I propose that there are four main "factions" of Atheists...

I propose that there are four main "factions" of Atheists. Below is a list with what I would anecdotally ascribe to be their percentage of the total Atheist community.

40% - Secular Christians: Those who are atheists yet still functionally Christian in the sense that they still ascribe almost entirely to standard Christian ethics. Give to the poor, do not judge others, we are all equal, forgiveness in all things, non-violence and turn the other cheek, etc. Talks about income inequality like its the most important thing in the world. Probably voted for Bernie. Left-leaning, viciously opposed to the death penalty or any form of harsh punishment for criminals. Unironically thinks human life has inherent value despite being Atheist.

35% - Modernists: Atheists who are high on the fanciful conceit of techno-futurism. Logical positivists at heart, will probably argue that philosophy and theology are irrelevant and insinuate that the scientific method has a monopoly over human truth and understanding. Commonly transhumanist, endlessly talks about the benefits of technology. Plays Kerbal Space Program and has the hubris to secretly think that it is humanity's destiny to colonize the galaxy. Claims to be Nihilistic but actually isn't.

20% - Anthi-theists: Those who are openly and actively against religion as a concept, usually reserving a special prejudice in their heart for whatever religion was forced upon them during childhood. Ideally seeks the eradication of all religions in the distant future, imagining such concepts having been abandoned due to their "primitiveness".

5% - Renegades: A loose amalgamation of mostly unrelated splinter-groups who are united by being entirely at odds with mainstream Atheists, and possibly even society itself. This is the domain of "true" Nihilists, anti-natalists, anarchists, criminals, socialist darwinists, anti-humanists, and radical environmentalists.

Thoughts? Any others you can think of?

interesting but the %'s are just pulled out your ass and these groups will all have overlap
Give some examples?

Why do you think I explicitly said "anecdotally"?

Good post.

'athiests' are just tree food.

I would say 70% are secular christians.
15% modernists.
10% anti-theists
5% renegades

>will probably argue that philosophy and theology are irrelevant and insinuate that the scientific method has a monopoly over human truth and understanding.
why would anyone have to argue what's blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in reality?

...

Well, the modernists aren't wrong

>35% - Modernists: Atheists who are high on the fanciful conceit of techno-futurism. Logical positivists at heart, will probably argue that philosophy and theology are irrelevant and insinuate that the scientific method has a monopoly over human truth and understanding. Commonly transhumanist, endlessly talks about the benefits of technology. Plays Kerbal Space Program and has the hubris to secretly think that it is humanity's destiny to colonize the galaxy. Claims to be Nihilistic but actually isn't.
>20% - Anthi-theists: Those who are openly and actively against religion as a concept, usually reserving a special prejudice in their heart for whatever religion was forced upon them during childhood. Ideally seeks the eradication of all religions in the distant future, imagining such concepts having been abandoned due to their "primitiveness".
Those are usually the same people though.

This seems more credible to me. Secular Christian describes me pretty well, but isn't this just humanism? I can't deny that these values are largely derived from Christian teaching and developed by Christian thinkers, but can't values derived from religion become secular cultural values distinct from religion? Or no? I'm honestly up in the air.

Anyone else here get raised Unitarian? Do we think it's actually religion? I grew up in a very secular congregation even by their standards, and I'm wondering what other people have taken from it.

Existentialism dwells inside a field where the scientific method cannot have a grasp.

It seems a bit silly to me desu, being an atheist means you don't believe in God(s). They have a wide range of opinions on every other topic imaginable, trying to sort them into "factions" doesn't make any more sense than trying to sort people who don't believe in horoscopes or dragons into factions.

>people who don't believe in horoscopes or dragons into factions.

Spotted the anti-theist

I'm an atheist too but we should all admit that there is a big difference between believing in dragons etc. and subscribing to an organized religion. Religion has a strong baseline of popular credibility and sprawling, expensive institutions of respected people who reinforce these beliefs in people from childhood. You should be careful not to ascribe the same cultural legitimacy or lunacy to all things you don't believe, because the truth on the ground is that religion enjoys broad cultural legitimacy. People are not necessarily delusional to believe something that many respectable people assure them is quite true, because we all get nearly all of our information second-hand at best. People weren't delusional to believe that four humors dictate the function of the body; that idea had the authority of science in its time. The doctors/priests themselves, though...

>there is a big difference between believing in dragons etc. and subscribing to an organized religion.
U be sayin dragons arnt real?

