askchapo

I suppose the point of my comment was to say that when people here say "atheism," they don't just mean "disbelief in gods," and that a lot of the extra stuff is related to Western epistemology in general. I didn't even go over various Indigenous belief systems, which could be seen or is at least compatible with atheism-as-in-disbelief-in-gods-and-disbelief-in-gods-only that is dissimilar to Western or Eastern atheism. A lot of their so-called deities aren't actually deities as understood by Western religion but purposeful mistranslations by Christian missionaries who tried to shove their creation myths and cosmology into a Christian hole. When some Indigenous elder say something like "Creation gives us mouths to speak the truth" and characterizes Creation-with-a-capital-C as a self-directed process instead of a Creator god, is his religious and spiritual beliefs compatible with atheism-as-in-disbelief-in-gods-and-disbelief-in-gods-only?

It's like how when people here say "philosophy," they're not actually talking about the entire sum of philosophy that encompasses very different philosophical traditions like Chinese philosophy or Islamic philosophy but more specifically Western philosophy or even more specifically, Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Western philosophy because no one has time to deal with Christian apologia by some French bishop from the 10th century. And I don't think it's a coincidence that on one hand, you have people who think atheism fits in a particular Western box and on the other hand, you have Western chauvinists who think Muslims are savages who must be civilized by their Western superiors.