Talk:Apatheism

Doesn't sound very apathetic

The very last sentence of this article reads: "The premise for Apatheism is not that, if real, God would not be very important, but rather that since it is an absurd superstition, it is without essential import other than as a political and social reality." That sounds more like a strong opinion (God is a silly superstition) than apathy (a lack of care one way or another regarding whether God is a superstition or not) and doesn't seem to gel with the rest of the article. Edris Qarghah 17:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'm going to remove this sentence as uncited and possibly non-NPOV. Doctormatt 18:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

agreed i hope its gone --Gu3Miles (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

old comment

Many people have come up with "apatheism" independently, years before Mr. Rauch wrote his article. John Cooper, who wrote the Church Of Apatheism web page, came up with the word years before he wrote the page in August 2000. A glossary of secular terms on another site <http://www.eclipse.co.uk/thoughts/glossary.htm> may have added "apatheism" as early as 1998. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.156.167.110 (talk) 05:06, January 25, 2005 (UTC)

"no clear basis for this page is evident"

The article says:

There is also a web page with the title "The Church of Apatheism," but no clear basis for this page is evident.

What does the phrase "but no clear basis for this page is evident" mean? Does it mean "there is no evidence that such a church actually exists"? -- samuel katinsky (137.111.13.34) 09:20, March 16, 2005 (UTC)

Apathyism—contrast to Apatheism

Apathyism is a neologism and oxymoron meaning "The belief system based on a general uncaring attitude." I set up a Wikipedia page based on this defininition and preserved the old Apatheism page there just as I had found it. A more experienced Wikipedian decided to change Apathyism into a redirect to Apatheism, thus losing the preserved page. The way I read the Rauch article he was using Apatheism to mean a specific uncaring attitude about belief structures, which is far from Apathyism.

I'm a NUG Wikipedian. Since the new stub was not acceptable, I will include the discussion of of the difference between Apatheism and Apathyism with in the current article. I will do this as soon as I can learn enough to do it properly, i.e. table of contents, headers, indenting, etc.

In a phrase, "Remeber that Apatheism is not for the apathetic."

DrBobStirling 17:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Replied on user's Talk page. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 18:21, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I restored some of the content you removed and altered some of your additions. You've limited the scope of apatheism to "judging actions", thereby reducing a broad set of beliefs about metaphysics in general into one solely about morality. Also, I disagre with the claim that all apatheists come to the conclusion that a belief in gods is irrelevant as a consequence of the belief that the existence of gods is unprovable. I have therefore refactored your additions against the previous contents of the article to restore a more accurate representation of what, I at least, understand apatheism to be. Kelly Martin 20:30, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I added the second link to the Rauch article, because the Atlantic Monthly site would not allow me to access the article without a paid subscription. "Let it be" is reprinted at the seminary site with Mr. Rauch's permission and in a format most users can easily access.

DrBobStirling 01:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How much apathy is required to be an apatheist?

I have been an Apatheist for many years, well before I saw the word in print. I was raised an evangellical Christian, with a tolerant or apatheistic bias. I have been at many points on the scale of theisms, including a long stay at agnosticism. I am currently a practicing Roman Catholic. Throughout it all I have been and am still an Apatheist. This "attitude best described as 'apatheism'" in Mr. Rauch's words has served me well. It has kept me open to other ways of seeing the universe. However Apatheism is not intrinsically tied to, or "contrapositive to" any theistic stand.

If you wish to view the continuum of theistic belief from the far left of Atheism (100% disbelief in the existence of God) to the far right of any theism (100% belief in God), with the Agnostic position (0%) squarely in the middle. Apatheism is not on this scale at all. It would be 90 degrees to the theism axis and delimits a two dimensional plane for describing a person's position.

It is the Dominance vs. Submissive scale. At the top is the belief that I am 100% correct in my belief and you should believe the same way also. At the bottom is the belief that there is some 100% correct belief and I'm trying hard to find it and submit to it. Apatheism is the assertive middle position. The attitude that I have found my spot on the theism scale, and I will not submit to any attempt to dominate me away from that position, nor will I attempt to dominate you away from your position.

Mr Rauch, an atheist and an apatheist, supports this position when he writes, "And Agnostics? True most of them are apatheists, but most apatheists are not agnostics. Because--and this is an essential point--most apatheists are believers.", in the May 2003 Atlantic Monthly.

