Atheism is not an intellectual achievement. Maybe for some people it can be, people who grew up in an environment completely drenched in god sauce, atheism and doubt never being allowed a voice. And in that void, they had to rebuild atheism from scratch, using the power of reason to give voice to and justification for rejecting everything they’d ever been told to believe about the universe.
But my cat is nigh-thoughtless and he’s an atheist, no need for any of that. He never had the power to understand the lie of religion in the first place.
President for Short-ass Rest of His Life Donlad Pumpkinhead Shitler IV possesses the atheism of a cat. He will never fear death because he is incapable of grasping the reality of it on an emotional level. It means nothing to him. Should we really expect that he has anything like a conception of life beyond his own, enough to imagine a creator that came before him, a creator that would have any opinion that matters regarding his worldly conduct?
The people who trust that he is christian are the same as the people who believe he is honest. On at least this one issue, we gotta admit, he’s one of ours. Likewise most of us in the atheist community are “culturally christian,” carrying with us the patriarchal and zealously conformist baggage that entails. Unsurprising in hindsight to see our “thought leaders” in the same sordid company as hair fuhrer.
When I say these things, on some level you know it’s just to court controversy in my scene. But also I feel a need to distinguish myself from the shitbird hypocrites of the right wing by not playing the no true scotsman game. If that sack of shit wants to say he’s an atheist – which he won’t – he has as much right to the word as DickDawk, Spam Hairish, and the rest.
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But is someone who believes himself to be a god really an atheist?
Is there a word for that?
i imagine you’d call that autotheism, but i don’t believe he believes that either. he thinks so little of everyone else in the world that he would be a god in comparison, but i don’t think it’s quite the same thing.
Then there is the problem of …
can whatever is going on in whatever is remaining of his brain be called “thinking”?
i’ve definitely danced all over the border of my ableism policy on this one. my flimsy excuse is that i’m not handing out a dx from my armchair, but maybe that ain’t enough. plenty of sweet people have cognitive decline, right? gotta exercise care not to make them feel bad by talking about his deficits like they’re the direct precursor of his evil.
I would evaluate Trump as a Christian – an unthinking, impious, amoral, heterodox Christian, but a Christian nonetheless.
I wonder what his cultists would do if he came right out and announced that he was an atheist? What sort of pretzels would they have to twist themselves into to keep believing? Would their “God’s imperfect vessel” excuse be enough? Would they still stand by him like they would if he shot someone on 5th Ave on tv?
I have to admit, he’s almost got me believing he’s the antichrist…
That does get to one of the difficulties of definitions. Is an atheist someone who:
1. Does not believe in deities?
2. Does not believe in interventionist deities?
3. Does not believe in any aspect of the supernatural?
4. Makes an informed decision to not believe in deities based on studies of religion or reality?
5. Someone who was exposed to religious doctrine but rejects all of it, informed or not (as opposed to a heathen/pagan who has not been exposed or a heretic who rejects parts of it but not all)?
6. Someone who was exposed to religious cultures (not necessarily doctrine) and rejects it.
I would submit that most people who call themselves atheists belong to most these categories, although most atheists probably do adopt some of the trappings of the religious culture they exist in (e.g. christmas) so they are not type 6 atheists. Although, I also suspect that most people who claim atheism are in category 4, while your cat is only in category 1. While your cat may be an atheist, I would be surprised if they made a claim that they were. (If your cat does make this claim, we’ll have to sponsor a debate with the Jackdaw of Rheims.) I have run across, on occasion, people who don’t believe in a diety (interventionist or not), but do believe in the supernatural. These days they tend to call themselves heathen or Pagan not atheist. But from a purely technical definition of atheism, the lack of a belief in a god or gods, they would count as atheists.
However, I would also submit that most religious people are, in fact, heretics. That is, they adopt the cultural trappings of a religion (a la point 6), and some of the teachings (but not all), and do believe in some sort of interventionist deity.
