this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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I think that a lot of Atheists oversimplify religion. (NB: I'm Atheist myself.)
"True" and "false" only apply to statements about reality (epistemic). And sure, religion has a lot of them: "God exists", "if you fornicate you'll go to Hell", "the world was created in seven days" etc. I think that most of them are false.
However a religion isn't just its epistemic statements. It's also morals, practices/rituals, and a community. Those things cannot be true or false, because they are not statements about reality. You need another ground to refer to them, as "good" vs. "bad" (deontic).
Yeah, but atheism does not mean nihilism. It doesn't even mean opposing religions in general. It simply means you do not believe in a higher (or multiple) being often referred to as "god".
Do I believe in the power of love? Yes! Do I spiritually put my family and friends over anything else? Yes! Do I believe that I need to help people, even though it is not beneficial for me? Yes! Do I believe that placebo works? Yes! ...
I'm aware - and that's part of my reasoning.
Atheism itself isn't even a whole set of epistemic statements. It's lack of belief in one statement. It doesn't imply any sort set of values (like nihilism, secular humanism, satanism... or even the ones from the religions), nor give you any practice (no mass, no "it's Salah time, drop what you're doing for a prayer"), nor it makes you part of a community (much more than "we don't believe in centaurs, we should hang around togerther" would).
And Atheists often transpose that into religion, oversimplifying it into "you believe in one or more gods". But religion was never just that, it's a lot more things. And most of those things can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, but not true or false.
I agree, but I'm not sure where someone stated something like this in this thread? Especially because the initial post followed a completely different logical reasoning.
OP asked "something many people believe but is not true". The other poster replied "religion". I'm showing that religion contains things that are not true, but religion as a whole cannot be true or false.