Mr. John Cooper also at least implies this relationship when he writes, "There is a common misconception that Apatheists don't care about anything. Apatheists might be interested - fascinated even - in all sorts of other questions of life and existence. General apathy is not necessarily an Apatheistic trait, but it admittedly provides a springboard for the 'leap of indifference'.", on his "The Church of Apatheism" web page.

This is one of the points I was trying to make with the "Apatheism vs. Apathyism" comment. Apatheism is an attitude about theisms, not a stand on the theistic scale.

I will attempt to cast this in a "neutral point of view" and expand the Apatheism stub to include this and the currently expressed point of view, but not until later. As a NUG I still have a lot of formatting to learn, but quoting from the earlier works of the Govenator of California, "I'll be back."

DrBobStirling 03:13, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

N/A-ism

This is really interesting for me. Till this very day I had never heard of Apatheism, but I’ve been one for many years now. My friends call me an N/A-ist. It started when in some application, asking for my religion, I wrote “N/A”. Having to explain about why I would write “n/a” as oppose to “no religion” or “atheist” or etc. I explained how existence and non-existence of god(s) is an irrelevant subject and how labels like religion are meaningless and hence not-applicable. This was almost yars ago. From then on, I was an N/A-ist!

To me n/a-ism is a state of mind. You can always be one, even if you convert from a believer to a non-believer and vice versa. I used to be borderline agnostic/atheist n/a-ist. More and more I’m leaning towards atheism, but I’m still an n/a-ist.

I especially liked the analogy given by DrBob – the xy plane analogy. --LogiPhi 06:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

A thanks, and a Clarification

As one of the first people to expand on this page, it's good to come back a year or two later and see it to have grown so well. Thanks to everyone helping in elucidating this somewhat tricky theological perception. However, Apatheism has nothing to do with proving, disproving, or having anything to say about Religion. Do not be confused, an Apatheist is only stating that the existance or lack of existance of God, aka: a being of infinite or greater ablity in one or more areas, is a qustion that is not one which can have any merit. Religion is still considered valid for many valid and profound reasons from: a persons desire to explore their own spirtuality, to a means of keeping those with less questioning minds from becoming a weight on society. Apatheism, in short, is apathetic to God and makes no claims on anything else. CSO (68.211.49.246) 02:10, September 27, 2005 (UTC)

merge

Just having been used by a columnist once, and appearing on a couple of internet pages doesn't make it a respectable term. The concept can easily be merged with either Apathetic agnosticism or Ignosticism. Or else, if discussion of the coinage of the term itself (apart from the concept it wishes to express) is deemed important enough, make it about the website explicitly. But I doubt that "apatheism.net" as a website passes our notability threshold. As a neologism, it could also be exported to wictionary. As far as I'm concerned, Apathetic agnosticism and Ignosticism can also be merged, since not caring about the question and not caring about the answer for most purposes seems to be pretty much the same. Come on, people, this is stub-creep, what's the use of spreading a discussion about a single topic over so many independent "articles"? dab (ᛏ) 11:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The merge notice has been on this page since last November, so I think it's OK for me to suggest an alternative. If I'm reading the articles correctly, Ignosticism and Apatheism are distinct: the former says that the question, "Does God exist?" is philosophically meaningless and should therefore be ignored. The latter says that the question can be meaningfully asked, but the answer is unimportant as a practical matter and therefore a waste of time. The ignostic rejects the notion of God as incoherent; the apatheist says, "I understand what you mean when you're talking about God, but I don't care whether that idea represents something real or not."

However, apathetic agnosticism does seem very close to apatheism, and a merge between these two might be more successful. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ambiguous definition

The article describes apatheism as "the position that God may exist but is of no real importance to one's daily life". However, "one" in "one's daily life" could refer the holder of the belief or people in general.

In other words, this description could mean either: a. the existence of god is of no importance to the believer b. the existance of god is of no importance to ANYONE

I follow the first defintion (I don't care about the existence of god), and I have labeled myself as an apatheist for quite a long time now. Viltris 09:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Subtle Difference

"Daily life" is different than life altogether. An apatheist could be saying that while ze believes in a god, and it plays no real importance in day to day life, it still may determine hir afterlife, lack thereof, etc.

In other words, "said deity isn't going to help you win the lottery or get an A on your test, but will send you in the right direction when you die." They may come around for the so-called "Apocalypse" or grant a Divine Intervention, but don't really care otherwise. "Day-to-day life" is a minor thing.

