What is the difference between Atheism and religion?

Answer:

Religion is a deep spiritual belief in anything. It doesn't have to be about gods, but it implies a deep belief that one uses to live their life by. Atheism on the other hand tends to be about life it's self rather than the spiritual work 'behind the scenes' that the uninitiated cannot see.

Answer:

The simplest and most impartial answer is that religion (aka theism, hence atheism) is the belief in some kind of supernatural force or being, and atheism is the opposite.

While morals constitute beliefs, they do not, of themselves constitute a relgion. The answer to the original question is that religions invariably include beliefs in the supernatural, whether gods, saints, departed spirits, afterlife, prayer (as opposed to meditation) or a belief that any part of a human being survives death. While the formal definition of atheism is the simple conviction that gods do not exist, most atheists go further than this and state that everything supernatural is merely imaginary. Thus, it normally constitutes a non-belief in anything supernatural.

Religions usually include statements about moral and ethical conduct, it is also true that morality can and does exist without religion. The myth that people without religion are without morals is simply untrue, unkind and indefensible. Many religious people fail in their morality, and many non-religious have strong morals.

Answer

Religion comes from religio (belief), so religion implies belief. Mostly as a belief in a supernatural being.

Atheism implies "no belief in a supernatural being".

Answer

Teapot Atheists

The difference between religion and atheism has been likened to the difference between hair color and baldness. The fact is, that 'atheism' is a word which would be devoid of meaning, if it were not for it's semantic relationship with 'religion'. Atheists often insist that the label is redundant in light of the non-existence of any God. Bertrand Russell used an analogy with a hypothetical teapot which might be believed to be in orbit about Mars. Failing any empirical means to test for the existence of the teapot, why would we hold out even the most marginal, tentative speculation, that such a teapot exists?

As Richard Dawkins points out, strictly speaking we would have to think of ourselves as 'teapot agnostics', unless we go to the trouble of proving conclusively, to our own satisfaction, that the teapot does not exist but in practice, we don't bother to speculate about; or consider worthy of even the slightest tentative possibility, any proposition that fails to offer even a modicum of evidence that we might consider it plausible in the first place. For all practical purposes we are 'teapot atheists'. We simply don't believe there is a teapot in orbit around Mars.

By the same token we needn't bother to invent a word to describe a person who doesn't believe in celestial teapots. Nor do we need a word to describe people who don't believe in the Loch Ness Monster, or those who don't believe there are fairies at the bottom of their garden. We only have a word for people who don't believe in god, because monotheism it is such a pervasive mythology, eliciting so much controversy.

Faith No More

One significant philosophical difference between atheists and religious adherents is that the religious worldviews tend to honor the acquisition of beliefs, without evidence or reason (faith) as a virtue. Atheism on the other hand, reviles faith as anathema to critical thinking. Religious adherents often invoke faith with reverent pride, to explain their detailed beliefs. Somehow thought, the faith possessed by adherents of other religions, who worship other gods and profess different metaphysical schemes, does not have the same level of significance for them. This prompts some atheists to point out that, as Richard Dawkins has put it - "everyone is an atheist with respect to most of the gods mankind has ever believed in, some of us, just go one god further"

Faith seems to lead to a multitude of contradictory beliefs, the only consistency being directly attributable to the anthropological relationship of each religion and their morphological history of borrowed mythology and traditions. Religions tend to agree with each other not for logical reasons, but because they are in part browed from and made up based on older mythological beliefs. These are the things that made it easier through history to proselytize and convert a culture from one religion to another, a process of assimilation as much as conversion. There is a tenacity in the religious community to resist the equally implausible faith based beliefs of other religions, that is reinforced by cultural prejudice and socio-political taboos. It is interesting to note that what a religious person believes about the universe, how it and we came to be here, depends largely on where they were raised as children, into which culture they were born and what their parents or kin folk believed. Atheists will point out, that what is likely to be true about the world and life within it, should not depend on your geographical or cultural heritage, but what brand of religious revelation your faith presents to you, apparently does.

