Religion is "The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe."
I'm an atheist, I don't believe in higher powers. I'm non religious.
My highest "placeholder" is a society that values all its members equally regardless of race, intelligence, physical abilities, sexual or gender preferences.
Many atheists do believe in higher powers, though. What about something like Patriarchy or institutional racism? These are higher powers that are said to exist beyond any individual, and to be propagated subconsciously and perhaps even unwillingly by people? What is a power other than something that modifies behaviour, and what is "higher" other than something that exists outside of an individual, and across multiple individuals?
Without wanting to take sides on any culture war issues, I think that people from any political persuasion will agree that such higher powers do indeed exist.
I put it to you that much talk of "spirits" is far more aligned to the kind of higher power that you already believe in, rather than the dualistic way of seeing spirits as some kind of invisible smoke hiding inside living creatures. This kind of thinking is a curse of our modern age, handed down from the likes of Descartes and the "Enlightenment".
> Many atheists do believe in higher powers, though.
No, they don't. Unless you are actually talking about human power structures, in which case, of course we do.
Doesn't make us "religious".
> I put it to you that much talk of "spirits" is far more aligned to the kind of higher power that you already believe in, rather than the dualistic way of seeing spirits as some kind of invisible smoke hiding inside living creatures. This kind of thinking is a curse of our modern age, handed down from the likes of Descartes and the "Enlightenment".
I don't believe in spirits or souls or any of that. I'm an atheist, stop making up versions of "higher powers" or "something that exists outside of an individual, and across multiple individuals" and insisting I believe must believe in them. I assure you I don't.
I don't insist that you believe anything, I just tried to pick an example that you might already believe in, and draw analogies to belief in spirits so you can better understand the more nuanced view of spirit that is actually what a religion such as Christianity talks about https://biblehub.com/nlt/ephesians/6.htm.
I think that we live in a time where our understanding of what a spirit is, is very different to what religions traditionally believed. We only think of some kind of ghostly person which might be in some kind of other dimension which science has yet to discover. But I think that the way we think of Patriarchy is actually much closer to the way that a spirit was thought of in the past. It's not exactly the same, and it lacks some aspects, but it is a much better starting point for a secular person to understand what a spirit is, rather than childhood memories of caspar the friendly ghost.
> so you can better understand the more nuanced view of spirit that is actually what a religion such as Christianity talks about
So, you're proselytizing? This is pretty common reaction when I say I'm atheist. An assumption that I'm just ignorant as to the true nature of God or Spirituality.
> Many atheists do believe in higher powers, though. What about something like Patriarchy or institutional racism?
Eh? Those are social phenomena, not supernatural forces.
> These are higher powers that are said to exist beyond any individual, and to be propagated subconsciously and perhaps even unwillingly by people?
Again, this is _society_. When people use the term "higher power" in the context of religion, they're generally talking about something supernatural, not just "large groups of people do weird stuff sometimes".
the problem is that words we use are like well-worn tracks in the snow. We use them without pondering what they mean. It takes something like a crisis in our lives, or a psychedelic trip, can jolt us out of the same old mental rut.
The word "supernatural" is such a worn-out rut of a word. It invokes paranormal movies or Caspar the friendly ghost. The very dichotomy of supernatural/natural is a recent, post-Enlightenment invention.
What I'm trying to do in this conversation is take something that exists in many people's mental framework, and use it to point to something outside that framework.
"Large groups doing weird things" must have a cause, right? And in an example like Patriarchy, no one claims that there is some king Patriarch sitting on a throne somewhere calling the shots. No, the story goes, Patriarchy is in all of us, even in women, perhaps even professing feminists. Patriarchy has real world effects, it isn't consciously controlled by any one person or group, it lives beyond any individual. According to some versions, Patriarchy is more than an impersonal force, it almost has some kind of malicious agency or intent. So much so that we gave it a name, like we do for conscious agents such as dogs or people.
I'm not trying to suggest that Patriarchy is a spirit, or that religious views of spirituality are exactly the same as feminist interpretations of Patriarchy.
I'm just using something from inside your framework to try to explain something outside your framework, because all the words designed for this purpose are worn out and no longer convey the meaning that they once did.
what do you mean by "exists"? They don't exist as a solid physical object. They exist more like a gust of wind, which moves all the leaves in the same direction and that's all we see. You can't "prove" that they exist, you can only postulate them as theories that explain why we see a whole collection of physical data that we can see. Your proof might be considered good if it coherently explains a large amount of the data, and makes predictions that come true. But you certainly can't "prove" that they "exist" to the same level of proof that an atheist will demand for the existence of God.
Patriarchy and institutional racism are even ascribed agency, they "want" to hurt people, rather than merely being general forces such as gravity or a fluid flow.
I don't question the existence of thoughts, I merely pointed out that "existence" is different for different types of things. I think there are "layers" of existence, similar to how the OSI networking model works. One layer is the physical. Something like a single human being is another layer. Collective phenomena such as the patriarchy are another layer. We have limited understanding, so we may not perceive these things accurately, but that does not stop them from being real, in other words "existing". I personally believe that the layers scale right up to levels not visible to the tools of science, which work at a lower layer.
It seems a pity to write people off with a different understanding of the world as not being worth talking to. I recommend being open minded to this perspective even if it doesn't convince you. For a much better presentation of what I'm saying, I recommend looking into Jonathan Pageau; he has a good book or you can catch some interviews here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX78CipFi-Ahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGglfl5j_I
The other side of this debate is insisting we are actually spiritual and not really atheist and you are calling us out?
I’ve been an atheist for 40 years now. After you’ve been through these arguments in high school debates, philosophy classes, on Usenet, slashdot, digg and Reddit; you start to recognize the signs for when you need to just walk away from the discussion because you are being sealioned or proselytized or otherwise being engaged in bad faith.
No I've just had these conversations before, and trying to say god exists because science cannot yet detect it is not a new or engaging argument, no matter how much you dress it up with purple prose.
The person I was responding to was not being an honest interlocutor and I don't feel like engaging that person. And now I'm "mean" or "close minded" because I called them out on their dishonestly.
Weird how the atheists are expected to extend infinite grace and participate in the same circular arguments over and over again, but it doesn't matter how dishonest a theist can be.
I'm an atheist, I don't believe in higher powers. I'm non religious.
My highest "placeholder" is a society that values all its members equally regardless of race, intelligence, physical abilities, sexual or gender preferences.