I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me they go as far as the legs of reason can carry them - and they leap.I've started reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I'm only a couple dozen chapters into it, but it's obviously quite good. The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails.
I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anquished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we also are permitted doubt. But, we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
More on the book later.
Following David Eagleman, I choose the label "possibilian."
ReplyDeletePossibiliamism-
Free from doctrine.
Full of awe.
The Possibilian believes we know one thing:
1. what we don’t know (and that will change).
http://www.possibilian.com/
"The Possibilian believes we know one thing: 1. what we don’t know (and that will change)."
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch the full video at the link, but the quote opens up some word games. "What we don't know" can only be identified by eliminating what we do know. In fact, what we don't know can only exist if we do know something. So we must know at least TWO things...
I am an atheist, and the idea that it is some kind of religion is ridiculous. I reject anything that hasn't been proven. I reject fantasy. Men have been telling stories for Millennia. Which ones you believe mostly depend on which part of the Earth you were born and during which age. I have no spiritual beliefs. The absence of spiritual beliefs is not a philosophy. It's scientific method. A hypothesis is not a philosophy. Still, I don't even have a hypothesis on Creation. I'm in awe of life on Earth. I don't have any answers. To be honest, I don't care of it was Big Bang or whatever.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm waiting for anything supernatural to be proven. I see no point in blind faith.
All one needs to be a Humanist is compassion for other living things. It's nothing fancy. The Golden Rule doesn't need any judeo-christian philosophy to hold true. It's obvious: "Please don't hit me, and I won't hit you."
> It's nothing fancy. The Golden Rule doesn't need any judeo-christian philosophy to hold true.
Delete'xactly. I'm an atheist, but I'm pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who knows me even a little bit who wouldn't say I'm kind and good, honest and trustworthy, respectful of others. (In as human-fallible a way as can be, of course)
There is nothing obvious about, "Please don't hit me, and I won't hit you." In fact, it is counter intuitive. What is obvious is that if I hit you hard enough, I can take what is yours and you are no longer a threat. Because I survived I am stronger. Better genes for the next generation.
DeleteAtheism is a religion in that it is a filter through which your experience of the universe is subjected. The chief tenant is that nothing can be real that isn't experienced with the five senses or attested to be by a suitably high number of observers. Choosing the scientific method as a filter for the universe is picking a belief system.
You don't get to decide the definition of religion. It's been defined. It can't be changed without affecting the very ideology itself. Totally unlike my "non-belief" system.
DeleteScience is the opposite of faith. It's testing your ideas of how the universe works, and dropping those ideas if they don't jibe with careful observation. What annoys many religious people about science is that so many of the science "facts" they learn become obsolete as the scientific method does its work of testing and revising or discarding ideas. Faith, by definition, is accepting something as true without evidence or even in the face of evidence to the contrary. I'm agnostic about many things, meaning I don't know enough about them to have an opinion one way or the other. I'm not really agnostic about deities or the "miraculous" because there's zero verifiable evidence in their favor. But I don't know enough about thorium reactors to provide nuclear power, so for now I'm agnostic. I'm agnostic about multiverse hypotheses, and there's no need to "leap" into acceptance of a technology or cosmology. If the information is there, it's just a matter of study. If it's not, it's a matter of waiting for better minds than mine to put ideas to the test.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, thanks for saying my piece for me.
DeleteI have talked to atheists who do seem to conform to this as a belief. I suspect they are also the "scientists" who cannot accept new data that does not conform to their pet theory, and ridicule out of hand anyone suggesting otherwise.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't see agnosticism as doubt, I understand it as a lack of proof for gods and magical thinking. One cannot prove a negative, so I have to allow for the unlikely existence of the supernatural and an occasionally inexplicable universe. I prefer to see it as allowing for new information and critical thinking. I don't think there is a god, have seen no compelling evidence for one, but that doesn't mean I know, 100%, that the definition of god is sufficient, and no such thing can exist.
The quote above is a rather small minded way to extoll faith as a primary virtue, rather than a flawed thinking method. Dividing the world into believers and unbelievers, the latter to be pitied and discarded.
“Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved.” — Thucydides
BS, looks like hashish to me
ReplyDeleteTaking it a step further, I really dislike when people start treating atheism as a sort of organized religion where you have people who represent the belief and speak out for all its believers. I think that atheism, like most religious beliefs, works best when it's kept as a personal thing. It's OK to share your belief with others, to engage in civil discussions about why you believe what you believe, and even to attend churches or mass gatherings if that's your inclination. But I am strongly opposed to prosthelytizing and the use of one religious viewpoint to condemn or attack another religious viewpoint. It's becoming an increasingly annoying irony that many self-professed atheists are attempting to force their atheism onto others or belittle others for having faith in a higher power.
ReplyDeletePS: Life of Pi is on my list of books to read this year. I hope you enjoy it!
It's hard to be certain how you mean specific phrases you've used, so I'm not sure if I agree or disagree =-)
DeleteAtheism is not a sort of organized religion - agreed.
"It's ok to share your belief with others" - belief as in religious belief, faith? Not atheism, I hope, as it isn't a belief. To me, atheism is a disbelief in a 'higher' being. I don't believe it. I don't believe something else, I just don't accept that belief.
" I am strongly opposed to proselytizing [etc]". Total agreement. Please, believer, don't consider it your duty to convert me to your belief. If we agree to discuss the whole thing, perhaps even debate, and we're both interested in engaging, great. But it is NOT your duty - or your right - to attempt to impose your beliefs on me. Equally, I get irritated at atheists who think it is THEIR duty to turn the tables, take out bus ads, argue with others at any opportunity... Equally obnoxious.
"It's ok to share your belief with others." By that, I was referring to belief in a general sense of the word. Other comments in this thread have hit upon whether or not atheism is a belief system or not. But I think that the belief that there is not an all-powerful creator is a belief all the same, whether you intend it to truly be a religious dogma. To me, not believing something is true is essentially the same as believing something is not true. I suppose it's possible to tend towards the grey area where you just don't pay any thought to it at all and have formed no opinion, but I think atheism implies a bit more of a commitment in one direction.
DeleteThere's a set of very important questions that most people choose an answer to, concerning who we are, how we got here, why we're here, and what responsibilities we have as a result. Atheism is an answer to those questions as much as the various religions are. It always amuses me to see atheists vehemently denying that they have a belief system.
ReplyDelete"Atheism is an answer to those questions as much as the various religions are."
DeleteNot really, atheism simply says "there is no god". Which provides exactly zero answers to the questions you listed. How you get to "there is no god" is up to the individual, probably related to their personal belief system. So atheism itself normally isn't a belief system, but merely the result of another belief system (i.e. like if one believes extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence).
Not all atheists are the capital-A, scientism/imperialism Dawkins/Hitchens style atheists, that's for sure. But to deny that there are certain dogmatic strains of atheism and to define atheism as simply "lacking belief in (a) god - JUST LOOK AT THE ETYMOLOGY" is pretty intellectually dishonest.
DeleteJoel, I'm not sure why you say it's intellectually dishonest to say atheism is just lacking belief in god(s). That's precisely what it is. I don't believe. That's it. I'm not dogmatic about it. If you present evidence - not anecdotal, not coincidence seen as a directing hand, but verifiable, repeatable, as-close-as-unequivocal-as-can-be-given-what-we-know-today evidence, I'll accept it. And later, if we determine that evidence is undermined by new information, new evidence, I'll accept that. This is the opposite of dogmatic.
DeleteMel, atheism is not an answer to those or any questions at all. It doesn't put science in place of spiritual faith. It says I don't accept that the answer to difficult, complex, intractable questions about, for example, how our universe began is that something else created it. That's a non-answer for me. I'm ok having questions that we simply don't know the answer to, and maybe never will. I think that's EXCITING! And I don't ever want us (humanity) to stop trying to answer them. How boring and limiting that would be.
It's impossible to win an argument about faith with believers, because faith is by definition inarguable. It is what one believes. It requires no proof.
That doesn't mean we can't have good, stimulating, enjoyable discussions about it all, as long as all parties can engage without rancor, defensiveness and ad hominem attacks. Just look at the comments here: not your average school-yard taunting blog comments thread.
