Is religion good?

[Arval Va]

Then what are ex-Muslims?

Often made to be very uncomfortable in atheist spaces. Blankholm writes a bit about ex-Muslims in his book and notes that even though they no longer feel at home in Islam, atheism and secularism are not necessarily safe homes either. In Blankholm's ethnography, ex-Muslims expressed frustration with rampant anti-Arabic racism and Islamophobia in the atheist spaces and networks they were in touch with. And for ex-Muslims who have heritage from the Middle East, the Protestant shape of modern atheism and secularism prompts prejudice against or discomfort with the history of their heritage, leaving them feeling as if they do not have a past. The entanglement of Islam and, say, Arabic art and literature is noticed and criticized while the entanglement of Christianity in many Western art forms and history gets a pass because of the way secularism renders its Protestant and Christian partners and/or precursors socially invisible.

And yet, their existence proves that atheism is not the Protestant-flavoured monolith you suggest. It's not something built in - it is a taint on many Western breeds of secular thought. The social invisibility you speak of is more of cultural trait of the West in general than that of atheism.

However, my general point is that faith offers shelter to the ideas of a prophet or holy book's time, allowing them to overstay their welcome in society.

This seems to have less to do with faith and more to do with intellectual heritage and print culture. All sorts of texts and traditions remain current through transmission. One can place trust and a sense of value in destructive ideas without supernatural beliefs getting involved. Ovid's Metamorphes come to mind. The Metamorphoses has remarkable staying power in the field of classics, and it's regarded as a work of high literature. The Metamorphoses is also a series of narratives about fifty rapes, often described graphically, often as comedy. It took until 1992 for a major classicist, Amy Richlin, to confront this. Yet Ovid remains on many humanities syllabi.

The classicists who picked up Ovid in the Renaissance and kept reading him through modernity had no religious dog in the fight. They were not believers in Jupiter or Apollo. Academic Greco-Roman classics has been a pretty thoroughly secular enterprise for generations. Yet a cultural investment into tolerating, even implicitly glorifying, sexual violence has endured across generations. It's lasted longer than some religions and churches. No faith required. Culture, taste, and patriarchy are what sheltered Ovid's graphic scenes and kept them as part of academic experiences.

This is only one example of ideas "overstay[ing] their welcome in society" in the absence of faith. I don't think it would be productive to just list more and more. I hope the premise and principle is clear enough.

Faith is not required for an idea to overstay itself - fame can do the same, particularly for literature - but faith holds much greater sway over the people beneath it. It is the most persistent of the agents behind this - culture changes, significantly faster than religion - pieces of literature fade in and out of popularity - but religion, comparatively, is far for perseverant.

Otherwise, we seem to be at an impasse. You seem convinced there is a fundamental quality about faith that makes religious people more dogmatic, more retrenched, more set in their ways, and that people who disavow religion, who do not allow religion in their lives, are able to more freely inquire, more thoughtfully consider, and—both psychologically as individuals and socially as societies—be better off than they would be with religion. I have expressed, while referring to examples and interpretations from scholarship I've read, why the perceived differences are not quite so differential, how secularism and atheism carry forward the contours of their Protestant Christian antecedents, how the practice of asserting the superiority of secularity echoes and perpetuates the fundamentals of apologetics that have raged since the Reformation and have contributed to articulating and justifying the power of colonial nation-states.

You suggested that secularism was a tool, and if it's implicated in something bad, that's not inevitably or necessarily part of secularism. I suppose I don't grasp why it would be difficult to imagine faith also being a tool, sometimes entangled in damaging stuff but with that stuff not being inevitable to it. And I suppose I don't grasp how you can read me write that modern secularism's discursive genealogical heritage as part of an apologetic lineage that echoes the lines previously used to justify colonialism, say it is "interesting, certainly," and then leave it at that. Encountering this history and scholarship profoundly shaped me (as you might guess), but I am not as cogent a writer as the authors I read.

I have no qualm with the religious person - I take issue with the religious ideology, which manipulates those under it. Ultimately, if someone is informed and chooses that they want to join a religious community of their own volition, good for them. I have no problem, as long as such a group allows them to leave of their own volition.

The reason why atheism is corruptible but not corrupt is that it is effectively a blank slate - a non-ideology, the simple lack of a specific claim. Faith is both corruptible and corrupt because it requires an inherent element - the suspension of the believer's critical thinking. Even the most flexible religions require faith to shield the most central claim. The right to think freely is the most precious right, for without it, no other right can follow.

Discussions of religious politics around colonialism are very important, but what you attribute to atheism is more a quality of the fragile ego of the state or the expansionism of the West throughout the latter half of the second millennium. To try and draw connections between these ideas and atheism is like trying to pin the donkey's tail in midair. The important difference you do not seem to see is that atheism is not an ideology - it's not even a truth claim, simply the lack of one. Religion is a very consequential ideology, whose claims are constantly affecting our world. Secularism, on the other hand, is an ideal, the ideal of neutrality between religions. Ideologies that contradict that ideal are inherently anti-secular. Atheists can be anti-secular, and theists can sometimes be secular - the immoral excesses of some "secular" ideologies is no taint to atheism. Nothing stops atheists or agnostics from being manipulated by political or other ideological cults or abusive ideologies, particularly among those who have escaped abusive environments. But religion is a barrier to complete intellectual freedom, in all environments.

[New Zoigai]

But religion is a barrier to complete intellectual freedom, in all environments.

Denominations exist because of intellectual freedom so your wrong.

It is hypocritcal to say religion is bad because all the problems religion has caused are problems that non-religious people can cause and have caused on scales equal to large portions of history in much shorter timeframes.

Care to provide some examples?

*drums fingers waiting for the mention of Stalin*

Pol Pot
Mao Zedong
Fidel Castro
Kim-Il-Sung


Here are four, all communist but not Joseph Stalin because everyone talks about Joseph Stalin. Communism is a prime example of problems in short timeframes. There are also the super-rich people who the communists hate so much who fill the shoes of the religious aristocrats that were being rebelled against quite well. I could name the person who just shot up that school in Nashville too but that probably shouldn't be talked about on NS.

