Seriously, should these words even exist? I don’t think so. I prefer to say “Normal” person over “Atheist” person or “Nonbeliever” person.
The word “Atheism” denotes a negation of theism, but in reality, that negation of theism is what all newborns start with. That is the default behavior; that is the normal behavior. I never saw a Chimp at zoo going to Sunday Schools.
It is us, the human society in general, who dump this theism BS on kids, at an age when they can’t even reason by themselves (pretty convenient age to try to convince and convert eh?)
For context, my Dad has always been a skeptic, and as he became old, he started to be a hardcore agnostic - so I was never brought up in a family of faith (thankfully) - and so I never had to struggle with any “deconstruction”, as some of us had to. All my encounters with religion has been while interacting with my peers, colleagues and neighbors. To me, growing up without any faith was totally normal, because that’s how I happened to be raised. And by the time I encountered religion, I already had enough cognitive capacity to recognize and reject that as BS.
Enough ramblings, but my point is that theists brought in a claim (about invisible Sky Daddy) that can’t be proven, so the burden of proof stays with them. We don’t have to “negate” a fiction. I dislike the word “Atheist” (although I respect the intended purpose of that in this present time), but I still prefer to say we are “normal”.
'Imagine that you were omnipotent, omniscient, and master of the entire universe. You decided that you were going to give one – just one – book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you would want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioural codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You would want to be sure to help them regulate slavery and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course, you would want the book to be chock full of mythology – a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There is a point here about the Bible that, in any estimation, really cannot be understated: there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that could not have been simply made up by Bronze-Age human beings. Nothing at all. There are no profound scientific insights that such cultures could never have known. There is some bogus cosmology, a flat Earth, and instructions for how to slaughter animals among other profound insights. Now, some Christians are keen to point out that the Jews did apparently get some things right. They had “Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of a sanitation system… but so did ancient Egypt, the Hittites, the Elamites, and the Aegean civilization. So, big whoop. They also had some codes for cleansing themselves after handling dead bodies or people with leprosy, but these rituals also included ritual animal sacrifice. Not exactly innovative. Moreover, the rituals themselves were stupid – after handling a corpse, for example, you would be “unclean for seven days” [Numbers 19:11]. This obviously had little to do with hygiene. Then we have the New Testament. Written by anonymous authors decades after the events purportedly happened and filled with internal factual contradictions, with no trace of the original manuscripts and thousands of copies rife with errors, there is nothing about the New Testament that demands that a rational person should believe it to be divinely inspired. I challenge Christians to show that the evidence demanded that we believe the supernatural claims of the Bible are anything more than made-up. There is simply no reason whatsoever for any rational person to make such an assumption. Is the Bible really the best God could do? Is this book of myths, scientific blunders, and ambiguous or even downright demonstrably bogus historicity really what anyone really thinks the omnipotent Lord of the universe would bestow upon humanity? That this God would ignore humanity for the bulk of its 200,000+ years on the Earth, only deciding to reveal his One True Religion to a small, mostly illiterate Bronze Age tribal culture? Think of all the things the Bible could be if it were really divinely inspired. Think of all the knowledge and insight such a holy book could contain that simply could never have been made up – profound scientific insights, timeless moral instruction, and revelation clear enough to prevent the innumerable schisms in Christian theology over fundamental issues, like how to attain salvation. Any sane, rational view of the Bible shows it to be little more than the confused scribblings of ignorant Bronze or early Iron Age tribes.
’
Reminds me of apophatic theology. I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a Hindu, Baha’i, Sikh, Jain or Buddhist. Am I an atheist? Maybe, it depends on what you mean…
As others said normal is semantically unsuitable. Original, initial, default is what you’re describing
Thought Virgin?
Extra Virgin
In a vacuum, a label like non - stamp collector seems silly, until you add the context of the majority of the population are stamp collectors and push others to collect and make laws around stamp collecting. It starts to be a more meaningful label in that scenario.
Not just a majority, an overwhelming majority of people to the point that not expressing a belief was prosecuted by society.
100%. I’m tired and didn’t want to really elaborate on the analogy lol
Language is used to communicate. If you get so caught up in the “logically correct” word to use that people don’t know what you mean, you’re defeating the purpose. The “right” word is the one that people understand regardless of how messy it’s history is
The word “normal“ is a subjective abstract which constantly shifts meaning depending on the speaker, the audience, and the context.
“Atheist” is a clear, definitive term.
We need words to describe things. Atheism is the word to describe the thing you are. You don’t have to use it and you can make up other words. Until they catch on most people will still probably use atheist.
You’re absolutely free to say ‘normal’ instead of ‘atheist’, but you’ll probably get tired of explaining what you mean by ‘normal’ pretty quickly.
I don’t like to describe myself or anyone else as normal.
usually people mean “average” when they say “normal”
I agree with cruseo, normal is not the word you’re looking for. Where I grew up, atheism definitely wasn’t “normal”. Normal in this town is different from normal in another town. Even what’s normal in my house is different from the normal next door.
I think “default” is closer to what you are looking for, the state of something without external influence.
This might end up on unpopularopinion comm instead.
If you aren’t talking about religion, then you don’t need the label at all. If someone brings up religion, then you just state you don’t believe. Getting wrapped up in proper labeling is creating a problem where there isn’t one. “Normal” or "default’ or any other labeling like that will just confused the issue when the majority considers themselves a believer in something. Why do you need the label? That will probably tell you how to approach this, not from you as the base but from the subject.
You’re not wrong that everyone is born without belief and learns it.But I think the human mind is wired for some type of religious thought - the anthropomorphism we evolved for group survival is strong, and leaches out to other things. So a bunch of kids born and growing up without influence by others would likely come up with some higher power that is controlling things they don’t understand. Critical thinking and scientific method to dispel this and give rational explanations is not that old in our civilization, and took a lot of effort to figure out. On their own, kids wouldn’t and would tend to go with what makes their brain satisfied, and that’s religion in a nutshell. So that is default, eventually.
people get wierd with language. I have athiests saying all agnostics are athiests and vice versa. its kinda true but its a matter of magnitude. Many of these things don’t make sense in the strictest literal sense but we basically know what people mean by societal context. also some use it in ways were it can be a bit different. When I was agnostic I knew an athiest who believed in ghosts. this did not make sense to me but to him the term was only about religion and not all supernatural stuff. At that time I identified as agnostic because for me the existence of god or whatever was a 50/50 shot. To me it could as equally be assuming you don’t start getting into specifics. I identify as athiest now because I feel the chances of any kind of supernatural thing being so remote as to be zero. less than getting hit by lightening right after you won the lottery while an extinction level asteroid was hitting the earth and a gamma ray burst was blasting our solar system.
In order to be normal you have to subscribe to societal norms which atheists don’t do. At least not in the US.
“Atheists don’t do”? Many people believe X; therefore, X is true.?
