Glossary
Many of the words used by the religious are strange to those of us who see no need to propose a god.
We have tried to find reasonable definitions for the words and phrases frequently encountered in relation to religion.
We welcome contributions to this page.
Agnostic
Someone who does not believe in god but who says that the existence of a god can be neither proved nor disproved. Agnostics are a sub-set of atheists. Non-agnostic atheists argue that it is never possible to prove a negative - god does not exist until those who believe in her can prove it.
Apostasy
This means abandoning one's religion.
In some religions, Islam for example, this is punishable by death.
Atheist
A person who does not believe in god. Atheists have no personal need for god, religion or superstition.
We prefer the term "god-free" for what we are - it better defines the positive feeling of freedom when one is not bound by the shackles of religion.
Atheism
There is no such thing as atheism.
There is no single ideology that units atheists and there are good atheists and bad atheists - just as there are good and bad religious people. Apart from non-belief in god, atheists do not necessarily share anything in common. At best, atheism can be defined as "the state of non-belief in god".
Blasphemy
The blasphemy laws make it a crime to "revile", "rail against" or insult the state religion.
Those in power always seek to prevent others from criticising them - hence the use of Anti Terrorism laws against someone daring to call out "nonsense" at the Labour Party Conference!
Those in power (those with land and wealth in the past) have always used religion as a method of maintaining their own status and keeping people in their place.
Once you allow people to mock religion, and to laugh at it, you are on the slippery slope of people beginning to think for themselves, rather than simply doing what their "betters" tell them to do.
Since the C of E is the state religion, we hereby commit blasphemy by reviling and railing against Christianity which is dangerous, ignorant, superstitious nonsense.
The Christian Bible is one of the most violent and disgusting books you could ever hope to read - full of rape, murder and "smiting down" - acts of a vengeful, malevolent and violent god.
So, can we now be arrested for blasphemy please? We demand our day in court! (Ludicrous isn't it?)
Church leader
At the lowest level this is one who leads prayers - a priest or prayer leader.
In some churches this will be a normal member of the congregation who is moved to prayer.
In most religions this is someone appointed by the church hierarchy.
Church hierarchy
Many churches: Catholic, Church of England; have a rigid hierarchy from the lowest priest to the head of the church.
Many churches: Catholic, Church of England; have accumulated enormous wealth - far greater than that of many small countries.
This wealth has been extracted from the members of the church by way of taxes and tythes.
The church hierarchy pays itself from this wealth and acts in a ultra-conservative manner to protect its position.
In many churches, the continuation of the church itself, rather than the interests of its members, becomes the paramount aim of the church hierarchy.
Community leader
Many religions, Islam for example, do not have a rigid hierarchy as does the Church of England or Catholicism for example.
Politicians find it almost impossible to deal with groups of people who do not have a rigid hierarchy so they have invented the concept of "community leader".
A "community leader" is a self-appointed, and totally undemocratic, individual who assumes that he or she has the right to speak on behalf of some ill-defined group.
Evil
Most of us would be happy with the words "bad", "harmful" or simply "wrong".
However, the religious tend to be more melodramatic so "evil" becomes "the work of the devil".
Since their "god" is supposedly a "good" entity we must assume that their "devil" is a "bad" entity.
Fruit-cake
A mildly insulting term used, out of frustration. by non-believers to describe the more extreme forms of the fundamentally religious - most often creationist Christians.
"Fruit-cakes" are devoid of all logic and are verging on insanity.
"Fruit-cakes" are extremely dangerous. They offer a simplistic certainty, a black and white view of the world dictated by their holy book, a view that is unquestioning, intolerant and frequently violent in both its defence and offence.
They control major positions of power and their finger is, quite literally, on the nuclear button. They have the capability of unleashing Armageddon at any time - and, if we are not active in campaigning against them, they will!
God
We have no idea what this is or what it means.