Hi, embeetee. I said that because while at its core atheism is the lack of belief in god(s), it can and often does (but doesn't have to) mean much more than that.
DeleteWhat inspired my reply is the way that many atheists (ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE WARNING) refuse to identify with other atheists who hold the same values and ideas (SPECULATION WARNING) out of fear that having some common belief might open them up to legitimate (ie. not just from fundies) criticism of the "structures" of atheism. As a (lower-case) atheist I won't deny for a second that atheists are extremely diverse, but there are certain beliefs and patterns that unite lots of "New Atheists" (emphasis on science, logic, and reason, claimed feminism, fedoras, the idea that religion is a key engine of conflict and progress, fedoras).
So, when people deny that these Dawkins-related/inspired strains of atheism exist and that every atheist is just some radical individual who is linked to other radical individuals via a totally nebulou/non- definition, I think that absolutely is a dishonest position to take.
For the record I think god sucks, religious people are usually ok but very often crap.
Mel V, atheists don't HAVE a belief system. We believe everything from Zoroastrianism to Christianity to Mormonism and Scientology are stories created by man, not god. We believe it is fantasy and rather quite ridiculous. It's the complete absence of belief.
DeleteA question for you, anonymous. What is your view on the existence or nonexistence of sentient life elsewhere in the universe? (i.e. not on earth).
Deletea) There is life elsewhere, and I have proof of its existence.
b) There is no life elsewhere, and I have proof it does not exist.
c) I believe (or don't believe) there is life elsewhere, but have no proof. This is one component of my "belief system."
d) I don't know what you're talking about, or I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may contradict myself.
e) I believe there could be life elsewhere. It would require "proof."
DeleteDid I contradict myself? If I believe there could be life elsewhere, does that mean I believe they share the same "God."
PS: I will believe in "God" when "He" comes to Earth (may I suggest television as the medium) just like "He" did so many times in ancient religions. Why so camera shy lately?
I'm not talking about gods. I'm talking about the necessity of believing (or not believing) some things for which one does not have proof. You have a belief system, but it doesn't involve gods.
DeleteStan: "The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails."
DeleteYour original post said perhaps people like me, according to the author, have a "faith" and a "religion" and a creation "story." Now you say I have a belief system. I have a "non-belief" system with open-ended questions, not closed yes or no questions, such as "who create the Earth?"
I only believe that everything called religion is false and man-made. I don't believe in any substitute.
I don't claim to have any answers. I just know NO ONE ELSE DOES EITHER. I DON'T BELIEVE in a God-like creator who requires my faith and devotion; therefor, I have no faith or written belief SYSTEM.
Different anonymous here (I'm the one from the first reply in this thread).
DeleteWhen you get right down to it, everyone has to believe things without proof. This is because many things are unprovable. However I try to limit the things I believe (positive sense) to things for which there is sufficient evidence. I'm sure there are things for which I fail this test however.
Also it is entirely possible for someone to treat atheism (as with many things) as a religion, but the strict definition still falls down to being "some who believes there are no gods".
Your alien example misses the obvious option of e) I believe it is possible but not guaranteed that life is elsewhere.
(that was kinda sorta directed roughly at Anonymous)
ReplyDeleteAtheism does not require faith; it is based on the inability of religious peopleto provide evidence for the existence of any gods.
ReplyDeleteAgnostic literally means "not knowing". It doesn't mean doubting. I am agnostic because I don't know the answers to many of the great questions of origin of the universe, etc. I am not even sure I know all the questions.
ReplyDelete"I am not even sure I know..."
DeleteI think you just said you are doubting.
I love this book :) Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteAtheism is my religion as much as not collecting stamps is my hobby.
ReplyDeleteGood to meet a fellow aphilatelist!
DeleteAnd as for me, I HAVE to believe in God, and therefore in an afterlife where the sinners will be punished, and the good will be rewarded (even if our ideas of sinners and good differ, and even if punishment and reward are different). Otherwise the 9/11 hijackers got away with murder, pure and simple.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually, I hope that they got the 75 virgins that they believed that they would receive in the afterlife. Only, not the female virgins that they hoped for, but MALE HOMOSEXUAL virgins. Picture that!
