It was around Christmas that I came around a question on reddit which asked,"Why do atheists also celebrate Christmas?". So, I wrote this. It seemed good at the time but I now see the pitfalls and shortcomings:
The answer to your question depends on whether Christmas is purely a religious celebration or if it is a part of the culture and if it affects the social scene? Christmas is obviously more than just a religious thing. In predominantly christian communities it is really much more than that. I see in India that Diwali (Hindu festival) is celebrated by people of different faiths. I think your question arises from confusion between faith and religion. Religion is not faith. Religion is a social and moral construct that someone follows. All faith does is provide a source for the moral constructs. Atheists have a different source for those than theists. The social construct is to hold the community together. It does not matter if it is influenced by a faith since the faith promotes the same morals as those followed by the atheist members of the religion. A religion is formed by people with very similar morals and those who agree to follow a certain social protocol.
A celebration is a social construct. Theists take part in it for reasons of faith (and thus promote the moral structure) or the actual purpose of it (togetherness) and atheists take part in it for togetherness or to promote the moral structure. To each their own.
If your definition of religion starts from faith and not people, it suggests that maybe you do not agree that religion is from people and not the other way round. I would not be surprised if you do, since most religions are adopting that ideology in order to provide those at higher religious authority with more power. I would prefer that you do not get offended by me calling your religious authorities corrupt but frankly I don't care about it if you are so attached to your religion that it may affect your thinking abilities and make you short-sighted (I also don't blame you for it. It is very common and almost accepted as a mark of humanity. I still see it as a weakness, though.).
The answer to your question depends on whether Christmas is purely a religious celebration or if it is a part of the culture and if it affects the social scene? Christmas is obviously more than just a religious thing. In predominantly christian communities it is really much more than that. I see in India that Diwali (Hindu festival) is celebrated by people of different faiths. I think your question arises from confusion between faith and religion. Religion is not faith. Religion is a social and moral construct that someone follows. All faith does is provide a source for the moral constructs. Atheists have a different source for those than theists. The social construct is to hold the community together. It does not matter if it is influenced by a faith since the faith promotes the same morals as those followed by the atheist members of the religion. A religion is formed by people with very similar morals and those who agree to follow a certain social protocol.
A celebration is a social construct. Theists take part in it for reasons of faith (and thus promote the moral structure) or the actual purpose of it (togetherness) and atheists take part in it for togetherness or to promote the moral structure. To each their own.
If your definition of religion starts from faith and not people, it suggests that maybe you do not agree that religion is from people and not the other way round. I would not be surprised if you do, since most religions are adopting that ideology in order to provide those at higher religious authority with more power. I would prefer that you do not get offended by me calling your religious authorities corrupt but frankly I don't care about it if you are so attached to your religion that it may affect your thinking abilities and make you short-sighted (I also don't blame you for it. It is very common and almost accepted as a mark of humanity. I still see it as a weakness, though.).
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