "negative" further confuses the mix, especially as the negative atheist she describes is an agnostic - Agnosis, without knowledge or revelation (of deity). The author then conflates "negative" atheism with deism
Moving on to "Anti-Theist": this ignores the obvious problems that any person of any belief of non-belief set can be anti-theist. Some Christians are anti-theistic toward the deities of Hinduism, others claim (falsely) to be against Allah. Therefore it is not a classification of Atheist, just a description of an attitude towards (certain) theological conceptions.
Agnostic is largely correct although the author again fails as a-gnosis is not entirely the same as a-theist.
Skepticism - is an method of looking at the world. Believers in deity as well as non-believers can be skeptic so why classify it as a part of atheism? Also a person can be atheist whilst not being skeptical; it is possible, for example, for an atheist to believe that homeopathy works, the method of action being magical "vibrations" or "quantum interactions".
Free-thinking is a philosophy, an examination of customary and received wisdom or modes of behaviour discarding what the thinker finds to be unnecessary in thought and deed and substituting reason for precedent. Theists can be free thinkers as can deists or astrologers or atheists and agnostics.
Humanists. Humanism is again a philosophy and again can be adopted both by non-believers as well as people of religion. This last is not an easy mix but it can be done, I believe some the Founding Fathers (so beloved of the Christian Right) are thought to have been both Deist and Humanist.
Lastly Pantheist, pantheist??? What part of the word "Pantheist" does the author not understand?
dmallind
(10,437 posts)But you still either play golf or you don't.
Minimizing atheism by reviling the word, creating irrelevant subsets of atheism, and trying to restrict the meaning in silly ways can never change the basic fact that anyone who, to quote "simply asserts a lack of belief in such a deity" IS an atheist.
Almost all the others are types of atheist (it's certainly possible to be an agnostic theist of course, but most people who assume the term lack a god-belief, and pantheists can fall into theism if they posit an independent non-bioligical consciousness) by the definition used.
SwissTony
(2,560 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Much ado about the same thing.
AndyTiedye
(23,500 posts)5. Freethinker. Free-thinker is a term that dates to the end of the 17th Century, when it was first used in England to describe those who opposed the Church and literal belief in the Bible. Freethought is an intellectual stance that says that opinions should be based on logic and evidence rather than authorities and traditions. Well known philosophers including John Lock and Voltaire were called freethinkers in their own time, and a magazine, The Freethinker, has been published in Britain continuously from 1881 to the present. The term has gotten popular recently in part because it is affirmative. Unlike atheism, which defines itself in contrast to religion, freethought identifies with a proactive process for deciding what is real and important.
7. Pantheist. As self-described humanists seek to reclaim the ethical and communitarian aspects of religion, pantheistscenter in on the spiritual heart of faith--the experience of humility, wonder, and transcendence. They see human beings as one small part of a vast natural order, with the Cosmos itself made conscious in us. Pantheists reject the idea of a person- god, but believe that the holy is made manifest in all that exists. Consequently, they often have a strong commitment to protecting the sacred web of life in which and from which we have our existence. The writings of Carl Sagan reflect this sentiment and often are quoted by pantheists, for example in a “Symphony of Science” video series which mixes evocative natural world images, atonal music, and the voices of leading scientists, and has received 30 million views.
bananas
(27,509 posts)Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that (1) “God is everything and everything is God … the world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature” (Owen 1971: 74). Similarly, it is the view that (2) everything that exists constitutes a “unity” and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine (MacIntyre 1967: 34). A slightly more specific definition is given by Owen (1971: 65) who says (3) “‘Pantheism’ … signifies the belief that every existing entity is, only one Being; and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.” Even with these definitions there is dispute as to just how pantheism is to be understood and who is and is not a pantheist. Aside from Spinoza, other possible pantheists include some of the Presocratics; Plato; Lao Tzu; Plotinus; Schelling; Hegel; Bruno, Eriugena and Tillich. Possible pantheists among literary figures include Emerson, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, and Robinson Jeffers. Beethoven (Crabbe 1982) and Martha Graham (Kisselgoff 1987) have also been thought to be pantheistic in some of their work—if not pantheists.
