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I'm interested in this, Richard. Note that you're going to have to keep your explanation pretty simple for me. I didn't finish High School, so though I've learned a lot through reading since then, I don't have the language for discussing it that a lot of you do. Having said which - I would have thought in many instances atheism could well be an effect of religion, if you've been born into and strongly corralled by a religion and then found it wanting. I've known people - I grew up with people - who were raised in a strict form of Christianity. As they grew older, quite a few of them (particularly gay kids and those who loved them, but also some women who found the views on women restrictive) responded by examining, investigating, trying on other religions - and then ultimately turning away from the entire idea of religion and greater beings.
Without that early experience of religion, I would have thought most of them would have been agnostic. Most of my never-had-religion friends are proudly and cheerfully agnostic. I've always assumed agnosticism is the natural position for humans. We usually start from a position of not being sure either way and then - when the possibility of a concept arises - we search, we investigate, we test it. If it's natural for us to do that with everything else around us (hence science) - why wouldn't it be natural to do that about god as well? And if it is, then doesn't that mean that our natural state is agnositicism, and doesn't that mean that it's likely that atheism is more likely to spring from contact or knowledge or study of religion than from a lack of awareness of it?
I told you my frames of reference for high level discussion were pretty low level. Is it clear what I'm saying at all? We can take it to PM if you think I'm just fogging things up.
Not fogging things up at all. There is one subtle element in atheism that can be hard to communicate. It is that, to many atheists, religion and its concerns are irrelevant. Barring the occasional argument with theists and prevalent cultural aspects (like holidays), and worry about government support, religious matters simply do not apply in their/our lives.
Even someone for someone like me who studies religions and religious history and uses practices from various religious sources. I do not regard religious questions as part of how I deal with life and other people or how I see the universe.
Atheism is a life lived without concern for or regard for the theistic. One can argue that this is agnosticism, because it is not a claim to know one way or the other, but agnosticism carries with it an implicit caring about the subject matter. I simply don't care. The closest I've come to caring is creating different fictional universes, some theistic, some atheistic, some fuzzy. Those universes matter to me as worlds for my stories and games.
I know that I can create theist and atheist universes that match this one in appearance and detail. But I don't regard that as a matter of concern, except from the perspective of a fiction writer.
This, as I said, is hard to communicate. To many theists, theism is a vital matter, breath and blood and life to them. To me, it's just more subject matter for fiction. It is not part of my real life thought and action.
Does that help?