We believe that the religious take it to mean some intangible and unprovable entity which was responsible for the creation of the universe.
After the creation stage, the various ideas about what this god is, and what he/she/it does, are often totally contradictory - and way beyond us.
Logic
The rule-based system which is the foundation of reasoning.
An understanding and respect of logic is essential for any form of intellectual discourse.
All philosophy books cover the basics of logic but here are a few key points.
- A postulate, proposition or hypothesis, is an idea which can be tested. For example: "water always flows downhill" can be tested. An untestable proposition is a frivolous waste of intellectual effort.
- A theory is a descriptive explanation. For example: "gravity is an attractive force between any two bodies which is a function of the combined mass of the two bodies and which varies according to the distance between them." Note: this does not define what "gravity" is, it simply gives a name to the defined force.
- Where two explanations will fit the evidence the simpler one should always been accepted. This rule has been given a name: "Occam's razor".
An example of applied logic would be as follows:
- Proposition: "everything has a cause. The Universe exists so something must have caused it."
- Hypothesis: "there exists a supernatural entity, called god, which caused the Universe."
- Logical criticism: this is illogical because it disobeys the original proposition. If everything has a cause, what caused god?
- Modified hypothesis: "there exists a supernatural entity, called god, which has no cause, no beginning and no end and which caused the Universe."
- Logical criticism: this disobeys Occam's razor since you are now proposing some new, untestable entity while you could apply the same logic to the Universe itself which we can see around us. A simpler, and therefore more acceptable explanation, is that the Universe itself may continuously change its form but it has no beginning and no end.
Hence, no necessity to postulate god - the logical position of the atheist.
Intelligent, sensible, religious people give up at this point and go back to their irrational faith being based on "miracles" or "personal experience of god". (Click here for a criticism of this viewpoint.) The non-sensible variety become the fruit-cakes known as "creationists" who defy all logic - when you have lost the logical argument you may as well go bonkers!
Note: please consult any book on logic or scientific method for the exact definitions of words such as "proposition", "postulate", "theory", "proof", "hypothesis" and "null hypothesis".
Moral
Ask the man in the street about "morals" and the word "sex" springs readily to his lips.
Many religions, particularly Christianity, have always had a very strange attitude to sex. The celibate priests of the Catholic church, the downright perverts of Opus Dei, the attitude of religions to women and to homosexuals, all show the hang-ups that many religious leaders have about sex.
Of course, this does not stop many of them being extremely "immoral" in relation to sex: priests rape young boys and girls, priests have affairs with parishioners and evangelical leaders engage in serial extra-marital affairs.
Boiled done to its essence, "moral" relates to the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.
Of course this begs the question: "what is right and what is wrong?"
For us to get along with one another in society we need agreed rules that clearly define right and wrong. These rules can be drawn up, and embedded in laws, without recourse to religion.
Numinous
"that which is wholly other. The numinous is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that leads in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent."
We love these words - the attempts by the religious to endlessly obscure their beliefs in highly abstract terms in such a way that most people give up with "well, it sounds so clever, and so many people must have thought hard about it, so it must be true!"
Numinous: "in order to clarify the term in layman's language it may be viewed as 'the intense feeling of unknowingly knowing that there is something which cannot be seen.' And this knowing can 'befall' or overcome a person at any time and in any place - in a cathedral; next to a silent stream; on a lonely road; early in the morning or in the face of a beautiful sunset."
Well, as my father used to say: "that's about as clear as ditch water." Or, to quote The Blessed Homer: "Duhh!"
Is this far short of Donald Rumsfeld's "There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns,"
Ofsted
Office for Standards in Education. The government body responsible for inspecting schools.
QCA
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - a government established body.
Religion
This seems to be the most difficult of all words for the religious to define - so we have compulsory "Religious Education" in schools when we cannot agree on the meaning of the word "religion".