[Concejos Unidos]

-snip-

You deal with the possibilities of atheism, the possibilities of atheism and secularism somehow detached and wholly abstracted from their origins in Protestantism, so it only seems fair that you should compare to the possibilities of religion. Your idea of religion inherently suppressing doubt, as I've stated before, either requires an extremely narrow lens on religion or prescribing that religion is the suppression of doubt, which does not conform with the actually existing definition and understanding of religion. Certainly in my own experience, I don't hold to an orthodoxy or see any claim as an essential core of my belief. If we can deal with imaginary atheisms, surely we can deal with imagined (and real) religions that are liberatory, actively value exploration and elevate the seeking mind of the individual.

The exploratory element that religion can have is further highlighted by the fact that while claiming to value free-thinking, you seem to revile the sphere of the unfalsifiable and speak of it as if it were dangerous knowledge that might impinge on empiricism, like a religious literalist preaching against the dangers of empiricist epistemology, in fear that it might challenge the epistemology of their divine revelation. In contrast, properly balanced, religion does not inhibit the exploration of the material world and the sphere of falsifiable claims, while also unlocking for exploration the sphere of the unfalsifiable, the sphere which you would rather seal away as dangerous knowledge. In a sense, the most damaging act to thought is the idea that we should only deal with the falsifiable and refuse to deal with the unfalsifiable, to valorize curiosity and knowledge-seeking in one way but absolutely forbid it in the other.

[Melrovia]

But religion is a barrier to complete intellectual freedom, in all environments.

Denominations exist because of intellectual freedom so your wrong.

Care to provide some examples?

*drums fingers waiting for the mention of Stalin*

Pol Pot
Mao Zedong
Fidel Castro
Kim-Il-Sung


Here are four, all communist but not Joseph Stalin because everyone talks about Joseph Stalin. Communism is a prime example of problems in short timeframes. There are also the super-rich people who the communists hate so much who fill the shoes of the religious aristocrats that were being rebelled against quite well. I could name the person who just shot up that school in Nashville too but that probably shouldn't be talked about on NS.

Don't forget Enver Hoxha

[Arval Va]

-snip-

You deal with the possibilities of atheism, the possibilities of atheism and secularism somehow detached and wholly abstracted from their origins in Protestantism, so it only seems fair that you should compare to the possibilities of religion. Your idea of religion inherently suppressing doubt, as I've stated before, either requires an extremely narrow lens on religion or prescribing that religion is the suppression of doubt, which does not conform with the actually existing definition and understanding of religion. Certainly in my own experience, I don't hold to an orthodoxy or see any claim as an essential core of my belief. If we can deal with imaginary atheisms, surely we can deal with imagined (and real) religions that are liberatory, actively value exploration and elevate the seeking mind of the individual.

The exploratory element that religion can have is further highlighted by the fact that while claiming to value free-thinking, you seem to revile the sphere of the unfalsifiable and speak of it as if it were dangerous knowledge that might impinge on empiricism, like a religious literalist preaching against the dangers of empiricist epistemology, in fear that it might challenge the epistemology of their divine revelation. In contrast, properly balanced, religion does not inhibit the exploration of the material world and the sphere of falsifiable claims, while also unlocking for exploration the sphere of the unfalsifiable, the sphere which you would rather seal away as dangerous knowledge. In a sense, the most damaging act to thought is the idea that we should only deal with the falsifiable and refuse to deal with the unfalsifiable, to valorize curiosity and knowledge-seeking in one way but absolutely forbid it in the other.

You clearly haven't read anything I've said.

[Heavenly Assault]

Yes, no and other. Like all ideas, religions have their utility and of course those utilities are always contextual. On the other hand, while religion is an expression and expansion of the spirit, in some cases, it signifies a degeneration of the spirit. Religion is always politics and almost always a coping mechanism. Obviously, religions are also not created equally. As a general, Eastern and Pagan religions are more spiritual, whereas Western ones like Abrahamism are far more spiritually bankrupt and degenerate. These are essentially just politics and indicate a degeneration of the collective mind and soul. Esotericism is kind of a half measure against this spiritual degeneration. So, is it really good? Again, yes and no. Paganism, Animism, Shinto, Buddhism and things like that are at the better end of the spectrum, while Judaism, Christianity and Islam are nearly spiritually bankrupt and built solely upon lies, ignorance and belligerence. They have of course contributed to the expansion of consciousness, but ultimately, they are merely a (necessary) contraction to serve expansion. They have outlived their use and should be jettisoned along with their inherent spiritual decay. Abrahamism is a cancer of the soul based on a false God and false laws and this can be observed in the progress of cultures. Pagan and secular Europe, Ancient Egypt, the Native Americas, Japan and India all have far more distinctive and vibrant identities when compared to the Abrahamic demiurge. This is because Abrahamism is merely a death cult meant to imprison humanity.

[Luna Amore]

Yes, no and other. Like all ideas, religions have their utility and of course those utilities are always contextual. On the other hand, while religion is an expression and expansion of the spirit, in some cases, it signifies a degeneration of the spirit. Religion is always politics and almost always a coping mechanism. Obviously, religions are also not created equally. As a general, Eastern and Pagan religions are more spiritual, whereas Western ones like Abrahamism are far more spiritually bankrupt and degenerate. These are essentially just politics and indicate a degeneration of the collective mind and soul. Esotericism is kind of a half measure against this spiritual degeneration. So, is it really good? Again, yes and no. Paganism, Animism, Shinto, Buddhism and things like that are at the better end of the spectrum, while Judaism, Christianity and Islam are nearly spiritually bankrupt and built solely upon lies, ignorance and belligerence. They have of course contributed to the expansion of consciousness, but ultimately, they are merely a (necessary) contraction to serve expansion. They have outlived their use and should be jettisoned along with their inherent spiritual decay. Abrahamism is a cancer of the soul based on a false God and false laws and this can be observed in the progress of cultures. Pagan and secular Europe, Ancient Egypt, the Native Americas, Japan and India all have far more distinctive and vibrant identities when compared to the Abrahamic demiurge. This is because Abrahamism is merely a death cult meant to imprison humanity.

Considering your history and the fact that you just got a 1 day ban for this:*** 7 day ban for continued trolling ***

[Maricela Gutierrez]

And yet, their existence proves that atheism is not the Protestant-flavoured monolith you suggest. It's not something built in - it is a taint on many Western breeds of secular thought. The social invisibility you speak of is more of cultural trait of the West in general than that of atheism.

