Too many atheists forget that they themselves do belief. They might belief many things, like that there is no God. some belief there was a Big Bang, others have other beliefs about the beginning of this universe. They also forget that they too have services and forms of ‘worship’ though they are not called as such and do not take place in buildings to be recognised as such, though in some places we can clearly recognise straight ahead their meeting places, which are often also signalled by plates or names on the building.
In certain countries, like Belgium and Germany, they also receive working funds from the government like the other groups of beliefs, be it Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Laic or humanistic covenant, which they do not refuse, and as such should have to be honest for themselves to recognise to be willing to be part of a faith group.
Like many others they assemble or gather at regular intervals. They too are divided in different main groups with subdivisions of different laic thinking. You could compare it with denominations in the different churches, and by ‘churches‘ we do not mean only churches of Christian religion but also of the many other religions we have in our surroundings.
Though what we can notice is that it is only the atheist group which like some conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals, try to force their belief onto others as the only right belief. Being in the majority, those who want others to take it that there does not exist a God, often forget that the so called “freedom” they claim in their banner becomes very restricted in their way of thought, because it are just they and a few fundamentalists, who try to impose their thinking onto others as the only way of thinking to be allowed.
They should come to realize that human beings have an inner feeling of togetherness and somehow are attracted to the feeling of being part of something and needing to gather with others to keep that feeling strong. That is also the reason why we can find certain philosophers and laic thinkers finding it necessary to have regular gatherings or to have people like the atheist Sunday Assembly co-founder Pippa Evans who had to admit that when he left Christendom he realized
“it wasn’t God that I missed or Jesus, it was church. I really missed church.”
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Additional reading:
- To mean, to think, outing your opinion, conviction, belief – Menen, mening, overtuiging, opinie, geloof
- Morality, values and Developing right choices
- Caricaturing and disapproving sceptics, religious critics and figured out ethics
- Science, belief, denial and visibility 1
- Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
- Being Religious and Spiritual 2 Religiosity and spiritual life
- We all have to have dreams
- What moves mountains? Trust!
- Blinkered minds
- Faith antithesis of rationality
- Looking to the East and the West for Truth
- God’s forgotten Word 3 Lost Lawbook 2 Modern scepticism
- Condemnation of the World and Illustration of Justification
- Creator and Blogger God 7 A Blog of a Book 1 Believing the Blogger
- Faith is a pipeline
- A Living Faith #1 Substance of things hoped for
- Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook.
- Everything that is done in the world is done by hope
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Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atheist_symbol.jpg
I get it when someone says he(no gender preference meant) is an atheist! I agree with him when he says “I don’t believe in God or, gods for that matter”, he is unassailably right in stating his belief! It is only when the atheist asserts that “There is no God” that, in my mind, he has allowed his belief to get the better of him…he needs a reality check on this one!
What I find difficult to get a handle on is why atheists congregate under the banner ‘church’! Why church? At a time I thought the whole point of being an atheist was an attempt to free oneself from the rigidity of religion and sectarianism!
Now, pardon my old-fashioness: the human component of a church extends wider than a Christian congregation to include ‘any assembly dedicated to religious activities’ and religion is universally defined as ‘the…
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Stepping Toes 
Hi – thanks for an interesting (and at times provocative) post!
These comments assume that the translation is slightly off – I’ve assumed you’re referring to the term “faith” instead of “belief”. I think you’re conflating different versions of the term “faith”.
An atheists “faith” should generally be considered as ‘a reasonable expectation informed by evidence’. For example, if someone said I had “faith” that my car would start, I’d assert that I had a REASONABLE EXPECTATION that my car would start based on the evidence that 99.9% of other times I’ve gone to start my car, it has started. You may say I have “faith” in the Big Bang, but I’d argue it is a reasonable expectation, given the numerous avenues of evidence that all point to the Big Bang being the best explanation available to us. Contrast this with faith that a literal creation(s) occurred per Gen 1 & 2, and that women suffer pain in childbirth due to eating some fruit. This is not based on testable evidence, only on hearsay.
It is silly to assert atheists should be considered a faith group – they are exactly NOT a faith group. The only thing atheists reliably have in common is that we lack a belief in god(s). The vast proportion does NOT assert that there is no god, simply that there is a lack of evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. Atheists have no dogma, no saints, no Commandments, no ruler, no human sacrifice, and don’t get angry if people draw cartoons of them! Merely meeting together weekly to celebrate life & discuss common interests does not make a group a faith group. It’s a bit of a cliché, but if atheism is a faith, then it follows that off is a TV channel, bald is a hairstyle, and not collecting stamps is a hobby.