Some definitions:
- "A general term used... to designate all concepts concerning the belief in god(s) and goddess(es) as well as other spiritual beings or transcendental ultimate concerns" and "human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
- "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety ..."
- "a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law."
- "both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction."
- "Organised religion generally refers to an organisation of people supporting the exercise of some religion with a prescribed set of beliefs, often taking the form of a legal entity."
One religion tends to label the beliefs of others as "superstition", "delusion", "heresy" or "witchcraft." Their beliefs are "true and right", the others are "false and wrong."
Religion meets a psychological need in some people and is characterised by three things:
- an irrational belief in one or more supernatural creative entities - god or gods;
- an irrational belief in a personal supernatural entity called the "soul";
- an irrational belief in the survival of the soul after death.
Note:
The word "irrational" is not insulting or demeaning in this context, it merely means "in defiance of logic" and untestable.
Ritual
The psychological impact of ritual is very offensive to non-believers. When we talk about "mumbo-jumbo" it is primarily the ludicrous complexity of ritual that we are referring to.
Ritual is a way of doing something. It is the way a church ceremony is carried out. It includes all the elements of that ceremony: the building it is in, the clothes worn by the participants, the symbols surrounding them, the objects they use, the words they speak and the actions they carry out.
Ritual provides a never-changing comfort to many religious people. "This is what should be done, this is the way we do it, this is what we feel comfortable with."
The truth is, ritual changes enormously. Layer upon layer of ritual have evolved over time. The shape of a bishop's hat, and the clothes he wears, are not god-given - they were created by some clerical fashion designer!
Churches and their rituals have deliberately come between ordinary people and their god.
The symbols and acts of ritual enforce the hierarchy of "church". Ordinary mortals kneel before priests ("kneeling before the symbolic representatives of god!"). For two thousand years the Christian church has used ritual to keep people in their place, to take their money and to maintain itself in the style to which it became accustomed.
In the 21st century this same church finds itself saddled with enormous churches that cost a fortune to maintain, with thousands of priests, with a rigid hierarchy and with all the baggage of generations of applied ritual. Now it comes cap-in-hand to the tax-payer asking for money to maintain "our heritage". It is not "our" heritage, it is "their" creation. It is a symbol of the combined power of the church and the wealthy against ordinary people.
Don't get us wrong - we like a good church (in moderation - some of the southern European variety turn our stomachs!) Get religion out of these places and we will gladly pay our taxes to maintain them as important historical buildings and as symbols from which we can all learn.
SACRE
Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education. Every local authority has one. See our page on working with SACREs for more details.
Sin
We assume this to be something that their man-invented god disapproves of - as set down in their man-written books.
"The fear of god" has always been a favourite with some religions. If you don't do what the church says you will be condemned to "hell-fire and brimstone".
That's what we like about the religious, so rational and tolerant.
Soul
The religious tend to bandy about the words "soul" and "spirit" almost interchangeably.
It would seem that this term describes some sort of consciousness totally separate from the body and which lasts beyond death.
We do not accept that there is any conscious experience after death - when you die, you die - end of story.
Spirit
We take great offence at the religious hijacking this term - especially in the "spiritual" form.
We all have "spiritual" experiences, things that can bring us to tears such as the wonders of nature, beautiful pieces of music or wonderfully written novels.
Spiritual experiences are common to all human beings - they do not imply a religious experience not do they imply an abstract entity ("spirit" or "soul") separate from the body.
Theocracy
A state run exclusively according to the rules of religion.
Examples include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, The USA, and, soon, Iraq.
If you do not believe in the religion of the state - you are toast! Simple as that.
Great places for a relaxing holiday these god infested states.
Transcendence
A condition or state of being that surpasses physical existence, and in one form is also independent of it.
This "something above and beyond the physical" is, for the religious, god. Their "souls" may also be transcendent - though non-believers would argue that the concept of "soul" is meaningless and unhelpful - "the youness of you" is simply your consciousness that results from the activity of your living brain.
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