So, what is Trump, in the past and in the present? My feeling is that in the past he was unconcerned about the existence of a deity, but would acknowledge the possibility of one because of a couple factors. Trump is (was?) an adherent of Norman Vincent Peale, who promoted the idea of the power of positive thinking. While there is certainly some benefit in being confident in what you are striving to accomplish, there is a large amount of supernatural thinking involved in Peale’s doctrine. Which suggests that Trump also has a belief in the supernatural, although he may call it luck or the power of positive thinking. A belief in a non-causal event which can change random propabilities is a supernatural belief. Peale’s acolytes didn’t hope they were going to win the lottery, they knew they were going to win, and when they didn’t it was because they didn’t “know” strongly enough.
This has the been one of the underlying beliefs Trump has demonstrated for many years. It underlies every one of his “get-rich” schemes. He knew his university was going to make money. He knew his steaks were going to make money. He knew his casinos were going to make money. He didn’t have to work at any of these things, he only had to believe strongly enough.
So, Trump believes in the supernatural. Does he believe in the afterlife? That’s harder to get a read on. The fact that he is pissing on everything he can to leave his scent could imply that he doesn’t believe in an afterlife, or it could merely be a what a mongrel does in an attempt to claim ownership. My gut feeling is that he does believe in an afterlife, but is frightened by it. Which is why he wants all the trappings of power because, somehow, an improved status while alive equates to an improved status in the afterlife. But I doubt that he’s really thought seriously about it, and I’m not certain he can at this point.
Is Trump a type 4 (from the list above) atheist? Absolutely not. He is at a minimum a believer in the supernatural (i.e. not type 3) and a cultural christian (i.e. not type 6). He has not learned religious beliefs and rejected them (i.e. not type 4). He has not been exposed to religious beliefs and rejected them without study (i.e. not type 5). He could either be a type 1 or type 2 atheist, like your cat, or a heretic.
Personally, I would call him a heretic. Like most christians.
Just a variant:
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flex:
An atheist is a non-theist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative
Therefore, any non-theist is an atheist.
(If an agnostic is not a theist, then they are an atheist)
You know, when I wrote my comment I expected one of two responses.
A) Someone saying that my 5 categories don’t cover all potentialities. Which is true. I wasn’t trying to completely encircle what variations are possible within atheism. I was only giving some examples to clarify the difference between an atheist who has been exposed to religious teachings and reject them, and an atheist who has never really been exposed, like Bebe’s cat (and per the OP, Trump).
B) Someone to haul out the old dictionary and say there is only a single definition of atheism and that’s someone who is a non-theist. If I had been asked to put money on which commentor that would be, my initial bet would have been on Mr. Morales, although I may not have found any takers.
The trouble, John, with the dictionary is that it is required to be terse. There are many subtleties of meaning within the word atheist which a mere collection of words paired with a short definition simply cannot cover. It looks simple, an atheist is a non-theist. That’s clear. But what is a theist?
So we move to asking ourselves what a theist is. Well, that’s pretty clear too. A person who believes in a deity.
But what is a deity? What characteristics define a deity? How can you distinguish a deity from something else, like a cat or a table? This discussion has gone on for as long as we have had written records, see Xenophanes’ argument that if horses, oxen, or lions had hands and could create art, they would draw their gods in their own likeness. Sifting through all the various definitions of a deity we arrive at one common attribute to them, a deity is not restricted to natural laws. The deity may choose to abide by them, or adopt a policy of non-intervention, but the deity itself, whatever form they may take, is not bound by the laws which restrict every other collection of quarks in the multi-verse.
The only common attribute for all deities is that they are supernatural. They are beyond natural laws.
There are deities who want to be worshiped, deities who want to be acknowledged and thanked, and deities who don’t care. There are deities who throw thunderbolts, and deities who only project their voices into people’s heads. There are a whole slew of deities with different characteristics. But the one thing they have in common is that they are supernatural.
Which allows us to pull back one level on our investigations of the definitions of theism. A theist believes in a deity, which means the theist believes in the supernatural. Which then allows us to say that an atheist does not believe in the supernatural.
However, our investigation doesn’t end here, as that definition is a proscriptive one, and does not really reflect how the term atheist is used in everyday conversation. In many cases people will say they are an atheist, but spiritual. I’m not certain what they mean in that case, because our brains can certainly experience spiritual feelings without the supernatural. However, some people do believe that a spiritual experience is a supernatural one. Which leads us to the conclusion that some people use the term atheist in a stricter sense, as being a person who doesn’t believe in the deity which is commonly found in their culture. Or against a specific type of religion, as in an atheist doesn’t believe in Abrahamic religions but might believe in Buddhism.
