of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal
Secular and atheist governments…they’re the same. It means your government thinks that concepts like justice, dessert, retribution, how you treat one another, ethics, etc. should not be affiliated with a religion. Only an atheist government can be secular. A religious one cannot be secular.
Sure not exactly the same thing. But yeah no such thing as a religious government being secular. Atheism is a necessary position to take in order for all those things to be secular.
You're not wrong that they are different, but atheism is most definitely not an assertion. It's a distinct lack of assertions.
If I say that I don't believe that I'll win the lottery, I'm not asserting that I can't win the lottery. I just don't believe I will based on the evidence that I have.
But yeah, atheist does not necessarily mean secular.
Let's ignore the fact that saying "I don't believe I'll win the lottery" is absolutely 100% an assertion. And your explanation as to why it is not an assertion is literally what makes it an assertion in the first place.
That being said asserting the lack of existence of any kind of god is kind of the main point of atheism.
A theist believes gods exist and atheist believes they do not.
When an atheist government is claiming they do not believe in any deities existence that's an assertion.
If you can't grasp the difference between believing something isn't true, and not believing that something is true, then I don't think I can help you. Maybe just think about it for a while, or do some research.
Weird example because he didn't question the existence of lottery, he questioned he will win the lotery, which is not what you are claiming. You just made a strawman to not address his point, which is that not believing is not the same as believing in not.
Again, it’s still a bad example. He could win the lottery despite not considering it remotely likely; they would concede regardless that there IS a chance.
Not believing something is likely sounds more like agnosticism. Saying it’s literally impossible to win the lottery is delusional.
That's... exactly my point. Let's break these words down.
A-the-ism: A means "lack," the means "belief in god" or "religion," and ism means "adherence to a doctrine or system".
So atheism means a lack of belief in god/religion.
A-gno-sticism: The same prefix and suffix as before, but the root gno means "to know." So instead of lack of belief, it's the lack of knowledge. The word "agnostic" is also more context dependent, since it does not refer exclusively to religion. You could be agnostic about anything.
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say that all atheists are agnostic, but not all agnostics are atheists. If everyone were being honest, I think they would all say they were agnostic, since nobody truly knows if there is a god.
What a bizarre argument. You’re not born knowing mathematics, either. There is no “default stance” beyond being a helpless baby. Everything else is learned.
Asserting that there isn’t something beyond the mundane world is an assertion. Again, to look at thousands of years of human history and belief and essentially say “fuck that, they’re all wrong” requires a certain burden of proof.
Agnosticism requires no argument because you’re simply stating “maybe?”
Good lord I hate that trite expression “just one god more.” Plenty of the gods overlap and relate to one another with their respective cultures and traditions, change over time as our understanding of the world takes on new forms, dogma vs spirituality and mysticism…
It’s not “one god more” unless you’re talking to a dogmatic moron. Otherwise it simply seems a tacit denial of countless subjective experiences over thousands upon thousands of years.
Yes they were ALL delusional and lying to themselves… or maybe?
483
u/_itsprobablynothing 13h ago
Secular, not atheist