The definition of atheism has been repeatedly argued on this talk page. Before suggesting substantial changes, please make sure that your view is entirely supported by reliable sources and has a neutral point of view.
Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated, especially about the definition in the first paragraph. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting on that topic.
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Atheism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Atheism is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Atheism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of atheism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AtheismWikipedia:WikiProject AtheismTemplate:WikiProject AtheismAtheism articles
Add Atheism info box to all atheism related talk pages (use {{WikiProject Atheism}} or see info box)
Ensure atheism-related articles are members of Atheism by checking whether [[Category:Atheism]] has been added to atheism-related articles – and, where it hasn't, adding it.
Try to expand stubs. Ideas and theories about life, however, are prone to generating neologisms, so some stubs may be suitable for deletion (see deletion process).
State atheism needs a reassessment of its Importance level, as it has little to do with atheism and is instead an article about anti-theist/anti-religious actions of governments.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Theology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Theology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TheologyWikipedia:WikiProject TheologyTemplate:WikiProject TheologyTheology articles
This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed.
Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.
Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. Ifconsensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
atheism is personocratic (it is non-personocratic, but studies the "personocratic criterion" and in philosophy and not only; categories are grouped with the hypernymic criterion of focus) (focused on the denial of the supposed precosmic cosmogonic person); naturalism is physiocratic/naturocratic (it is the pure metaphysics of physics; without a personocratic bias [it is impersonal but it's not that its main point])
atheism is a negation; naturalism not
atheism as a term is famous nowadays; naturalism is not and doesn't have enough followers (it's not self-evident on philosophical doctrines people to easily move from one idea to a better defined)
usually (but according to Pew Reseach, Robert Sapolsky and many others) they both accept only science (partially won't do, because theists do the same; partiality here is a bad criterion for categorization)
I have not read this article or the preceding Talk comments, so, if what I write here is redundant, then I apologize. But the third definition -- "the position that there are no deities" -- is ambiguous. On the one hand, a person who takes that position might insist on the truth of a negative, but to do that requires an act of faith, and few atheists are foolish enough to do that. After all, atheists are generally people who do not believe things on faith. On the other hand, I take the position that there are no deities, not as an act of faith, but because no evidence of them is known to exist. Therefore, my taking of that position is provisional, because, if evidence were discovered, I would consider altering my position. Maurice Magnus (talk) 00:49, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The sources states that in a narrow sense it is a position. It does not matter how people come to that position as there is no one path to reach it, any more than for theism (faith, reason, evidence etc are not unique, but universal). Ramos1990 (talk) 05:58, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is not ambiguous. The below statement is a statement of opinion, not fact. In order to make this statement, you would have needed to review all of the evidence, which you certainly have not, and correctly interpreted it. You're a human being capable of misinterpreting evidence. It is also a statement of faith, you're putting your faith exclusively in your own five senses since you personally have not experienced a deity with those senses.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I am not interested in editing this article, so feel free to ignore this comment, but the third definition is ambiguous, for the reason I stated; it doesn't merely seem ambiguous. And it is unequivocally ambiguous, not just "a little ambiguous." If the body of scholarly work on the subject overlooks or writes off this ambiguity (if that's what you mean), then so much the worse for the body of scholarly work on the subject. Maurice Magnus (talk) 16:57, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The third definition is strong or positive atheism as in "there is no Thor and no divinity either". It is true it can be provisional, as in "there is no divinity unless one becomes evident". Nevertheless, positive atheism is notable hence its inclusion in the lede. Also the degree it's provisional or not largely depends on context and individual assessments which falls a bit outside its scope, although I am reminded of Richard Dawkins' spectrum of theistic probability. Modocc (talk) 18:40, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with everything you say here, but I want to emphasize that the difference between a strong atheist (in Dawkins' terms) and a provisional one is crucial, because the former, like a strong theist, believes irrationally, as a matter of faith, and deserves no more respect a strong theist who claims to know that a god exists.
I disagree with Dawkins' description of the strongest atheist after that a "strong atheist." It is "De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. 'I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'" I consider myself a stronger atheist than that, without being a "strong atheist" in Dawkins' sense. That is because I would not say that I don't know for certain that a god doesn't exist. I would say that nobody can know for certain. But I have no more doubt about the non-existence of a god than I do about the non-existence of flying pigs, while I acknowledge that I can't "know" the non-existence of either.