DaBrisFebruary 10, 2013 at 1:15 AM's post has everything from 'my god = one true god' to 9/11 to homophobia to mocking the Muslim religion.
DeleteAnd this whole 'HAVE to believe in God' because you are dissatisfied with the justice of man (or the lack there of):
Perhaps it is not the whole [lack of god in the USA] that has allowed evil to run rampant but instead this 'god will fix it later' complacency.
Anon, Feb 10th at 11:02am.
DeleteI am the DaBris who wrote the above item, and I just don't see your "'my god = one true god' to 9/11 to homophobia to mocking the Muslim religion.", period. I never said WHICH God I pray to (or if I even pray), nor, if I do pray, how I pray.
Nor was I either mocking Islam, or showing homophobia. I have to believe in God because the 9/11 attackers died during the attack, and they are beyond our capability to give them ANY kind of punishment. If there is a just and fair God, then He (or She) would punish the hijackers. My understanding of the situation was that the HIJACKERS believed that when they died they would be rewarded in Heaven by being given 75 female virgins. My closing comment was that it was (and is) my sincere hope that they were not REWARDED by being sent to Heaven and being given the 75 female virgins, but rather they were punished by being sent to Hell, and given to 75 male homosexual virgins, quite the opposite of what they had thought they would end up with. I was talking solely about the hijackers who are outside of our legal jurisdiction, and not painting all Muslims with the same brush.
DaBris, you might find this discussion to be informative:
DeleteA couple observations. First, nonfundamentalist Muslims don't take the cosmological parts of the Koran any more literally than nonfundamentalist Christians take the biblical story of Genesis. They understand the bits about virgins and so on as metaphors for the ineffable joys of the afterlife. Second, while dreams of celestial babes may motivate the impoverished Palestinian kids who blow themselves up on Israeli street corners, a number of the 9-11 terrorists were older and had known something of earthly delights. That these middle-class types nonetheless were suicidal fanatics is yet another indication that we've entered a scary new phase.
Now to your question. The difficulty in determining what the Koran has to say about virgins and such is establishing what the Koran says, period. Translators vary widely in their rendering of the spare and often opaque text. For example, we find the following passage in a Web-based version of Islam's holy book (www.unn.ac.uk/societies/islamic/index.htm): "Verily, for the Muttaqun [righteous], there will be a success (paradise); gardens and grapeyards; and young full-breasted (mature) maidens of equal age; and a full cup (of wine)" (An-Naba 78:31-34). Whoa, one thinks--the Kingdom of Heaven meets the Playboy Advisor! However, most other English translations, both on-line and in print, replace "full-breasted maidens" with some tame construction such as "companions." Inquiring further, we find that the Arabic word at issue is WakawaAAiba, which appears nowhere else in the Koran. The French, less prudish in these matters, usually render it as something like des belles aux seins arrondis, "beautiful women with round breasts," so I think it's pretty clear what the Prophet, or at least his stenographers, had in mind.
Nothing in the Koran specifically states that the faithful are allotted 72 virgins apiece. For this elaboration we turn to the hadith, traditional sayings traced with varying degrees of credibility to Muhammad. Hadith number 2,562 in the collection known as the Sunan al-Tirmidhi says, "The least [reward] for the people of Heaven is 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome of pearls, aquamarine and ruby."
There's more at The Straight Dope [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2329/does-the-koran-really-promise-islamic-martyrs-72-virgins]
"It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith."
ReplyDeleteThe words atheist and faith don't belong in the sentence. You should not project your mental illness onto normal people.
"Otherwise the 9/11 hijackers got away with murder, pure and simple."
Yeah, if you want to call being vaporized getting away with something.
There is no life after dropping dead. Dead animals stay dead, including human apes.
Reality is a wonderful thing. You shouldn't be afraid of it.
"The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails."
ReplyDeleteI see this bull**** a lot. It's the wishful thinking of Christians who want to pretend they are not insane.
Evolution is not a "story". It's a basic scientific fact. Your "application of faith" is believing in bull**** that couldn't possibly be true. Atheists don't do that. They demand evidence for everything. That's why they don't believe in your magic jeebus man and all your other ridiculous childish cowardly fantasies.
