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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here is an adaptation of a question I asked in the “What do Atheists Believe?” thread. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/729573.page  It seems better suited for its own discussion:

Reading through questions posters are asking about atheists and atheism, I wonder how people got some of these ideas (e.g., atheists having a “worldview;” atheists not contributing to worthy causes because they are not religious; atheists …“who decide, screw it, there’s no punishment so I’ll just steal and murder and die rich and happy”;[b] people thinking that atheism has theories about things, [/b]the way a belief system would.

I know when I was growing up, everyone seemed to have a religion and there was not much talk of atheism. Still, atheists were generally, but vaguely, considered to be lesser people because they didn't believe in God. The only atheist I ever heard of was the woman who took prayer out of the public schools, and she was presented as a villain. It wasn't until I started to become an atheist that I thought about atheism in any depth.

So I'm asking – do your questions about atheists and atheism come from personal speculation? from church? from your family? From books, TV, the movies? something else? 
[/quote]

How do people decide that "religion" has theories about things?  Clearly Marxists, say, and social Darwinists have different views of things. Just Presbyterians and Hindus have different views of things (and we can put Buddists on both sides of that, eh?) But people generalize, usually on the basis of the examples they are most familiar with.

Most Americans who are not religious base their view of religion on Christians, and often don't make much real distinction among denominations and approaches.    Where I grew up in NYC, you wouldn't be far wrong to assume that anyone who called themselves an atheist (rather than agnostic) was a Marxist, and believe in dialectical materialism.   [/quote]

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