this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Religious Cringe
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This is the official Lemmy for the r/ReligiousCringe***** subreddit. This is a community about poking fun at the religious fundamentalist's who take their religion a little bit too far. Here you will find religious content that is so outrageous and so cringeworthy that even someone who is mildly religious will cringe.
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Atheists are as old as time and predate religion as we know it
In order to have atheism, the concept of theos must first exist. You can't have an ism if no one knows what the thing is that its suffixed to. So there's no atheism before religion or at least one theos.
Just like Tinklipism. What is that? Who knows? No one's invented the idea of a Tinklip yet, whatever that may be. Definitely no Atinklipism yet either.
That's just how isms be.
No. Atheism is not defined as opposition to religion, it's absence of religion. That means that before religion, there was only atheism.
Before humans, the concept of "human" didn't exist. Yet we can still say that the animals living before humans were non-humans, just like non-human animals today are.
Reply to the wrong comment? I literally said nothing even close that that.
And before religion there was no atheism or theism or any other ism involving.divinity.
Atheism does not mean "without theism".
No, I replied to the right comment. Which definition of atheism do you go by that requires "the concept of theos" existing? I've seen you repeatedly stating your position, but no formal definition or actual argument.
Would you then say that all animals before humans can't be described as non-human?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-ism
I don't know what to say. We haven't changed the language, the construction of Greek morphemes within Greek etymology, made a recent exception, or changed the meaning of Atheism to suit a collective of people recently misunderstanding fundamentals of philosophical and/or psychological stances on topics.
I don't want to sound patronising, but I really did not think this needed sources.
If you can think of any other word—just one of the thousands—ending with ism that breaks any of these common understandings, where ism isn't a suffix to the thing that precedes it, rather is attached to an existing ism and the prefix morpheme is actually the defining stance of the word, please, share. To my understanding, it simply doesn't exist and one ism has never been nor suddenly is an exception.
Could you please cite the part of the Wikipedia article that supports your point? I looked through it and couldn't identify it.
It seems to me that you're arguing from a linguistic point of view, and missing the forest for the trees. Again I pose my question - are animals that existed before humans non-human?
What you're asking has no relevance to positions of belief. It has relevance to physical things. These aren't isms.
Did humanism exist before humans? No.
Did non-human things exist before humans? Yes.
If you're saying atheism is a lack of theism, that's fine—loosely. But it will be confusing to other people if you don't clarify that stance. people with English as secondary language, other atheists or theists, people that delve into atheism, or people that are curious about how their stance fits in etc.
Deism is without theism, that doesn't make it atheism. The article is quite clear. Being a position of belief is indicated by the ism. The part before it defines the position of belief. Whether disbelief/lack of belief of the gods, or belief in no gods. It is not being without the belief of the belief in gods. That's just anything that's without theism which is soooo many things.
Now please clearly explain the difference between the position "no belief in gods" and "no belief in gods because the concept doesn't yet exist". That's what your entire position hinges on, and you haven't given any arguments for it.
Also, the article is quite clear in not supporting your position. It says:
No mention of requirements regarding pre-existing concepts or anything similar.
You can't form a position of belief on something you don't know exists. You must first know what something is in order to establish a position of how much you believe it to be so or not so.
I'm just repeating myself more and more now. Refer back to Tinklipism.
As for what you've somehow understood of isms from that article—genuinely mindblown. You literally just quoted the whole job and point of the ism suffix and...whoosh. It's staring you in the face; I'm not somehow simplifying it further. I don't even know what else to give you if your brain glazed over that very efficient, simple, and clear, explanation then landed here...
Yes, I understood your point the first time you made it. Do you finally have any arguments for this position? Supporting evidence? Anything? Because I can trivially say "no", and I've thus made just as strong an argument as you've made.
Since you appear to literally be incapable of describing your position beyond "it is this way because I understand it to be this way", I won't waste more time on you. Have a good day.
Their point was just that humans existed for a long time before theism was invented. Atheism is just a word to describe a lack of theism. Which there was definitely a lack of before theism existed.
That's not how isms work and that's definitely not what atheism means.
A+theosism. No. Atheos+ism. Yes.
It is the ism of being without god. The concept of god must exist in order for the person to think about and decide there isn't one, ergo atheism. Theism if they decide there's at least one.
There are other words that exist for what you're trying to explain.
And my point is that you’re splitting the wrong hairs. Still are.
I had to really consider this, but I agree.
You can't claim that a person is an atheist of they can't conceive of a God. "Atheism" is ancient Greek for "without God." A (without) and theos (God). The "ism" part was added much later.
You wouldn't call ice cubes "without magma" because you wouldn't be able to expect there to be magma.
You wouldn't refer to an infant as "without Alzheimer's" as it's a ridiculous thing to clarify. So referring to ancient humans that predate the concept of religion as atheistic is a needless clarification and not a good argument for or against something, regardless.
Though I have to say the argument itself is super pedantic and probably not enriching anyone's lives.
You’re thinking “antitheism”?
It's mostly semantic but the usage of atheism as the absence of theism is quite new and not really used in philosophy in that manner. In the end it shouldn't really matter. It mostly matters for the religious that want to define you themselves instead of listening.
It matters a lot to atheists that don't want people to be confused. It's also a bit hard to be taken seriously when a small portion of your mob doesn't even understand what atheism is and then tries to tackle the bigger concept of deities with someone. Breeds the idea that atheists are idiots and don't understand what they're talking about.
This is like saying you can't not collect stamps if stamps haven't been invented yet. Before stamps are invented, it's impossible to collect stamps, which makes everyone.... Not a stamp collector.