sophiaserpentia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophiaserpentia) wrote2006-03-30 11:43 am
sophiaserpentia) wrote2006-03-30 11:43 am
Entry tags:
faith and belief (partially copied from a comment)
My post about the non-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-Deity religion was a bit snarky, yes, i admit that.
But this is something i feel strongly about. Atheism is not a religion.
Disbelief in the existence of God is not simply the flip-side-of-a-coin from belief in God.
For one thing, faith is not belief. Faith is a way of being grounded. Faith is not mutable the way belief is. Faith does not depend on arguments and concepts and doctrine. Faith is an action that involves your mind and identity on a deep level. Belief, on the other hand, is agreeing with a statement.
Theists are theists not because of their beliefs, not because someone told them about God and they said, "Hey, that's a great idea, i think i will invest a great deal of my energy and identity in that." They are theists because they are deeply grounded in the closeness of divine presence.
Atheists are not grounded spiritually in the non-existence of God. You cannot ground yourself in a sense of absence. "Presence of absence" is not presence, it is still absence. Atheism is a fundamentally intellectual exercise.
Whether i like it or not, i have faith. This sometimes confuses me because i'm not sure what i believe or sometimes whether i believe anything at all. I veer between agnosticism and theism and atheism, but my sense of being grounded in the presence which i have felt is unwavering.
Edit. Another reason i feel strongly about this is because religion is an important part of a person's identity. If you've been a believer since birth, then your religion is part of your life and your history. If you're a convert, then your religion is something over which you labored and agonized. One does not belong accidentally to a religion, the way someone might accidentally put on a pair of pants that has a tear in the back. To claim that atheism is a religion is to claim that you know what is going on in atheists's minds better than *they* know.
But this is something i feel strongly about. Atheism is not a religion.
Disbelief in the existence of God is not simply the flip-side-of-a-coin from belief in God.
For one thing, faith is not belief. Faith is a way of being grounded. Faith is not mutable the way belief is. Faith does not depend on arguments and concepts and doctrine. Faith is an action that involves your mind and identity on a deep level. Belief, on the other hand, is agreeing with a statement.
Theists are theists not because of their beliefs, not because someone told them about God and they said, "Hey, that's a great idea, i think i will invest a great deal of my energy and identity in that." They are theists because they are deeply grounded in the closeness of divine presence.
Atheists are not grounded spiritually in the non-existence of God. You cannot ground yourself in a sense of absence. "Presence of absence" is not presence, it is still absence. Atheism is a fundamentally intellectual exercise.
Whether i like it or not, i have faith. This sometimes confuses me because i'm not sure what i believe or sometimes whether i believe anything at all. I veer between agnosticism and theism and atheism, but my sense of being grounded in the presence which i have felt is unwavering.
Edit. Another reason i feel strongly about this is because religion is an important part of a person's identity. If you've been a believer since birth, then your religion is part of your life and your history. If you're a convert, then your religion is something over which you labored and agonized. One does not belong accidentally to a religion, the way someone might accidentally put on a pair of pants that has a tear in the back. To claim that atheism is a religion is to claim that you know what is going on in atheists's minds better than *they* know.