Atheism/agnosticism as an ethnic religion or Ethnoreligious group

[walmart]

Anyway you could have Atheism/Agnosticism as an ethnic religion or ethnoreligious group. Something similar to what Catholicism is to Poles or Croats or like Orthodox is to Greeks or Russians.

Something like true X are Atheists/Agnosticism or all atheists/agnostics in this region are regards as members of same ethnicity distant from members of religion etc...

 

[Arkenfolm]

Some anti-religious communist regime attempts to also abolish ethnic distinctions in their land, similar to how tens of thousands of people to this day consider themselves "Yugoslavs" or "Soviets". Irreligion could be a key part of that identity.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

And yet I think to make it seem an ethnic identity, surely you’d need an earlier pod- perhaps something like a revolutionary France type thing with their waves of nationalism and irréligion taking root as a key part of the French identity.

 

[Lalli]

First France Republic decide conquer whole world and turn that as atheist and French.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

First France Republic decide conquer whole world and turn that as atheist and French.

Even over 200 years it probably wouldn't be able to get rid of religion entirely.

 

[SpaceOrbisGaming]

Anyway you could have Atheism/Agnosticism as an ethnic religion or ethnoreligious group. Something similar to what Catholicism is to Poles or Croats or like Orthodox is to Greeks or Russians.

Something like true X are Atheists/Agnosticism or all atheists/agnostics in this region are regards as members of same ethnicity distant from members of religion etc...

The only thing I find wrong with this post is that Atheism isn't a religion/faith in any sense of the word. So the very idea makes no real sense. But having it as a small group in a nation is fine. In that case, I would guess they would live together in atheist communities and try to live their life just without the idea that he/she is going to burn in some place in the next 60+ years because he didn't live in some kind of way.

 

[Flashman]

Have some proto-Scientific anciemt philosopher emerge who emphasizes 'rationality', the proto-scientific method and discovery enough that its able to serve as something of a creed. He gains enough followers that they form a community, preferably galvanized by struggle. Greece, Persia, China or India seem like your best bets.

 

[Arkenfolm]

The only thing I find wrong with this post is that Atheism isn't a religion/faith in any sense of the word. So the very idea makes no real sense. But having it as a small group in a nation is fine. In that case, I would guess they would live together in atheist communities and try to live their life just without the idea that he/she is going to burn in some place in the next 60+ years because he didn't live in some kind of way.

If atheism isn't a religion, then it's certainly a philosophy. Anyone who doesn't believe in religion probably has reasons for it, and to form a proper ethnoreligious group they'd need a shared reason/philosophy behind it. In the past few centuries in the Western world, it would be based on rationalism and likely adherence to ideas found in Revolutionary France, the USSR, and Mexico under Plutarco Elías Calles. Odds are to form a true ethnoreligious group, the state which produced them (i.e. the USSR, Revolutionary France, etc.) needs to have fallen, but they still identify with that state rather than its successors.

 

[Rridgway]

Would Buddhism count?

 

[SpaceOrbisGaming]

If atheism isn't a religion, then it's certainly a philosophy. Anyone who doesn't believe in religion probably has reasons for it, and to form a proper ethnoreligious group they'd need a shared reason/philosophy behind it. In the past few centuries in the Western world, it would be based on rationalism and likely adherence to ideas found in Revolutionary France, the USSR, and Mexico under Plutarco Elías Calles. Odds are to form a true ethnoreligious group, the state which produced them (i.e. the USSR, Revolutionary France, etc.) needs to have fallen, but they still identify with that state rather than its successors.

True I would also place it as a philosophy and one that IHO is a very good one. I, however, don't know really know how being an atheist or something like it would tie a group together as one atheist vs another could hold views that are at odds.

 

[Pempelune]

True I would also place it as a philosophy and one that IHO is a very good one. I, however, don't know really know how being an atheist or something like it would tie a group together as one atheist vs another could hold views that are at odds.

Revolutionary France could sidestep that problem quite nicely with the Cult of Reason: basically an explicitly atheist religion.
Still, I can't quite imagine what sequence of events would be necessary to turn the Eldest Daughter of the Church to the Cult of Reason, Robespierre certainly did not come close to succeeding IOTL.

 

[Arkenfolm]

True I would also place it as a philosophy and one that IHO is a very good one. I, however, don't know really know how being an atheist or something like it would tie a group together as one atheist vs another could hold views that are at odds.

