Strong atheism of the sort you profess is religious in my opinion. It may or may not be spiritual, depending on its flavour. You don't sound like a God hating atheist (which is definitely spiritual).
You may find an Atheist that says something like "If god does exist, it's a dick". but that's not really hating god but rather pointing out the silliness of believing in a supernatural all powerful being that is good which allows evil to happen. IE, the problem of evil.
Edit: Just a note that the specific term "God Hating Atheist" I take from John Gray's book Seven Types of Atheism.
This "hate", however, is not directed toward an entity this atheist thinks exists. The type of atheist you describe hates the concept of "god" that their prior belief system constructed.
When one comes out of a system that one feels they were duped by for 20+ years (in my case), sure, I retain a powerful, strong, negative reaction to that system and its concept of god.
It does not mean that my disbelief in this god is equivalent to some kind of "religiousness" and to suggest that I think is incredibly naive
Had the founder any moral character and I frankly might still be a mormon today. (though, tbh, it was likely because of his immorality that mormonism has survived. I'd probably not be around as I'm from a large family that likely wouldn't have happened without mormonism).
The lesson I took from that is to challenge my world views, don't take assumed knowledge for granted, and to be extra super wary of anyone trying to tug on emotions to motivate me into action.
> Smith said that he found the plates on September 22, 1823, on a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. He said that the angel prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. He returned to that site every year, but it was not until September 1827 that he recovered the plates on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve them. He returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box. He allowed others to heft the box but said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original "reformed Egyptian" language.
Oh and the plates have never been found or seen by anyone else.
Quiet literally the same as if I wrote about how George Washington felled a cherry tree with a magic axe that granted him the ability to see through time.
When your parents believe it, and their parents believed it, etc all the way back to the founding of the church when your (rubes) of ancestors fell for a con... yeah, hard to see the lie for what it is. Even if, from the outside, it's beyond obvious.
"I don't have any" is the one that doesn't care, vs "I am atheist" says you care a whole lot about god. You don't identify as afairist at all. If you do, you're almost certainly a fairy hating afairist
I would not call myself an atheist if it weren't for the fact that theism is thoroughly and deeply ingrained in american culture.
In china, most people are atheists, but they don't really identify as such. It's simply the default. Were I in that circumstance, I certainly would feel exactly the same way.
That is just wrong.
I don't hate god anymore than I hate leprechauns.
I can see how there is overlap between spirituality and atheism, as there's no need for a god or belief in most of the subjects that seem to fall under spirituality. Especially when we exist in a universe, the chances of which even existing are infinitesimally minute, that is so breathtaking that most of us have resorted to filling in the knowledge gaps of how and why with best guesses. It is so wondrous that, god or not, you can feel plenty spiritual just experiencing it.
Whether personal spirituality should be your life's focus when there's so much at play on Earth, however, is another question.
Then the question is whether it's useful to assign a third category, or just to combine it with one of the original two categories. My own feeling is that strong versus weak atheism is not a useful distinction.
> 100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one
He forgets which one? Either he really wasn't raised in it at all or more likely he wants to emphasize his contempt for it by "forgetting" what it even was.
Religion is "absolute nonsense" and "laughable" - twice. He derives "tremendous spiritual and psychological relief" in an alternate way of looking at things.
> As an atheist I was suddenly responsible for making my own moral judgements and conclusions (I had to decide upon my own objective basis for making moral judgements)
He has developed an entirely new personal system of moral values - based on what? It's just an implicit religious system based on our current secular politics.
> forgiveness was something I had to work towards myself (as in I had to forgive myself for things, which is not easy, but is incredibly rewarding) versus simply getting it for free from some nonexistent deity. All in all, was an incredibly positive change in my life, and I do believe
He's worked some pretty uniquely Christian ethics about personal forgiveness into it too. This stuff isn't universal.
> there can be a weird sort of spirituality to 100% atheism that people don't really acknowledge.
Exactly right.
As defined, religion is "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.". Nothing about a strongly held belief, even one lacking evidence, makes it religious.
I think if god-hating atheists do exist it’s an inherent contradiction. Perhaps you are confusing people who practice “satanism” mostly as a way to troll religious people as god-hating.
There are definitely anti-religion atheists but I don’t see how that is spiritual.
To hate god, firstly you have to admit his existence in one way or another. Hence, spirituality, even with "minus" sign.
A religious person may perceive an atheist as “god hating” when they are merely “religion hating” or perhaps making fun of your god/the existence of a god.
If you hate something that doesn't exist, your are either making no sense or must imply the existence (in some form).
Think about it deeply.
This is rethorical question, 'cause there is no easy answer, and yet my original statement is valid.
In this case god-hating atheists confirm the existence of god in the form of 'concept' you may say.
I don't think anyone denies the existence of the concept of god. I'm an atheist, but of course the concept of god exists. People believe in it, it can and has been talked about.
Seems like you're equating the concept of god (i.e. people's beliefs), with the actual entity of God (i.e. the man in the sky that created everything).
C'mon, no atheist is remotely claiming that God doesn't exist even as a concept. You can't possibly think this is what any atheist ever meant?
On the face of it it's almost impossible to claim that something doesn't exist as a concept, since making such a claim creates the concept. Some atheists might claim there are logical inconsistencies in the concept of God, but that's still different from claiming the concept doesn't exist.
Personally I don’t care neither abou atheists nor about religious people in general.
I was just answering the question.
But you misinterpreted what "exists" means in this context.
Additional question — what religions do you know that explicitly state the existence of god in materialistic sense and not as a non tangible ideal (hence the word idea by the way)?
Please try to answer deeply and not just critisize me for hating atheists, I am not, I just point out very simple but overlooked details that are crucial for such discussions.
The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to.
Yes it is, for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.
The same with zombies - if you afraid of them => they definitely exist _at least_ in your head! Otherwise what the hell exactly are you afraid of?
> Yes it is
No, it's not.
> for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.
This...requires the assumption that God does not exist (in re, if we must, since you seem to insist on the archaic, Anselm-like insistence that existence in intellectu is a real thing and that material existence is a predicate), but, even ignoring that giant problem with one premise, that's not true. I may have a concept of a robber who robbed my house when no such robbery actually occurred in the material universe, but the existence of they concept doesn't mean that a robber who robbed my house exists even if I have had no experience of a material robber only the concept, it means the concept refers to a thing that does not exist.
Ditto with concepts of God to the extent that God does not exist.