<snip>
2. Is Pantheism Atheistic?
Like “atheism” the term “pantheism” was used in the eighteenth century as a term of “theological abuse,” and it often still is (Tapper 1987). A.H. Armstrong says the term “pantheistic” is a “large, vague term of theological abuse,” (Armstrong 1976: 187). With some exceptions, pantheism is non-theistic, but it is not atheistic. It is a form of non-theistic monotheism, or even non-personal theism. It is the belief in one God, a God identical to the all-inclusive unity, but pantheists (generally) do not believe God is a person or anything like a person. The fact that pantheism clearly is not atheistic, and is an explicit denial of atheism, is disputed by its critics. The primary reason for equating pantheism with atheism is the assumption that belief in any kind of “God” must be belief in a personalistic God, because God must be a person.
In his non-pantheistic phase, Coleridge claimed that “every thing God, and no God, are identical positions” (McFarland 1969: 228). Owen (1971: 69–70) says, “if ‘God’ (theos) is identical with the Universe (to pan) it is merely another name for the Universe. It is therefore bereft of any distinctive meaning; so that pantheism is equivalent to atheism.” Similarly, Schopenhauer (1951: 40) said that “to call the world ‘God’ is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word ‘world’.” The charge that pantheism is atheistic is as old as pantheism itself. Christopher Rowe (1980: 54–5) says, “When Cicero's Velleius describes Speusippus' pantheism as an attempt to ‘root out the notion of gods from our minds’, he is echoing a charge which was commonly made against the pantheism of the earlier Greek natural philosophers … like Anaximander or Heraclitus. These tended to be identified as atheists in the popular mind; and indeed Plato himself implies a similar view … the opponents who classify them as atheists are in reality attacking them for undermining traditional beliefs about the gods—or, to borrow a phrase from the indictment against Socrates, ‘for not believing in the gods the city believes in’.”
At most, what Schopenhauer, Coleridge, Owen etc. can show, and probably all they intend, is that the pantheistic Unity can be explained in terms that would either eliminate the notion of deity from pantheism altogether, or that it is incoherent. They want to show that believing in a pantheistic God is a convoluted and confused way of believing in something that can adequately be described apart from any notion of deity—and in this they are mistaken.
<snip>
GeorgeGist
(25,311 posts)Scientist.
rug
(82,333 posts)Has the hypothesis been tested?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)No accepted scientific theory depends on a god, so in a sense, science has taken a position.
rug
(82,333 posts)laconicsax
(14,860 posts)In a sense, yes.
Did you mean the poorly worded follow up question "has the hypothesis been tested?"
Well, the answer to that is that in a sense, yes. No test has ever found any effect that suggests a god, so in a sense, the hypothesis has been tested indirectly and the results don't suggest the existence of a god.
rug
(82,333 posts)The notion of a god is utterly extraneous to science.
It has neither taken a position nor attempted to prove a position it never took.
I'm sure you knew that.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)Science operates on the assumption that no gods exist. If you feel the need to shoehorn one into whatever gaps you like, that's entirely your right, but don't try to pretend that gods are anything but superfluous to the amazingly precise description of reality that science provides.
It is, by the way, on theists like yourself to provide evidence that your god exists.
rug
(82,333 posts)I understand you want to lasso science into your view of religion but it really has nothing to do with it. Your arguments must stand on other ground.
Oh, and the word I used was extraneous not superfluous.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)Sorry, rug. Science has taken a position on gods. That position is "100% unnecessary."
By the way, had I quoted you as using "superfluous" you may have a point, but seeing as I didn't, you don't.
rug
(82,333 posts)
eridani
(51,907 posts)In either case, the operating system of the universe is what it is, and that is the subject matter of science.
rug
(82,333 posts)But it's not the case. The subject matter of science is not god.
eridani
(51,907 posts)The existence of God and the non-existence of God are both compatible with the operating system of the universe being what it is. The subject matter of science is therefore consistent with both hypotheses.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)so if you think god exists then your god exists