An Apatheistic Christian may believe in God, and that Jesus is the son of God, but since then, God's not made much of a difference in humanity. Agnostics say they don't know whether there is a god or not. Ignostics say it doesn't matter whether there is a god or not. Apatheists say they do or they don't believe there is a god, but that doesn't matter. It is a subtle difference, but noticable enough that they should not be merged. -Nie (68.93.80.252) 22:30, June 12, 2006 (UTC)

Major Edit

I have replaced the rhetoric and pejorative "definition" on the article with a neutral definition.

Whether it is possible to be an apatheist is tangential to the definition of the term and is a debate topic that shouldn't be including in a neutral encyclopedia.

It is pejorative to claim that apatheists actually are, secretly, interested in gods and secretly believe in gods. It likens to the oft seen debate by theists that it is allegedly impossible to be an atheist and that those who claim to be atheists really do believe in a god (i.e. the one the theist happens to believe in). This is an offensive statement, just as it is offensive to post materials claiming that apatheists really do believe in gods and are interested in them.

Therefore, the previous material is inappropriate, offensive, and judgmental. The discussion belongs on debate forums, not on an encyclopedia.

An apatheist is a person who lacks belief in gods and who lacks interest in gods. Lacking belief does not meant the same thing as believing gods do not exist. I believe that the general usage of this term requires stating that the person lacks belief in gods, and is, therefore, a weak atheist. Having an active belief in gods contradicts lacking interest in gods, I believe.

I would agree to an edit that inserted the caveat that some apatheists do not consider themselves to be atheists. But, since many people misuse the term "atheist" in the more restrictive "positive atheist" sense, rather than its more proper broader sense of being "a person who lacks belief in god". However, I think have already covered that in my definition. KeithStump

This page is a joke —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.244.119.20 (talk) 00:08, October 23, 2006 (UTC)

It is. Just because Austin Cline (a non-reliable source) defined it on his about.com blog does not make it a notable term (I've had troubles with the guy, in far too many instances have I met people who were misinformed on the terminology of certain things, which was traced back to him several times, end of tangent). "Apatheism" is just ignosticism with a catchy title. I am not in a wiki-experienced enough position to suggest this article be deleted, or merged, but do something.GravityExNihilo 07:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem with apatheists is that they just dont care... Emoscopes ^Talk 02:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Viable Neologism

The term was used by a notable author Jonathan Rauch in a respected and notable publication The Atlantic Monthly. It has also been used by other authors. It seems to have a relatively unique meaning. It is not a word or concept to be deleted. Richard Dates 21:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

How do you say, "I don't care"

This apatheism is far too philosophical. So what do you call someone who simply does not care whether there is a god.

If you ask a theist, "Does god exist?", he answers "yes". If you ask an atheist, he says "No". If you ask an agnostic, he says, "We can't possibly know?" But if you ask a whatever you call it, he answers, "Look what I got on sale at the mall today." Of course there are people (very much the opposite of agnostics) who answer, "I haven't figure it out yet." So what do you call them? [Note: My sister is a devout whogivesafigist. I'm the serious one. I'm an atheist.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.41.0.50 (talk) 03:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought I was an apatheist, but after reading all this I don't want to think about it and I don't care one way or the other, so I guess I'm not one after all.Atomota (talk) 02:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

gnostic -lysdexia 09:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

American Dialect Society Definition

I first encountered this word here: "apatheist, someone believing that God or gods exist but are not of any use (7)." http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/2003/01/ I would have thought they cared enough to get it "right" . . . any idea where they might have come up with that definition? It seems to clearly differentiate the "Apatheist" from the actual atheist, whereas this article does the opposite.

One more Apatheism

3 years ago I tried to describe my own beliefs and came up with: One must live ones life as if God's existence is irrelevant.

I tried to come up with a name for this and settled on: Apatheism: a combination of apathy and theism

After searching this term, I quickly realized that others had come up with this term years before I had, and with slightly different meanings.

With my definition that I applied to this term, whether it's: apathy and theism, apathy and atheism, apathy and agnostic (doesn't quite work on the combination) is really irrelevant because the belief in God is irrelevant, which fits any of these combinations. Personally I believe in a universal God, but not in any involvement of God in human affairs. I disagree with the comment that Apatheism is lack of belief in deities. Rather, I see it as the existence of god/gods is not meaningful for how we live our lives.

As far as being apathetic about everything, I see Apatheism as a dedication to defining our existence without reverting to some religious doctrine. It focuses the responsibility on the individual to redefine religious topics: good and evil, uses of power, etc. Some atheists may view this as the definition of atheism. My impression has been that a major focus of atheism is on the non-existence of God as opposed to how our live should be lived without a divine interpretation.

