# Atheism

*"In this moment I am euphoric ..."* --some retarded atheist

An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in [god](god.md) or any other similar supernatural beings. An especially annoying kind is the **[reddit](reddit.md) atheist** who will DESTROY YOU WITH FACTS AND [LOGIC](logic.md)^(TM) while managing to throw around le [42](42.md) jokes. These atheists are 14 year old children who think they've discovered the secret of the universe and have to let the whole world know they're an ATHEIST who scored 200 [IQ](iq.md) on facebook test and knows all 10 argument fallacies, while in fact they reside at the [mount stupid](mount_stupid.md) and many times involuntarily appear on other subreddits such as r/iamverysmart and r/cringe. They masturbate to [Richard Dawkins](richard_dawkins.md), love to read [soyentific](soyence.md) studiiiiiies about how [race](race.md) has no biological meaning and think that religion is literally [Hitler](hitler.md) (oh noes, reduction to HITLER has been committed, game over) while taking every words of famous soyence popularizators like the word of a priest. They love to write or even read the ["rational" wiki](rationalwiki.md). They like to pick easy targets such as [flatearthers](flat_earth.md) and cyberbully them on [YouTube](youtube.md) with the power of SCIENCE and their enormously large thesaurus (they will never use a word that's among the 100000 most common English words). They are so [cringe](cringe.md) you want to [kill yourself](kys.md), but their discussions are sometimes entertaining to read with a bowl of popcorn.

Such a specimen of atheist is one of the best quality examples of a [pseudosceptic](pseudoscepticism.md). See also this: https://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Contents.htm.

Favorite topics of atheists include argument fallacies (which they also like to practice), cognitive biases (same), their own intelligence, [Occam's razor](occams_razor.md), Murphy's laws, the number [42](42.md), [quantum physics](quantum.md), proving over and over that Earth isn't flat (at least 10 times every day just to keep themselves in shape), correlation that does not imply causation, finding contradictions in Bible, asking other people for citations, [binary](binary.md) or even [hexadecimal](hexadecimal.md) numbers, "programming in HTML", living in a simulation and disproving religion with books about [Evolution](evolution.md) or something.

On a bit more serious note: we've all been there, most people in their teens think they're literal [Einsteins](einstein.md) and then later in life cringe back on themselves. However, some don't grow out of it and stay arrogant, ignorant fucks for their whole lives. The principal mistake of the stance they retain is they try to apply "science" (or whatever it means in their world) to EVERYTHING and reject any other approach to solving problems -- of course, [science](science.md) (the real one) is great, but it's just a tool, and just like you can't fix every problem with a hammer, you can't approach every problem with science. In your daily life you make a million of unscientific decisions and it would be bad to try to apply science to them; you cross the street not because you've read a peer-reviewed paper about it being the most scientifically correct thing to do, but because you feel like doing it, because you believe the drivers will stop and won't run you over. Atheists will likely take no issue with taking an [optimist](optimism.md) mindset when encountering hardships in life, but what else is optimism than BELIEVING there will be a happy ending, perhaps despite it being the less probable outcome? How is this different from a dying man choosing to believe something good awaits him after death? Beliefs, intuition, emotion, non-rationality and even spirituality are and have to be part of life, and it's extremely stupid to oppose these concepts just out of principle. With that said, there's nothing wrong about being a well behaved man who just doesn't feel a belief in any god in his heart, just you know, don't be an idiot.

