This article appeared in my social feed, What are the different types of atheism? But the author makes at least two notable mistakes. Firstly, he conflates atheism with agnosticism, the first being about belief and the last being about knowledge. So, one can believe or disbelieve in something, but that doesn’t speak to knowing. This debate is specifically about gods, so one can believe in a god but not know; one can not believe in gods and not know; one can believe in a god and know; and one can disbelieve in gods and not know. As for me, I am an igtheist: I don’t care about gods. It’s a silly place to spend my time.
For a theist or atheist, the existence of gods is a truth statement. For me, the question is not ruth apt; it’s ostensibly gibberish. Even then, I am still agnostic, which might also be ignostic because not only don’t I know, neither do I care.
As Ricky Gervais has pointed out (recasting per the linked article), if there are 10,000 gods, a typical Christian doesn’t believe in 9,999 gods. They believe in their god. Just 1. Of course, the other gods are nonsense. Ditto for Muslims. Ditto for Jews. In the end, they claim the same underlying deity, but they argue over which cohort He favours, and their god identifies as a male, so they’ve adopted male pronouns.
Secondly, whilst the author mentions religious and non-religious, he misses the spiritual cohort. This is a subset of non-religious. In some cases, I and many others might argue that spirituality is simply a personal religion, so the distinction would be one of community. The religious congregate en masse whilst the spiritual take this journey alone. One may also argue that some spiritual folks also congregate. I’ve attended more than one Wiccan or Pagan group event, but the ties may be looser than with a mainstream religion.
In the case of some spiritual adherents, non-religious is shorthand for being opposed to Big Religion. Perhaps not coincidentally, many of these are opposed to Big Pharma and Big Agriculture, but my purpose here is not a psychological profile.
I recently heard Robert Sapolsky say in a lecture that the religious live longer and are happier on average than non-religious, which is to say the spiritual and the atheists alike, so he notes this could provide an underlying evolutionary explanation for religious belief. Neither will I comment further on this notion, but there you have it. Take id or leave it.
Philosophics 