Scepticism, by the general philosophical definition, is the point of view that confronts every philosophical thesis (often, even the non-philosophical) with rational thought and doubtful criticism. The word derives from the Greek verb sképtomè = to think or to think about, whose action causes thinking and thought (based on logic, at least at the advanced level) which, in the context of scepticism, is aimed toward criticism and dispute. Finally, scepticism concludes with the acceptance or rejection of a position and also leads to the classification and separation of different positions. The process of thinking, logic, comprehension and consciousness represents the greatest difference between human beings and animals and it is the greatest power for creating civilisation. We could even contend that animals possess consciousness to some degree, depending on their species. However, they do not have the ability to reflect on their thinking, which is “the consciousness of the consciousness” and which only humans possess. All these processes make up the more general system of logic, written or unwritten, without the common acceptance of which no communication, collaboration, science, technology, progress or criticism of our acts is possible.

Here we do not write a philosophical paper. After all, there are plenty of philosophical papers on scepticism that any interested person can find and study. Here, we examine scepticism under the following commonly accepted but (much) narrower definition of religious scepticism (to which some simple dictionaries refer). We consider religious scepticism as the point of view that confronts every organised religion and/or world-view in order to rationally dispute and/or put into doubt its correctness; its value; the ethics that it imposes; the role that it plays in life, society, happiness of humankind and the general development of civilisation. More concretely, we will make a conceptual analysis of this kind of scepticism at its final three stages, which are: theism (or deism), agnosticism and atheism. We will not spend any time with the various intermediate or primitive stages of scepticism with which all humans, more or less, come into contact or experience during various periods of their lives. These three stages of scepticism conclude, at least for most thinkers, with the immediate rejection of every organised religion and the three stages adopt world-views that are strongly opposed to the religious convictions and world-views of the religious people, fundamentalists or the pious. Ultimately, they have to dismiss such views. For this reason, the followers of organised religions throughout history have fought these three stages with tooth and nail. These stages admit and/or create a new and a different approach to life and they promote a new philosophical and creative stance for society and civilisation. They also create a new confrontation of the metaphysical questions, beliefs and doctrines that have tortured people for ages and continue to torture them. That is, they introduce a world-view and attitude that promotes creativity in life and the liberation from all sorts of pitfalls that make the intellect suffer. By contrast, the religious people’s mould, that is, the set of their religious beliefs and fundamentalism, promotes passivity and blind submission to the doctrine, the organisation/church and finally submission to a terrifying god or many terrifying gods.

The elucidation and the correct understanding of these concepts are of utmost importance. This is especially important today, when many people speak about many things, hoping to achieve this elucidation and correct understanding and thus add to their concept of the dialogue when they become involved in such topics. In this way, we consider that we will contribute positively to establishing some order in the current intellectual quagmire and the depressing intellectual poverty of modern life. Furthermore, our aim is to help the interested readers to correctly understand the concepts analysed here and then make the appropriate choices. In this aim, we follow the understanding that Analytical Philosophy and Lingual Analysis have put forward in the recent times.

In order to understand these three concepts of religious scepticism we must examine briefly the concept of religious faith and, in particular, the way by which religious people believe in one of the abundant existing religions and/or their heresies. It is quite evident that the religious people never think to criticise whatever it is in which they believe. Such a thought would be a sacrilege, a great sin and a contradiction of their faith. That is, as soon as the religious dogma has been decided upon, there is no room for doubt and dispute. The theologians’ debates do not constitute criticisms of the dogmas, but expositions, elucidations and analysis of them; never their dispute. The religious people accept, without doubt, all the things that their religions profess, so they blindly believe in them and have adopted them as the supreme and inviolable truth regardless of the fact that the things they believe are most paradoxical, unnatural, antiscientific and catastrophic. Even if their god/gods communicate with them in the most irrational ways, even if the ethics of their religions are dogmatic and contradictory within themselves, against civilisation, nature and/or happiness of human beings, they are ready, whenever the circumstances demand, to sacrifice their lives for their causes. With their martyrdom, they believe that they will be rewarded one hundredfold in the extraterrestrial heavens. Therefore, our thesis is that the religious and faithful in such a manner are on a par with “fundamentalists”, “pietists”, “fanatics” and so on.

