Vault313
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I realized after reading my post I may not have been clear.
I think everyone believes in something. Atheism, theism and agnosticism are all belief systems. They are variants of essentially the same thing. Again, the spectrum thing. Even "non-beliefs" are in fact beliefs. Everyone has a world view and all of their individual beliefs stem from that. And your worldview is a set of philosophies that you agree with. Ideas that you believe to be true.
I never said I take issue with people identifying as atheist. People can identify themselves in which ever way they see fit. You could tell me you identify as a tree, and I wouldn't care. I might think your a bit nutty, but whatever. My point was, atheists are constantly saying atheism is not a belief system. But it is. People are more than welcome to identify as atheist. But they are kidding themselves if they believe that professing to be an atheist is professing to a "non-belief". I tend to recommend avoiding labels for oneself however, as I stated above, since that can have an effect of closing yourself into a more strict set of beliefs that close your mind to beliefs that contradict those of your self proscribed label.
And we have a word for a "non-belief" in God because it is quite literally one of the most fundamental questions of humanity. A belief in Bigfoot, is not. However, feel free to create one. Words are a creation of man, and have no meaning or purpose beyond what we believe (and agree) they do. Words are arbitrary.
I think everyone believes in something. Atheism, theism and agnosticism are all belief systems. They are variants of essentially the same thing. Again, the spectrum thing. Even "non-beliefs" are in fact beliefs. Everyone has a world view and all of their individual beliefs stem from that. And your worldview is a set of philosophies that you agree with. Ideas that you believe to be true.
I never said I take issue with people identifying as atheist. People can identify themselves in which ever way they see fit. You could tell me you identify as a tree, and I wouldn't care. I might think your a bit nutty, but whatever. My point was, atheists are constantly saying atheism is not a belief system. But it is. People are more than welcome to identify as atheist. But they are kidding themselves if they believe that professing to be an atheist is professing to a "non-belief". I tend to recommend avoiding labels for oneself however, as I stated above, since that can have an effect of closing yourself into a more strict set of beliefs that close your mind to beliefs that contradict those of your self proscribed label.
And we have a word for a "non-belief" in God because it is quite literally one of the most fundamental questions of humanity. A belief in Bigfoot, is not. However, feel free to create one. Words are a creation of man, and have no meaning or purpose beyond what we believe (and agree) they do. Words are arbitrary.