Apatheism

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Apatheism (a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic or critically as practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief, or lack of belief in a deity. Apatheism describes the manner of acting towards a belief or lack of a belief in a deity; so applies to both theism and atheism. An apatheist is also someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life; nor perhaps to human affairs.

The eighteenth century French philosopher Denis Diderot, when accused of being an atheist, replied that he simply did not care whether God existed or not. In response to Voltaire, he wrote,

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

Jonathan Rauch described apatheism as "a disinclination to care all that much about one's own religion and even a stronger disinclination to care about other people's".

See also

• Nontheism
• Indifferentism
• God in Buddhism

References

External links

• Apatheism, Allognosticism, and the American Religious Landscape.
• The Church of Apatheism, a web page first published in August 2000 which also uses the terms “apatheism” and “apatheist”
• Apatheism defined on Atheism.about.com
• "Let It Be: Three Cheers for Apatheism" by Jonathan Rauch Atlantic May 2003
• ABC New Radio:wordwatch, Apatheism
• Apathetic Agnostics

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 06:36:44 PDT (GMT -0700)
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