There's one thing I've noticed over the years regarding highly religious people (not all people who are religious, but just the ones who are on the "fringe" of religious extremism) is that they are exceedingly intolerant of people who don't share their religious beliefs.
DeleteFanatically religious people get angry when their beliefs are challenged. And rather than walk away, or just ignoring the unbelievers, they are apt to confront them - and even try to convert them to their religion. They'll present logical arguments favoring their religion, and if (when) that doesn't work, they resort to the (childish) response of insulting the people who don't share their faith.
An average religious person might, for example, think things like "Christians (and their Muslim terrorist friends) are uneducated morons," but the religious extremist will not be satisfied with the simple thought, and will instead post it publicly for maximum effect.
When a reply undergoes a shift from discussing facts/theories to instead focus on the supposed personal faults of the infidels, then control of language may get out of hand, to the point of resorting to profanity. This is what leads to the unnecessary unpleasantries of everyday life, and on a broader scale and a longer timeframe, this is what leads to wars.
That's why in my curation of this blog I come down hard on comments that personally insult other readers. Incisive debate and barbed criticism of ideas are welcome, but not personal invective. I have monitored over 11,000 comments on TYWKIWDBI and deleted only a few, typically from newcomers who are not familar with the general ethos and intellectual environment of this particular blog.
just woke up to comment on the passage in the posting and I find that you guys have already said it all: accepting science is not faith, acknowledging ones agnosticism is not remaining in doubt but accepting human limitations.
ReplyDeletefurther, there are too many different people who do not accept religion or a god and these people hold a variety of views on things; it seems to me as useful to lump together these people into one group based on their non-accetance of religion/god as it is to lump together all people who happen to be attracted to their own gender. when you say someone is gay, you have said almost nothing about him or her; likewise, when you say someone is an atheist, you really haven't described him/her. Can I go so far as to say that it also goes for people we call "christians"? i think so.
in any event, like many things, the passage crumbles under even a bit of thought...
-Frad
I don't believe in god. Any god, not just the christian one, the moslem one, but all of them, from Odin to Kali, and all the ones I've never heard of.
ReplyDeleteYou might thus call me an atheist, but I'm no card carrying member of an atheist movement. It's not a religion, it's not based on immutable faith, it's based simply on a lack of any evidence for any god. Nor am I, as some critics of atheists often cry, a "Darwinist". Yes, I believe in evolution, we can demonstrate it, but is 'Origin of Species' a holy tome, not to be disagreed with? No. Darwin never claimed to know it all, nor that all he said was right. He set forth a hypothesis, and showed some evidence to support it. It does not explain everything we see, but, unlike so many holy books, it does not demand blind obedience.
I enjoyed 'Life of Pi', but feel no great desire to read another book by Yan Martel
"If atheism is a religion then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
ReplyDeleteI can't put my finger on why, but for some reason I loathed the book, but finished it completely. The ending (no spoilers from myself) might have been why, but the matters of faith were also unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteAs a Christian, I certainly don't mind hearing about other worldviews. I've read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so I'm used to discussions of this type. However, the author of the Life of Pi seems to lack good understanding of Christianity and Islam. The same may be the case with Hinduism. Of that, I can't be sure, as it is one where my information is fairly shallow.
Specifically with the above quote, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" is best understood as referring to Psalm 22 (chapters of the Bible haven't always had chapter and verse numbers) - a prophecy of what would and did happen to Jesus, rather than Jesus doubting God.
I think militant Atheists (Richard Dawkins et al) indeed do have a faith of sorts, but I believe most who call themselves Atheists do not. This later group, of whom I used to number, seems to be more Agnostic than Atheist, which is a group both without knowledge and without faith.
Anyway, the book itself is interesting, but not especially enjoyable - if that makes any sense.
"...atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me they go as far as the legs of reason can carry them - and they leap."
ReplyDelete"The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails."
When I read that quote, I read it two ways: one, that the faith that atheists have is the belief and hope that someday, somehow, mankind will let the binders and blinders of religion fall away and all of humanity will finally be free. And two, that again here is another religious person who is incapable of seeing the world without faith and, when encountering someone who does, must twist perception until the other person has faith, ANY faith because to be without faith is unbelievable.