>>Non-Violence
Modern people are not inclined towards violence as much as their predecessors were because we have an abundance of food and material wealth and effective internal security(police, basically), and a legal system that is more effective and less corrupt then prior eras so there is little reason for vigilantism in comparison.

Western Europe was majority christian during the middle ages yet has a very high homicide rate compared to Western Europe now, for example.

None of that matters compared to the core of what he said though. Atheism is the lack of belief in deities. No more, no less.

edgy teen phase: anti-theist
not so edgy teen phase: modernist
now: social darwinist who wants nothing more but to somehow be able to become a faithful christian. fuck

Death penalty and war are officialy acceptable in catholicism and protestants in the USA are more likely to be in favor of both so I don't know why you are associating humanist values to christianism.

>why would anyone have to argue what's blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in reality?

I didn't necessarily draw a direct equivalence, the point is that atheism is a lack of belief in something. If you want a less controversial example trying to generalise atheists into factions makes about as much sense as trying to put people who don't play golf into generalised factions.

Lot of atheists just lack faith in a religion, I'm not saying a lot of them are not like these categories but it's wrong to assume that what people believe in is always a mere consequence of your psychology and ideology.

A lot of "secular christians" just lack belief without real ideological differences.

You missed out people who were simply raised non religious, never gained a belief in god and don't really think or discuss it

>>Western Europe was majority christian during the middle ages yet had a very high homicide rate compared to Western Europe now, for example.

Fixed.

I propose the faction even greater than all fours of yours. The people who are effectively atheists but claim to be atheist and use religion as a pretext to no be responsible for their actions. God is above human logic and understanding. Everyone who claims to know anything about God is a fake theist.

> Secular Christians
How do you people even get up to 70% of atheists being secular Christians, as it exists only in the Christian world? What about, I dunno, China.

Godless - those who have no God.
Unrighteous - those who attempt to follow God's Law, either directly or indirectly.
Righteous - those who have been born again in the Spirit, and have had the righteousness of the risen Christ Jesus imputed to them.

Those are the three categories of people.

It may not be true for much longer, but atheism is still exceptional. Theism is the default. That's why we have a word for atheism and rarely say "theist". I wouldn't say that it's a "lack" of anything, but that it's a positive notion that people actively develop or adhere to because otherwise they would just subscribe to whatever they were brought up with. You might think that atheism is an absence of something, but it's actually an idea in itself. It runs counter to convention.

With that in mind, it makes sense to me that different people have different reasons for arriving at atheism, and different senses of identity attached on it. It's not as though most of them really put themselves in a factional box, though some do -- but I think there are some broad categories that most of them can fit into. What they all have in common is that they resisted the social pressure to believe in something the majority does.

people who don't play golf because it's
a) expensive
b) time consuming
c) boring
d) or gay

I belong to all these factions, but everybody's got their reasons. There's a limited number of reasons for the vast majority of people who don't play golf, and various degrees of hostility toward the sport: people who would play if they were asked to, people who would casually decline, people who would foam at the very suggestion.

But that's kind of beside the point. If you grew up in a country that played golf every week, and your father expected you to play golf with your kids etc. it would say something about you if you decided to never play golf again, and it would mean you probably have something in common with at least some other golf skeptics.

*tips cross*

>It may not be true for much longer, but atheism is still exceptional.
Where are you from, Pakistan?

>people who don't play golf because it's
>a) expensive
>b) time consuming
>c) boring
>d) or gay
>I belong to all these factions, but everybody's got their reasons. There's a limited number of reasons for the vast majority of people who don't play golf, and various degrees of hostility toward the sport: people who would play if they were asked to, people who would casually decline, people who would foam at the very suggestion.
>But that's kind of beside the point. If you grew up in a country that played golf every week, and your father expected you to play golf with your kids etc. it would say something about you if you decided to never play golf again, and it would mean you probably have something in common with at least some other golf skeptics.

But we aren't talking about "something in common" or categories of reasons for disbelief / not playing. OP is organising people in broad categories based on everything from their opinions on environmentalism and ethics and transhumanism and what politicians they support to what video games they play.

People who don't play golf:

A) Atheists

I'm from the US.

People are not as unique as you like to think. You're not as unique as you like to think. If you know one thing about somebody, you can infer a number of other things that may be true of them, and at least one of them will be right. Some people never fit perfectly into any category, but marketers and algorithm jockeys make the big bucks because they know we mostly do. For instance, you're here, you're an atheist; you're probably 20-30 and play video games. You pride yourself on your individuality, and bristle at the suggestion that you might be similar to other people with similar mindsets, as ridiculous as that is, meaning you are probably an insecure autistic-spectrum depressive struggling to make a virtue out of being a marginal entity. Am I right?

