Читать книгу Atheism as Religion - Valeriy Sterkh - Страница 2

Why is Atheism a religion? What characteristics of religion are inherent in Atheism? What are atheists wrong about? Can an atheist have meaning in life? This book tackles all these questions and a few other relevant topics.

As a worldview, Atheism is opposed to theism or, to put it another way, to the belief in the Divine. Atheists deny the existence of God and any supernatural beings and powers. Can such a worldview be called religious? Let us think about it.

The basis of any religion is faith. The basis of science is knowledge. But what is the basis of Atheism – faith or knowledge? The main tenet of Atheism says that God doesn’t exist, so let us first examine if such a statement is religious or scientific in nature.

As Creator of the universe, God must be outside of space and time. Hence God is transcendent and incomprehensible to our experiential knowledge or scientific inquiry. In other words, it is impossible to obtain objective proof of God’s existence or non-existence. And where there is no proof, there is no knowledge. In other words, this denial of God is not based on knowledge, but rather on faith. Atheists simply believe that God does not exist, even though they are unable to scientifically prove his non-existence. Therefore, Atheism is unscientific in its nature and is, essentially, a belief in the «absence of God,» which means that Atheism is a religious worldview.

But let us not be too hasty in declaring Atheism a religion. There are several other aspects that we must consider before drawing conclusions.