So much of this was stated in earlier discussions (I also like DrBob – the xy plane analogy), but people keep trying to force Apatheism into a religious belief which it is not.

Deloi 17:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

- I'm pretty much of the same view. And since this is really apathetic Agnostic-Deism or apathetic-deism, I['ve taken to calling it "ApaDeism".---Iconoclastithon (talk) 19:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

ApaDeism

Apathetic theism or for that matter apathetic agnostic-theism is actually more a form of "Deism" is it not? I have found many Apatheists are of the same view as the poster above me. I am in agreement with her/him. I am Agnostic leaning towards Deism, but find the deistic god practially, emotionally, morally irrelevent. I know many will say, "oh but deism is a form of theism", but it really isn't. Deism is a belief category all it's own, it's not a form of Theism, Agnosticism, or Atheism{as it's detractors often claim whether the detractors are theisst or atheists}, it is a category all it's own and in a sense combies all the best aspects of Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism, but is yet distict.

That beeing said. If someone is like myself and "suspects" there is a deistic prime mover/first cause based on rational arguments and the evidence and not contrary to it, yet feels no emtoional atatchment to said creator force and sees it's existence as "practically, morally, emotionally" irrelevent, and only relevent in terms of philosophy{if that much} than this artcile suggests that they are "Apatheists", but as I said, deism not beeing a subset of theism{at least anymore} would not "ApaDeist/Apadeism" be more accurate? Perhaps as a secondary subset of Apatheism in the apathetic agnostic sense, and as de-fault atheism. I know this sounds very convuluted and complex, but it really is a matter of intelelctual honesty and term correctness IMO, which is why I am expressing the idea. This pretty much describes me, however I am also simultaneously an Anti-theist{opposed to theism, faith, and religion- at least revealed religions anyhow}-and I have noticed this actually where alot of alledged, so-called, and self-professed "Apatheists" stand as well. So, I wonder if my suggestion should be taken seriously by the Raionalist community at large and perhaps discussed amongst us all and amongst so-called "Apatheists". Actually, perhaps it could be seen that "Apatheism" is apathetic agnostic atheism and "ApaDeism" is apathetic agnostic-deism{not theism}. Thoughts?--Iconoclastithon (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Learn how to spell. -lysdexia 09:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Apatheist userbox

{{User:TechBear/Apatheist}}

This user is an apatheist and believes there are more important things to worry about than whether or not God exists.

Just wanted to share. If you have any suggestions, please visit my talk page. TechBear 23:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

whether or not = whether or not whether -lysdexia 09:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

"Gods" in general rather than "God"

I changed the first two occurances of God to gods on the basis that atheism isn't necessarily specific to a particular god (ie: not limited to disbelief in Yahweh or whatever one wishes to call him). If this definition isn't actually carried across to apatheism then feel free to change it back. Antisora 10:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 03:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

redirect from apathetic agnosticism

why does apathetic agnosticism redirect to this page? it's not the same. -76.27.231.192 (talk) 14:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

What happened to the article about the UCTAA???

It redirects HERE, instead. What the heck is Wikipedia 'pruning' my (lack of) religion for? Is it the editorial opinion of Wikipedia that the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic is NOTHING except a description of this fashionable 'apatheism' neologism? Should Wikipedia similarly redirect Baptist and Methodist and Christian Science and Mormon and Catholic (and the other thousands of sects) to a single generic 'Christian' article? Hey, maybe then we can just redirect Islam and Hinduism and Christianity and the other top-level religions and all their subspecies into one generic 'Religion' topic. That'll save some space. This pruning and redirecting of topics is turning into a black hole that's devouring content at a frightful rate. Soon Wikipedia will be nothing but redirections to redirections. Like opening up the phone book to look for 'Clothing' and finding 'See Apparel', then going to 'Apparel' and seeing 'See Clothing'. I mean, sure the phone book is a lot thinner for not having to have any actual listings at all, but it's kind of useless as well. There's probably a name for such an information collapse, or maybe one needs to be coined. Storage is CHEAP, people! Quit pruning content! It's not as if you're going to print an affordable paper encyclopedia from this. Sorry about the rant. Pingnak (talk) 05:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't discover any evidence that the article existed, except for Uctaa, but probably it didn't meet the "Notability" and "Third-party reputable sources" guidelines (unlike Catholicism...). AnonMoos (talk) 01:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

There used to be more content here about 'Apathetic Agnosticism', and now there's not.

