Atheism

Etymology

The word atheism appears at the 16th century. The first mention is made by it in the text of François de Billon, the impregnable Fort of the honor of the female sex , in 1555. It then indicates the unbelief of people.

It derives from the atheistic word and the suffix - ism and thus qualifies “the doctrines of the atheist”.

The atheistic word (in its French version) also goes back to the 16th century (first mention: François Rabelais in Letter with Érasme December 1532). The word is composed of the prefix has privative which means without and of the Greek radical théos meaning god and comes from the meaning at Plato of the Greek adjective atheos (I {{Re}} décl.) “which does not believe in the Gods” (Greek gods) which will be taken again in Christian Latin by atheos “which does not believe in a God” (the biblical god). Attention however not to say nor to write to “atheist” , this word does not exist.

Former uses

Before acquiring its current direction, the atheistic word had many different uses, which are not used any more:

According to Emile Littré, “the Greeks distinguished the atheistic first names (for example Plato) and the first names théophores (for example Dionysos)”. An “atheistic” first name is thus simply a “laic” first name, which does not refer to the religion.

Formerly, in Europe, the Church (Christian) called atheists those which did not respect or which partially its dogmas. The term is then obviously pejorative, connotation which it officially lost since, although one observes a resurgence of anti-atheism in certain believers.

in 167 after J-C., in Smyrna, a Christian named Polycarpe, refusing to pay homage to the emperor then divinized, is lived to propose the choice between roughing-hew it or shouting publicly “Dead with the atheists”. Polycarpe was carried out, but by stating clearly that these was its indicters that it indicated thus, and was thus flaring.

Atheisms

Atheism is not to recognize the existence of some divinity that it is. Atheism can take several forms according to the range and the bases which it has at each one.

Range of atheism

The diversity of the possible definitions of the divinity generates ambiguities in the field of the concept of atheism: a belief will be compatible or not with the atheism according to whether its object is or considered as a divinity. According to the authors, the phenomena rejected by the atheists will be able to go from the figure of personified God, like that of the Christian religion, with the existence of any spiritual, supernatural reality or transcendantale, as one can find some in the hindouism or Buddhism.

Atheism can be defined has minimum like the absence of belief in gods. This negative definition also includes those which do not have this belief by defect, like the newborns for examples. Of holbach in 1722 noted that “all the children are born atheistic; they do not have an idea of God”. This simple absence of belief is described as implicit atheism . Conversely atheism clarifies is the absence of belief in the existence of any divinity whereas one is informed of the existence of such beliefs. In this article, the atheism term generally refers to explicit atheism.

Sometimes lastly, one speaks about positive atheism to indicate the assertion of the inexistence of any divinity, and negative atheism when it is about a simple absence of belief. In this direction, the Agnosticisme is a form of negative atheism.

Bases of atheism

Atheism is a philosophical position which admits various bases according to the authors (and therefore, according to those which follow them).

Scientific atheism

The advances in knowledge since the time of the Lights make it possible to explain the world in an increasingly satisfactory way without recourse to any god, as shows it the famous exchange:

Napoleon: Mister de Laplace, I do not find in your system mention of God?

Laplace: Lord, I did not need this assumption.

One knows of it less the continuation: other scientists having deplored that Laplace makes the saving in an assumption which precisely had " the merit to explain tout" , Laplace answered this time the Emperor:

This assumption, Lord, explains indeed all , but allows to predict nothing . As a scientist, I must provide you work allowing of the predictions (quoted by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen).

At the time where the scientific knowledge (more particularly those concerning the mechanisms of the universe) were still with their stammerings, the Principe of economy leant rather in favor of the monk who brought answers simple to include/understand with the complex questions of humanity, which justified the recourse to the assumption God in rational reasoning. The observation of Aristote appeared to be held: a not very foreseeable sublunary world governed by one-way movements (falls of the heavy bodies, assembled steam), and a celestial world, beyond the lunar sphere, perfectly comprehensible and formed of eternal cycles: complexity was simply returned in " the other monde" , the divine world.

Conversely, for a few centuries, progress in sciences has given many elements making it possible to avoid the recourse to the divine intervention in the step of comprehension of the world.

One names scientific atheism the step while inférant that the role of the religious belief in the explanation of the world is null and void. The argument voltairien (which becomes then: what explains why physics obeys such rules rather than such others? ) is returned at a later stage of achievement of science, or like unknowable fundamental. The astrophysicist Stephen Hawking estimates with a very British Humor that to know the source of these laws will be like knowing the thought of God .

