Portal:Atheism

The Atheism Portal

Atheism is the philosophical position that either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism. In its broadest definition, atheism is the absence of belief in deities, sometimes called nontheism. Although atheists are commonly assumed to be irreligious, some religions, such as Buddhism, have been characterized as atheistic. Many self-described atheists share common skeptical concerns regarding supernatural claims, citing a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Other arguments for atheism are philosophical, social or historical. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as Humanism, rationalism, and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. The term atheism originated as a pejorative epithet applied to any person or belief in conflict with established religion. With the spread of freethought, scientific skepticism, and criticism of religion, the term began to gather a more specific meaning and was sometimes used as a self-description by atheists.

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Metaphysical naturalism, or ontological naturalism, characterizes any worldview in which reality is such that there is nothing but the natural things, forces, and causes of the kind that the natural sciences study, i.e. the things, forces and causes which are required in order to understand our physical environment and which have mechanical properties amenable to mathematical modeling. Metaphysical naturalism entails that all concepts related to consciousness or to the mind refer to entities which are reducible to or supervene on such natural things, forces and causes. More specifically metaphysical naturalism rejects the objective existence of any supernatural thing, force or cause, such as are described in humanity’s various religions and mythological accounts. In this view, all "supernatural" things are ultimately explainable purely in terms of natural things. It is not merely a view about what science studies now, but it can also emphasize what science will encompass in the future. Metaphysical naturalism is a monistic and not a dualistic view of reality. In practice the use of the term metaphysical naturalism reduces to the more specific ontological view of “scientific naturalism”, according to which reality consists only of what the concepts of the natural sciences (and especially physics) refer to. Scientific naturalism is closely related to physicalism. It is often simply referred to as naturalism, Religious Naturalism or spiritual naturalism and occasionally as philosophical naturalism or ontological naturalism, though all those terms have other meanings as well, with naturalism often referring to methodological naturalism.

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Credit: Niklas Jansson

Touched by His Noodly Appendage by Niklas Jansson, a parody of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, utilizing the Flying Spaghetti Monster

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In this month

• 3 July 2002 - Original airing of South Park episode "Red Hot Catholic Love"
• 7 July 1990 - Earliest known reference to the Invisible Pink Unicorn, on a Usenet discussion group
• 19 July 1982 - Death of American physicist Hugh Everett III
• 24 July 2007 - Death of Albert Ellis (pictured), American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

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Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917–19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, a collaboration which also produced the film of the same name; and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor and technician from 1941-1946, proposed satellite communication systems in 1945 which won him the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal in 1963. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994. He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1947-1950 and again in 1953. Later, he helped fight for the preservation of lowland gorillas. He won the UNESCO-Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1961. Clarke emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving, and lived there until his death. He was knighted by the United Kingdom in 1998, and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.

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Did you know...

• ...that Margaret Downey's (pictured) first major public activism for atheism was in response to the Boy Scouts of America refusing to renew her son's membership due to his professed atheism?
• ...that developmental biologist PZ Myers, who writes about evolution, cephalopods, politics, and atheism, is the top-ranked science blogger according to the journal Nature?
• ...that the Jugendweihe is a secular alternative to confirmation in Germany and became a Socialist pledge in the atheist GDR?

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Main project: WikiProject Atheism

Related WikiProjects: Religion • Mythology • Philosophy • Spirituality • Holidays • Alternative views  Rational skepticism • Countering systemic bias

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We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated. — Leo Tolstoy

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Topics

Atheism

• Concepts: Religion · Nontheism · Antireligion · Antitheism · Agnosticism · Humanism · Metaphysical naturalism · Weak and strong atheism · Implicit and explicit atheism
• History: History of atheism · Enlightenment · Freethought
• Arguments: Against religion · For nontheism · Against god · Against atheism
• Demographics: Atheism · Irreligion · Famous atheists · State atheism · Discrimination · Persecution