Although there are various gradations of fundamentalism and of the fanaticism and zeal that it produces, let us consider a few more arguments in support of this thesis. Some say: “We are religious but not fundamentalists.” In our opinion, for those who believe in an organised religion, this cannot be. It is a pseudo-excuse due to either ignorance of the teachings of their religions or lack of courage for their own opinions. The faithful of an organised religion can never find themselves in a position to admit that another religion or world-view is scientifically more correct or better (based on some criteria) than the one in which they believe, even if it is. Also, they never open a discussion on matters of their faith with others who have different or alternative opinions from them. Even before a sceptic begins to criticise their beliefs, they cut him/her off, stop any discussion and exclude the sceptic from their surroundings. So it is a matter of fact that religious faith of this kind creates odious intolerance, fanaticism, war and extermination. It also exhibits uninhibited proselytising. The faithful of this sort can never be at peace unless they see all the inhabitants of the planet under the cloak of their faith. Nevertheless, most of them do not abide by the rules and tenets of their religion but continually violate them and therefore they continually sin. These rules and tenets are usually very unnatural, irrational and schizoid so they are not conducive to the happiness and intellectual development of humans and therefore it is naturally expected that they not be observed. Most of the time, the followers of organised religion know very little about the doctrines of their faith and the rules of their catechism, which actually constitute their religion. This happens because organised religions demand sheep-like followers, who should not know, think and/or doubt but believe only those things dictated to them.

Organised religions nurse their flocks from infancy until death with certain, purposely chosen maxims and tenets, ignoring all else. If their followers renege, change faith or do not apply the imposed ethics (however catastrophic these ethics may be), their religions inspire continuous fear and threat of eternal punishment. They promise eternal bliss of metaphysical type (after death) in the presence of their god or gods only to the good, obedient followers. For social progress and civilisation, the organised religions show no genuine interest and most of the time they create horrific abhorrence, demerit and/or catastrophic rage. This happens because, on the one hand, they consider progress and civilisation harmful and, on the other, their only essential interest is metaphysical, which is the post-mortem bestowal of justice, of eternal punishment or blissful reward, according to their own notions and caveats.

As a result of this mentality, we often see the abandonment of worldly matters and apathy with regard to the problems of life and/or the betterment of society. Science has no value for the religious unless, if and when, it serves their purposes. The unexplainable or too difficult to comprehend phenomena that usually the faithful call ‘miracles’, to them are mysterious appearances or irrational communications of their god or gods. If things do happen as they wish, that means that god loves and rewards them and/or listens to their prayers. If they do not, then the god is tempting them or testing their faith. All questions find a more or less tautological answer. The most common, very immediate, painless and simplistic one is: “God wanted to do it this way….” And so forth! Even the most illogical contradiction is a business of God. You see, as God, he can do whatever he pleases as omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and all those other “omnis….”

We now challenge any religious person to tell us what else is missing in order to be characterised as fundamentalist etc. This is exactly the thesis we proposed earlier. i.e., religious and fundamentalist are inseparable concepts. We think that we have provided here enough evidence for it. We also add that the organised religions exhibit more characteristics some of which are the following: They are based on collections of holy books that contain their inviolable “truths” about everything and they use these books exclusively. They have very restrictive and unchangeable forms and ways of worship. Any different opinion, notion, proposition or examination is cast out as heresy, punished by death whenever possible or when the epochs allow. They try to devour the whole societies in which they live and to control all social or political activities. They produce their own styles, forms of expression, arts etc.

We summarise with the most striking traits of the faithful and fanatic. First of all, logic does not play an important role in the thought or the discussion of the fanatic and faithful. Even though they desire to show that they use and apply logic, most of the time logic is pushed to the limits of non-existence. The use of arguments is, for the faithful and fanatic, minimal to nil. They use arguments only when expedient, otherwise faith and fanaticism blinds them so that no argument convinces them about anything. They must rather distort an argument to make it fit their a priori points of view. The same thing is true for the uses of data that we attract from experience and that all sciences offer. In the course of their speech they continually relapse into various contradictions that they sometimes sense and even sometimes cannot. Finally, their way of living and activities are not in accord with whatever they fanatically contend and support. Usually, the faithful and fanatic say one thing and do another.They want to “have the cake and eat it too”. We have surely an abundance of examples of faith and fanaticism that lead their faithful and fanatic partisans to complete wretchedness and extinction. The following distich laconically expresses this situation.

