Do atheists know more about religion than believers?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Well, apatheism seems to be mature enough to have it's own wikipedia article...

Apatheism (a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic  atheism or (critically) as practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief, or lack of belief in a deity. Apatheism describes the manner of acting towards a belief or lack of a belief in a deity; so applies to both theism and atheism. An apatheist is also someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods  exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life.

Apathetic agnosticism (also called pragmatic agnosticism) is the view that thousands of years of debate have neither proven, nor dis-proven, the existence of one or more deities (gods). This view concludes that even if one or more deities exist, they do not appear to be concerned about the fate of humans. Therefore, their existence has little impact on personal human affairs and should be of little theological interest.

As for Swato's definitions I know there are distinctions between each level:

Theism: the belief that at least one deity exists.
Deism: god exists but doesn't bother (interfere) with us
Agnosticism: which in turn is split in
   Soft: I can't tell if there is or not a got
   Hard: I don't know and neither do you
and Atheism:
   Soft: I don't believe there is a god
   Hard: I'm certain there is no god

Plus the distinctions for apatheism mentioned above.

[Swatopluk]

I think atheism has to have an active component to qualify as such. Otherwise it is a variant of the joke: 'Can you play the piano?' 'I don't know. I never tried.' That is, in order to qualify as an atheist, someone has to have thought about the 'god problem' in the first place.
Of course it is possible to have an opinion about something you don't know anything about A classic joke is a street poll (in Germany) where people were asked what they think of heterosexuals. Many obviously did not know the word but had very strong opinions about what should be done with these perverts (up to demands to send them to the gas chamber immediately).

[Aggie]

^Reminds me of my term CPC - Canadian Presumed Christian.  There are many people here (and elsewhere) that have a cultural root in the traditions of a dominant religion (Christmas, Easter for example) but haven't really thought about it enough to actually be (insert faith-term here).  They don't reject the ideas of the religion, but haven't thought them through and applied them in their own life.

(My sister plans to ask for forgiveness on her deathbed and not worry about it until then.  I told her she should get some Mormon friends just in case of an accident - they baptize by proxy after death if necessary)

Swato's qualification of an atheist is the flip-side of this attitude; American Presumed Atheist perhaps?

[Opsa]

A soft spot in any argument about religion is also the belief vs. know factor.

I believe in the great spirit, but I do not know there is a great spirit. I think that only the entirety of the great spirit would be able to know for sure whether or not it exists.

I sense, or feel a unity of all things. Connecting to all things is a method of coping with life. I believe that when I connect with you, I connect with another part of the great spirit. I cannot say for sure that the great spirit is anything more than what exists in this world, because I am only a tiny part of the whole. I cannot speak for you, or any other part of everything.

I may be somewhere between believer and agnostic on Swato's scale. A lot of people would consider me atheist too, I suppose.

Does "confused" count as a religion? 

[Aggie]

I believe in the great spirit, but I do not know there is a great spirit. I think that only the entirety of the great spirit would be able to know for sure whether or not it exists.

I am of the conviction that one can come to know a great deal about God - but then again I don't think that 'exist' is a word that can be applied to God (or The Great Whatever).   I also am of the conviction that this can only be done on a personal level and that trying to prove evidence of whether or not TGW 'exists' is futile. 

I suppose I'm agnostic in that I don't differentiate on whether the ability to know TGW on a personal level is due to something inherent to the universe or something inherent to humankind specifically.  I think there is sufficient evidence to conclude that at least a subset of humanity has the ability, through rigorous personal practice, to experience that which is shorthanded as 'God' directly, but to restate, I make no distinction on an intellectual level as to whether the basis of this experience is extrinsic or intrinsic to Homo sapiens. 


So yeah, put a checkmark under 'confused' for me too. Or at the least, 'confusing'.

[Opsa]

  Trying to be reasonable can get pretty confusing.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

After more than 5 years of thinking about what it means to be a believer vis a vis a non-believer, I've come to some conclusions.

1) the claim or idea of god is pretty remarkable-- extra-ordinary even.  As such, it requires extreme proof, else it may safely be discarded as myth without anything else.

2) whereas it is impossible to prove all gods in the universe myth, that is rarely if ever necessary.   People who believe in The Great Nebulosity typically do not advocate passing laws based solely on their belief, nor on some ancient 'magic' book.  I have no problem in the least with these sorts, and in a way, am a teensy bit jealous that they have what I do not; i.e. faith in the Great Nebulosity.   But I cannot make myself do what I am not capable of doing (faith) so there you go.

3) in the case of someone who is bent on passing laws, and therefore forcing everyone else to conform to his particular notions of belief?  I don't need a general disproof of god.  All I need to do, is prove his particular brand of god is myth.  This is almost always very easy to do; too easy, in fact.   Especially when this person makes specific claims about his particular god (i.e. ultimate good, super-just, ethical, moral, etc).  Or if the person uses an ancient 'magic' book as his proof.

In the first case, all we need do, is prove that his god is not good, or is immoral, or is not just, or is unethical and so forth-- this is often so very easy to do, that is all you need do, to prove his god is not real. 

In the second case, (magic book-god) what we do here, is discredit his 'magic' book.  Once you've proven the book is false, then anything it says about [a] god is false as well.

These proofs can be quite certain-- as certain as anything in this universe is, in fact.

So it is possible to prove certain, specific gods are myth, i.e. the special case.

Many times, that is all that is required.

[Opsa]

Good points, Bob O'Q.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps believers and disbelievers are similar in the fact that they both want absolutes. Not everyone wants absolutes. Some of us just want inspiration.

Inspiration is a personal thing. If I want to get inspiration from watching a flower grow from between the cracks in a sidewalk, who's to say that's hooey? The flower exists, but what I get from it is only intangible thought. The spirituality is the thought, not the concrete fact.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I positively hate the concept of the absolute, so you can say we are in complete (absolute) agreement on that.

[Griffin NoName]

I'd like to be around when the real G-d comes along and smites all people who think they know G-d according to current religions

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I'd like to be around when the real G-d comes along and smites all people who think they know G-d according to current religions

Indeed, I'd pay good money to see that myself.

Of course, the smiting will not be in the usual forms-- this is the ultimate being, correct?

As such, I would imagine it is ultimately rational? 

Thus the 'smiting' would likely take a form that is fitting to whomever is on the receiving end.   That is to say, it would take a form that they would immediately and without ambiguity recognize as chastisement for promoting a false god.   Otherwise, it's just be gratuitous punishment, possibly causing them to press forward with their false-god premise, all the harder.

Hmmm.... such smiting is beyond my pay grade.... but I'd still like to see it anyhow.

[Swatopluk]

The Western monotheist religions seem to have a on-size-fits-all eternal punishment system while in the East there is personalized service.
The ancient Greek reserved that for just a few that really urinated them off.