Friday, December 08, 2006

On the Atheist Faith:

As I was lurking through DIGG today I noticed a post by a netizen with the handle “network” that referred to the “Atheist Faith”. He was immediately chastised, as follows, by a follower of the Atheist Faith that Atheism isn’t a faith.

“Also, atheism is NOT a faith. It is a lack of belief in god(s). Nothing more, nothing less. It is NOT a belief that god(s) do not exist."

I beg to differ. A true atheist is indifferent to God and religion. He would view both as a mere superstition and be done with it. Much like the average Christian is indifferent to the unluckiness of the number 13. When’s the last time someone lobbied Congress to correctly number the floors in a 15-story hotel? It’s a silly superstition. The superstitious are happy staying in a room on the “fourteenth floor”. The rest are indifferent. A true atheist responds to religion and God in the same way.

So what do you call someone who proselytizes his point of view with the conviction of a 2nd century martyr? Someone that is bound and determined to root out and destroy every last bit of religion with his dieing breath? If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, walks like a duck…. it’s no atheist.

This brings us to the question of: Just what are these people who claim to be atheist but clearly are not. Antitheist would seem to apply but the term is considered by some as synonymous with atheist. Niatsirhc is a better term. Pronounced: “Ni-at-circ” It’s Christian spelled backwards. It has all the negative trappings of religion. The most annoying proselytizing, the “I’m right and everybody else is wrong”, the endless prattle about humanism as a moral code… Puleese. Now we need to establish a wall of separation between Niatsirhcs and State.

You don’t have to believe in Jesus as God to espouse Christian values and customs. You can be an atheist and wish someone a Merry Christmas. You can even obey the Ten Commandments and be an atheist but that’s for next time.

1 Comments:

Blogger Tiggerr said...

Weeeeelllll I agree with most of what you say BUT
in both the Latin and the Greek the letter/word a(n) means without. For instance afebrile means, without fever. anoxia -- without oxygen and atheist according to webster comes from the Greek (I feel a movie line coming on) a (without) theos (God). Meaning that an atheist believes that there is no God.
An agnostic on the other hand believes that we can not really know if there is a God or not. Again coming from the Greek --a (without) gnostic (knowing or knowledge).

Whether either of those constitutes a religion is doubtful. Religion comes from the Latin word religio, meaning reverence for a god(s) or simply put, a system of religious belief in some form of Supreme Existance greater than ourself. A matter of Faith. Faith in something unseen. That would seem to leave both atheists and agnostics out of the running for status as a religion.

Baby Sister

8:00 PM  

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