this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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As an atheist, I’d personally argue that a lack of belief in certain things constitutes a system of beliefs still, and that there are multiple sects of atheism with differing beliefs. For example, there’s New Atheism, which seems to be what’s on display here, and which I certainly hope I’ve managed to rid myself of.
Trying to connect someone to Richard Dawkins because they espoused a preference against theocracy is embarrassing.
Dawkins is certainly a prominent new atheist but the parallel I see is not with him specifically but the belief that atheism must be evangelized.
When they espouse that preference in a way completely indistinguishable from reddit atheism it's hard not to make that connection
I'm not being intentionally difficult or pedantic when I ask this: how can the lack of belief be the same as belief?
Being insufferable isn't a separate sect of non belief
In a vacuum you're right, but the dialectical way of analyzing things is the opposite of just evaluating them on face value as if they existed in a vacuum. If you take a country that's been through hell and back because of colonialism, who has been subject to a western collaborating fascist regime under the Shah, and were brought out of that period of nihilistic, proto-liberal subjugation by the Islamic Revolution, the negation of Islam must necessarily be a historical force that is similarly positive and brings a distinct form. The purely negative aspect of irreligiosity can't be a force of history by itself, it only becomes one when combined with some other positive agenda in the context of Iranian society.
Now if I had to guess why a lot of us are viscerally skeptical and critical of such a thing is that atheism in West Asia is almost always associated to the West now that communism is much weaker in the region. Arab nationalism (obviously a bit outside of the Iranian context now) can be secular but it is very different from the form of Western-style atheism that sets Islam as its target.
Trying to have a discussion removed from the context of the thread was a bit silly, that's on me.
I don't claim to have any informed opinion on religion in Iran or basically any country and will shut the fuck up
I’m not taking it that way!
I assume we agree that in general, a belief is defined as “an acceptance that a statement is true” and while on the surface atheism seems to be nearly the opposite - a claim that many statements are false - we can we can easily reword any such claim to instead be an acceptance of truth. I believe that it’s true that there is no higher power and that when I die there is no aspect of my own consciousness which will continue to exist.
There are additional beliefs that some atheists hold which make them insufferable, like the belief that atheism must be evangelized.
This can be used to make anything into a belief system, then.
I believe there are no invisible unicorns in the room with me right now.
In no way am i trying to say that people who happen to believe the invisible unicorns are wrong or bad in any way. Does that mean that my belief system is defined by this lack of belief?
Yes, it can and does. I don’t think any single belief defines a person’s belief system, but each individual belief is a contribution to it.
Your belief that there are no invisible unicorns (or at least none that are with you right now) doesn’t simultaneously require you to also believe that people who do believe in them are bad, though I wouldn’t say the same about believing that they’re wrong (unless we’re truly applying the “in the room with you right now” qualifier and they’re in a different room than you are or time has progressed).
I can't fundamentally agree that non-belief is the same as belief.
I don't think "i do not believe in invisible unicorns" is making a positive claim even if you change the grammar around. If someone had evidence that supported the idea of invisible unicorns and i discounted that evidence, that would be an assertion on my part.
I don’t think I’m saying that belief and non-belief in a given thing are the same - fundamentally they are opposites, but both are things that someone arrives at through a collection of beliefs that form their belief system.
I guess you could say these things are unified by their internal oppositions - like some kind of unity of opposites.
I think I agree, but I also feel like you’re saying something that’s going over my head.
The unity of opposites is a basic law of materialist dialectics. Mao's On Contradiction is helpful for understanding how this works: a thing can not exist without its dialectical opposite and is also defined by its dialectical opposite.
A missile knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't.