Atheists are not a monolith, no. But if the Protestant flavor were not so built in, ex-Muslims would not be finding it so difficult to create a space.

The important difference you do not seem to see is that atheism is not an ideology - it's not even a truth claim, simply the lack of one. Religion is a very consequential ideology, whose claims are constantly affecting our world. Secularism, on the other hand, is an ideal, the ideal of neutrality between religions. Ideologies that contradict that ideal are inherently anti-secular.

To this I am not sure what else can be said except that you do not seem to see that atheism and secularism are ideologies or at the very least in practice consistently and always are ideologies, and the very defense of them as non-ideologies is itself the deployment of particular ideologies that surround, permeate, structure, and make possible atheism and secularism. The literature on this is so vast that your willingness to disregard it is staggering. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003). Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2011). Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (University of Chicago Press, 2019). To give only the tip of the iceberg.

You describe secularism narrowly as "the ideal of neutrality between religions," and as rosy as that tenet on its own sounds, as the literature describes, such a tenet does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. We are always, everywhere, imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious. You suggest that all I have described is really attached just to the state or the West and that the co-occurrence of secularism and atheism in modernity is incidental, as if the modern West and the modern state and the modern secular did not grow up alongside each other, intertwined with each other, co-constructing each other.

None of this is to say that religions aren't also ideologies. But to allow "atheism" and "secularism" to stand apart from "religions"—to grant them a suis generis status and a privilege of neutrality, of blank slate-ness, of non-ideology, over and above the rest of the crowd—it is a Christian apologetic all the way down. It is what Catholicism insisted about "paganism," what Protestantism insisted about Catholicism, and now there are discourses of atheism and secularism which claim the same privileges of old. The goal posts have moved, and the labels have changed, but the game remains at bottom the same.

[Bombadil]

And yet, their existence proves that atheism is not the Protestant-flavoured monolith you suggest. It's not something built in - it is a taint on many Western breeds of secular thought. The social invisibility you speak of is more of cultural trait of the West in general than that of atheism.

Atheists are not a monolith, no. But if the Protestant flavor were not so built in, ex-Muslims would not be finding it so difficult to create a space.

The important difference you do not seem to see is that atheism is not an ideology - it's not even a truth claim, simply the lack of one. Religion is a very consequential ideology, whose claims are constantly affecting our world. Secularism, on the other hand, is an ideal, the ideal of neutrality between religions. Ideologies that contradict that ideal are inherently anti-secular.

To this I am not sure what else can be said except that you do not seem to see that atheism and secularism are ideologies or at the very least in practice consistently and always are ideologies, and the very defense of them as non-ideologies is itself the deployment of particular ideologies that surround, permeate, structure, and make possible atheism and secularism. The literature on this is so vast that your willingness to disregard it is staggering. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003). Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2011). Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (University of Chicago Press, 2019). To give only the tip of the iceberg.

You describe secularism narrowly as "the ideal of neutrality between religions," and as rosy as that tenet on its own sounds, as the literature describes, such a tenet does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. We are always, everywhere, imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious. You suggest that all I have described is really attached just to the state or the West and that the co-occurrence of secularism and atheism in modernity is incidental, as if the modern West and the modern state and the modern secular did not grow up alongside each other, intertwined with each other, co-constructing each other.

None of this is to say that religions aren't also ideologies. But to allow "atheism" and "secularism" to stand apart from "religions"—to grant them a suis generis status and a privilege of neutrality, of blank slate-ness, of non-ideology, over and above the rest of the crowd—it is a Christian apologetic all the way down. It is what Catholicism insisted about "paganism," what Protestantism insisted about Catholicism, and now there are discourses of atheism and secularism which claim the same privileges of old. The goal posts have moved, and the labels have changed, but the game remains at bottom the same.

I mean.. if the ideology of the atheist is 'let's build a world without worrying about what some irrelevant myth demands', then sure..

The simple fact is that throughout most of our history, some 99.9% of it, government and religion have been the same, so to fight for rights against government was, in effect, fighting against religion. However, religion was used in the fight for rights as per the Peasant's Revolt 1381 mantra..

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who then was the gentleman?

Rights are not an outcome of atheism, they've always been fought for, just remove the role of religion in providing some divine justification and one can think without those shackles.

The problem with calling atheism an ideology by noting certain forms of government and rights are defined almost by a rejection of religious involvement, is that a natural result of free thinking derived from better rights inevitably leads to that rejection of religion. Religion was rejected because it was the hierarchical arbitrary form of societal structure by default.

It's conflating two things and then saying atheism has an ideology.

It really doesn't. It's literally a lack of belief.

[Arval Va]

And yet, their existence proves that atheism is not the Protestant-flavoured monolith you suggest. It's not something built in - it is a taint on many Western breeds of secular thought. The social invisibility you speak of is more of cultural trait of the West in general than that of atheism.

Atheists are not a monolith, no. But if the Protestant flavor were not so built in, ex-Muslims would not be finding it so difficult to create a space.

The important difference you do not seem to see is that atheism is not an ideology - it's not even a truth claim, simply the lack of one. Religion is a very consequential ideology, whose claims are constantly affecting our world. Secularism, on the other hand, is an ideal, the ideal of neutrality between religions. Ideologies that contradict that ideal are inherently anti-secular.

To this I am not sure what else can be said except that you do not seem to see that atheism and secularism are ideologies or at the very least in practice consistently and always are ideologies, and the very defense of them as non-ideologies is itself the deployment of particular ideologies that surround, permeate, structure, and make possible atheism and secularism. The literature on this is so vast that your willingness to disregard it is staggering. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003). Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2011). Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (University of Chicago Press, 2019). To give only the tip of the iceberg.

You describe secularism narrowly as "the ideal of neutrality between religions," and as rosy as that tenet on its own sounds, as the literature describes, such a tenet does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. We are always, everywhere, imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious. You suggest that all I have described is really attached just to the state or the West and that the co-occurrence of secularism and atheism in modernity is incidental, as if the modern West and the modern state and the modern secular did not grow up alongside each other, intertwined with each other, co-constructing each other.

