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Atheism Categories | New pages | All pages | Basic help with editing Objectives This wiki strives among other goals to: Teach scientific thinking, logical thinking, and critical thinking, to improve thinking generally. Present the atheist point of view. Dispel myths about atheists. Highlight the damage that religions can cause. Show the world the damage that is caused by various religions. Note: This wiki says relatively little about Liberal Christianity because Liberal Christianity is less harmful. Point of view This wiki does not have a neutral point of view. This wiki has a naturalistic or atheistic point of view. It is unlikely that contributions supporting religion or superstition will remain in articles. Still editors may put those opinions into talk pages. This wiki Supports Naturalism Philosopher Paul Draper, wrote that naturalism is the concept "that the physical world is a 'closed system'". That means "nothing that is neither a part nor a product of [the physical world] can affect it." More simply: Naturalism denies there are real supernatural causes. Naturalism is therefore the direct opposite of supernaturalism. Naturalism rejects the idea that supernatural events, supernatural forces, or supernatural beings are real. If a disease is caused by microbes, we can learn more about how microbes interact with the body and how the immune system can be activated to destroy them, or how the transmission of microbes can be contained. But if a disease is caused by demons, we can learn nothing more about how to stop it, as demons are said to be supernatural beings unconstrained by the laws of nature (unlike natural causes). (Definition of Naturalism) Writing Not sure where to start? Find out more about the wiki on the About page. If you are new to wikis, check out the Detailed help with using wikis. Good Citizen Policies To write a new Atheism article, enter the page title in the box below. <createbox> bgcolor=#f3f3ff </createbox>

Atheism Basics Atheism is defined as: the absence of a belief in a god or gods (deities) the belief that there is no god or gods (deities) People often assume that atheism is a religion, which it is not. Saying that atheism is a religion is rather like saying that not collecting coins is a hobby. Atheism is in fact the absence of religion, and therefore cannot be considered to be a religion in itself. Atheists are often associated with scientific thinking and critical thinking, while religions demand belief without supporting empirical evidence. Scientists like Richard Dawkins show how scientific thinking stops people from believing in superstition and religion. That often leads to a lack of religious belief in general, and agnosticism, and finally atheism. The term "atheism" comes from the greek prefix "a", which means "not" or "without", and the greek word "theos", which means "god"; so the word "atheism" literally means "without a god". Beliefs Atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods, and from this atheists typically do not believe in any other supernatural forces or influences. Morality Atheism does not lead inevitably to any particular moral position, though Humanist morality is popular among atheists. Religious people (theists), notably Christians, frequently like to imagine that human beings only want to be moral if they’re afraid some supernatural father-figure will punish bad behaviour. Frankly, people are better than that. We've evolved so that we care about our relatives: we care about other people from our group, and we can care about humanity and about sentient beings in general. When others do well, we feel better ourselves, and when others suffer, we feel worse. Cultures with memes that encourage helpfulness survive better than uncooperative cultures, so we work to make our culture into a culture in which we and others can survive—or we work to maintain our culture in that way. See: Atheism and social justice Why atheists should support charitable work Atheism vs. Christianity Do we need religion for ethical behavior? How many immoral acts have been committed in the name of a particular religion or god? Some examples of this behavior include the Inquisition, the Crusades against non-Christians, crucades against different Christians, witch hunts and more recently the murder of abortion doctors in the United States by fundamentalist Christians. So which is the better of the two ideologies below? Christian morality Humanist morality Perhaps you will feel like reading the two articles before deciding. Footnotes

Scientology advertisements appear or have appeared on this page. We don't know why Wikia accepts money from that questionable organisation.

Here’s a science fiction story about an alien called Xenu, I didn’t write it, someone called L. Ron Hubbard wrote it. Why is it important? All too often advertisements paid for by Scientology turn up on the Internet and some are obviously Scientology but others talk about Dianetics or just promise you ethical happiness etc without making the source clear. Well Scientology doesn’t look very ethical and many reasonable people say they’re more likely to empty your bank balance and make you less happy and less healthy than before. So if you find advertisements pretending saying they’ll improve your life and it all looks too good to be true keep away.