Testing Claims

While atheism and science are not synonymous, atheism does appear to be vindicated by the modern scientific understanding of nature. While religion presents worldviews ostensibly based on supernatural, cultural myths, atheism accords to the more modern understanding of nature proffered by science. An important distinction to be made in this regard is that science expects truth to 'speak for itself'. The diligent efforts in science to eradicate falsehoods and eliminate misconceptions are intrinsic, systemic, methodologies which have been refined throughout the centuries. The commitment to allowing conclusions to be predicated on evidence, balanced up by Ockham's razor and winnowed through peer review, is what has made the scientific worldview so successful at gaining insight into nature.

Religion on the other hand, seeks to preserve it's authoritative dictates and its proponents often resort to disingenuous means to avoid cognitive dissonance or facing logical consequences in a debate. Intellectual honesty should dictate that we are willing to test any proposition and see it stand or fall on it's own merit. religion doesn't seem to work this way. It has no equivalent of the double blind controlled experiment, no critical thinking or peer review to test it's propositions, and no Ockham's Razor to test relative parsimony. When a pretense to enter into debate is attempted, many religionists resort to contrived, sophist, polemics.

Evidence that may be proffered in support of the religion, will focus on scavenging for anything that may be construed as lending support for the religious view, instead of the honest head on approach of science to test the idea against the worst case scenario (what if I am wrong). What prediction could I make, that would show my idea to be wrong if it actually was? It is a matter of convention in science to test ideas to breaking point. The systematic collecting of evidence that might be construed as lending support to a proposition while ignoring evidence to the contrary, is known as confirmation bias. In many religious factions, it is, like faith, a matter of systemic convention, to begin with an unsupported belief, then proceed to prop it up with an edifice of contrived evidence, disingenuous reasoning and confirmation bias.

The Moral Zeitgeist

Other differences of the two world views involve asthetic and ethical considerations. While these are more subjective and contentious, it should be noted that religions have had a virtual 'moral monopoly' for centuries, while advocating and perpetrating the most heinous acts of depravity and barbarity in the name of their gods. Much of this misfortune arises out of the irreconcilable claims of each religion to have a divine conduit to the one true God. The holy scriptures of each faith often command the devout follower to exterminate anybody who dares to betray God by proselytizing for other gods. Atheists are only just beginning to voice their distaste for the pious, self righteous, moralizing by the religious right. The custodians of absolute morality, have been irresponsible to the point of shame. If only they knew it.

Atheism has no divine authority, so the religionists are concerned to know how the atheist would know right from wrong. It never occurs to them that we all have benevolent social instincts. Perhaps this is an example of predicting in others the lowliest of their own characteristics. People who are untrustworthy tend to be un-trusting. People who are violent tend to be defensive and so on. If they can't see in others, any moral virtue greater than that which they themselves possess, It may not occur to them that the atheist may actually be ethical without a celestial dictatorship They would not themselves be ethical without their belief in god. In essence what they are saying is, that were it not for belief in their vengeful god who censors their innate, sinful proclivities, they would be off pillaging, raping and looting in the streets. They wouldn't know right from wrong and what they believe of themselves with respect to their own intrinsic greed, depravity and hatred they assume to be true of others.

To an atheist, the atheist worldview should not even need to be defined and argued for. It is a worldview, but one borne of natural causes and would just be a meaningless, default worldview if there were never any man made supernatural creators invented to give meaning to the opposing view. For reasons of ethical prudence, many atheists are seeing good reason to unite and put forward their case as conciencious citizens of the world. There has for far too long been a moral stigma associated with the disbelief in supernatural creators and other religious myths. Atheists have also been far too passive in providing secular fellowship and charitable organisations; alternatives to the roles taken traditionally by religious organizations. To unite for such civic goals, one must aknowledge a name for ones worldview and as an absence of belief in any supernatural creator is the one thing which all atheists share by definition, for better or worse, atheism is being reclaimed and unstigmatized.

Answer

Strictly speaking, atheism and religion are two different concepts, not two positions the one continuum. Atheism is a belief position and is opposite to theism. Religion is a broad term that encompasses sacred practices, procedures, texts, leaders/ interpreters, organizational structure and people as members that express faith in a transcendental or supernatural aspects of reality.

Answer

Atheism- is the practice of disbelieving in the existence of a higher power such as an omnipotent or godlike presence. The absolute conviction that such a supernatural entity does not exist.

Religion- is the physical practice of worship to acknowledge and praise the existence of a supernatural being, deity or entity such as ...God.

First answer by ID1112157689. Last edit by Nmdh. Contributor trust: 2 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 45 [recommend question]