None of this is to say that religions aren't also ideologies. But to allow "atheism" and "secularism" to stand apart from "religions"—to grant them a suis generis status and a privilege of neutrality, of blank slate-ness, of non-ideology, over and above the rest of the crowd—it is a Christian apologetic all the way down. It is what Catholicism insisted about "paganism," what Protestantism insisted about Catholicism, and now there are discourses of atheism and secularism which claim the same privileges of old. The goal posts have moved, and the labels have changed, but the game remains at bottom the same.

Many ideas can be built on top of atheism or secularism - but those speak nothing to its inherent properties. If you want to talk about the ideologies built off of atheism, fine. But I am not arguing for or against those - I'm in the realm of the most basic, essential qualities of a thing. The most basic quality of atheism is a lack of theism. That isn't anywhere near an ideology. Organised religion has the basic quality of a system of spiritual claims believed without substantiation. I treat them differently because they are deeply different in their basic qualities. Trying to twist atheism into an ideology is like saying not being conservative is an ideology - being liberal is an ideology. Simply lacking conservatism isn't, even if liberalism correlates with a lack of conservatism. Unless an ideology - whether conservative or liberal or anything else - is later formed, that person's political ideas are tabula rasa, and no value, positive or negative, comes from nothing.

The thing is, that literature isn't bad or incorrect - it's just irrelevant to what I'm arguing. Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

[Pangurstan]

Atheists are not a monolith, no. But if the Protestant flavor were not so built in, ex-Muslims would not be finding it so difficult to create a space.

To this I am not sure what else can be said except that you do not seem to see that atheism and secularism are ideologies or at the very least in practice consistently and always are ideologies, and the very defense of them as non-ideologies is itself the deployment of particular ideologies that surround, permeate, structure, and make possible atheism and secularism. The literature on this is so vast that your willingness to disregard it is staggering. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003). Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2011). Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (University of Chicago Press, 2019). To give only the tip of the iceberg.

You describe secularism narrowly as "the ideal of neutrality between religions," and as rosy as that tenet on its own sounds, as the literature describes, such a tenet does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. We are always, everywhere, imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious. You suggest that all I have described is really attached just to the state or the West and that the co-occurrence of secularism and atheism in modernity is incidental, as if the modern West and the modern state and the modern secular did not grow up alongside each other, intertwined with each other, co-constructing each other.

None of this is to say that religions aren't also ideologies. But to allow "atheism" and "secularism" to stand apart from "religions"—to grant them a suis generis status and a privilege of neutrality, of blank slate-ness, of non-ideology, over and above the rest of the crowd—it is a Christian apologetic all the way down. It is what Catholicism insisted about "paganism," what Protestantism insisted about Catholicism, and now there are discourses of atheism and secularism which claim the same privileges of old. The goal posts have moved, and the labels have changed, but the game remains at bottom the same.

Many ideas can be built on top of atheism or secularism - but those speak nothing to its inherent properties. If you want to talk about the ideologies built off of atheism, fine. But I am not arguing for or against those - I'm in the realm of the most basic, essential qualities of a thing. The most basic quality of atheism is a lack of theism. That isn't anywhere near an ideology. Organised religion has the basic quality of a system of spiritual claims believed without substantiation. I treat them differently because they are deeply different in their basic qualities. Trying to twist atheism into an ideology is like saying not being conservative is an ideology - being liberal is an ideology. Simply lacking conservatism isn't, even if liberalism correlates with a lack of conservatism. Unless an ideology - whether conservative or liberal or anything else - is later formed, that person's political ideas are tabula rasa, and no value, positive or negative, comes from nothing.

The thing is, that literature isn't bad or incorrect - it's just irrelevant to what I'm arguing. Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

You're saying that a lack of religion isn't an ideology, which is true. However, the person you're arguing with is saying that modern western secularism is an ideology because it does have ideas about empiricism, the role of religion in society, etc.

[Arval Va]

Many ideas can be built on top of atheism or secularism - but those speak nothing to its inherent properties. If you want to talk about the ideologies built off of atheism, fine. But I am not arguing for or against those - I'm in the realm of the most basic, essential qualities of a thing. The most basic quality of atheism is a lack of theism. That isn't anywhere near an ideology. Organised religion has the basic quality of a system of spiritual claims believed without substantiation. I treat them differently because they are deeply different in their basic qualities. Trying to twist atheism into an ideology is like saying not being conservative is an ideology - being liberal is an ideology. Simply lacking conservatism isn't, even if liberalism correlates with a lack of conservatism. Unless an ideology - whether conservative or liberal or anything else - is later formed, that person's political ideas are tabula rasa, and no value, positive or negative, comes from nothing.

The thing is, that literature isn't bad or incorrect - it's just irrelevant to what I'm arguing. Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

You're saying that a lack of religion isn't an ideology, which is true. However, the person you're arguing with is saying that modern western secularism is an ideology because it does have ideas about empiricism, the role of religion in society, etc.

Modern, western secularism. Not secularism at its heart, at its most core qualities.

[Concejos Unidos]

Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

If I read them correctly, they mean to say that your formulation of "stripped down" atheism, boiled down to inherent properties beyond context is not possible. If as they say, that we are always "imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious," how can our ideologies exist in voids? If we are to speak of an essential, basic atheism or secularism, we must depart from the world as is and the possibilities of the world.

[Arval Va]

Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

If I read them correctly, they mean to say that your formulation of "stripped down" atheism, boiled down to inherent properties beyond context is not possible. If as they say, that we are always "imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious," how can our ideologies exist in voids? If we are to speak of an essential, basic atheism or secularism, we must depart from the world as is and the possibilities of the world.

And yet, if we judge a belief by what is built on top of it, we only get muddied reflections of it - none of the original idea's value can be accurately assessed. To judge a belief by the merits of things that are not part of its basic properties is to ascribe it with qualities that it does not necessarily have or require. Our ideologies or beliefs do not exist in voids, but they cannot be accurately judged when only seen for what surrounds them, rather than the central ideas that fuel them.

[Bombadil]

Your willingness to disregard the actual beliefs of the person you're arguing against is staggering.