So a dictionary definition for the word atheism fails to capture the nuances in the word. As does the dictionary definition for just about every word. Free thyself from the tyranny of dictionaries, and learn how to think!
Brought to you by the letters, A, Q, and V!
Dictionaries don’t dictate word meanings, they record current word meanings.
I think John Morales is right in a way, without being relevant. Of course the word “atheist” is simple and means only one thing, but it doesn’t tell us other things. It doesn’t need to, because that’s not what it is about. We could, I suppose,have a language in which the reason for a condition or situation is contained in the word for it, a different term for the atheism of a cat and the atheism of a philosopher, the heat of a cup of tea or of the fires of hell, and so forth, but basic words don’t. We qualify the word with explanations that point out the differences, depending on why we’re speaking of the subject at all. But there’s a distinct limit to what we can say about the contents of an empty box.
I think Bébé came close enough in this case, with the observation that Trump’s position here is like that of a cat, in which rote behavior might look like something but has no fundamental meaning. If saying or doing certain things gets you a bowl of kibble, then you do those things.
I get what Flex and Morales are about here, in a way, and in a way it’s even sort of interesting, but in the context of the original post it seems spurious. Bébé stated the what and the why. I recall long ago seeing the poet John Ciardi defining a pedant as someone who studies a vacuum using instruments that allow him to draw cross sections of the details.
People have forgotten Trump in August of last year:
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/trump-tells-fox-hosts-hes-worried-about-not-getting-to-heaven-i-am-really-at-the-bottom/
“Heaven”, as he seems to use it, implies immortal souls, an afterlife for those souls, and a being that judges those souls for entry into heaven — all part of the typical Western Christian theistic package.
I doubt he thinks about God much, but presumably occasionally someone or something gets through his mental barriers, and reminds him that if God exists, he personally does not seem to live up to the typically-conceived God’s standards.
Note that this was around the time of the anniversary of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, proclaimed to be suicide. Could Trump have an occasionally guilty conscience?
but did i court controversy in my community?
Ha ha. A deity is not the issue, it’s the theistic type of deity at hand. Right?
Atheism.
There are many types of deity, and one type is the theistic type, most notably the Abrahamic type.”
Not adeistic, apolytheistic, ahenotheistic, amonolatrous, apantheistic, apanentheistic, aanimistic, ademiurgic, aemanationist, ahenadic or the like. Atheistic.
I know, it gets conflated with ‘religious’. But of course one can be religious and atheistic.
(It’s complicated)
I suppose you can overload it to mean not anything worth worshipping.
(I like Conan’s Crom, not a mess around type of deity)
@John Morales,
Referring back to one of your favorite sources, the dictionary says that theism is the belief in a god or gods.
Atheism would be a lack of belief in a god or gods. It is not limited to Abrahamic gods, there are atheists in India who reject the Hindu pantheon.
Deism, polytheism, henotheism, monolatism, pantheism, animism, demiurgic, and hendadic beliefs overtly involve gods. The atheism rejects even the Deist non-interventionist god, because an atheist rejects all gods. While panentheistic and emanationist beliefs do not directly invoke a deity, they do involve the divine.
But you are shifting your ground and proving my point. Atheism is not a simple concept either through an analysis of the definitions or by the usage of the term in conversation. An emanationist is unlikely to style themselves as an atheist, and will likely take offence if you call them one. They think of themselves as an emanationist. This characteristic isn’t unique to the term atheism, it’s also true of the word “theism”, or “table”. (Although, realistically, the couple people who I’ve met whom I believe were likely emanationists have been so mellow that they probably wouldn’t care if someone called them an atheist. They wouldn’t agree, but they wouldn’t argue the point because, in their opinion, it isn’t a valuable position to take. I feel similarly about my atheism, I’m not militant about it. I’m certain most theists I interact with believe I belong to some version of the Abrahamic religions, and I’ll correct them if it ever comes up, but it rarely comes up and I don’t care enough about the issue to advertise. I advertise that I’m a humanist, and politically progressive, but I don’t think my atheism matters all that much.)
