{"id":5958,"date":"2021-03-27T10:40:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T10:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5958"},"modified":"2021-03-27T10:40:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T10:40:27","slug":"atheism-is-not-a-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5958","title":{"rendered":"Atheism Is Not A Belief!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recently I came across a Twitter thread that perpetuated the notion that atheism is a <em>belief<\/em>. Which is always frustrating to read because atheism is not and has never been a belief; it&#8217;s an absence of belief. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many historical definitions of atheism which show the prejudices of the religious towards the &#8220;godless&#8221;, but the best modern definition of the word comes from philosophy: &#8220;rejection\u00a0of\u00a0belief\u00a0in\u00a0God\u00a0or\u00a0gods&#8221;. But it would perhaps be better put as not believing in the existence of gods because there is no satisfactory <em>evidence<\/em> for their existence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Note the word &#8220;satisfactory&#8221; in there &#8211; no, just because you had blue cheese last night and dreamed of Jesus, this isn&#8217;t evidence for the existence of any god. And no the bible isn&#8217;t evidence either &#8211; you may <em>believe<\/em> that it was written by your god, but there is no <em>evidence<\/em> that it is the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-03-01-untitled.jpeg?resize=695%2C521&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5941\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-03-01-untitled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C767&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-03-01-untitled.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-03-01-untitled.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021-03-01-untitled.jpeg?w=1265&amp;ssl=1 1265w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Does this matter? Not that much to be honest, it is just that as a whole atheists tend to be a little bit pedantic about their &#8220;beliefs&#8221; or lack of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I came across a Twitter thread that perpetuated the notion that atheism is a belief. Which is always frustrating to read because atheism is not and has never been a belief; it&#8217;s an absence of belief. There are many historical definitions of atheism which show the prejudices of the religious towards the &#8220;godless&#8221;, but <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5958' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[355,2017,1675],"class_list":["post-5958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-atheism","tag-belief","tag-evidence","category-10-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1y6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5959,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958\/revisions\/5959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}