On the Many Kinds of Person and Non-Religiosity

On the Many Kinds of Person and Non-Religiosity

A person who is irreligious must instead take on one of a number of roles: The Radical, The Scientist/Science-Driven, The Philosopher, The Spiritualist or The Nihilist. