Atheism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Citations === {{reflist|colwidth=30em |refs= <ref name="encyc-unbelief-def-issues">{{cite book |last=Harvey |first=Van A. |title=Agnosticism and Atheism |postscript=,}} in {{harvnb|Flynn|2007|p=35}}: "The terms ''ATHEISM'' and ''AGNOSTICISM'' lend themselves to two different definitions. The first takes the privative ''a'' both before the Greek ''theos'' (divinity) and ''gnosis'' (to know) to mean that atheism is the absence of belief in the gods and agnosticism is the lack of knowledge of some specified subject matter. The second definition takes atheism to mean the explicit denial of the existence of gods and agnosticism as the position of someone who, because the existence of gods is unknowable, suspends judgment regarding them ... The first is the more inclusive and recognizes only two alternatives: Either one believes in the gods or one does not. Consequently, there is no third alternative, as those who call themselves agnostics sometimes claim. Insofar as they lack belief, they are really atheists. Moreover, since the absence of belief is the cognitive position in which everyone is born, the burden of proof falls on those who advocate religious belief. The proponents of the second definition, by contrast, regard the first definition as too broad because it includes uninformed children along with aggressive and explicit atheists. Consequently, it is unlikely that the public will adopt it."</ref> <!-- <ref name="eb2011-atheism">{{harvnb|Nielsen|2013}}: "Instead of saying that an atheist is someone who believes that it is false or probably false that there is a God, a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for the following reasons ... : for an anthropomorphic God, the atheist rejects belief in God because it is false or probably false that there is a God; for a nonanthropomorphic God ... because the concept of such a God is either meaningless, unintelligible, contradictory, incomprehensible, or incoherent; for the God portrayed by some modern or contemporary theologians or philosophers ... because the concept of God in question is such that it merely masks an atheistic substance—e.g., "God" is just another name for love, or ... a symbolic term for moral ideals."</ref> --> <ref name="eb2011-Rejection-of-all-religious-beliefs">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Atheism as rejection of religious beliefs |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40634/atheism |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |edition=15th |volume=1 |page=666 |year=2011 |id=0852294735 |access-date=April 9, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512015453/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40634/atheism |archive-date=May 12, 2011 |url-status=live}}</ref> <!-- <ref name="encyc-philosophy">{{harvnb|Edwards|2005}}: "On our definition, an 'atheist' is a person who rejects belief in God, regardless of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that 'God exists' expresses a false proposition. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion."</ref> --> <!-- <ref name=RoweRoutledge>{{harvnb|Rowe|1998}}: "As commonly understood, atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. So an atheist is someone who disbelieves in God, whereas a theist is someone who believes in God. Another meaning of 'atheism' is simply nonbelief in the existence of God, rather than positive belief in the nonexistence of God. ... an atheist, in the broader sense of the term, is someone who disbelieves in every form of deity, not just the God of traditional Western theology."</ref> --> <!--ref name=extreme-secularism>{{harvnb|Zuckerman|2010}}: "A major source of these biases is the lack of clear definitions. Atheism and secularity are defined in opposition to religion, with atheism (the rejection of theism) often perceived as an extreme form of secularism (the decline of religious influence over society). But atheism is a narrow term referring to a specific belief (that there is no god), whereas secularism has various meanings, including a range of attitudes (such as religious indifference, doubt, agnosticism, and atheism) as behaviors (such as lack of regular church attendance or disregard for traditional religious morality)."</ref--> <ref name="martin-agnosticism-entails">{{harvnb|Martin|2006|p=2}}: "But agnosticism is compatible with negative atheism in that agnosticism ''entails'' negative atheism. Since agnostics do not believe in God, they are by definition negative atheists. This is not to say that negative atheism entails agnosticism. A negative atheist ''might'' disbelieve in God but need not."</ref> <ref name="agnosticism-compatible">{{harvnb|Martin|1990|pp=[https://archive.org/details/atheismphilosoph00mart_0/page/466 <!-- quote="compatible with negative atheism". --> 467–468]}}: "In the popular sense an agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves that God exists, while an atheist disbelieves that God exists. However, this common contrast of agnosticism with atheism will hold only if one assumes that atheism means positive atheism. In the popular sense, agnosticism is compatible with negative atheism. Since negative atheism by definition simply means not holding any concept of God, it is compatible with neither believing nor disbelieving in God."</ref> <ref name="barker-agnostic-atheism">{{harvnb|Barker|2008|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=fAjPWYgIfCoC&pg=PA96 96]}}: "People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, "Well, are you a Republican or an American?" The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, "I don't have a knowledge that God exists." The atheist says, "I don't have a belief that God exists." You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic."</ref> <!--(this citation is not used in content and was thus giving a cite error) <ref name=honderich>Honderich, Ted (Ed.) (1995). "Humanism". ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy''. Oxford University Press. p. 376. {{ISBN|0-19-866132-0}}.</ref--> <!-- <ref name=religioustolerance>Most dictionaries (see the OneLook query for [http://www.onelook.com/?w=atheism&ls=a "atheism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930023613/http://www.onelook.com/?w=atheism&ls=a |date=September 30, 2007 }}) first list one of the more narrow definitions. * {{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofphil00ange |title=Dictionary of Philosophy |editor-first=Dagobert D. |editor-last=Runes |editor-link=Dagobert D. Runes |year=1942 |publisher=Littlefield, Adams & Co. Philosophical Library |location=New Jersey |isbn=978-0-06-463461-8 |quote=(a) the belief that there is no God; (b) Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic". The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term though widely current in the history of thought |access-date=April 9, 2011}} – entry by [[Vergilius Ferm]]</ref> --> <!-- <ref name=oxdicphil>{{cite encyclopedia |editor=Simon Blackburn |encyclopedia=The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy |title=atheism |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199541430.001.0001/acref-9780199541430-e-278?rskey=GC0Coc&result=279 |access-date=November 21, 2013 |edition=2008 |year=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |quote=Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none. Sometimes thought itself to be more dogmatic than mere agnosticism, although atheists retort that everyone is an atheist about most gods, so they merely advance one step further.|isbn=978-0-19-954143-0 }}</ref> --> <!-- <ref name=reldef>{{cite web |url=http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/aboutreldefinitions.html |title=Definitions: Atheism |publisher=Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama |access-date=December 1, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607093325/http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/aboutreldefinitions.html |archive-date=June 7, 2011 |url-status=live }}</ref> --> <ref name="hume-metaphysics">{{harvnb|Hume|1748|loc=Part III}}: "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."</ref> }} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page