Atheism = Anti-Father Religion?

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Atheism = Anti-Father Religion?

Is (so-called) atheism actually nothing more than the “highly diffuse” religion of rebellion against any form of “fatherly authority”?

I actually find most so-called atheists to be very ethical, systematically logical (within their own systems of logic), highly reasonable (within scientistic materialist “reason”), and nearly always hyper-intellectual people of extemely good will.

I say “so-called atheists” because I personally don’t believe that self-proclaimed atheists are properly atheists, but rather that their religion’s “God” is “that which is the order in the universe” which they worship via the “sacraments” of “science [verb]” and “good intention [desire to actually change human nature into legal-ethics]”.

Now, why the antithesis of atheists to “fathers”?

My thoughts:
  • Fathers have been abusive or nonexistent (nonpresent), causing trauma.
  • Being the child of a father is a demeaning position.
  • Fathers, being “of the past”, where the present and future are more “valuable” than the past, are less valuable people than those of “the now”.
So, are (so-called) atheists simply the natural consequence of people having “faith” in the religion of “anti-fatherhood” or “anti-fatherness”?

I would be especially interested in hearing from fathers who profess atheism, people who desire NOT to be fathers who profess atheism, female atheists, or children of atheistic fathers.

(( Are the VAST majority of atheists MALE? ))
 
CatsAndDogs said:
Atheism = Anti-Father Religion?

Is (so-called) atheism actually nothing more than the “highly diffuse” religion of rebellion against any form of “fatherly authority”?

I actually find most so-called atheists to be very ethical, systematically logical (within their own systems of logic), highly reasonable (within scientistic materialist “reason”), and nearly always hyper-intellectual people of extemely good will.

I say “so-called atheists” because I personally don’t believe that self-proclaimed atheists are properly atheists, but rather that their religion’s “God” is “that which is the order in the universe” which they worship via the “sacraments” of “science [verb]” and “good intention [desire to actually change human nature into legal-ethics]”.

Now, why the antithesis of atheists to “fathers”?

My thoughts:
  • Fathers have been abusive or nonexistent (nonpresent), causing trauma.
  • Being the child of a father is a demeaning position.
  • Fathers, being “of the past”, where the present and future are more “valuable” than the past, are less valuable people than those of “the now”.
So, are (so-called) atheists simply the natural consequence of people having “faith” in the religion of “anti-fatherhood” or “anti-fatherness”?

I would be especially interested in hearing from fathers who profess atheism, people who desire NOT to be fathers who profess atheism, female atheists, or children of atheistic fathers.

(( Are the VAST majority of atheists MALE? ))
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You admittedly are talking about intelligent, introspective people here. Yet you seem to think they’d miss something like this. I think you’re reading way too much into it - not that this might not be the case in a small number of individuals, but not generally speaking. Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. 🤷
 
Oh, one more thing. No, I don’t think atheists are more male than female in population. Also, I don’t think they view God as a “he” - most have moved far beyond that intellectually, realizing that if there was a “god” it would be a spirit, not a “man”. Even I feel this way and I’m not an atheist.
 
My purely anecdotal two cents:
  1. I have known quite a few atheists in my time, and the ones who care enough to comment on such things have nearly always been disdainful of all religion, not just patriarchal/male dominated religions.
  2. I’ve never done a precise count but I have known quite a few female atheists - maybe more than male ones.
My life’s conclusion is that atheists really cannot be pigeonholed, nor can their reasons for their lack of faith. The very angry, radical, argumentative ones that are commonly seen on religious debate boards are, in my experience, kind of rare in real life. Nearly all the atheists I have known in real life prefer to lay low.
 
My memory may be off on this, but I seem to recall a story about Madolyn O’Hair saying that she hated her father and either tried to kill him or thought about it, and that hatred caused her to question this whole “Father-GOd” construct.

I read this years ago and it stuck in my head, but I may be wrong. Perhaps we can google it.
 
ibkc said:
My purely anecdotal two cents:
  1. I have known quite a few atheists in my time, and the ones who care enough to comment on such things have nearly always been disdainful of all religion, not just patriarchal/male dominated religions.
  2. I’ve never done a precise count but I have known quite a few female atheists - maybe more than male ones.
My life’s conclusion is that atheists really cannot be pigeonholed, nor can their reasons for their lack of faith. The very angry, radical, argumentative ones that are commonly seen on religious debate boards are, in my experience, kind of rare in real life. Nearly all the atheists I have known in real life prefer to lay low.
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I tend to agree in very large measure.

Most quasi-practicing “religious” people, aka “luke warm” types of any religion, are, to my mind, really rather atheistic (agnosto-atheists) in that they obviously don’t REALLY consider the “meaning” of God as (qua) God, or they’d be a LOT more attentive to doing as God tells them to do.

It’s not until a person (any person) really has to deal with their own mortality that God, or the question of God, becomes “burdensome” enough to not be ignorable any longer.

To your point #1: How many of your “atheist population sample” come from non-“male heavy” religions?

By that I mean, not judeo-christo-islamic, nor “fire worshiping” mid-eastern (zoroastrian, etc), nor taoist-confucian, nor “warrior cultic” (most amerindic and austric [australio-oceanic]) religions

Female atheists are most likely even more “quiet” about their faith, atheism, which we should consider a religion and not simply a lack thereof, because it’s perceived as very masculine to be a vociferous atheist. If they do profess atheism, it’s for the same reason as for “quiet males” below.

“Quiet” male atheists realize that they are more agnostic than truly atheistic, and since God really doesn’t matter to them, as He’s quite irrelevant to everyday life, they are only noticed as atheists, or agnostics, for club/class/clique reasons (to be one of the “cool kids”).
 
