Atheism

Atheism is the rejection of all systems of belief in one or more spiritual entities to which people are beholden in any way. This includes rejection of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, wherein the core belief is the recognition of one all powerful, all knowing god. It also includes the rejection of ancient Graeco-Roman gods, Hindu and Buddhist transcendental concepts, African gods and so on. If religion is defined in terms of belief of god or gods then it is rejection of religion itself.

This definition may be challenged on the grounds that the definition of god is not necessarily anthropomorphic (and is therefore is difficult or impossible to reject), that demonstration of god is not desireable by theists, or that denial of god is not necessarily denial of god's existence.

A more complete definition of atheism would claim rejection of the existence of god for the following reasons:

because it is false or probably false that there is a god (anthropomorphic god). This can be supported by a weight of evidence rather than pure demonstration.
because the concept of god is meaningless, incomprehensible or incoherent (nonanthropomorphic god).
because the concept of god is merely a symbol for moral ideals or another metaphysical notion (e.g. love, power).

This must be differentiated from agnosticism in that the agnostic may say that there is no evidence for the existence of god, nor evidence for the lack of existence of god, whereas the atheist would claim that there is sufficient evidence to claim against the existence of god.

Finally, the claim (Dostoyevsky et al.) that life is meaningless without god is absurd because even if there is no meaning or purpose to life there are still purposes in life - sustenance, shelter, love etc, things people want and want to do. Even in a godless world morality still exists - hurting is not good and self esteem is still desireable. It may be a puzzle to discover how we know what good is but that is merely an intellectual challenge, perhaps not as great as supportng the religious claims made by some! It remains self evident that good things are desireable and life has a point even for those without god.

Spiritual Systems				Main Religions
Agnosticism	Atheism	Monotheism	Polytheism	Buddhism	Islam
Ancestor	Deism	Naturism	Theism	Christianity	Judaism
Atheism	Dualism	Pantheism	Totemism	Hinduism