For a faith fanatic faith, when wedded fast
To a nice falsehood, hugs it to the last

The faithful and fanatic prefer to die (bear martyrdom) for their faith and convictions, instead of admitting and disavowing their mistakes and starting their life anew. Historically, we have plenty of examples where faith and fanaticism have led whole nations, nearly or completely, into extinction.

Here let us add that there were and are persons or groups of persons who have religious inklings to one degree or another. That is, to some degree, they are religious-like or religious-wise people. This means that they believe in their own way in non-organised religions or have some religious convictions, which by contrast with the organised religions, are net affairs of the persons or groups that accept them. Their religious convictions do not usually instigate intolerance, antagonism, fear, pathetic or disastrous trends and they tolerate other analogous religions or convictions and world-views. They are not afraid of heresy, whereas the organised religions are terrified by it. They take into consideration the cultures and traditions and idiosyncrasies of different peoples and societies, whereas the organised religions dismiss or destroy, partially or totally, all these elements. They have essentially adopted fluid philosophical and/or scientific approaches to life and a world without fanaticism. However, for the dark, unanswerable questions and metaphysical pseudo-questions that always show up in one way or another, they give answers based on religious beliefs and theories in accordance with the notions and biases of their members, because either they do not possess the knowledge of how to answer and understand them or because they lie outside rationales and beyond the world. However, they accept logic, the power of criticism and of philosophy and the scientific knowledge. Therefore these people are ready or willing to change or modify their credos whenever they deem this necessary.

We now return to scepticism. A sceptic may be anybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, political point of view, culture etc. A sceptic may also be rich or poor, educated or uneducated, ethical or unethical etc. Even though we may contend that everybody has been sceptical, at least for a while in their lives, this is not enough for including them in the sceptical stream. The real sceptic is the one who thinks continually (most of the time critically), interprets results and conclusions, then terminates in one of the three stages referred to above.

Let us now examine the first category of scepticism out of the three final ones, that is, theism. A theist (or deist) is a person who believes in some indefinite superior power that he/she calls God, or in a god that he/she calls a superior power. Most of the time the theists confuse these two terms. We do not understand why they need or desire to keep them both. Although the theists have no experience whatsoever of, and know nothing about, this indefinite god, the definitions that they put forward are very arbitrary and they accept such a god axiomatically. In this way the theists find some teleological meaning in the world, have psychological support, repose themselves in their personal world-view, in something untouchable and without experience that they call “superior”. Moreover, the theist gives answers, according to his/her liking, to the general metaphysical questions as well as some legitimate questions that cannot yet be answered scientifically.

There is some small room for heresy in theism, e.g. a theist may believe that God intervenes in the affairs of human beings and the universe, whereas another theist may believe that God does not intervene. This is the limit of a theist’s religious dogma and faith. Therefore, a theist cannot belong to any organised religion. That is, within real or imaginary ignorance, the theist introduces a concept that helps him/her psychologically, but without being able to accurately define it. This concept cannot be taken as an original one, for the theist knows nothing about it based on any initial, primitive knowledge and on impressions that experience puts forward, i.e., empirically. This concept is then a pseudo-concept. In other words, the theist makes an inconsequential, transcendental leap and thus considers it legitimate and meaningful to speak about a “God” in whom he/she believes. At times the theist entangles this god with nature itself. That is, he/she asserts that “God = nature, nature = god” or claims that he/she receives some experience of this god when they look at a beautiful sunset or in various other experiences of nature and/or love. Why this whole entanglement of all these concepts and experiences satisfies him/her, instead of separating and classifying them accordingly, seems to be due on the one hand to his/her own idiosyncrasy and on the other to his/her upbringing and acquired education.