Swan said:
Oh, one more thing. No, I don’t think atheists are more male than female in population. Also, I don’t think they view God as a “he” - most have moved far beyond that intellectually, realizing that if there was a “god” it would be a spirit, not a “man”. Even I feel this way and I’m not an atheist.
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Well, we’ve come to know that God is THREE persons, all of whom rather elude being described as male or female, except for practical descriptive purposes.

The Father is the Father because He is Father-like.
The Son is the Son because He was incarnated as male.
The Holy Spirit is considered a “He” only because of His being a very active person, which for cultural reasons has historically been described as male.

But God qua God certainly transcends “sex”, and it’s consequent “organ configuration”, as sex qua sex is not an applicable “thing” to God.

No one calls God the Father Father because His pants contain the usual “guy parts”. 🙂
 
CatsAndDogs said:
Well, we’ve come to know that God is THREE persons, all of whom rather elude being described as male or female, except for practical descriptive purposes.

The Father is the Father because He is Father-like.
The Son is the Son because He was incarnated as male.
The Holy Spirit is considered a “He” only because of His being a very active person, which for cultural reasons has historically been described as male.

But God qua God certainly transcends “sex”, and it’s consequent “organ configuration”, as sex qua sex is not an applicable “thing” to God.

No one calls God the Father Father because His pants contain the usual “guy parts”. 🙂
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Correction, we have come to know none of this. It was revealed by God to us. The simplest form of God that can be reached by reason alone excludes the trinity and a male or female characteristic.
 
Polaris said:
Correction, we have come to know none of this. It was revealed by God to us. The simplest form of God that can be reached by reason alone excludes the trinity and a male or female characteristic.
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You are absolutely correct, and I utterly agree with you.

Knowledge of God “came to us”, and we didn’t “discover it for ourselves”.

“We’ve come to know” was perhaps the wrong idiom for that particular spot in the text! 🙂

Thanks for the correction.
 
CatsAndDogs said:
To your point #1: How many of your “atheist population sample” come from non-“male heavy” religions?

By that I mean, not judeo-christo-islamic, nor “fire worshiping” mid-eastern (zoroastrian, etc), nor taoist-confucian, nor “warrior cultic” (most amerindic and austric [australio-oceanic]) religions
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That’s a good question. Since most atheists of my acquaintance have been westerners or people of Asian descent raised in Asian countries, I’d have to say all the atheists I have personally known were raised within American culture - that is, in a culture dominated by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.
 
CatsAndDogs said:
Atheism = Anti-Father Religion?

Is (so-called) atheism actually nothing more than the “highly diffuse” religion of rebellion against any form of “fatherly authority”?

I actually find most so-called atheists to be very ethical, systematically logical (within their own systems of logic), highly reasonable (within scientistic materialist “reason”), and nearly always hyper-intellectual people of extemely good will.

I say “so-called atheists” because I personally don’t believe that self-proclaimed atheists are properly atheists, but rather that their religion’s “God” is “that which is the order in the universe” which they worship via the “sacraments” of “science [verb]” and “good intention [desire to actually change human nature into legal-ethics]”.

Now, why the antithesis of atheists to “fathers”?

My thoughts:
  • Fathers have been abusive or nonexistent (nonpresent), causing trauma.
  • Being the child of a father is a demeaning position.
  • Fathers, being “of the past”, where the present and future are more “valuable” than the past, are less valuable people than those of “the now”.
So, are (so-called) atheists simply the natural consequence of people having “faith” in the religion of “anti-fatherhood” or “anti-fatherness”?

I would be especially interested in hearing from fathers who profess atheism, people who desire NOT to be fathers who profess atheism, female atheists, or children of atheistic fathers.

(( Are the VAST majority of atheists MALE? ))
Click to expand...
That’s fascinating!

Ironic because when I was interested in psychology I considered the exact same thing. My “case studies” were Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, both of whom experienced the death of their fathers at pivotal developmental stages of their lives.

Additionally if Freud wishes to claim belief in God is the result of the longing for a father figure, then isn’t it fair to ask how the father figure affects atheism?
 
Most Atheists that i know dont even the reason for not having a religon, Or even give a second thought into it as they are too busy looking after there family and working!!
 
whiteknite said:
Most Atheists that i know dont even the reason for not having a religon, Or even give a second thought into it as they are too busy looking after there family and working!!
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Then most of the “atheists” that you know are not atheists, but indifferent agnostics.

I would agree that most agnostics are really just an apathetic version of atheist, but what I’m most interested in are not those atheists who don’t give a fig, but those atheists who actually profess their atheism.

There are some out there, don’t you know. 🙂
 
Postmodern said:
That’s fascinating!

Ironic because when I was interested in psychology I considered the exact same thing. My “case studies” were Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, both of whom experienced the death of their fathers at pivotal developmental stages of their lives.

Additionally if Freud wishes to claim belief in God is the result of the longing for a father figure, then isn’t it fair to ask how the father figure affects atheism?
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You know, it seems that it’s quite acceptable, not even considered “rude”, to call a Christian a childish slave of an obviously evil big Daddy in the sky.

Why should we consider it “rude” to call atheists guys, and tom-boys, who hate their fathers for not being good fathers, and hate any father who calls himself a father, haters of those who don’t hate their fathers?

Perhaps the way to deal with atheists is to simply sympathize with them for being abused as children by their fathers (or father-like substitutes), and inquiring if they’ve replaced their bad “father” God with themselves, making their “mother” nature their “wife”?

When nature is your mother instead of the gift of your Father, delving deeply into her secrets takes on a WHOLE new meaning.

Ah, poor Laius’s son…
 
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