I mean, is this 'apagnostic' neologism really all that notable or reputable, or has some individual run with his favorite word and tried to index it into existence?

All in all, Google seems to do a better job when you want to find out about something than Wikipedia.

9 hits for 'apagnostic'

7030 hits for 'apathetic agnostic' in the greater web.

What's happened is someone has chosen a made-up word, like 'Frooblicious' and started redirecting Wikipedia links and articles to it.

Pingnak (talk) 06:56, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The article was subject to an articles for deletion (AfD) discussion and the result was to redirect here. You can see the debate and reasoning here. The original article is still in the old page history (see [1]) which you could try and make into an article that will meet the concerns of the debate and meet Wikipedia's requirements (esp WP:ORG)—perhaps at Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic. -- SiobhanHansa 15:44, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Sub-class of Atheism?

Couldn't this reasonably be linked to atheism? Since atheism is not selectively a belief that there is no god, it is also an absence of a belief in a god; simply put, anyone who does not actually have a belief in a god is an atheist.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atheism#English atheism (plural atheisms)

  1. Absence of, or rejection of, belief in the existence of God or gods.

apatheism (uncountable)

  1. Apathy towards the existence of a god; belief that the question of the existence of a god is unimportant.

Apatheism seems to essentially be a lack of belief, or reason to believe. I'm sure one could easily be an apatheist yet maybe have theistic leanings, but is it not very fundamentally linked to atheism? 98.168.204.179 (talk) 06:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

---

That meaning is in the dictionary, but is somewhat controversial; the proper place to discuss the definition of atheism wouldn probably be Talk:Atheism (which, however, has the following disclaimer: "The definition of atheism has been repeatedly argued on this talk page. The current revision attempts to put forward all definitions without favoring any particular definition."). -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Nontheism, more precisely.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 08:23, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It is indeed a subset of that definition of atheism (which we cover at atheism)—more precisely, I would say it's a subset of implicit atheism. I'm not sure if you are suggesting a change to the article, though? The article mentions atheism numerous times, referring to it as "Practical atheism". Mdwh (talk) 21:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that apatheism is a sub-set of atheism. The comparison I have seen made is:

• Theism - "I believe in God(s)."
• "Weak" atheism - "I do not believe in God(s)."
• "Strong" atheism - "I believe there is/are no God(s)."
• Agnosticism - "I do not know whether to believe in God(s)."
• Apatheism - "I believe I will have another cookie."

The distinction is that atheists are still taking a position, either nonexistence of belief or belief in nonexistence. An apatheist does not address the issue at all, and so does not take any position. TechBear (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It all depends on which of the three definitions are used. Under the broadest "absense of belief" definition, implicit atheists are not taking a position, as opposed to explicit atheists who are taking a position (see atheism). Mdwh (talk) 10:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Apatheism should be viewed as more of an attitude than a certainty or belief. Apatheism generally boils down to not seeing any practical place for one's beliefs in the world. While you might personally observe your beliefs or live according to the values therein, you would have no interest in debating them, justifying them to others, involving them in politics, making everyday decisions based on these beliefs, etc. Say I believe in the existence of a deity. If I have never observed this deity intervening in this world, guiding my actions or decisions, or otherwise influencing this life in any manner what-so-ever, I would fail to see the significance of telling other people their beliefs are wrong, pursuing evangelicalism, attempting to outlaw practices my deity forbids, etc. Regardless of what we create in this mortal life, higher powers obviously don't care enough to drop in and say, "Hey, guys! You're doing it all wrong!" Why, then, do any of us waste our time trying to enforce their doctrines? 70.153.104.235 (talk) 11:08, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

do not -> can not -lysdexia 09:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

New Format

I gave the page a new format and added some material. Please feel free to contribute and suggest new fun stuff. I hope its better. Ideas? Gu3Miles (talk) 00:26, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Krishnadas Kaviraja Goswami described in Chaitanya-charitamrita Adi 6.38:

‘chaitanya-mangala’ shune yadi pashandi, yavana

seha maha-vaishnava haya tatakshana

If even a great atheist hears Shri Chaitanya-mangala (previous name for Shri Chaitanya-bhagavata), he immediately becomes a great devotee.

So all the great atheists which comprise of 99.99% of the world’s population can become maha-vaishnavas if they get the supreme good fortune of reading this book. Thus in my personal opinion, when this book is published and distributed in mass quantities all over the world, it will break open the gates of the flood of the love of Godhead brought by Lord Chaitanya and His associates and will hasten the advent of the predicted Golden Age in all its glory.