It’s the sense of community that motivates people to go to an ‘atheist church’ – it’s simply fun to be around people who hold similar views to oneself.
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Hallo Scott,
Strange you want us and others to believe that it are the religious people who are making it difficult for others to live in the world. You seem to forget that the revolutions and wars were not as such caused by religious feelings and undertakings. About the repression because of different thoughts you also seem to think it are religious people causing problems there, but seem to forget that most torturing and killing because of other ideas or because of mockery was done by atheists and much often not done for religious bur for political reasons.
May we remind you that most terrorist acts are not done by religious people but by atheists.
For Belgium in 2013 there where 759 terrorist acts by which only 2 (two) were done by religious people and on one them was for religious motives, done by Muslims. If you would place that in percentage this would turn out a very very low cipher for religious terrorism, is it not?
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You say the atheist has faith because of “reasonable expectation informed by evidence”, which is also for the believer in God. In the pasts we did have enough cases where human beings felt the assurance to be helped by an extraterrestrial being. Lots of people have felt the presence of something which goes beyond human conception and understanding.
We do not say that “women suffer pain in childbirth due to eating some fruit” and do know the pain is cause by all other things, but we look back at the origin of pain. As atheist what would you consider the origin of pain? Can you explain pain and show us the difference with our believing doctors in medicine?
You consider it “silly to assert atheists should be considered a faith group” by that do you mean they have not faith in certain things. We are convinced they have faith in many things and for sure they also believe they are right in what they believe and would like others to believe that as well. All elements part of faith groups. You seem to limit faith groups only to people who believe in a god or in God, but faith goes much wider than that.
You say ” Atheists have no dogma” ,but who says all faith groups have dogma’s and even in Christianity you have faithgoups like ours which have no dogma’s, except perhaps one, to believe in a Divine Creator, but than your dogma would be the dogma that there is no Creator.
You also say “atheists have no saints”. Saints are people who are set apart, people who are special. Atheists have loads of such people who are set apart. So either you proof not to understand what it means to be a saint, or you limit “saints” only to what Roman Catholics consider to be ‘saints’.
You also say “Atheists have no Commandments” but than we wonder in which country you live. All the countries we do know on earth have commandments to organise their system.
You also say atheists have “no ruler”. But once again wherever we look around us we see many earthly systems where human beings do take up the position of ruler, or boss. Most countries do have also a ruler over the country and many subrulers for the regions and different rulers fro all the human organisations in that system and all sorts of managers in charge of the different companies in that system. We also see different atheist groups which have different unions, organisations and clubs, which have rulers and a hierarchic system with also different traditions and rites.
do you know the masonries, and have you any idea of their rites? Is that not something equal to a church?
You also “they have no human sacrifice”, but it is in the material world we we can find most human sacrifices, away from any belief. Did you forget how many millions in the past already sacrificed their life for their country?
You also say “atheists don’t get angry if people draw cartoons of them”. Well that is the most weird remark we heard. Than you do not seem to know how many politicians already became very angry and even let others be tortured and killed for the cartoons or the jokes which were made about them.
Perhaps you know the most recent angriness about cartoons and offensive publications, Charlie Hebdo. You should have a look into the history of that magazine and how many difficulties they got form atheists. than you would come to see that they received more negative remarks from atheists than from religious people. You also would see that they were more threatened by atheists than by religious people. Please do know your historical facts. See also other countries, for example the communist ones and Africa were atheists were more offended and were more aggressive than religious people for drawings or texts written by atheists and by religious people or by believers of something different than what they believed (e.g. communism or n other political system than the offender) or stood for.
You as an atheist are “Merely meeting together weekly to celebrate life & discuss common interests” but we do know of many atheist organisations and atheist clubs which come regularly, sometimes more than weekly, while we as believers do not have to come and do not all come together weekly.
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For those who believe in God it is no surprise that atheist or non believers and those against God would come into the majority. But from many examples in the Bible but also in the worldly (atheist and religious scientists and historians) book about the past, we can see that in the past many terror acts and wars were committed by non-believers and we do know they will continue to happen also without religions, because then the lawlessness shall have it even easier to grow in abundance and many more people would not mind any ethics but look only at their selves
“Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:12–14).
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