If I read them correctly, they mean to say that your formulation of "stripped down" atheism, boiled down to inherent properties beyond context is not possible. If as they say, that we are always "imbricated within networks of meaning and acculturation, both conscious and subconscious," how can our ideologies exist in voids? If we are to speak of an essential, basic atheism or secularism, we must depart from the world as is and the possibilities of the world.

I mean.. it's as if there was a culture that, for little reason, placed concrete boots on their feet every morning. Then someone had the bright idea of removing those concrete boots. Concrete boot proponents would then say that not wearing boots is an ideology of not wearing those boots, and things like running and swimming are inherently anti-concrete boot ideologies, and can't be separated from our shared history of wearing concrete boots.

We're saying, no.. we're just not wearing your concrete boots. Being able to run and swim is not a philosophy derived from anti-concrete boot wearing beliefs, it's just what we can do without wearing concrete boots.

[Concejos Unidos]

I mean.. it's as if there was a culture that, for little reason, placed concrete boots on their feet every morning. Then someone had the bright idea of removing those concrete boots. Concrete boot proponents would then say that not wearing boots is an ideology of not wearing those boots, and things like running and swimming are inherently anti-concrete boot ideologies, and can't be separated from our shared history of wearing concrete boots.

We're saying, no.. we're just not wearing your concrete boots. Being able to run and swim is not a philosophy derived from anti-concrete boot wearing beliefs, it's just what we can do without wearing concrete boots.

Ehh I think the converse is quite obvious. In that social context, running and swimming are integrally tied and related to the social environment of concrete boot wearing they emerged from. All actually existing concepts and philosophies have intellectual origins and genealogies that relate them to other concepts and philosophies.

Now, I don't deny that running and swimming can be treated as pure ideas without relationality. For better or worse though, when we treat with those abstractions we cease to treat with the necessary nature of things in the real world. Logical reasoning with the object of atheism or secularism as an abstract idea can tell us something, but nothing about the social institution of atheism or secularism in the real world.

[Maricela Gutierrez]

Ehh I think the converse is quite obvious. In that social context, running and swimming are integrally tied and related to the social environment of concrete boot wearing they emerged from. All actually existing concepts and philosophies have intellectual origins and genealogies that relate them to other concepts and philosophies.

Now, I don't deny that running and swimming can be treated as pure ideas without relationality. For better or worse though, when we treat with those abstractions we cease to treat with the necessary nature of things in the real world. Logical reasoning with the object of atheism or secularism as an abstract idea can tell us something, but nothing about the social institution of atheism or secularism in the real world.

Precisely.

Insofar as I have been talking about the social institution of atheism or secularism in the world as it exists, perhaps I have in doing so seemed to "disregard the actual beliefs of" Arval Va. Perhaps we have been talking past each other. If it seemed as if I was claiming that an individual atheist, by virtue of not avowing supranatural phenomena, therefore was personally colonialist, racist, etc., I am sorry for muddling that, as I don't think that's the case.

I grant that I have been, in this thread, more interested in talking about atheism and secularism as social forces and institutions in the world; as for why, for one, the thread title is not "can a person ascribing to a single religious idea be good?" but rather "is religion good?" Insofar as religions exist out there in our real, social world as discourses and institutions, it made sense to talk about secularism and atheism as discourses and institutions in our real, social world. And for two, tabula rasa perhaps can be imagined in the mind, but I don't think it pragmatically exists in society.

And for three, comparing the hypothetically tabula rasa, in-a-vacuum tenet of atheism as not avowing supranatural phenomena, to religion—i. e. to the whole constellation of human collectives, unusual experiences, and philosophical discourses which often but not exclusively mediate alleged interactions between humand and suprahuman phenomena—that seems rather like comparing apples and oranges. If the former seems to have less baggage than the latter, isn't it because the former has been stripped of all possible baggage? Assenting to a faith claim (an attribute which is not even universal to religion, e.g. consider certain iterations of Judaism) can only set limits on one's inquiry as an individual within a sociomaterial contexts for which there are things to inquire about which a faith claim would hypothetically prevent investigation of. Assenting to a faith claim can only enable outdated ideas to outlast their time within sociomaterial contexts. If I stripped all possible baggage from, say, assenting to a belief in an indefinite, transcendent, suprahuman thing and named it "god," and then compared that to secularism as it has historically and materially been practiced in the history of modernity, then it seems like the god claim would rather handily win, but not by dint of any fair comparison.

Hence, because I figured we're talking about religion as a sociomaterial phenomenon, my thoughts turned to secularism and atheism as sociomaterial phenomena. And in so doing I conclude that asking "is religion good?" plays into a discourse rooted in—well, but then I am repeating myself.

[Bombadil]

I mean.. it's muddy because religion, history, culture and practices are inextricably entwined. We're extricating ourselves from those constraints.

One can hardly say that religious customs are the dictate of god, they're human customs given divine meaning. That divine meaning has acted as a constriction on evolving those customs. The Jews probably stopped eating pork because of some pig-based disease that wiped out a good portion of the population.. but add religious edict and no bacon for you! Where superstition and unexplained events guided our customs, we can now better explain them and evolve, and do away with arbitrary rules based on superstition and unexplained events.

The human desire for basic equality and human rights does not come from god, they were, for millennia, constrained by religion that justified a hierarchy on society.

It's why much earlier I said I don't even really consider myself an atheist, to term something atheist is to inherently pigeon hole a type, and types are assumed to have a set of beliefs or ideology.

I don't have an atheist ideology, god is simply not present in my life or thinking even though I accept that I operate out of a society that remains constricted by religious customs. Like, I probably wouldn't ever have questioned the idea we take Sunday off work.. I accepted the weekend without thought. I'm influenced by religious custom but atheism isn't part of that. We kiss under mistletoe.

God is simply not a thing I think about, and doesn't impact my thinking about my actual ideologies, such as a belief in basic equality and human rights, belief that education and healthcare should be free, these do not require belief or not in any god. It's not that I've removed concrete boots, it's that I've never worn them even though I'm in a society that's shaped a lot by our history of wearing concrete boots.

[Concejos Unidos]

I mean.. it's muddy because religion, history, culture and practices are inextricably entwined. We're extricating ourselves from those constraints.

One can hardly say that religious customs are the dictate of god, they're human customs given divine meaning. That divine meaning has acted as a constriction on evolving those customs. Where superstition and unexplained events guided our customs, we can now better explain them and evolve, and do away with arbitrary rules based on superstition and unexplained events.