Many atheists (and, to be fair, not all) fall a victim to the fatal oversimplification of "god = religion = bad", but indeed reality is not so simple and blindly following such a simple rule of thumb does more harm than good. If our goal is to reduce [evil](evil.md), we must first turn off [shortcut thinking](shortcut_thinking.md) and examine the situation in more depth. Doing so we find that faith in god or higher power doesn't equate religion, that religion is much more than belief in god (it is [culture](culture.md), set of [moral](morality.md) guidelines, tradition and folklore, wisdom, ...), that not all religions are hierarchical mass religions, and that on the other  hand many modern social phenomena, despite not being "officially" classified as religion, are closer to the "evil" kind of religions of the old times -- for example many of the [capitalist](capitalism.md) religions such as the [productivity cult](productivity_cult.md), [corporate](corporation.md) world worshiping legendary [entrepreneurs](entrepreneur.md) basically as [gods](hero_culture.md) or the worship of economy as the highest, unpredictable, mysterious force to which everyone must bow. The world has changed and the role of mass religion as the great oppressor has been taken on by others. And so to truly evade evil we must adapt to the change: rather than bullying a poor [Buddhist](busshism.md) for daring to believe in reincarnation, it's better to for example address the concerning fact that too many people believe [Elon Musk](elon_musk.md) is a savior of mankind, capable of being expert in every field of science while performing miracles such as running 20 companies while casually reaching professional skill levels at several video games.

Although they think they do, these atheists don't really believe in science but rather [soyence](soyence.md), they have merely chosen to subscribe to a new religion than the old one. Compare these scenarios:

- A medieval peasant believes what the priest tells him because only the priest has high enough education to know the language of the scripture. The priest tells the peasant God's miracles happen and other priests confirm this, they even show him the page in the holy book where it is written, it was reviewed by hundreds of priests. The peasant believes them, he didn't see the miracles (in fact he doesn't even know anyone who did) but someone with higher education assured him it is so and other people with such education approve of the message. Why would they lie? Certainly there is no politics and business in religion. Besides this, questioning the priests is socially punished, it's better to not do it.
- A [21st century](21st_century.md) internet peasant believes what [PhD](phd.md) in biology tells him about human [races](race.md) because he himself doesn't have such qualification nor the means to run his own research. The PhD science popularizator tells the guy races are an illusion and other such PhDs confirm this, they even make their mutually reviewed papers available on the internet. The guy believes them, he didn't make the research himself (in fact what they say contradicts his everyday observations) but someone with higher education assured him it is so and other people with such education approve of the message. Why would they lie? Certainly there is no politics and business in science. Besides this, questioning these PhDs is socially punished, it's better to not do it.

We see practically zero difference besides changed names.

There is a famous quote (sometimes attributed to Werner Heisenberg, accuracy of which is questioned) stating that "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you". Whoever said it, it captures the reality of the situation: in our society obsessed with shallow worship of [soyence](soyence.md) most people only ever take the first sip (through mass media, Internet, "science popularization" etc.), and so most end up remaining atheists. A few manage to drink a bit more and become agnostic, but by definition only a tiny minority of the smartest get near the very bottom of the glass. Indeed, among greatest minds it is hard to find true atheists, even though they typically have a personal and not easy to describe faith, they tend to think for themselves and by this usually reject consuming prepackaged religion, but the more convincing it is then that they independently arrive at accepting some kind of God -- it is because truly deeply engaging in rational thinking for one's whole life inevitably reveals there ARE limits to the rational: greatest thinkers stand at the very top of where humans can get with their thinking and then witness that still there are things they will never know, and the only thing remaining beyond is faith. [Newton](newton.md) for example was a Christian and [Einstein](einstein.md) often used the word "[God](god.md)" instead of "nature" or "universe"; even though he said he didn't believe in the traditional personal God, he also said that the laws of physics were like books in a library which must have obviously been written by someone or something we can't comprehend. Obviously: science is rational and works, but who made it so? This can never be answered by science itself. [Nikola Tesla](tesla.md) said he was "deeply religious, though not in the orthodox sense". There are also very hardcore religious people such as [Larry Wall](larry_wall.md), the inventor of [Perl](perl.md) language, who even planned to be a Christian missionary -- as hinted above, this is not rare in him believing in God, but rather in accepting a kind of "mainstream" faith. The "true atheists" are mostly second grade "scientists" (often called "science promoters") who make career out of the pose and make living by writing books about atheism rather than being scientists.

checkmate QED

## See Also

- [stupidity](stupidity.md)
- [rationalization](rationalization.md)
- [soyence](soyence.md)