I concede that I may be conflating logic and feelings here. Logically, I acknowledge the possibility that a god exists, but I do not feel that there is any possibility. The person who uses Dawkins' phrase, "I don't know for certain," sounds as though he feels that there is a possibility, however close to zero, that a god exists. How's that for nitpicking? Maurice Magnus (talk) 02:28, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See Agnostic atheism. It makes a clear distinction between knowing (we do not or cannot know) and not believing because we do not have a belief in a god (or a divinity) and we may believe there is no god (provisionally on account of one's agnosticism). Modocc (talk) 04:33, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The headline of the citation is "Are atheists sadder but wiser?" Why would one aspect of the article be included but not the studies related to religious people are happier? It is cherry-picking from sources.
The study says there is a statistically significant (in otherwords, big enough to be measurable) correlation between religious belief and self-reported happiness. The study does not say atheists are sadder, which is merely the clickbait title. I guarantee the study did not ask atheists how sad they were, which means it would be incorrect to make that claim in this article. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:30, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are missing the point entirely. While it positively states people with religious belief are happier, it does not positively state that atheists are less happy or not as happy. That would technically be original research.
Imagine a report that stated two people (persons A and B) held 100 oranges between them, but person A held 51 of those oranges. What you want to do is say that person B had 49 oranges but the report does not explicitly state that and it would be original research to do so. You and I know that person B had 49 oranges, but we cannot say so. Person A's Wikipedia article can confidently state "person A had 51 oranges" and provide a citation, but because the reference does not say person B had 49 oranges you cannot even mention it in person B's Wikipedia article. Do you see what I'm getting at? It doesn't belong in this article. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:01, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a pity that there had to be an edit-war before this discussion started. I think that Scjessey is taking an extreme view here. Of course we can say in the example that person B had 49 oranges - that's simple arithmetic, not any kind of research, original or not. Whether religious people or atheists are sadder than the others has no connection to the truth value of any statements that they make. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:09, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Skeptical Inquirer citation relied upon by the OP's addition is behind a paywall and has thus far not been explicitly quoted here in support of the addition. Nor is it clear whether it is a single study under consideration or whether it is one of many and what the sampled population(s) are and any caveats, such as confounding variables to consider such as the fact that often agnostic atheists do not even identify as atheists due to stigmatization and discrimination in some communities. Also, Caleb Henshaw's piece compares irreligion or nonreligious nones to the religious, which is a problem for there are far fewer irreligious atheists than the many irreligious theists, thus it's not at all specific enough to whether atheists are less happy. Perhaps that may not matter, but I don't know. Modocc (talk) 15:07, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It still fails WP:CALC because it is not a "routine" calculation. The survey claims a percentage level of happiness, but "sadness" is not the opposite of "happiness" just as "cold" is not the opposite of "hot" because other states exists, so any calculation is unsupported and certainly doesn't have a consensus agreement. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nevertheless, you still described my interpretation of original research as "extreme" simply because I was trying to come up with an easy-to-understand example of why the original poster's point wasn't valid. That does not seem like an assumption of good faith. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that the OP was trying to claim a study saying religious people are happier automatically meant that atheists are sadder. Despite the click-baity title of the reference that clearly isn't the case; therefore, the source wasn't used as described. -- Scjessey (talk) 12:54, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"So, according to the evidence, atheism appears to be a choice to be sadder but wiser, but, in fact, we are not justified in drawing that conclusion. It is important to recognize that all the evidence cited in this column is correlational, which means we cannot identify what causes any of these relationships—only that certain variables travel together."
It's not just a "click bait" title. It's the premise of the whole article. The data clearly shows the more frequently you attend religious services, the more likely you are to indicate you are happy. The basic logic that the author utilizes is that atheists, generally speaking, aren't going to be as likely to attend weekly church services.
So, according to the evidence, atheism appears to be a choice to be sadder but wiser, but, in fact, we are not justified in drawing that conclusion.
It literally says in the article that "we are not justified in drawing that conclusion." The article is being used as a secondary source for information about a primary source metastudy, but there are also several other sources being used to provide references for the prose. None of them use the "sadder" or "not happy" narrative that you seem awfully eager to shove into the article. If it makes you feel better, strip out the objectional reference but leave the prose alone because it is already adequately sourced. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:25, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