Philosophical atheism

Spiritual atheism

Although spiritualism and atheism can seem to be two paradoxical concepts, they are not it inevitably. If one regards atheism as the negation of the existence of the gods, it does not prevent of anything the belief in other forms abstract thought. Thus, of the religions whose dogmas do not utilize the concept of divinity, can, to a certain extent, being regarded as atheists.

One can quote, for example, the natural Panthéisme, however disparaged by the atheists anti-monk.

Passive atheism

When atheism is not dictated by the reason, one speaks about passive atheism or weak atheism. According to the level of conscience, this atheism can result from a simple intuitive feeling or be as dogmatic as religious doctrines. This type of atheism can have very diverse origins, often influenced by the family circle or cultural

History of atheism

The Anthropology, the Ethnography, more generally all the social sciences suggest a very widespread presence of extremely varied religious concepts, with the majority of the known times, in the majority of the examined companies. Contrary, the atheism, which supposes a rejection of these religious concepts emerged with the wire of the centuries vis-a-vis this Substrat religious.

The regression of the faith is not only related to scientific progress, it was built on the rejection of the abuses the religions, such those of papacy during the Renaissance (records of the Pape, several deaths of Venereal disease, sale of Indulgences…) who led to his questioning. These facts gave rise to the Protestantisme, but also to increasingly weakened versions of the Christian faith (Panthéisme, Agnosticisme, Déisme), thus causing a rise of atheism. Moreover all these movements protester were continued, sometimes very violently (Inquisition), with the contempt of the values of Tolérance S which preached and always preach these dominant religious movements.

The wars of religion between catholics and Protestants, motivated many intellectuals against the prevalence of the religion in the human businesses, and for the religious tolerance, from which also the atheists profited.

Atheism and beliefs

Atheism and ancient philosophy

The philosopher Démocrite adopts from the start an atheistic position: if the world consists of atoms, those combine randomly, sometimes giving stable forms, even reproducing, but any intervention of God (the Greek philosophers seem to thus name a kind of principle single; to see for example the death of Socrate described in the Phédon) or gods is not there necessary. This position irritates Plato which does not make any place with the ideas of Démocrite in its writings - not even to refute them - nor its name does not mention there.

Atheism and monotheism

Atheism and Christianity

At the time where Christianity dominated the social life (spiritual, political, intellectual, scientific, etc) of most of the Europe, atheism was generally regarded as the rejection of this religion in particular. Although that was the case of certain humanistic atheists (in opposition in particular to the Croisades and the Inquisition), the antichristianism represents only one small fringe of the atheists. But it is necessary to also announce the importance of the antichristianism of the Lumières, antichristianism which was not always atheistic as at Diderot (Voltaire is the most famous example), and which was mingled with various movements (including atheists) with fight against the dogmas with any religion.

Atheism and Islam

Policy and Islam

In the majority of the Moslem countries, the Islam is integrated into fabric even State and company. The Moslem Droit is of primarily religious nature.

There does not exist representation in Islam of the treatment of the atheistic question.

Some see a bond between the propagation of the Islam and the prohibition of atheism, even the call to the murder of the atheists. The majority of the Islamic companies applied the capital punishment for Apostasie (abandonment of the Islamic religion). Nowadays Mauritania and Iran still apply it, but it is not any more the case of the great majority of the Moslem countries.

Finngeir Hiorth, convinced atheist, state for example that “Undoubtedly there are intolerant people in all the religions. But Islam is perhaps most intolerant of the religions deists, although there are also many tolerant Moslems”. This militant vision is based on the sales leaflet according to which Islam tolerates the religions of the Book, but does not accept atheism.

Atheism and Islamic religion

From the point of view of the vocabulary, the Coran generally condemns the not-Moslems (named the " mécréants" (kafiroun), those which mécroient as a God) as well as the false believers (named the " hypocrites" (mounafiqoun)) but not specifically Atheists. It seems that the concept of Atheism never existed in Arabia 7th century since neither the Hadith nor Coran do not speak about it.

The readings of atheism in Islam are multiple and complex and depend on the reading of Coran. In the traditional Interpretation S, the atheist is regarded as a person in the major error, nobody who would leave his error by respecting the Five pillars of Islam. This approach is questioned by certain Moslem currents in particular in the Soufisme, through the Islamic writings of lawyers soufis like Al-Ghazali. This last states indeed that it is useless to make pretense believe and request if one really does not believe.

The fate of the non-believer according to the Charia depends on its belief. On a religious level, those Ci are dedicated to the Géhenne, i.e. the Enfer. From a political point of view, " People of the book " are entitled to the statute of Dhimmi whereas the others have the choice only between conversion or death. Always according to Charia, fate of that which leaves Islam (Apostasie in Islam) is death.

