Atheism
(noun)
"disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."
It has synonyms but we are not here to look at synonyms for atheism, if you want to look at the synonyms of Atheism, then please look it up on google.
Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.
The etymological root for the word atheism originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god(s)". In antiquity it had multiple uses such as a pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshipped by the larger society. it could refer to someone who was was forsaken by the gods or someone who had no commitment to the gods. However, the actual term Atheism emerged first in the 16th century. With the spread of free-thought, sceptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope. The first individuals to identify themselves using the word Atheist lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its "unprecedented atheism," witnessed the first major political movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason.
Since conceptions of Atheism vary, accurate estimations of current numbers of atheists are difficult. Several comprehensive global polls on the subject have been conducted by Gallup International: their 2015 poll featured over 64,000 respondents and indicated that 11% were "convinced atheists" whereas an earlier 2012 poll found that 13% of respondents were "convinced atheists." An older survey by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2004 recorded atheists as comprising 8% of the world's population. Other older estimates have indicated that atheists comprise 2% of the world's population, while the irreligious add a further 12%. According to these polls, Europe and East Asia are the regions with the highest rates of atheism. In 2015, 61% of people in China reported that they were Atheists. The figures for a 2010 Euro-barometer survey in the European Union (EU) reported that 20% of the EU population claimed not to believe in "any sort of spirit, God or life force".
A diagram showing the relationship between the definitions of weak/strong and implicit/explicit Atheism.
Explicit strong/positive/hard Atheists (in purple on the right) assert that "at least one deity exists" is a false statement.
Explicit weak/negative/soft Atheists (in blue on the right) reject or eschew belief that any deities exist without actually asserting that "at least one deity exists" is a false statement.
Implicit weak/negative Atheists (in blue on the left), according to authors such as George H. Smith, would include people (such as young children and some agnostics) who do not believe in a deity but have not explicitly rejected such belief.
(Sizes in the diagram are not meant to indicate relative sizes within a population.)
In early ancient Greek, the adjective átheos (ἄθεος, from the privative ἀ- + θεός "god") meant "godless". It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning "ungodly" or "impious". In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods". The term ἀσεβής (asebēs) then came to be applied against those who impiously denied or disrespected the local gods, even if they believed in other gods. Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render átheos as "atheistic". As an abstract noun, there was also ἀθεότης (atheotēs), "Atheism". Cicero transliterated the Greek word into the Latin átheos. The term found frequent use in the debate between early Christians and Hellenists, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other.
The term Atheist (from Fr. athée), in the sense of "one who ... denies the existence of God or gods", predates Atheism in English, being first found as early as 1566, and again in 1571. Atheist as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577. The term atheism was derived from the French Athéisme, and appears in English about 1587. An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term Atheonism. Related words emerged later: deist in 1621, theist in 1662, deism in 1675,and theism in 1678. At that time "deist" and "deism" already carried their modern meaning. The term theism came to be contrasted with deism.
Karen Armstrong writes that "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word 'Atheist' was still reserved exclusively for polemic ... The term 'Atheist' was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling himself an Atheist."
Atheism was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god. In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe Atheism as simply "disbelief in God".
William Lane Craig on attempts to define the word Atheism
William Lane Craig declared:
“ There’s a history behind this. Certain Atheists in the mid-twentieth century were promoting the so-called “presumption of Atheism.” At face value, this would appear to be the claim that in the absence of evidence for the existence of God, we should presume that God does not exist. Atheism is a sort of default position, and the theist bears a special burden of proof with regard to his belief that God exists....
But when you look more closely at how protagonists of the presumption of Atheism used the term “Atheist,” you discover that they were defining the word in a non-standard way, synonymous with “non-theist." So understood the term would encompass agnostics and traditional Atheists, along with those who think the question meaningless (verificationists)...
Such a re-definition of the word “Atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of Atheism, for on this definition, Atheism ceases to be a view. It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all. On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as Atheists! In fact, our cat Muff counts as an Atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.
One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist, which is the question we’re really interested in.
So why, you might wonder, would Atheists be anxious to so trivialize their position? Here I agree with you that a deceptive game is being played by many Atheists. If Atheism is taken to be a view, namely the view that there is no God, then Atheists must shoulder their share of the burden of proof to support this view."
Atheism is a religion and this has implications in terms of the disciplines of religion, philosophy, Christian apologetics and law. In addition, although many atheists deny that atheism is a worldview, atheists commonly share a number of beliefs such as naturalism, belief in evolution and abiogenesis.
If the view that there is no God (or are no gods) is a religion, it is argued its expression is constitutionally protected in the United States. The government cannot force Atheists to recant and adopt the opposite belief.
If atheism is not a religion, then the expression of atheistic ideas is still covered by the First Amendment, but only by the free speech and free press clauses.
The implications go deeper, affecting public education. If Atheism is a religion, then the Atheism adhering to the methodological naturalism of physical science cannot be given excessive government support. That would violate the establishment of religion clause. So, evolution education would have to allow students freedom to dissent from the "orthodox" pseudo-scientific view that human beings evolved from earlier forms of life without any intervention from God. It should be noted that biology courses only require knowledge of what the theory of evolution, its mechanisms, and the evidence supporting it, rather than belief that evolution occurred.
In 2013, a trend of atheist services began and atheist services were reported in the New York Times, The Blaze and other major news outlets.
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