We also hear many different stretched-out syllogisms, for example: “Since I exist, then god exists” or “God exists because universe, nature, etc. exists”. These kinds of syllogisms remind us of the ancient Greek one: “If altars exist, then gods exist”. Also the no-sense colloquial one: “If there is black jack, then there is castor oil”. The leaps of these syllogisms are so conspicuously transcendental, immense, inconsequential and lie out of rationales, therefore we will not comment further. We offer these syllogisms as gifts to all those who do not see the inconsequential nature of them. When, for example, a chemist claims that if he bonds two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, he can produce a molecule of water, this assertion did not arise a priori and out of his imagination. He did not proclaim that, since there is hydrogen and oxygen, then there is water. Instead, firstly, he knew very well all the concepts that he has used in his claim. (Hydrogen, oxygen, water, molecule, atom, etc.) Secondly, he has interpreted his claim as conclusion of a sufficiently satisfactory series of experiments, etc.

Hence, against theism we have the following objections:

1. What good does it do to believe in something about which we know absolutely nothing and which we cannot determine empirically but have presumed it axiomatically?
2. If we do not know something, why should we proceed to have faith in it, instead of stopping at “we simply do not know?” (Do we have a problem with that?)
3. Should we religiously believe in whatever we have introduced axiomatically, simply because we do not know it?
   

Axiomatically, since we are not in danger of being scoffed at, we can harmlessly introduce infinitely many things and pseudo-concepts. Consequently, what is the thing that we gain or achieve by doing so? It is the easiest thing to give an answer to something that we do not know by introducing a new and indefinite concept axiomatically as the cause. We could very well justify everything and give causality thereof with all sorts of pseudo-beings from the cosmic space. In other words, we can claim that there are divers pseudo-beings that cause all things that take place, but we ourselves do not know these pseudo-beings, do not see them, do not smell them, do not touch them - and all those “do nots….” In all things we could offer painless explanations of this type, and then challenge, if you or anybody can prove that these explanations are not valid!

We must deal with two totally different, but confused concepts, for both of which language unfortunately uses the word “belief” in two disjoint contexts: The religious and the scientific. Confusion has arisen through the centuries and persisted as a result. Because of this confusion, the religious people conveniently find a pseudo-argument to substantiate their dogmatic faith with science or to bring dogmatic faith into science. The religious belief is not amenable to criticism. It cannot be examined in the laboratory or in the physician’s office. It cannot be calculated mathematically nor tested experimentally. It cannot be observed, denied, corroborated or altered. Nobody tries to prove or disprove it and if somebody does try, there are no methods of examination and no criteria for the verification of its truthfulness or falsehood of any conclusions or results. If anybody wagers anything whatsoever, even his/her own head, over the truth or falsehood of a religious dogma, he/she may do this absolutely without fear, for the wager will never be resolved. “For the resolution of such a wager one needs to wait infinite time and then what…?” I cannot imagine that anyone would, with a clear mind, risk losing his/her whole estate, let aside his/her head, for the accuracy of the next day’s weather forecast. When the next day comes and goes, this wager will be resolved and woe to him/her if he/she has lost. They will find themselves homeless in the streets. Such a risky move is not worthy for such an issue. If today, I say: “I believe that tomorrow it is going to rain”, this belief is not of the same order and at the same level with a Christian’s belief in the dogma of the “holy trinity”. The former belief is always subject to challenge and criticism, if the forecast was made correctly, with the right means and under the correct conditions. A probability for its verification is also attached along with it. Finally, within a certain time-interval, we will have the answer about its correctness or falsity. The scientific belief is essentially a likelihood-forecast based on certain well-defined and known criteria. Consequently, it would have been accurate to substitute the word “belief” with the word “likelihood” or “probabilistic foreseeing”.

In contrast, the religious belief in the dogma of the “holy trinity” is not subject to any challenge and criticism. Either you accept it as it is, or you do not. No matter what you may wager over it, you are not going to win or lose. Wager fearlessly the whole world! There is no way for such a wager to be resolved, no matter how long you may wait - unless God himself comes down to Earth and reveals its resolution! When you believe religiously in this dogma, or in any other dogma for the same sake, it has no meaning to claim that the dogma of your faith is true with probability 60%, but with 40% may not be true. Even if you claim such a thing (inappropriately of course, for this would represent a scientific likelihood and would be contradictory to your faith), you have no justification of these probabilities and none you can ever provide. You have plucked them out of the blue, arbitrarily and without being able to defend them. In conclusion, we see that the religious belief is not scientific and vice-versa. They are two totally different concepts that are badly confused because of the vacuums and pitfalls that language creates by, for instance, using the same words for mutually disjointed things and concepts. Various religious conspirators and propagandists use this kind of loophole in order to cover their own inadequacies. That is why society needs to learn how to speak accurately and avoid talking nonsense. But when...?