Even if Charia is taught in the world arabo-Moslem as a divine law, few Moslem countries apply its laws to the letter.

Eastern religions

Atheism and other religious movements

The position of atheism towards the sects is various, some of them asserting a membership and a philosophy not theist. However, as spiritual movements, the sects are generally fought by the rationalist atheists and the free-thinkers.

In its traditional meaning, the definition of atheism does not exclude nevertheless to belong to a sect, provided that it is not based on a belief in one or more divinities. That excludes in fact the sects derived from the traditional religions, like the Témoins of Jéhovah, or the worships satanists of the field of traditional atheism.

Raelism

In its sectarian step opposed to the religions known as traditional, Raël is posed in “larger defender of atheism”, position refused by the majority of the atheists.

According to Raël, Elohims, the extraterrestrial ones, would have created the life on Earth, and not of the divinities. The atheistic organizations stress the fact that Elohims are venerated by the raëliens like divinities, denying, de facto, a possible atheism.

Scientology

Not being a religion theist, the scientology is asserted like an atheistic religion, although these two concepts seem, a priori, paradoxical. Moreover, in its “crowned” texts, this religion claims that the traditional religions would be only the result of the establishment of these beliefs by external powers, in bond with the “thétans of body”.

Atheism and policy

Atheist does not mean anti-monk

Atheists can agree to coexist with various religions:

is by respect: idea that the messages allotted to God or to the Gods synthesize a truth anthropological, medical, and social, and that even if the allotted cause, the divinity, is absent and false, the effect does not remain less real about it and consequently the religious regulations are worthy of attention (for example, the religious interdicts are sometimes validated by medical problems caused by their non-observance, and the message of Christian love was preserved by our companies).
is by tolerance: idea that with laic education, the religion will disappear from itself, and that while waiting it does not justify a fight.
is by Pragmatisme: certain atheists could regard the Religion as a social tool allowing to maintain a community under their cut, the national unit, the honesty of the citizens, etc It is the case of Charles Maurras, of Napoleon in his implementation of the Legal settlement of 1802.
is by obligation: because their statute or their social condition does not allow them the contrary choice, sometimes by social or family pressure (example of atheists obliged to coexist with the remainder of their believing family), even Community.
is by ignorance or lack of interest towards the religious fact (see: passive Atheism )

Atheism and modes of Marxist inspiration

Contrary atheism was founded like official doctrines of state at the 20th century in particular in the Albania of Enver Hoxha, where the exercise of any religion was severely repressed and where any religious symbol was proscribed. The religious monuments either were destroyed or voluntarily transformed in a particularly ignominieuse way for the religion of origin. The political economists are of agreement on the fact that the nostalgic ones of this period are very few…

In the USSR

The Soviet Union and its satellite states also made atheism one of the bases of their ideology. With more or less of strength, they persecuted the believers (brimades, monitoring, reclusion, put at the variation, etc) thus confining with semi-clandestinity the clergy. “Atheism scientific” was on the contrary promoted by leagues often very virulent (so unverifiable that they were often dissolved) and belonged to the obligatory matters at the university. All these practices varied in intensity throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. Of 1917 with 1924, the mode had a policy reconciling towards the deprived practice, whereas it dismantled the goods of the Church. The leaders were divided between the will to remove " the stringcourse which masked the truth with the peuple" and fear of alienating the masses.

Atheism and Stalinism

The accession with the capacity of Stalin put an end to this relative tolerance. Until 1932, the mode followed a policy of oppression, marked by multiple destruction of religious buildings and persecutions against the members of the clergy and their entourage. The Thirties transfer a slow renewal of the religious organization, slowed down by a short renewal of repression during the Great Purgings (1937-1938). The policy change was complete at the time of the Patriotic Great War (1941 - 1945), which inaugurated one period of ideological relaxation. An official clergy was authorized and charges it with Métropolite, abolished since 1925, restored, while the Moslems received four Directions Spiritual, authorized to train mollahs and to publish fatwas regularly. Post-war period, the policy of promotion of atheism began again, but especially, it combined with a hardening official churches (the uniates of Ukraine were the first to suffer from it). This divergence involved the creation of a semi-official hierarchy, the “churches underground” and “the parallel Islam” composed of the monks of brotherhoods soufies.

