feltlikeagoodnight asked: I fail to see how the definition of atheism is biased at all...
“Atheism will not become a dominant world religion despite the efforts of some scientists”
atheism isn’t a religion
atheism is ludicrous as it depends upon proving a negative
“proving a negative”? if you’re an atheist who likes scientific method and such, you’re not “proving a negative”. you’re looking at evidence and drawing conclusions. if evidence cropped up that verified the existence of an ominpotent deity of any sort, and it was peer-reviewed and proved it beyond reasonable doubt, i’d believe in it.
Atheism is constantly expressed in the same arguments and tactics of other recognized prejudices
“other prejudices”. actually, no. ‘prejudice’ is usually a combination of ignorance + fear that leads to the oppression of others. no one is oppressed by a person’s choice to be an atheist. and no, being annoyed that someone thinks your god doesn’t exist and tells you that is not a form of oppression.
Whether atheism is true or not, the main inescapable philosophical point in atheism, is that life has no meaning.
actually, what you just defined is existential nihilism. hate to burst your bubble, dictionary.com, but plenty of atheists live their lives with purpose and feel that life is worth living. the absence of religion does not cause one to become a nihilist, it just means that they don’t believe in religion.
The equation of science with atheism is one such example
if you think scientists live lives of nihilism, you’re an idiot. when you’re a scientist, every facet of the universe is intriguing: you don’t want to merely accept an object’s existence, you want to know why it is, and how it came to be. you want to discover the processes that led to its existence and replicate them. you want to come up with theories as to its existence and then test them, and in the process of testing them discover new theories and new facts, and find out about them. where some people choose to look at beautiful things like dogs or frogs or cats or birds and merely say “they exist because god created them like that”, advocates of scientific method see a story leading back to the inception of the animal, and want to see how it really came to be. after all, why accept the status quo blindly when you could be out there, having fun and discovering it for yourself?
Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby
once again, atheism is not a religion, it’s the rejection of religion.
Simply uttering the words can prompt a reaction akin to preaching atheism at tent revival
i don’t really understand what they’re trying to say here.
There is no automatic coupling between true and good science and atheism
atheism isn’t really a science. i should emphasize that while science and atheism aren’t the same thing, people tend to think they are even though they aren’t. truthfully though, people associate them with each other because a lot of atheist folks also happen to be interested in science. but they’re not the same thing. some people arrive at believing in atheism because they apply the scientific method to their lives, but that doesn’t mean that science is atheism or vice versa. there are christians who live very scientific lives and atheists who could care less about science.
additionally, “true and good science” kinda bugs me. truth is subjective and depends on evidence in scientific thought, and “good” is also a very subjective word that when put in front of “science” seems to hint at something vague that i’m not entirely picking up on.
Atheism is a religious vacuum and quite impossible to achieve
people use the word vacuum when talking in this area because it has this negative connotation. it implies that something had to be sucked out of your life, that you have to be empty, etc., to be an atheist. not very true. like i said earlier, there are people that lead happy, full lives as atheists and there are atheists who hate being alive and themselves and etc. the ratio is probably about the same as in the christian/muslim/jewish/buddhist/satanist world, i suppose.
additionally, atheism is very easy to achieve! it goes like this:
Q: Do you reject religion?
A: Yes.
Q: ATHEISM UNLOCKED 50G
The same can be said of strident atheism and totalitarianism
“strident” has a secondary definition of “Presenting a point of view, esp. a controversial one, in an excessively and unpleasantly forceful way.” (thanks, dictionary.com), and that’s undoubtedly what they mean here. the author of these sentences seems to have some sort of personal grudge formed by a bad experience with an atheist they know who probably refuted their beliefs by merely expressing their own.
in any community that consists of more than 10 folks, you’re going to get people who aren’t content to come to their own decisions about life, live by them, and be cool with others making different decisions. those people like to harass those who disagree with them, talk behind their backs, and generally be a prick about things they have little knowledge about. there are vocal atheists, and there are vocal christians. it just so happens we live in a society where it’s far more beneficial to be a vocal christian, to the point that atheists are generally distrusted and disliked and treated as scum, as with many minorities in this country, though certainly not to the level that POC, women, and queer individuals have been treated in the history of this world. this is called Christian Privilege, and just like in any relationship where individuals are bestowed certain benefits for coming to different decisions about how to live their life or for being born into a minority, it’s really shitty for someone who lives in the majority to not be aware of the benefits they get for living as such.
when dictionary.com puts up these sentences that are incredibly uninformed or straight up wrong about a topic and present them as a “correct” usage of a specific word, they enable the continued, pervasive existence of discrimination against people who aren’t christian. dictionaries aren’t supposed to do that: they’re just supposed to tell you the definition of the word and how to use it correctly, and in this case their examples for proper usage are offensive and rude. by altering this source of information with information that’s wrong and offensive, the author who wrote them is forcing their belief on you in a rather unpleasant way.
i guess you could say they seem kinda strident.
