Your perspective on what your religion views as up for question is very interesting, although it gives rise to many follow up questions (how does proclamation work when obviously contradicted by lower clergy? Who gets to question which parts of the dogma? If everything is up for question, what is the commonality of the religion?) I’m afraid we’ll have to leave for another time if we’re to get anywhere on the primary topic.
You cite Collins:
“If someone converts you, they persuade you to change your religious or political beliefs. You can also say that someone converts to a different religion.”
I’ll give you that it’s the weakest of the lot, but I read “converts to a different religion” as having you leave the first to then adhere to another.
As we previously established atheism isn’t a religion I find it hard to see that you could have been converted.
If we look at the usage for beliefs, Collins isn’t very clear if the definition includes “into another belief”, luckily the other three are and include the new belief in their descriptions.
So, I seem to find that the lexical definition for conversion does indeed include another positive end belief, in contrast to what you claimed the dictionary people were about. I was curious if there were subtle differences in world view behind this, but currently I understand this more as a difference in how we understand definitions rather than how we view questioning.
For the avoidance of doubt, atheism is not a religion.
The whole issue is about definitions.
But, before we finish up, I do have a question for you, if it’s ok?
You probably noticed that several people have jumped on the same thing. Where do you guys get these identical discussion points? In particular the whole “atheism is so different from any religious belief, world view, or philosophical position that I’ll have online arguments insisting on specific word usage”. Is it just from other online commentators?
It just seems strange - even when there’s no ambiguity, any topic that mentions atheism will have someone pop up arguing that you can’t use certain common words because atheism is different. You need to use special words like “deprogramming” instead.
I mean, this behaviour has to come from somewhere. I’m just genuinely curious from where.
I’d say the semantics arguments come from countering religions’ manipulative perversion of language.
Many religions use tricky language to confuse, conflate and abuse. One such example is that Christian apologists have conflated atheist with heretic for the better part of two millennia. Which is of course absurd, as most Christians are atheist towards Hindu gods, and are thus definitionally more atheist than Hindus.
Yet atheist/heretic/apostate remains as a dirty label, and includes judgement of character, and in many parts of the world persecution or lesser worth.
Reclaiming the word serves in part to actually give it usefulness beyond a boogeyman, to allow for discussions on fundamentals of belief, epistemology, and the contrast of belief vs reasons vs knowableness.
It also helps bridge some of the damage religion has done. When religious people get some nuance to the boogeyman term, they typically are more open to seeing the human cost of stereotyping and shunning people because of that label.
Other perverted terms common to religious trauma are gnosticism (ofc), but also love, grief, acceptance, morality and righteousness.
Things that us having to break free from religion all had to relearn the hard way, and typically while hiding from our still religious close ones.
I’ve got even more questions now, but I won’t press on!
I’m also getting the impression that I accidentally caused you to dredge up unpleasant stuff from your past - I promise it wasn’t my intention. Sorry if I did.
Hope I’ve at least shown a side to the thing that isn’t the insane/angry side that you know.
Thank you for your generous answer.
Your perspective on what your religion views as up for question is very interesting, although it gives rise to many follow up questions (how does proclamation work when obviously contradicted by lower clergy? Who gets to question which parts of the dogma? If everything is up for question, what is the commonality of the religion?) I’m afraid we’ll have to leave for another time if we’re to get anywhere on the primary topic.
You cite Collins:
I’ll give you that it’s the weakest of the lot, but I read “converts to a different religion” as having you leave the first to then adhere to another.
As we previously established atheism isn’t a religion I find it hard to see that you could have been converted.
If we look at the usage for beliefs, Collins isn’t very clear if the definition includes “into another belief”, luckily the other three are and include the new belief in their descriptions.
So, I seem to find that the lexical definition for conversion does indeed include another positive end belief, in contrast to what you claimed the dictionary people were about. I was curious if there were subtle differences in world view behind this, but currently I understand this more as a difference in how we understand definitions rather than how we view questioning.
Absolutely.
For the avoidance of doubt, atheism is not a religion.
The whole issue is about definitions.
But, before we finish up, I do have a question for you, if it’s ok?
You probably noticed that several people have jumped on the same thing. Where do you guys get these identical discussion points? In particular the whole “atheism is so different from any religious belief, world view, or philosophical position that I’ll have online arguments insisting on specific word usage”. Is it just from other online commentators?
It just seems strange - even when there’s no ambiguity, any topic that mentions atheism will have someone pop up arguing that you can’t use certain common words because atheism is different. You need to use special words like “deprogramming” instead.
I mean, this behaviour has to come from somewhere. I’m just genuinely curious from where.
Thank you for the clarification.
I’d say the semantics arguments come from countering religions’ manipulative perversion of language.
Many religions use tricky language to confuse, conflate and abuse. One such example is that Christian apologists have conflated atheist with heretic for the better part of two millennia. Which is of course absurd, as most Christians are atheist towards Hindu gods, and are thus definitionally more atheist than Hindus.
Yet atheist/heretic/apostate remains as a dirty label, and includes judgement of character, and in many parts of the world persecution or lesser worth.
Reclaiming the word serves in part to actually give it usefulness beyond a boogeyman, to allow for discussions on fundamentals of belief, epistemology, and the contrast of belief vs reasons vs knowableness.
It also helps bridge some of the damage religion has done. When religious people get some nuance to the boogeyman term, they typically are more open to seeing the human cost of stereotyping and shunning people because of that label.
Other perverted terms common to religious trauma are gnosticism (ofc), but also love, grief, acceptance, morality and righteousness.
Things that us having to break free from religion all had to relearn the hard way, and typically while hiding from our still religious close ones.
Ah, ok. Thanks for that.
I’ve got even more questions now, but I won’t press on!
I’m also getting the impression that I accidentally caused you to dredge up unpleasant stuff from your past - I promise it wasn’t my intention. Sorry if I did.
Hope I’ve at least shown a side to the thing that isn’t the insane/angry side that you know.