After Stalin

Parallel practices as official worships were a privileged target of Khrouchtchev as from 1959, which positioned thus as a retablissor of the Leninist tradition vis-a-vis the Stalinist wanderings. The era Brejnev was a considerable lull: a compromise was found which rested on the role of the monks outside, in particular in the relations with the Arab countries. On the other hand, Gorbatchev started again the policy of oppression on ideological bases similar to those of Khrouchtchev.

After the fall of the USSR and Eastern bloc, the worships orthodoxe (Russia, Ukraine), catholic (Poland), and Moslem (Central Asia, the Caucasus and Tatarstan) took again strength. Not only the expression of the religiosity increased, but a great number of atheists, often for identity reasons, converted. Some of the political regimes resulting from the fall of the Eastern bloc however continue the religious policy installation by the USSR, or at least, following the example Ouzbékistan, the methods preserved some.

In spite of the constant assertion of its atheism, the USSR did not cease borrowing from the orthodoxe liturgy. Stalin inaugurated this practice by entrusting the funeral of Lénine (1924) to the good care of Krasine, of the sect of the “Manufacturers of God”. The embalming of late had a strong orthodoxe resonance: it directly referred to the imputrescibility of the body of the saint.

Appendices

Estimates of the number of atheists

See also: Atheism studies and statistics

Various estimates of the number of atheists were emitted:

Official organizations

the World fact book of the CIA estimates, in 2004, the number of people without religion to 12,03% of the world population and the number of atheists with 2,36%
In the investigation of eurobaromètre of June 2005, 18% of Europeans affirm that they do not believe in any form of divinity, spirit or higher force.

Reference books

the World Christian Encyclopedia announces 1.071 million agnostics and 262 million atheists in the world in 2000.
According to the work of Jean Baubérot (to dir.), Religion and secularity in Europe of the 12 , 1994, page 259: 1/4 of the population of the European Union would be “not nun”. 5% of Europeans would be convinced atheists.

Public opinion polls and surveys

International

a survey carried out in 21 country out of 21.000 people and published in December 2004 announces that 25% of Europeans of the West are said atheistic against 12% in the Central European countries and Eastern. Always according to this investigation published in the Wall Street Journal European version, 4% of the Roumanians and 8% of the Greeks say themselves atheistic. On the contrary, 49% of the Czechs and 41% of the Netherlanders are declared atheistic.

In France

According to a survey of the survey institute SCUMS on the beliefs of the French carried out in March 2003, 26% of the questioned people declare " without religion" , and 33% of the people estimate that the " term; athée" " defines; very bien" or " enough bien".
a survey of the institute Harris Interactive, published by the Financial Times, gone back to December 2006, counts 32% of atheists and 32% of agnostics in France (survey carried out on the United States, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom).
According to a survey SCUMS published in January 2007, a third of the French (31%) is said without religion. 51% of probed are declared catholic but only half believe in a God.
According to a survey of IFOP published in the weekly magazine the Life, constituting the office plurality of 91 waves of investigations carried out over period 2003/2006 and published in March 2007, 28% of French are said without religion.

Famous defenders of atheism

Antiquity

Chârvâka
Leucippe, Démocrite d' Abdère, Atomism abdéritain
Diagoras de Mélos, raises of Démocrite
Critias
Aristippe and the Cyrénaïsme
Diogène de Sinope and the Cynisme,
Épicure, Lucrèce, Horace, the elegiac and the epicureanism
Pythagore the dualistic
Parménide Éléate,

The Middle Ages

Boèce de Dacie separates the field from the faith and that of knowledge.
Siger of the Brabant, condemned like heretic in 1277
Guillaume de Conches (1080-1154) and Nicolas d' Autrecourt (15th century) takes again the theory nuclear physicist.

Rebirth

Lights

Jean Meslier (1664-1729)

19th century

Ludwig Feuerbach :

"The man created God with his image"
the man imagined one something endowed with omniscience, love, of absolute power, and this something it called it “God”.
God is the perfect being imagined by the man.
the religion makes of this something a person in whom the man does not recognize himself any more, the man forgets that this God is simply a projection: Alienation
God is a brilliant swindle developing the man, giving a direction to its life.
the religion it is the relation of the man to the man who is idealized itself.
the man is a god for the man.

max Stirner:

Feuerbach is not atheistic, it replaced God by the Man.
As soon as there is a principle above us, this principle is a religion.
the man became new God, morals became the new religion, but all the atheists are attached to the same beliefs as the believers.
plane shade of God: it is morals. But to recognize morals is to recognize the shade of God, it is thus to recognize God.

Michel Bakounine

And if God existed, it would be necessary to get rid some!
If God is, the man is slave; however the man can, must be free, therefore God does not exist.