The human desire for basic equality and human rights does not come from god, they were, for millennia, constrained by religion that justified a hierarchy on society.

It's why much earlier I said I don't even really consider myself an atheist, to term something atheist is to inherently pigeon hole a type, and types are assumed to have a set of beliefs or ideology.

I don't have an atheist ideology, god is simply not present in my life or thinking even though I accept that I operate out of a society that remains constricted by religious customs. Like, I probably wouldn't ever have questioned the idea we take Sunday off work.. I accepted the weekend without thought. I'm influenced by religious custom but atheism isn't part of that.

God is simply not a thing I think about, and doesn't impact my thinking about my actual ideologies, such as a belief in basic equality and human rights, belief that education and healthcare should be free, these do not require belief or not in any god. It's not that I've removed concrete boots, it's that I've never worn them even though I'm in a society that's shaped a lot by our history of wearing concrete boots.

See, if you were a newborn, I think it would be fairly easy to say you lack faith (setting aside certain religious claims like the Islamic idea of fitra) in a way wholly not influenced by religion or by the social institution of atheism.

Yet to maintain that is impossible. Atheism is not merely a negation or lack, but a social institution and culture with positive existence. You've clearly thought about faith and religion. Regardless of whether you've ever worn the proverbial concrete boots, you choose to not wear them. Perhaps a man born alone on a desert island would not have that choice at all, but obviously you have been exposed to religion so you face that choice, whether or not it is a passive choice. That choice establishes a relationality, made manifest by the way boot wears and non boot wearers interact with each other and the ways they distinguish themselves (even if that distinction is merely not participating in the religious practices of the bootwearers). Religion is obviously an identity and social institution, so so must be atheism when it relates itself to religion. An internationalist "global citizen" is not merely someone lacking nationalism, because attributes with positive existence emerge from the relationality. Just as someone who always goes nude in a clothes-wearing society is obviously not merely someone who lacks clothes-wearing ideology (extreme example but instructive), atheism is not merely the lack of faith, in a society where being unaware of religion is impossible. The mere fact that you can probably conjure up an image of an atheist based on tropes/stereotypes and demographic tendencies shows that atheism is not merely the void of faith, but something with positive existence.

Put most broadly, it is impossible to become the fully atomized individual without relationality while existing in a society. Imagining someone who somehow grew up without any human interaction entering human society, upon establishing relationality, their identities and beliefs shed their pure lack and take on some degree of positive existence, in race, gender, age etc., atheism not excepted.

[Bombadil]

Regardless of whether you've ever worn the proverbial concrete boots, you choose to not wear them.

No, and this is fundamental. I did not choose not to wear them, much as I did not choose not to believe in unicorns. They don't exist, move on. It's not like I weighed up the competing beliefs of religion and atheism and chose the latter.

It's something people of belief find difficult to believe as it were, that it's not a choice to believe or not believe. I would have to choose to believe in any religion, but I don't choose not to.

[Arval Va]

Ehh I think the converse is quite obvious. In that social context, running and swimming are integrally tied and related to the social environment of concrete boot wearing they emerged from. All actually existing concepts and philosophies have intellectual origins and genealogies that relate them to other concepts and philosophies.

Now, I don't deny that running and swimming can be treated as pure ideas without relationality. For better or worse though, when we treat with those abstractions we cease to treat with the necessary nature of things in the real world. Logical reasoning with the object of atheism or secularism as an abstract idea can tell us something, but nothing about the social institution of atheism or secularism in the real world.

Precisely.

Insofar as I have been talking about the social institution of atheism or secularism in the world as it exists, perhaps I have in doing so seemed to "disregard the actual beliefs of" Arval Va. Perhaps we have been talking past each other. If it seemed as if I was claiming that an individual atheist, by virtue of not avowing supranatural phenomena, therefore was personally colonialist, racist, etc., I am sorry for muddling that, as I don't think that's the case.

The social institutions built on any idea cannot be used to accurately judge the quality of the root - it must be observed as its own institution to get an accurate idea of what is essential to it. That's my whole point. There have been racist or colonialist secular groups, but they by no means can be used to accurately judge the value of all of secularism or all of atheism.

I grant that I have been, in this thread, more interested in talking about atheism and secularism as social forces and institutions in the world; as for why, for one, the thread title is not "can a person ascribing to a single religious idea be good?" but rather "is religion good?" Insofar as religions exist out there in our real, social world as discourses and institutions, it made sense to talk about secularism and atheism as discourses and institutions in our real, social world. And for two, tabula rasa perhaps can be imagined in the mind, but I don't think it pragmatically exists in society.

Tabula rasa doesn't exist in practice, but that's because people always have interconnected ideas and beliefs. Just because atheism is commonly associated with something else doesn't speak to that being an inherent value of it.

And for three, comparing the hypothetically tabula rasa, in-a-vacuum tenet of atheism as not avowing supranatural phenomena, to religion—i. e. to the whole constellation of human collectives, unusual experiences, and philosophical discourses which often but not exclusively mediate alleged interactions between humand and suprahuman phenomena—that seems rather like comparing apples and oranges.

They are fundamentally different, but still occupy the same space. Anarchy and republicanism are fundamentally different, but they still occupy the same space in the sphere of political thought: who is the leader? They can easily be compared on their merits, and are just very different apples.

If the former seems to have less baggage than the latter, isn't it because the former has been stripped of all possible baggage? Assenting to a faith claim (an attribute which is not even universal to religion, e.g. consider certain iterations of Judaism) can only set limits on one's inquiry as an individual within a sociomaterial contexts for which there are things to inquire about which a faith claim would hypothetically prevent investigation of.

To ever choose one spiritual claim over another spiritual claim requires faith - because all spiritual claims have exactly the same amount of substantiation. To choose one over the others would be to ascribe nonexistent value to a belief that has no truth value over the others. Even in a space where the claim doesn't overlap with reality at all, which is mind-numbingly rare, it still requires that the believer keep a spiritual claim to believe, instead of, say, believing every single spiritual claim at once because they all are equally substantiated.