We now continue with the second category of religious scepticism: agnosticism. The agnostic discusses and examines all questions about God in a logical and meaningful manner as he/she thinks and/or imagines. However, the agnostic freely admits that he/she is not in any position to know the answers. Agnostic means “without knowledge of….”, and it is derived from the Greek privative “a” plus “gnosis”. The term was first coined by Sir Thomas Huxley in 1869 to indicate his opposition to Gnosticism, which he was studying and with which he was disgusted. Later on, the term was abused and pushed into the context that we develop here. We confidently predict that discussions on these topics with an agnostic are bound to be very brief. If, for instance, you ask an agnostic: “Does God exist?”, then he/she answers immediately: “I do not know”. But if you ask the same person “Does Xod exist?”, then he/she immediately, and without any thought, returns the question back and very rightly so: “Who or what is that?” Why did not this person give the same reply to the question about God? This is because he/she thinks that the concept “god”, in the former question, is unambiguously known to him/her and to anyone else. He/she has been accustomed to this “word-concept” from childhood by hearing everybody talking about it unequivocally and therefore it must be taken as given. We clearly see, in this instance, a linguistic trap and the effect of psychology and brainwashing. In any case, it is clear that an agnostic cannot belong to any organised religion and he/she is faithless. Our objections against agnosticism are:

1. We can always generate questions without answers, but then, what do we gain?
2. Agnostics have the illusion that it is legitimate to examine and discuss - logically, as they think - pseudo-concepts, like that of “god”, which on the one hand they consider meaningful concepts with well-defined content, whereas on the other hand, as they themselves admit, they have absolutely no empirical knowledge of them and they cannot answer anything about them.
3. Besides, they cannot discern the fact that the concepts they examine and discuss are pseudo-concepts and they cannot answer anything about them. No matter how long or how hard they try, they will never be able to find the answers. (This is also one of the reasons why these questions are pseudo-questions.)

Finally we come to atheism. The common dictionary definition of atheism is “Disbelief in the existence of God.” However, in the twentieth century, after the works of Bertrand Russell and most importantly of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Analytical Philosophy and Lingual Analysis, we have come to the point of understanding that atheism is the rejection of any theism (a+theism) due to the fact that the concept “god=theos” and all concepts derived from it are pseudo-concepts. Therefore atheism is essentially a stance that rejects all these metaphysical concepts and any discussion about them as void of meaning, conclusion and methods for checking any answers about them. That is, any discussion about pseudo-concepts is doomed to be nonsense. The author of this article is a proponent of this new definition and his thesis is that this approach to atheism, as this particular stance, is the only safe, complete and invulnerable one. This stance as such cannot be considered as faith, an argument that many enemies of atheism like to pop out as a trump card, in order to justify an abstract universal permeation of faith in everything. The commonly accepted definition suffers from this problem that it a-priori considers the concept of “god”, even at least implicitly, as a meaningful one but since there is no scientific or empirical evidence for it we are not willing to buy it. So, we may safely assume that if in the future we happen to acquire some scientific or empirical evidence, then we will reconsider. This is reminiscent to and confused with agnosticism that we saw before and the antitheism that we will see soon in the sequel. It can also be easily accused as being a new faith concerning a legitimate concept. The breakthrough of the philosopher Wittgenstein was the tremendous step forward to prove within the logical system and the calculus of language that the concept of “god” is a pseudo-concept, and so nonsense to be talked about. After this has become clear, every person takes appropriate and responsible stance against it. Therefore seeking scientific or empirical evidence or any disproof of it is futile from the beginning and resembles to chasing after chimeras…. So, the new approach and definition contains the main ingredient of the old one and continues beyond that. How many philosophers in the past tried to construct complete logical arguments about the existence and/or non-existence of god? All have failed and no one tries anything in either direction anymore.