Karl Marx :

the base of all is the economy, all is only class struggle.
the religion is only the reflection of the economy and the class struggle at a given time of the history.
the ideological debates with blows of books of Feuerbach and Stirner are religious debates: they reinforce the religion in alarming on problems which are not.
All their ideas are only the ideological reflection dependant on an infrastructure: Economy and the class struggle.
Feuerbach is certain that there is a truth, but that all depends on the economy.
to remove the religion, one needs an economic change.
the base of irreligious criticism is this one: the man makes the religion, it is not the religion which makes the man .
" The religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a world without heart, as it is the spirit of the social conditions from where the spirit is excluded. It is the opium of the peuple."

Friedrich Nietzsche :

the religions, in particular the religions monotheists and in particular Christianity are a demonstration of a downward will for power, it is a consolation for the weak ones vis-a-vis an intrinsically incomprehensible and painful world.
morals, but also positivism, science, socialism is only misadventures of the religion.

Auguste Count
Camille Pissarro
Emile Zola
Jean Engraves
Octave Mirbeau: " If God existed, as really would this strange animal of Edison believes it which thinks to have discovered it in the negative pole, why the men have the useless ones and inallaitables udders? "
Guy of Maupassant
Georges Clémenceau

20th century

Mustapha Kemal :

"The politician who needs the help of the religion to control is only one loose. However, never a coward should not be invested functions of chief of Etat."
" Since more than 500 years, rules and theories of an Arab old man sheikh, and abusive interpretations of generations of crasseux priests and ignares fixed, in Turkey, all the details of the civil and criminal law. They regulated the form of the constitution, the least action of the life of each citizen, his food, his hours of day before and sleep, the cut of its clothing, which he learns with the school, his habits, his practices and until his most intimate thoughts. Islam, this theology absurdity of an immoral Bedouin, is a putrefied corpse which poisons our vies."
" It is necessary to know to choose between the last revelation and freedom future."

Contemporaries

Quotations

“Atheism, force of the spirit, but until a certain degree only”, Thought (1670), Pascal
“atheism is the hard core of Christianity” Nietzsche
“I am atheistic, thanks to God! ”, Luis Buñuel
“the future is the only transcendence of the men without God. ”, the Man revolted , Albert Camus.
“ignorance and fear, here are two pivots of any religion. ”, Baron d' Holbach.
“atheism is a negation of God and by this negation, it poses the existence of the man. ”, Karl Marx.
“the silence of God allows the chattering of his ministers who use and misuse the epithet: whoever does not believe in God, therefore with them, becomes immediately an atheist. Thus the worst of the men, the immoralist, the hateful one, the immonde, the incarnation of the mal.
Difficile consequently to say itself atheistic… One is known as such, and always from the point of view insulting for an authority anxious to banish, put at the variation and to condemn. ”, treated atheology , Michel Onfray
“There is no god, it is no god, it is not at all of god. That which invented god is a cretin. That which propagates the idea of god is a rabble. That which adores god is a barbarian. ”, introduction to the speeches of Periyar.
“I am not free thinker says the watcher; I am atheistic. Hein what says the Holy Father; and the other in the pipe of its ear, the other is put at gueuler: Hello hello do the Holy Father you hear me? atheist: With like absolutely atheistic, T like completely atheistic, H like hermetically atheistic, E acute accent like atheistic astonishment, E like entirely atheistic; not free thinker, atheist. There is a nuance. ”, Paroles - the stick in the air , Jacques Prévert
“It is true that a little philosophy inclines the spirit of the man to atheism, but a major philosophy brings the spirits of the men to the religion.” ( Tests, on Atheism ) Francis Bacon
“If God is, the man is slave; however the man can, must be free, therefore God does not exist. ”, God and the State , Bakounine

Explicitly atheistic organizations today

Germany

Bund für Geistesfreiheit , created in 1870
Internationaler Bund der Konfessionlosen und Atheisten , created in 1972
Dachverband Freier Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften
Federation humanistic of Germany appeared in 1993

the United States

American Atheists, founded in 1963
Atheist Alliance , founded in 1991
Americans United for the Separation off Church and State (with its monthly review “ Church & State ”)

France

Union of the atheists
Athétürk - Association law 1901 free Turkish atheist and layman, founded in 2006.
the atheists of Ille and Vilaine, founded in 2000
international Athéisme, founded in of 2001
It [[Free-thought]]
the Friendly atheist, founded in 1993

atheistic India

Center of Vijayawada, founded in 1940

Canada

Libre without God, founded in 2004.

Francophonie

Association Confabulated

References

See too

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