I would very much like to know what creation story atheists have. Further, when all else fails the only thing you can do is carry on. There is no faith there. There is simply more continuing on. If you are lucky there are others there to help you. If you are unlucky, you have to go alone. This can be frightening but just because one is afraid doesn't mean there is a god.
"I would very much like to know what creation story atheists have."
DeleteI can't speak for anyone else, but my creation story begins like this: "Once upon a time there was a Big Bang, creating the universe with all its stars. Later dust from exploding stars happened by chance to come together on a planet we call Earth..."
"when all else fails the only thing you can do is carry on. There is no faith there." When I had my prostate cancer, I had faith that medical science and practice would excise all of it. I have a lot of faith in (selected) medical practitioners.
My creation story is similar to Stan's.
DeleteOne commonly asked question is "What happened BEFORE the Big Bang." I don't mind saying I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to know. Sometimes, I like to think about it, and it can be very mind-boggling. I think some people are uncomfortable not knowing. Faith can be a very comforting thing.
But in all fairness to the question of what happened before the Big Bang, one must also ask where God comes from.
jesustapdancingchrist
ReplyDeletewww buzzfeeddotcom/seancurry1/questions-atheists-are-sick-of-answering
I believe strongly in science. And I am a theist. A polytheist. I believe they all exist equally. Quantum theory, the many-worlds interpretation, can support that belief.
ReplyDeleteIn that vein, I am also an atheist and an agnostic. It's fun being me.
Delete"Atheism is a religion like baldness is a hair color."
ReplyDeleteIf I told you I believe there's an invisible pink unicorn in the room, is it a matter of faith that you don't believe the same? The burden of proof is on the believer--failure to provide that proof doesn't mean that the person who doubts your assertion is on equal footing in terms of belief or faith.
So if I tell you I believe in extraterrestrial life, you would place a burden of proof upon me? Why? Why can't I just believe that there's life in the universe? Why do I have to prove it?
DeleteYou don't have to prove it to believe it. But if you want to convince someone else this is a reasonable position I would expect you to be prepared to lay out your evidence and reasoning.
DeleteBut I suspect your belief in extra-terrestrial life is more evidence and reason based, rather than faith based anyway (feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken). For me it comes down to figuring out exactly how much of a fluke life arising on Earth was, the rest is just statistics when dealing with a fantastically large number "dice rolls".
Atheism is not a relgion, because it requires belief, not faith. There is a difference. Let me explain.
ReplyDeleteBelief is accepting a fact even though you can't verify it personally, because you either were not present or do not possess the knowledge necessary to verify it personally. You trust in peer review and the expertise of others to confirm claim that are made. Basically, belief is falsifiable, so you can trust it, but you do not have to claim it is 100% accurate. Depending on the amount of available evidence you can adjust the extent to which you assume that it is true.
Faith is absolute certainty of unfalsifiable, metaphysical claims which are supported by little or no evidence, and often contradict known provable elements that can be tested. Originally faith was used as a way to explain the areas of reality that science has yet to comprehend. But now, as the religious hold to those primitive explanations in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, faith has become a sort of existentialist impulse to deny reality whenever it conflicts with the a specific ancient mythology.
Atheism is not a religion, because science does not claim to be 100% accurate. It develops, and is our best CURRENT understanding of the universe. But since the mysteries of the cosmos are so vast and confounding, it is unlikely that science will ever reach an a final unified theory.
Religion is the assertion that the explanation of our universe is simple like a children's story, and that the purpose of life is to be totally subservient to whatever imaginary deity you happened to be raised to believe in. And that life goes on forever, so you don't have to be afraid of death.
But my question to the faithful is? What was it like before you were born? Was it terrible? Was it torture? Of course not, it was just a lack of existence. I don't claim to KNOW what happens after we die, but if it's the same lack of awareness that exists before we are born, then I don't fear it at all. And neither should you.
I'm not one of the faithful, but I'll respond to your last challenge.
Delete"What was it like before you were born? Was it terrible? Was it torture? Of course not, it was just a lack of existence."
There is of course no data, no verifiable objective support for your assertion that there was a lack of existence before we were born. We could have existed previously and not been aware of it. It is your presumption (and nothing else) that we did not exist in a previous life.
Your turn.