At any rate, atheism is the final stage of scepticism and it is the denial of theism from its foundations - consequently the denial of agnosticism and every religious faith. This word is of Greek origin and it is a compound one of the privative = “giving negative sense”, “a” and the word “theism”. It is, in other words, the “non-theism” or the freeing from any theism. The verb “believe” (in a religious sense) finds no application in atheism. The atheist neither believes nor disbelieves. ‘Belief’ is an admission of ignorance. When something is known it is no longer a ‘belief’. The atheist wants to know. For legitimate questions to which atheists do not know the answers, they stop with the phrase “I do not know” without causing any harm. They do not say: “Since I do not know, then I believe or I like to believe that….” The verb “believe” in the scientific context is more accurately substituted by “think so”, “consider plausible”, “consider probable” etc. By using such an expression, the atheist can offer a list of good reasons. For the atheist, the concept of “god” (as well as the related metaphysical concepts) is a made-up, artificial one or a pseudo-concept and therefore all related questions are pseudo-questions. Any discussion about such things is futile, devoid of meaning and/or content and it cannot be carried out on the basis of any experience and/or the rules of any logic. Consequently, this discussion is without any sense, that is, it is nonsense. This is so for the following reasons:

1. We do not know what we talk about at all, neither as a defined concept nor as an initial/original one, since there is no pertinent experience along with it. Then what can we say…? We speak without a base, that is, we speak in the vacuum.
2. Even if we presume or imagine that we gave some answer to any of the pertinent questions there is absolutely no means, way, method etc. to verify the truthfulness or the falsity of our proposed answer. If anyone knows any such means, way, criterion, method etc. we invite him/her to announce it (them) all over the world, so that all people benefit from his/her supreme knowledge! We conclude that, in all such cases, we speak “up in the air”. The solution for all of these pseudo-concepts and pseudo-questions is just the complete dismissal of them. What is there to be said, even with some relative assurance...? Nothing! What the ancient Greek poet of tragedies, Sophokles said, for a different reason and purpose in the unrelated context of his tragedy “Oedipus”, fits perfectly here”:

“But to whomever these are for nothing, he/she lives life most easily”!

Many times, people who believe in god challenge atheists to prove that god does not exist. They do not want to understand and cannot see that first of all they bear the burden of proving that god exists, as they, not the atheists, are the ones who introduce this concept. It is quite ridiculous when someone introduces all sorts of unknown concepts or words, and then imposes the task of proving or disproving their existence onto another. We have heard many more pseudo-arguments against atheists. Here we refer to two of the most frequently heard.

1. We hear many people propose, as indisputable truth, the assertion:
   “Atheists do not exist, no matter what!” We then answer: “Have you asked all human beings of the planet and found no atheist among them or that the concept ‘atheist’ is a logical impossibility”? In both alternatives they cannot offer a sincere answer. If we also say to them” “But we, for instance, are atheists!”, then they counterattack: “No, you are not!” Hence, they claim that they know us better than we know ourselves!…. In order to help them think, we also give them an example of a simple logical impossibility: "The rooster lays eggs!” This is a logical impossibility, for otherwise, by definition, the rooster would be a hen. Something like this cannot happen with the concept “atheist.”
2. We hear the very strange assertion that: “The statement ‘I do not believe in any religion’ is by itself a religion. In this way even atheists believe in a religion.” There is nothing more paradoxical and contradictory than this pseudo-argument. If we consider the thing that dismisses all religions to be a religion then, as a result, we dismiss the logical distinction between “destroy and “be integral”. The statement: “I do not believe in any religion” cannot be a religion itself, by dint of the following logical syllogism. Let us temporarily assume that it is a religion (our religion as they claim), then we will lead ourselves to a contradiction in the following way.  For convenience, let us call by R this statement. Since R is our religion, then, by the temporary assumption, we have that R is a religion that does not belong to the set of the religions that we have previously dismissed, according to our initial statement, by which we have clearly declared that we do not believe in them. The statement R is then a concept of religion that belongs to a different set (or level) of concepts, since we accept this one, whereas we have dismissed all the others.  Consequently we deal with a totally different concept and draw the simple conclusion that R does not equal religion. This is contradictory to our temporary assumption. Hence our temporary assumption is not valid, which means exactly that our initial statement (R) cannot be a religion.