Assenting to a faith claim can only enable outdated ideas to outlast their time within sociomaterial contexts. If I stripped all possible baggage from, say, assenting to a belief in an indefinite, transcendent, suprahuman thing and named it "god," and then compared that to secularism as it has historically and materially been practiced in the history of modernity, then it seems like the god claim would rather handily win, but not by dint of any fair comparison.

And yet, assenting to a belief in any one spiritual entity requires faith to some extent - that part can't be stripped out. At the same time, ascribing Protestantism to atheism doesn't work, because the Protestant tint is not required for atheists to not believe in a deity.

Hence, because I figured we're talking about religion as a sociomaterial phenomenon, my thoughts turned to secularism and atheism as sociomaterial phenomena. And in so doing I conclude that asking "is religion good?" plays into a discourse rooted in—well, but then I am repeating myself.

If you want to play the sociomaterial game, here's an example:
Say I wanted to judge religion on the institutions built on it, instead of its inherent properties. I could just as easily say that religion is inherently bad because of Kenneth Copeland. Kenneth Copeland is a powerful and influential figure in the religious game of prosperity gospel. Because prosperity gospel is built on top of religion, is prosperity gospel something that religion in general should be judged for? After all, there's quite a few televangelists around these days...

The sociomaterial properties of a belief can tell us about what is built on it and what certain people who believe it are like, but it won't ever provide a good assessment of what basic properties keep the gears turning or the value of the belief at its core.

[Arval Va]

Regardless of whether you've ever worn the proverbial concrete boots, you choose to not wear them.

There are second-generation and third-generation atheists now. Would you say that them being born and simply not interacting with religion means they have consciously rejected belief? In your analogy of the desert island, the man on the island is still an atheist, without consciously rejecting any deity. That proves enough that atheism does not have a claim baked in - it's just the default state of a person when they are born, lacking any and all spiritual claims.

[Maricela Gutierrez]

It's something people of belief find difficult to believe as it were, that it's not a choice to believe or not believe. I would have to choose to believe in any religion, but I don't choose not to.

I hope you might realize that people of belief might describe their position similarly: they do not choose to believe or not believe. They simply do because they do. My point is less invested in the notion of the conscious choice but rather in the sociomaterial reality that these ideas, however we assent to them (whether by conscious choice or not by conscious choice), are invested and created by/with historical structures and discourses

To ever choose one spiritual claim over another spiritual claim requires faith - because all spiritual claims have exactly the same amount of substantiation. To choose one over the others would be to ascribe nonexistent value to a belief that has no truth value over the others.

In your saying this it seems to clarify that there is an ideology associated with the allegedly free-standing notion of non-avowal. This system of thought takes as its premises that truth value A) operates in a way by which spiritual claims have no substantiation; and B) is the way we should be measuring value. These are not, as historians have charted, neutral or natural tenets, any more than a resurrected Jesus is a neutral or natural tenet, but rather have emerged in dialectics and in historical contexts and processes.

I could just as easily say that religion is inherently bad because of Kenneth Copeland. Kenneth Copeland is a powerful and influential figure in the religious game of prosperity gospel. Because prosperity gospel is built on top of religion, is prosperity gospel something that religion in general should be judged for? After all, there's quite a few televangelists around these days...

We could both agree with the destructiveness of prosperity gospel. The question comes down to how we criticize it. If we follow your track—the reason prosperity gospel is bad is because it is religious, and secularism/atheism do not have that problem because they are not religious—if we follow that line of thought, we might well conclude that religion is bad.

My line of thought would be to notice how the logics of prosperity gospel are not limited to religion but, because atheism and secularism are themselves structured and enabled by religion and Protestantism, instead pervade religion, atheism, and secularism. Some prosperity type thought invokes suprahuman beings, but not all do. Positive thinking, multilevel marketing, and techno-accelerationism likewise invoke notions of correct-behavior and correct-thinking rewarded materially via something transcendent over reality, though that transcendence is not a god but instead is "natural law" or "the way things work" or suprahistorical social scientific claims. They can have similar results and effects. As Jill Lepore describes in her These Truths: A History of the United States (Knopf, 2011), the late-twentieth-century Atari Democrat and business Republican consensus in the American congress was not built on deity, but it was built on a sense that the deserving would prosper, with the undeserving left in the dust. Prosperity gospel: no gods required.

You could, as you claim to, get away from this by thinking tabula rasa and by isolating non-avowal from all contexts: without its being structured by and enabled by historical discourses, might non-avowal, hypothetically, not be built and shaped by colonialism? Perhaps so; that makes sense enough. I just struggle to see how that would not in turn excuse religion. You point out that "To choose one over the others would be to ascribe nonexistent value to a belief that has no truth value over the others" (it is hard to not notice an ideology at play, i.e. that this hypothetical belief already, a prior, has nonexistent value)—but if we step away from the world, away from context, then there are no others to choose, are there? If atheism in its most basic form is the non-avowal of any supranatural thing, then religion in its most basic form would just be the avowal of some supranatural thing; that thing doesn't necessarily need to intervene even. It could be non-interventionist. It doesn't even need to espouse a positive (as in active) mode of thought or teaching. The basic form of atheism doesn't. And so, disassociated from historical dialectics, Christian apologetics, Western imperialisms, etc.... it's hard to see how this assent would definitionally be bad.

That's why "is religion good" or "is religion bad" is a distracting question that plays into hegemonies. My point that secularism and atheism as sociomaterial discourses reflect and refract Protestantism and Christian apologetics is not to say "therefore religion in society in every iteration is always and forever better than atheism in society in every iteration." Rather I would say "they are, in their sructuring, of a piece with each other." If one can exhibit a problem, the other can also exhibit that problem.

There are second-generation and third-generation atheists now. Would you say that them being born and simply not interacting with religion means they have consciously rejected belief? In your analogy of the desert island, the man on the island is still an atheist, without consciously rejecting any deity. That proves enough that atheism does not have a claim baked in - it's just the default state of a person when they are born, lacking any and all spiritual claims.

If I may push back using an example from the history of religion: there were, in the mid to late 1800s, second-generation and third-generation Mormons for the first time, many born in the Intermountain West distant from the rest of the United States. Would one say that this new generation of Mormons being born and simply not interacting with Protestantism means Mormonism was not influenced by, not pervaded by, the historical discourse of Christiainity? Even without conscious rejection, the actions those born-into-Mormonism Mormons took, and the actions we (whatever our inclination) take today, are connected to longer and wider discourses.