> Theism is the default.
You know that there were atheists as far in history as ancient fucking India? The only difference is that in the past nobody was triggered as fuck that someone doesn't care about your god and therefore there was no need for a special term.

That's a neat fact but I have no idea what it's got to do with what I said. Most people in ancient India were religious.

India has 330,000,000 gods.

Some Indians didn't believe in 330,000,000 gods.

I need proofs plz.

> Theism is the default.
Where are all your default theists? Theism isn't even a stance that you can hold, more like arbitrary grouping. We rarely say "theist" because the word is basically meaningless.

children are born pious and monotheistic

wheres jung in this?

>People are not as unique as you like to think.
Wrong. I don't like to think people are terribly unique.

>Some people never fit perfectly into any category, but marketers and algorithm jockeys make the big bucks because they know we mostly do.
The sort of complex algorithms you are referring to use a lot more data than one single data point.

>you're probably 20-30 and play video games.
Both wrong.

> 330,000,000 gods
> 330,000,000,000 indians
Do the math yourself.

Monotheism is Jewish invention, user.

Then get out of here, you little scamp. Isn't it a school day?

No, it's an egyptian invention.

All orchestrated by the Jews

> everybody's got their reasons
You don't really need a reason to not do anything if you aren't forced to and if you are forced to do something that thing can't be a default one.

Not even him but if you are not religious then you must belong to one or more four negative categorizations (muh christians in denial, muh I Fucking Love Science nerd, muh fedoras, muh weirdos) and if you deny that then you are just a special snowflake?

I'm not saying you can't infer anything from a characteristic but that don't means all shitty and overreaching are automatically true, yeah obviously marketers and sociologists but it's a lot more subtle and rigorous than that.

Moses was Akhenaten

I'm over 30 you cheeky rapscallion. This website has been going for over 14 years now.

im jewish too

Could you please clarify this?

What if you just happen to not be religious?
I just don't think any religion or spirituality is likely to be true.

who /renegade/ here?

Four main "factions" of Theists
40% - Christian Larpers: Those who claim to be Christian, yet still functionally atheists.
35% - Muslims: Theists who are high on the fanciful conceit of sharia caliphate.
20% - Contrarians: Those who are openly and actively reserving a special prejudice in their heart for whatever social group bullies them in school.
5% - Cultists: A loose amalgamation of mostly unrelated splinter-groups who are united by being entirely at odds with mainstream Church.

What about the atheists that believe that reconnection with nature is the key to good riddance of all the toxic behaviour and thoughts that society is infected with today? We could all learn from nature, because we're a part of it.

Religion is the key to seperation. It seperates man from nature, and it seperates human from human. Not only that, it forms a big target on people who practice a different religion, and gives nasty people a reason to hate on them for no reason, like the peculiar blokes above ^

It's hilarious how butthurt atheists get when you categorize them.

You don't just "happen" to not be religious. In the same post you have roughly explained why you aren't. It was a judgment you made consciously.

I just hope you're with us, the Secular Christians, and not those pencilhead Modernists.

THE JIG IS UP THE NEWS IS OUT THEY FINALLY FOUND ME
THE RENEGADE WHO HAD IT MADE
RETRIEVED FOR A BOUNTY

Not me.

>why are people butthurt when I generalize them as christians in denial, bill nye "nerds", literal fedoras and weirdos?

Yeah because if I said something about christians you wouldn't spam fedora pictures?

Theism is just label for many different identities like Christian, Muslim and other ones. It is absurd to claim that you are some sort of Default Theist, therefore theism can't be the default stance.

>secretly think that it is humanity's destiny to colonize the galaxy.
But this the truth. Also think secretly? They work for this openly.

>Dies at age 40
Doesn't have to suffer life for too long
>Can't get laid
Doesn't need to, is an incel
>Can't read
Immune to most all propaganda
>Autistic ideas will never happen in reality
Reality is shit anyway
>Requires >99% of humans to die for philosophy to work
99% of the human race is better off dead anyway
>Always loses to modern military technology in warfare
Afghanistan
>Pleasure limited by evolution-designed brain
Pain limited by evolution-designed brain

...

>What if you just happen to not be religious?
No such person.

