wizardsvsrobots:

sanityscraps:

cica-triz:

You know there’s more to religion than just Christianity, right? I’m cool with atheism and all, just not when some of you only bash one or two religions and start sounding just as bad as the people you are criticising.

Kind regards,

A friendly agnostic.

…

Point a: I think our good friend “A friendly agnostic” here was referring to eastern religions, not dead religions. Hindus and Buddhists account for an rather meaty portion of religious people in the world. He does have a valid point. I think the problem is that they’re not very well known by most westerners and are thus more difficult to pick apart, as well as less of an immediate issue for our atheist friends here in the west. I think that while the east is often overlooked, I don’t think it needs to be examined quite as carefully here. The Abrahamic religions are all very similar in many ways, and thus are a good starting point for atheists who are new to the great philosophical commentary known as theology.

Point b: That graph needs a third dimension - religious versus non-religious. Coz there are atheist religions and theist religions, agnostic religions and gnostic religions (not to be confused with Gnosticism…). Theism refers to a belief in a god, rather than a belief in anything of the “supernatural.” A belief in spirits that has no attachment to actual gods would therefore be considered atheist, would it not?

Point c: Apparently an atheist’s job includes “picking apart factual inaccuracies” now? That is a very poor choice in words. I’m pretty sure most Christians, for instance, understand that the world probably wasn’t created in seven days. Just the crazy ones who live in the US (no offense America, but you got yourself a lot of crazies down there). I would argue that the atheist’s job is to attack the philosophical side, the “unanswerable” questions such as “If you don’t know whether or not a god exists, what makes you choose to believe one does?” as well as moral issues such as gender equality, homophobic doctrine, etc.

How about we all agree that religion is a touchy subject that clearly needs more research done into it? (lol totally just trying to justify the fact that I’m a religious studies minor…)

Anyways, that’s my religious rant of the month, as per usual, the result of reblogging sonic-hip-attack. Sorry to all you folk who don’t really care. I find it fascinating and educational.

Yep, you are absolutely correct, I was referring to my perception that a lot of atheists proclaim that they don’t believe in God, Jesus never existed, etc etc but never seem to mention anything about other religions and whether those religious figures existed throughout history. I find that interesting since I’ve always thought of atheism as being an absolute belief that a god/god/deity/whatever you want to call it does not exist (generalising here, but you get my idea), so therefore it shouldn’t be directed towards JUST Abrahamic religions, not to mention that I think this very absolute, certain opinion is slightly dangerous for a staunch atheist to take. But I will acknowledge that for most people analysis of non-Abrahamic religions, given their relative non-prevalence in Western culture, would be difficult.

Also, I’m a female ;)

Atheism, agnosticism and religion to me is about spirituality, and not about how factual religious texts are, or whether there are inconsistencies in the core dogma etc. I associate with agnosticism because I have no spiritual connection with any religion so far (although Zen Buddhism is very interesting to me), and because I see no hard evidence that a god does not exist. I could go on but I won’t.