Is atheism really a breakoff of christianity?

Question

I think if there were less fundy christians, there would be less atheists.
I don't think there is really a need to make the connection.
I'm not totally against atheism or christianity, but looking for opinions.

I think will is the only one who understood the question

Well, it did have broad implications....I should have reworded it.

Answer 1

Yes.

I have noticed I get very different reactions from many atheists to the same questions when I use the word "God" rather than "Tao" or "Brahman" etc.

I have noticed that many atheists tend to have the exact same literalistic approach to reading the Bible as do Fundies.

I have noticed that many atheists have the same legalistic understanding of morality that many Fundies have.

Answer 2

Atheism is just the absence of belief in a deity. Now it's possible that if there were less crazies like Pat Robertson out there, then maybe an atheist would find religion a little more likely. But it wouldn't change how silly the Bible is or how everyone avoids using any common sense when thinking about their beliefs. Does anyone really think someone can float up into the air to Heaven like Jesus supposedly did? These are FAIRY TALES.

Answer 3

I doubt that athiests exist only as a backlash to fundamental Christianity.

As in any religion, atheism is an act of faith, in itself. It also need not be a declaration to wear on one's sleeve. Many young people will avow atheistic attitudes and discover their faith and acceptance of a religion later in life. This can be a perfectly normal and natural progression, reqireing no push from the outside.

My lack of religious alignment came as a result of my own journey through years of catechism classes offered via the Catholic church. While I make fun of my "black belt nun" teachers, it was not their fundamentalism that pushed me away from the church. Rather it was simply a failure for me to internalize the basic premise that I must accept the existance of God, the Trinity and all the other trappings of Catholicism, without question, as simply an act of faith.

Couldn't do it. No way. Not gonna happen.

What I DID do was embark on a (casual) study of many of the major religions, Christian and otherwise. What it all boiled down to, in my mind, was this. "Accept these tenets, on faith, and someday, somehow, I will know these things to be true."

Different trappings. Same tenets.

There ARE many things I am willing to accept on faith. (until proven othewise): The sun will rise tomorrow. It will appear, first, in the East. If I continue to overeat and do not exercise, I WILL get fatter. Men DID walk on the moon, starting in July, 1969, and a few more times after that. That if one mixes carbon, sulfur and saltpeter in specific quantities and ignites that mixture, the resultant reaction will, likely, be spectacular.

I love my wife, children and granddaughters. That I will, someday, die. And when I die, that will be the end of my existance.

Why do I believe the latter? Why do I accept that as an act of faith? Because no one has ever come back from beyond that permanent death and told me or anyone to whom I give credence, that there is anything beyond.

Answer 4

No. Atheism has enjoyed semi-mainstream success throughout history (Voltaire, for example, was celebrated and highly respected in his time for his dispassion for religion, as were many Age of Reason thinkers). The Dark Ages were really all about being either athiest or extremely pagan...Currently, I'm pretty convinced that it's the poster child of the cooler than thou counterculture...and you're only a really cool athiest if you're really pissed off at Christians.

I'm neither athiest nor Christian, though I have been both in the past.

Answer 5

There's no coreelation between the number of fundie christians and the number of atheists. I'd say that higher number of outspoken fundie christians makes for a higher number of outspoken atheists.

Atheism is simply lacking a belief in dieties/a diety. If you don't believe in deities, you're an atheist. If you do believe in deities (even if you're not sure which), you're a theist.

Answer 6

Oh, I think I get your point (if it's similar to what I've thought). So maybe I'll throw some gas on the fire, I bet you'll get some good comments...!

While people of course have chosen informally not to believe in God over the centuries, "Atheism" as a named movement seems (to me) to have been partly a reaction to the injustice, illogic, and/or over-controlling nature of fundamentalist Christianity.

Basically, with Christianty being driven down people's throats as the cultural standard in the early and middle of the last century, atheists reacted to the threat by consolidating and developing their own "anti-theology" -- usually amounting to just an intellectual repudiation of Christian thought. This was made possible by the advent of technology/science (including evidence for evolution) that could now offer a real plausible alternative to faith in regards to the origin of man and why things happened the way they did.

Many atheists I've read or even met here on the forums seem to be more reactive against Christian thought and less proactive in developing a separate, complex philosophy of life. Yes, some individuals have, but the movement itself seems entrenched as a foil to Christianity, rather than an entity in its own right.

[One obvious example: Some Christians put on their car a fish symbol with the word for Christ embedded in it. Instead of having their own symbol, atheists simply added legs and changed the word to "Darwin" for their symbol. Organized atheism is very much just "reacting" to Christianity, rather than existing proactively. It's like Jung's necessary anima, the shadow, to religion.]

I also say this because many of the writings floating around the web today are arguments and ideas that were first voiced fifty or more years ago, during the "modernist" era. At that stage, intellectual science was supposed to solve everyone's problems -- so you see a lot of Christianity in that time approaching life intellectually and impersonally, with "science" (such as the "young earth creationists") and atheists pushing back in the same style of thought.

Most of the critcisms made by the atheist movement might have been applicable to the Christian church fifty or more years ago (I followed them and agreed with some of the criticisms as a kid in the 1970's) but don't seem to apply to much of today's church at all. So when they're brought up, I'm left feeling like many of them are just regurgitating someone else's arguments because they've already developed a bias against religion.

It's like old ghosts, shadows of a past many of us left behind long ago. The world has moved on.

Note: This is not a criticism of all atheists, but simply of the movement in general. I've met (and am in conversation with) a few who do think proactively and aren't mainly just reacting to religion.

Answer 7

No, chrisitanity is a break-off of atheism. When our primate ancestors first evolved into Homo sapiens about 100,000 or so years ago, they had no god-concept, so they were atheists. As their brains grew and developed, they became self-aware & came to know they will die like all other living creatures. They had a psychological existential dilemma, so the brain evolved the god-concept and religion and after a long period of time, christianity emerged as just one of the many competing religions that try to offer human peace in the hour of their death and final dissolution.

Answer 8

Atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods... so it really has nothing directly to do with Christianity. You could draw the same correlation to Islam or Judaism.

If someone chooses not to believe in a higher being, then they really don't have religion at all.

Answer 9

Atheism exists completely separate from all religion. If there were no religion then atheism would still exist. How then could it be a spin off of Christianity?

Atheist literally means one without a god.

Answer 10

Atheism is no more a breakoff from Christianity as it is a break off from Islam or any other religion, it is almost like its own religion, the religion of not having a religion.