Can you blame Atheism for anything?

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Help me think this through because I'm having a bit of a hard time thinking this through.

When I was younger, being around my atheist family members, they would always blame religion for a lot of bad things and associated those bad things with belief in a God and religiosity.

In places where there are strong undertones of cultural atheism, places that pride themselves on being secular, and who have a low participation rate in traditional religions, can you blame or attribute the kind of world they produce to their atheist values and outlook?

Atheism isn’t really a worldview or outlook. There is only one criteria for being an atheist: a lack of a belief in supreme beings. Atheists do not organise the way that religious people do, neither do we have sacred texts. It is of course possible for a nontheist to be religious (there are nontheists within most major world religions) and for a theist to be non-religious (if they believe in a deity without reference to religious texts, traditions, and organisations) but as a rule, nontheists are much less likely to participate in organised religion than theists.

Now, if we are blaming Christianity (for example) for the evil done in its name, we must also credit it for the little bits of good done in its name. Some people enjoy participating in organised religion. It causes them to feel connected to their community. This is a double-edged sword, but it does mean that irreligious lives are different from religious lives in a significant way.

Religion provides a motivation to act. Atheism, less so. Unlike religions, atheism is not an ideology. A lot of the acts traditionally blamed on atheism, like communist dictatorships, are motivated by ideology.

In conclusion, there isn’t anything I think it makes sense to blame atheism for, but there are differences between a religious and irreligious life.

[opinion=mine]

If atheism can be blamed for anything, it is demonstrating, by example, that lack of faith does not immediately and automatically result in atheists being 'smote' by the supreme being(s) in whom they do not believe.  This may lead to 'believers' doubting what they had been taught by whatever religion they follow.

[/opinion]


Other than that . . . . . . I got nuthin'.

Hey thanks for the response.

Atheism isn't a worldview if you remove the human component from it. As an idea, it is just a starting point with no direction. But as soon as you factor humanity into it, it seems to have an orientation. There are very human questions that religion answers, and when you run those same questions through a secular framework, they produce a different result. So it seems that human-directed atheism, or applied atheism, is not pure and directionless. In fact, human atheism or applied atheism has consequences and produces a certain type of context for us to live under. Just because you stop or remove yourself from a religious context doesn't mean you stop being human, and those human questions and urges will still continue... just now guided under a different context.

You can't blame ideas if you don't apply them as a human being to human questions and drives. As soon as the human being becomes involved, and applies the idea, that idea is no longer pure and now has a very human direction. It must therefore take responsibility for how humans apply it. It can't be left alone as a dictionary definition if it has real-world consequences.

Also...
You don't need sacred texts to be religious. Sacred texts are just foundational cornerstones for a human movement and its primary importance was to maintain the direction of a movement over generations(time) and survive values important to a people over generations. It seems like religious impulses are built-in into the human being, and that those impulses express themselves regardless of your worldview. I'm from the United States, so maybe my references and cultural understanding might be limited, but an example of this might be a dogma such as "love is all that matters," or "give peace a chance," or the need for symbolism by flying a gay pride flag, or the need to commemorate "holy days" of remembrance such as Black History month or planting a tree on Earth day, etc. The human being is a religious being even if you remove traditional religion from the picture. Those religious impulses will still express themselves, just differently, especially under a "Western," secular context. Atheists are still dogmatic and not all atheists are "rational" or "free-thinking."

I don't think it can be blamed for much. Though not believing there's an afterlife may have a depressing or scary side to it, the survival instinct being what it is, and depressed and scared people might not make the best companions. But it's not that depressing or scary if you're used to it, and I haven't noticed any significant difference between how annoying atheists and religious people are. It's certainly possible to be happy and secular.

I don't think that being atheist and not getting smitten leads to any overall harm.

So in a nutshell, no, I don't think it can be blamed for anything.

I would think it healthy that they notice atheists are still walking about and therefore doubt the complete reliability of whatever person or book told them otherwise.

Atheists have no holy book or any sort of organized belief aside from "god doesn't exist". So outside of like, maybe an atheist killing someone in cold blood and using "I hate religious people, they all need to die" as an excuse.... I wouldn't say that atheism can be blamed.
I have had a lot of run-ins with atheists who have been as*holes to me just because I'm religious, but I wouldn't blame atheism as a whole for that.

Now, anti-theists actively want to take away freedom of religion and many cases wish to make practicing any sort of religion illegal, so they're another story. But I would wager that the majority of atheists are not anti-theist.

Yes but if the Atheist template produces similar results wherever it is tried, can we not tie its consequences back to it? Do you view it as just a descriptor or dictionary definition and not tie human application of it (and its results) back to it? Do ideas not have consequences, do they exist in a vacuum?

Only if a causal connection can be proven in every case.Atheism is a human belief.  Thus, its expression is a human application.Ideas, by their mere existence, have no consequences.  The consequences of their applications may or may not be beneficial.

Are you trying to find justification for criminalizing atheists?

Ain't gonna happen.

If its human application has consequences, especially ones that are universal wherever it has been tried, then atheists cannot argue that Atheism is simply a lack of belief in supreme beings. A lack of belief in supreme beings has consequences and produces a certain kind of world. So the definition of Atheism should also include the human experience with it and its application to human life and human yearnings.

If there is no supreme being or messiah that is going to come down from the heavens and make the world right, then only we can save ourselves. And if there is no supreme being, then there is no afterlife, and this is the only life we have to live, so this is the only life where we can experience ultimate justice. So heaven on earth becomes paramount. A resounding majority of societies that have applied atheism to these very real human questions have come to these or similar conclusions, and it has driven many of them to try and create a better world. One of those attempts arrived at the conclusion that personal happiness and having this over a long life is critical for living out the one life you have to live. Some atheists think that the best way to provide this is by having a big government to provide the infrastructure and resources necessary so that as many people as possible can live out their one life to live in the best way possible.

Modern-day Western Europe was not an accident/miracle. Neither is most major cities in the US, or larger Anglosphere. It was by design.

I'm not trying to criminalize Atheists. I'm trying to see if my worldview has holes in it or not and I'm testing it against other autistic people to see if my reasoning is sound.

Oh, really?  Please provide examples of actual Atheistic worlds, and the consequences they have experienced.

So far, the only inhabited world we know of is Earth, and it is not an Atheistic world.

I think you're probably too eager to argue but I provided examples in my last post.

Your 'examples' are presumptive, subjective, and subjunctive.  Do you have any empirical evidence? Time is: ~15:30

Just so I know I'm not talking to an AI chatbox, what was the example I provided?

Fnord answered this in better detail than I'm likely to.

I would add that if somebody were to use atheism as an excuse for doing harm, it's the use of lame excuses that I'd blame.

I also think that secular morality is better able to get to the point - human (and perhaps animal) well-being in ways that we can see - than religious morality that often deviates from that, in the belief that it's a deity's will to do so. Not that I think it makes much difference overall. Nobody has been able to demonstrate a difference between the kindness/cruelty of theists and atheists.

I think humans do harm in the name of all sorts of things. A lot of harm is done with good intentions, or by people trying to do the right thing.

You do bring up a good point about secular morality. I think some of the guiding principles of secular socities is:

1.) Is it consensual?
2.) Is it safe for the involved parties?
3.) Is it healthy?

Those are just a few, of course, there are many more.

A problem with Aggressive Atheism is that you force nihilism