[Concejos Unidos]

[

No, and this is fundamental. I did not choose not to wear them, much as I did not choose not to believe in unicorns. They don't exist, move on. It's not like I weighed up the competing beliefs of religion and atheism and chose the latter.

It's something people of belief find difficult to believe as it were, that it's not a choice to believe or not believe. I would have to choose to believe in any religion, but I don't choose not to.

I use choice to encompass both active and passive choice. Insofar as you are aware that some people do believe in unicorns, you at the very least passively choose to not believe. In other words, you are aware of your distinction. This is different from someone who does not believe in unicorns and has literally no concept of unicorns. The vast vast majority of atheists have heard of the concept of religion. That forms a relationality.

Anyways I wasn't raised in a religious household so yes, I understand what atheism is, which is why I know it's impossible to maintain it as a pure lack unless you somehow are able to never hear of religion as a concept, which is pretty much impossible in any society.

[Arval Va]

To ever choose one spiritual claim over another spiritual claim requires faith - because all spiritual claims have exactly the same amount of substantiation. To choose one over the others would be to ascribe nonexistent value to a belief that has no truth value over the others.

In your saying this it seems to clarify that there is an ideology associated with the allegedly free-standing notion of non-avowal. This system of thought takes as its premises that truth value A) operates in a way by which spiritual claims have no substantiation; and B) is the way we should be measuring value. These are not, as historians have charted, neutral or natural tenets, any more than a resurrected Jesus is a neutral or natural tenet, but rather have emerged in dialectics and in historical contexts and processes.

My belief that truth value is the primary way to judge beliefs is tied to my atheism, but not integral to it. There are some atheists who just don't want to be in a religious community, or don't believe for other reasons.

I could just as easily say that religion is inherently bad because of Kenneth Copeland. Kenneth Copeland is a powerful and influential figure in the religious game of prosperity gospel. Because prosperity gospel is built on top of religion, is prosperity gospel something that religion in general should be judged for? After all, there's quite a few televangelists around these days...

We could both agree with the destructiveness of prosperity gospel. The question comes down to how we criticize it. If we follow your track—the reason prosperity gospel is bad is because it is religious, and secularism/atheism do not have that problem because they are not religious—if we follow that line of thought, we might well conclude that religion is bad.

My line of thought would be to notice how the logics of prosperity gospel are not limited to religion but, because atheism and secularism are themselves structured and enabled by religion and Protestantism, instead pervade religion, atheism, and secularism. Some prosperity type thought invokes suprahuman beings, but not all do. Positive thinking, multilevel marketing, and techno-accelerationism likewise invoke notions of correct-behavior and correct-thinking rewarded materially via something transcendent over reality, though that transcendence is not a god but instead is "natural law" or "the way things work" or suprahistorical social scientific claims. They can have similar results and effects. As Jill Lepore describes in her These Truths: A History of the United States (Knopf, 2011), the late-twentieth-century Atari Democrat and business Republican consensus in the American congress was not built on deity, but it was built on a sense that the deserving would prosper, with the undeserving left in the dust. Prosperity gospel: no gods required.

Exactly. The same is true of colonialism and atheism. They exist together sometimes, but they are not integral. (BTW that was a rhetorical question, but alright)

You could, as you claim to, get away from this by thinking tabula rasa and by isolating non-avowal from all contexts: without its being structured by and enabled by historical discourses, might non-avowal, hypothetically, not be built and shaped by colonialism? Perhaps so; that makes sense enough. I just struggle to see how that would not in turn excuse religion. You point out that "To choose one over the others would be to ascribe nonexistent value to a belief that has no truth value over the others" (it is hard to not notice an ideology at play, i.e. that this hypothetical belief already, a prior, has nonexistent value)—but if we step away from the world, away from context, then there are no others to choose, are there? If atheism in its most basic form is the non-avowal of any supranatural thing, then religion in its most basic form would just be the avowal of some supranatural thing; that thing doesn't necessarily need to intervene even. It could be non-interventionist. It doesn't even need to espouse a positive (as in active) mode of thought or teaching. The basic form of atheism doesn't. And so, disassociated from historical dialectics, Christian apologetics, Western imperialisms, etc.... it's hard to see how this assent would definitionally be bad.

The avowal of any spiritual claim requires faith by virtue of its lack of substantiation, faith being inherently suppressive to free thought.

That's why "is religion good" or "is religion bad" is a distracting question that plays into hegemonies. My point that secularism and atheism as sociomaterial discourses reflect and refract Protestantism and Christian apologetics is not to say "therefore religion in society in every iteration is always and forever better than atheism in society in every iteration." Rather I would say "they are, in their sructuring, of a piece with each other." If one can exhibit a problem, the other can also exhibit that problem.

There are incredible flaws in modern secularism. But atheism still lacks the basic aspect of the required belief in the unsubstantiated claim.

There are second-generation and third-generation atheists now. Would you say that them being born and simply not interacting with religion means they have consciously rejected belief? In your analogy of the desert island, the man on the island is still an atheist, without consciously rejecting any deity. That proves enough that atheism does not have a claim baked in - it's just the default state of a person when they are born, lacking any and all spiritual claims.

If I may push back using an example from the history of religion: there were, in the mid to late 1800s, second-generation and third-generation Mormons for the first time, many born in the Intermountain West distant from the rest of the United States. Would one say that this new generation of Mormons being born and simply not interacting with Protestantism means Mormonism was not influenced by, not pervaded by, the historical discourse of Christiainity? Even without conscious rejection, the actions those born-into-Mormonism Mormons took, and the actions we (whatever our inclination) take today, are connected to longer and wider discourses.

The problem is that people aren't born Mormon. Atheism is a person's natural state - joining a religion requires a conscious choice, either by the believer, or their parents, or the prophet, or priests. Mormonism, by its nature, is colored by previous traditions, and the rejection of other traditions is passed down by virtue of the belief in contradictory traditions, i.e. you must not be Buddhist to be part of the LDS, because their traditions do not coexist. Atheism is not that way - it has no tradition or custom required for the atheist identity.