That's why you basically need a "secular religion" to fill that gap, like the French Cult of Reason, the later Positivist Church of Humanity, Soviet God-Building, etc, although arguably a group of atheists united under a philosophy like communism seeking to restore what has been lost (i.e. Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.), might be able to get around the differences in their atheism (which would be more anticlericalist in nature than anything else) to make a singular ethnic group. In that sense, their utter rejection of religion would just be part of their identity (in contrast to, say, a Catholic Croat or an Orthodox Ukrainian or even a Muslim Tatar), since other parts would be centered around idealised memories of how great those states were, villifying the people who led to their fall, and seeking their restoration.

This needn't just be communist nostalgia either, since a different Revolutionary Period in Europe could produce something similar. Imagine some communities of French following the Church of Reason (or even rejecting it in favour of some sort of atheism/agnosticism), continuing to use decimal time and the Revolutionary Calendar, and advocating for a Second Revolution in the 19th century.

 

[walmart]

The only thing I find wrong with this post is that Atheism isn't a religion/faith in any sense of the word.

yes but It was the best word to use in this context.

 

[Veiovis]

You can have an atheistic ethno-religion,but you cannot have atheism as such be that,because its too narrow and purely negative,meaning defined purely about what it is not,while communities form positive identities,as in what they are.

 

[Hvalrossen]

How would a group who held Atheism as the central tenant in it's belief system, be treated in different points in time and space OTL?

 

[Mort the Reaper]

Well, according to Will Durant, some pygmy tribes in Africa were essentially atheists.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

Would Buddhism count?

Buddism is not atheistic; theres plenty of supernaturalism in the beliefs even if there's not a personified deity in the strictist sense.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Anyway you could have Atheism/Agnosticism as an ethnic religion or ethnoreligious group. Something similar to what Catholicism is to Poles or Croats or like Orthodox is to Greeks or Russians.

TBH I think that's impossible. A disbelief in something lacks sufficient positive content to form a basis for nation-building.

You could probably get a group with a classical-style civic religion, where participation, rather than actual belief, is considered the most important part of the religion. You could probably also get a group where the majority of people didn't actually believe in the religion but participated anyway because "I'm an X-ian, of course I'm a member of the Cult of X-ianism!" But an explicitly atheistic religion would probably be a step too far.

 

[Thisisnotausername]

TBH I think that's impossible. A disbelief in something lacks sufficient positive content to form a basis for nation-building.

I think you could manage it. Consider Czechia and Slovakia. Per Pew, about 72% of Czechs are irreligious, atheists, or "nothing in particular," while per the last census, about 75% of Slovaks identify as some form of Christian. Czechoslovakia broke apart for other reasons, but it does suggest you could have some nation where parts are primarily, say, Catholic, and parts are mostly irreligious, and if this maps to other cultural differences, especially ones informed or influenced by religion (perhaps the Catholic part has managed to impose bans on contraception or abortion, which clash with the irreligious part's more liberal attitudes towards such things), then you could see nation-building for the irreligious part be at least partly on the basis that "we are liberal and open and enlightened, unlike those Bible-thumping country bumpkins in the other half of the country, and we should go our separate ways." And so you could see that country split into two countries, one of which has a national identity at least partially defined by atheism or irreligion.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

I think you could manage it. Consider Czechia and Slovakia. Per Pew, about 72% of Czechs are irreligious, atheists, or "nothing in particular," while per the last census, about 75% of Slovaks identify as some form of Christian. Czechoslovakia broke apart for other reasons, but it does suggest you could have some nation where parts are primarily, say, Catholic, and parts are mostly irreligious, and if this maps to other cultural differences, especially ones informed or influenced by religion (perhaps the Catholic part has managed to impose bans on contraception or abortion, which clash with the irreligious part's more liberal attitudes towards such things), then you could see nation-building for the irreligious part be at least partly on the basis that "we are liberal and open and enlightened, unlike those Bible-thumping country bumpkins in the other half of the country, and we should go our separate ways." And so you could see that country split into two countries, one of which has a national identity at least partially defined by atheism or irreligion.

Question: would this group be accepting of liberal, open minded, and elightened followers of a religion as part of their self identified national group? If so, than it's a Civic Nationalism/Set of Shared values that aren't intrisacly tied to Athiesm, which can be followed by people of broad philosophical stripes. Stalinist Communism is Athiestic, after all, and so is Annian Libertarianism, but they have two wildly diverging ideas on how one should live life.

It suppose you could say Athiesm has Sects just as much as religions do, so it's as hard to build an identity on broad Agnostism as it is to build one on broad Abrahamic Theology. There's not enough common doctrine to make the other people who follow it act and think enough like you to identify them as your kin