• lime!@feddit.nu
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    10 days ago

    atheism isn’t a belief system though. it’s the absence of belief. if the teachers are forced to do stuff based on belief, the only malicious compliance that works within the rules is to treat all belief systems equally. science is also not a belief system.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      Idk man. I’m pretty sure atheism technically IS a belief system: the null set is a subset of every set (also sure, bald is a hair color and if you hold up 2 fists I can count zero fingers you’re holding up). Of course, this is subject to some rich debate.

      I suspect you can go a step further in malicious compliance by maximally broadening what you mean by “belief system”. Obviously you should also have Asimovs 3 laws of robotics, the first rule of fight club, the key phrase to view the marauders map, and so on.

    • NABDad@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      I disagree.

      Agnosticism is the absence of belief.

      Atheism is believing that there is no God.

      • TootGuitar@sh.itjust.works
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        9 days ago

        Theism is the belief in a god or gods.

        Atheism is the lack of that belief. You can be an atheist and simply lack belief, or you can affirmatively claim that no gods exist.

        Many atheists are somewhat in the middle: for example, there are certain god claims that are so patently ridiculous (e.g. Xenu) that I do claim that they don’t exist, whereas there are others that are probably unfalsifiable (e.g. a deistic god) and so I don’t think it’s possible to make a legitimate claim that they don’t exist.

        Agnosticism deals with knowledge, not belief. It’s right there in the word: “gnostos” is the Greek word for knowledge.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        10 days ago

        this is a problem the movement has had forever. people who call themselves atheist but specifically “do not believe in God”, with the name capitalised, ruin it for the rest of us.

        agnosticism is specifically a both-sides belief. actual modern atheism is about theory of work. people who grow up christian and then turn against their upbringing think they’re atheist but they’re actually “achristian”.

          • TootGuitar@sh.itjust.works
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            9 days ago

            I understand where you’re coming from and I probably wouldn’t have worded things in the same way the person you’re replying to is, but there are a lot of misconceptions out there around what atheism is. For example I’ve talked to people who exit Christianity and simultaneously call themselves atheists while developing a belief in a different god, and this is objectively not atheism. Similarly, there’s often an atheism vs. agnosticism confusion which I addressed in a different comment here.

        • BanMe@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          I always think, there’s atheists and there’s angry atheists

          But yes achristian works.