A large number of people confuse atheism with the belief of many that “god does not exist”. This is a very serious mistake. This belief represents the antitheism. Its followers could properly be called antitheists. These people make the error that the concept “god” is a right and an unambiguous one. Also, they are very sure that it does not exist, as “there is no cheese in the refrigerator” or “black bears do not exist at the south pole.”

Hence, they fall into a religious belief, since this belief is not subjected to any criticism and/or logical analysis and examination. It is arbitrary and there are no criteria to check its truthfulness or its denial, since it is based on a pseudo-concept. In this way they attack a religious belief by introducing another new one. In atheism the point is to distinguish whether you deal with a pseudo-concept or pseudo-question in order to simply dismiss it and ignore it for the reasons explained above.

By confusing atheism with antitheism, either through ignorance, poor education and misunderstanding of these concepts or on purpose to portray a false argument, various religious people attack atheism, their great demon, by insisting that atheism is also based on a religious belief, just like their own. This is a cunning and preposterous mistake because atheism is the denial of :

1. Every religious belief from its foundation.
2. Theism, which is also based on religious belief.
3. Agnosticism, which deems the examination of pseudo-concepts and pseudo-questions legitimate and logical. As we have just said, the verb “believe” has no place in atheism. Unfortunately, this distorted argument of religious people and, at times, of some theists, has a few more reasons. Because they are faithful, everybody, with absolutely no exception, must be faithful too. This is an inferiority complex that pushes them to make everyone be just like themselves, by Coup d’état. Other reasons are: Lack of courage for their own opinion, their split personality, the disordered, acrimonious and precarious nature of their belief, the numerous contradictions involved in their faith, etc. We continue with their weakness in clearing out the concepts, their refusal to acknowledge the role that psychology plays and their inability to think scientifically. Finally, we charge them with lack of courage to stand up against the establishments that have brainwashed them and have put them into these channels from infancy, without ever having been offered any knowledge or option of other choices. That is why all these negative elements come to the surface as an inferiority complex that demands everybody be just like them.

The overwhelming majority of people, even those who hold diplomas, have not clarified these topics, nor are they concerned with their elucidation. They lay in a morass of: ignorance, confusion, non productive thinking, inability of critique, anti-philosophy, unwillingness to learn and advance, sanctimonious faith, hypocrisy, convenience, expediency, many contradictory ethical theories and world-views etc. All the time, this “moral” majority, apart from gaining a good living, is consumed with all sorts of meaningless pursuits and senseless preoccupations. Very unfortunately, this mode of living and thinking is promoted and perpetuated by the existing world-social-economic-political system. Today, with the method of Lingual Analysis, as it was enhanced, developed and given to us by the great thinker-philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, we could safely achieve the elucidation of the ambiguous concepts and safely escape from the unseen traps that language sets before us continually. It is left to us to use and apply this method. Most unfortunately, instead of concentrating their efforts to applying this method to the improvement of thought and the betterment of society, Wittgenstein’s disciples, with very few exceptions, spend their time in rehashing what the great thinker has already preached.

The people who have the inclination to think in a serious way and decide upon their stance in these extremely important issues of life and their own world-view, deem the improvement of society and the advancement of civilisation as the moral duty of every responsible citizen. These people must think, interpret and write clearly, lucidly and unequivocally. The concepts must be well known in all aspects and elucidated, the terms unambiguously interpreted and the rules of engagement logical and well understood. Eventually we must know what things we are to discuss in our examination and what rules of engagement we employ in this discussion. (You cannot play football in a natatorium.) Moreover, regarding the topics we have developed and presented in this work, which quite frequently become issues of protracted discussions, the serious thinkers must stop being wishy-washy and make a responsible choice from the groups presented and analysed here. The groups are: religious-sanctimonious, religious-wise, theists, agnostics, antitheists and finally atheists.

With the wish:

“And on earth peace, to humans good will”

Ioannis, Neoklis Philadelphos, Markos Roussos
Doctor, Professor of Mathematics
B.S. 1977, National and Kapodistrian University of Greece
M.S. 1982, Ph.D. 1986, University of Minnesota

Footnote:
To avoid using any reference to “belief”, The Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc defined Atheism as: “The acceptance that there is no credible, scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a God, gods or the supernatural.”

 Back to Articles Index