Throw agnosticism in and most people just get hopelessly confused. Atheism though is sort of ambiguous as it's sometimes used synonymously to anti-theism, of which it is a superset.
well, atheism is "I don't believe in a God". Then you get 2 strains of anti-theism on top of that: "I am against organised religion" and "I don't want anyone to be religious" (and it's related form, "I think anyone who is religious is stupid"). The problem is that people who claim to represent atheism are often of one of the latter two camps.
You're jumping from atheism to anti-theism far too quickly: atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not the belief of non-existence, which is a subset referred to as explicit atheism, from which anti-theism is rooted as an even smaller subset. This is the distinction between "I don't believe in a deity" (which includes agnosticism) and "I believe no deity exists" (which includes "I consider it true that no deity exists", referred as strong atheism). Wow, now that was some serious nitpicking on my part :)
yeah, I see your point - in my experience people who proclaim "atheism" tend to lean towards believing there is no God rather than not personally being faithful, and that the latter tends to be reserved for agnosticism. I see your point though, and I guess agnosticism does belong under atheism if treated as an umbrella term.
You just defined Agnostic vs Atheist. It's in the very word's semantics and history. I love talking about this in academic circles and I always find it frustrating if the talk is over semantics.
Occam's razor, "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected" So if it's impossible to prove a negative let's move on to the side where you can prove. The disregard of if or if there isn't a deity as opposed to there isn't.
Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens certainly fall/fell into the "against organised religion" camp. Dawkins strays into the "no-one should be religious" camp occasionally. Publicly atheist figures like Penn Jillette and Derren Brown (don't know if he's known outside the UK?) go the skeptic route which is mostly fair but occasionally delves into the "religion is stupid" territory.
Communities around atheism (e.g. the subreddit) are usually pretty unkind towards Christians, and I've known many left-leaning atheists who have pretty unpleasant stereotypes about Christians and openly treat them with hostility or assume they're stupid.
My brother was gay, had a great partner, and died a horrible death due to AIDS back in 1994.
His partner was a wonderful man whose last six months are a mystery to us, because his parents were devout Christians who saw their wonderful son as literally being possessed by the devil, saw us as evil for not casting our family out, refused to allow us to see him, and then had all his belongings (including many cherished ones from my brother that we very much wanted back) incinerated upon his death.
We never learned what happened to his ashes, either.
So no, I am not particularly fond of any group that would condone this kind of behavior. They were able to do what they did because they had the wide support of their entire congregation.
This does not mean I'm going to be a dick to a religious person at all. They didn't do anything to me, and I judge people on their own actions. And besides, I know not all Christian denominations would be so godawful.
But a hell of a lot of them are, too, and as far as organisations go, let's just say I am not impressed. So if you ever wonder why some atheists might be a bit prickly about organized religion, think of my example. People don't get mad without pain. Unfortunately there are plenty more of these types of example to chose from.
Most times religion is a crutch to hold to "common sense" and with little regard to others or primary sources AKA scriptures.
As a intrinsically religious person I say, I am sorry and as a former Pastor that sucks.
To quote a wise saying that helps me wrestle with these stories like yours is from the very non-religious movie Armageddon, "A person may be smart, but people are stupid."
> Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens certainly fall/fell into the "against organised religion" camp.
I took your "the latter two camps" (which I what I was asking about) to be the last two you mentioned
'"I don't want anyone to be religious" (and it's related form, "I think anyone who is religious is stupid")',
not "against organised religion".
> Dawkins strays into the "no-one should be religious" camp
I dispute this. Do you have any examples?
> Communities around atheism (e.g. the subreddit) are usually pretty unkind towards Christians
Sure, but I was responding to your statement "people who claim to represent atheism". There's a big difference to people who are atheists and people who claim to represent atheism.
I technically never met one single athiest. Not in academia. Not in even Punk or Hardcore culture. They have all been agnostic.
Atheism is the total certainty and belief that their is no God.
Agnosticism is the disregard to the importance of if there is a God or not absolutely. There may be or may not be a God.
Everyone when it is said and done places themselves in Agnostic thought. You really can't prove a negative and so this is the place of philosophy and thought. Historically they were Diest like Ben Franklin.