>I just don't think any religion or spirituality is likely to be true.
What you mean to say is that you don't realize what your religious beliefs are and like most religious people you consider the differing religious beliefs if others to be quaint superstitions which are unlikely to be true.

It's too difficult to die in civilization, so I don't see your point. This is a good thing.

>Afghanistan
Afghanistan is civilization a thousand years ago with modern weapons you idiot. Also if you are a prim, justify you hypocrity of using technology at all.

I will rot your delusions like a Roman if you build them upon the material plane. Remember the ukraine, savage.

The truth hurts user.

> It was a judgment you made consciously.
Wait, I thought that you need to make a conscious choice to believe in Christ? Why else would people proselytize if everyone just happens to be born religious?

>What you mean to say is that you don't realize what your religious beliefs are and like most religious people you consider the differing religious beliefs if others to be quaint superstitions which are unlikely to be true.
I don't get what you are trying to say here.

I don't believe in any religion or spiritualiy so in what capacity do I have religious beliefs?

To be fair, I would count everyone who denies most of the religions to be nonreligious. If you think that 85% of beliefs are bullshit, you can as well be a closet atheist. What is even a difference at this point?

>Modern weapons
SMLEs and later AKs, all stolen from the technological powers invading them.
>if you are a prim
I'm not, I just strongly admire them and their philosophy
>justify [...] using technology at all
Because if I have to suffer the downsides of civilization regardless of whether or not I enjoy the upsides, I might as well enjoy the upsides.

You are just an hypocrite.

People can happen to be born into religious families or societies. Inculcation isn't necessarily conscious. And I don't see why it can't be both, anyway. You can decide to believe in God, or decide not to. It's just that not everybody thinks they actually have the choice, in either camp.

Sad but true. Christians deny other gods left and right. But deny one more and you are suddenly nihilistic atheist.

What people say they believe and what beliefs their actions are sometimes unknowingly guided by differ more than you would think.

I'm trying to say that like most religious people that live in a society which caters to their beliefs, you've never had to confront what your religious beliefs actually are, and just assume the things you believe in are some kind of universal default rather than religious in nature.

That's far from true. Consider Deists. There's a strong tradition of believing in God while despising all religion. The argument goes, that God made the universe, and men made churches. Who do you trust?

You'll need to clarify further.

You're making the mistake of assuming that modern "secular" systems of belief can't be religious simply because they're modern and "secular".

"I just don't believe people saying stuff about spiritual things like an afterlife" is hardly a religious belief.

All humans are superstitious animals. If you claim to not be religious it just means you don't know what your religion actually is.

Because the thread blatantly pertains to the western world.

"I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ" isn't a religious statement either, yet it's still a belief held by religious people. Denying the tenets of a religion you don't believe in doesn't make you non-religious.

Even if one were to grant you your premise (which I think is oversimplistic) it does not logically lead to your conclusion as all superstitions are not religions.

Other gods don't compromise the moral and spiritual fabric of thousands of years of western civilization.

Religion implies some sort of organization. This is why animals aren't religious, for example.

It's indeed very rare even for someone who call himself nonreligious or even atheist to have zero superstitions but it's not like you can't find a few people without a belief in ghosts, astrology, afterlife,etc...

Obviously no human is 100% rational but there are a few non-superstitious ones.

> the moral and spiritual fabric
What does it even means?

...

>logically lead to your conclusion as all superstitions are not religions.
Utter nonsense.
The root impulse is exactly the same.

You've never heard of "men of the cloth"?

So in your opinion if one were to have socks they considered lucky they would have a religion?

>Religion implies some sort of organization
All human beliefs are organized.

...

If that person has allowed that fascination with a pair of socks to dominate their life, then yes I would say they do.

atheism isn't

I don't believe in an afterlife
I don't believe in cryptids although I guess some of the most plausible ones could exist

I don't believe that aliens visited us
I don't believe in religious revelations
I don't believe that spiritual insight is an actual thing. (meditation is purely psychological, spirituality is not a source of knowledge,etc...)
I don't believe in supernatural powers or creatures
I don't believe in luck or the laws of attractions.

What religion could I possibly have?

That's not the same thing.

The argument was made a) all humans are superstitious, therefore b) all humans are religious. It does not make that contention logical by moving to special cases where people have their lives dominated by pairs of socks.

Superstitions aren't just easily mocked low hanging fruits like astrology, and ghosts. They also count among their ranks such sacred cows as justice, extraterrestrial life, and the triumphalism of science.