We can make a claim that Trump is an atheist in the same way as Bebe’s cat. The implication is that Trump doesn’t understand theism or gods, and is an atheist by default. We can also make a claim that Trump is an atheist because he has intensively studied world religions and their beliefs and decided that none of them are true. Those are probably close to the limits on either end of a spectrum of how a person (or cat) can be an atheist. Plenty of room for just about everyone; except those who believe in some sort of deity. And since the term “deity” is even more poorly defined than the word “table”, it can be stretched to include everything which can violate a natural law; from inexhaustible wells of divine power nourishing and sustaining reality and the universe second by second, to the lowliest ghost who’s only violation of natural law is to exist at all. I personally do not believe that Trump is on the atheism spectrum, but I’ll acknowledge that Bebe has a point and the evidence for Trump’s theism is not strong.
@ 14 Bebe,
Hey! I’m trying to build controversy for you! 🙂
In my own pedantic, prolix, pettifogging way.
I’m not helping am I?
Nope.
Neither pantheism, animism, henadism entail gods, nevermind theistic gods.
My point is that theism is about the sort of gods to which one prays, the ones with an eschatology and/or organised religious dogma.
(BTW, we both know the Buddha is not a god, right?)
All you are saying is that your definition of a god is different than your definition of a spirit. In other words, when I say that the common denominator of deities is that they are supernatural, you are saying that maybe all deities are supernatural but not all supernatural beliefs are associated with deities.
Which brings us right back to the acknowledgement that atheism is a spectrum of beliefs because it related to where an individual draws that line between deity and spirit. The point where this occurs is different in different religions and can be different between individuals. The point where someone says that a supernatural belief crosses from a belief in a spirits inhabiting rocks and trees to saying that those spirits inhabiting rocks and trees require acknowledgement may be the point where you say it crosses from a belief in the supernatural to a belief in a diety. The distinction is between telling others that a spirit resides in that rock, and saying hello or giving a friendly wave to that rock to acknowledge the spirit which resides within. The latter can be seen as a form of worship. Being friendly with the spirit includes the hope that the spirit will be friendly back, or at least not interfere with the greeters activities.
You might not see it that way, yet great number of religious texts have described those same spirits as deities. You can say they were wrong to do so, but that’s because you are operating with a different definition of deity than they were. It’s all where you decide to make the distinction. Is a dryad a nature spirit so an atheist can believe in a dryad? Or is a dryad a minor deity so it would be expected that a person calling themselves an atheist would not believe in dryads? I don’t really care where you want to draw your line to distinguish between supernatural beliefs which are covered under the term theism and supernatural beliefs which are not covered under the term theism. But you should understand that there is no clearly defined point where that happens. Different people and different cultures have reached different conclusions, and the only real consensus is that theistic beliefs transcend natural explanations.
The definition as to which supernatural beliefs are related to worship (and fetishes like lucky rabbit’s feet come to mind), and which are considered deities is a cultural one. And different cultures have different definitions. Proscriptive definitions can cause harm. Definitions which are understood to have a certain flexibility of meaning improve communication and understanding. A pedant who demands that only their definition is the correct one will, inevitably, arouse ire.
As for the Buddha not being a god? Well, that depends on which of the many flavors of Buddhism you are talking about. I know some Buddhists say that petitioning Buddha to intercede for them would be against the teachings of Buddha, but there are some sects of Buddhism where that is common. You can have your own opinion of whether Buddha should be treated as a god or not, but you don’t get to make that decision for other people. As an atheist, I know that the Buddha was not a god. But there are people who treat him as such. I don’t get to decide that for them, I can only argue my case to them and let them decide for themselves.
“Which brings us right back to the acknowledgement that atheism is a spectrum of beliefs because it related to where an individual draws that line between deity and spirit.”
You clearly don’t get the concept of a privative.
“As for the Buddha not being a god? Well, that depends on which of the many flavors of Buddhism you are talking about.”
What? No.
“As an atheist, I know that the Buddha was not a god. But there are people who treat him as such.”
(Sigh) No.
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Pointless disputation, I see now.
im calling foul, john. treating as obvious something that legitimately ain’t from another’s point of view, yer getting rude. dip.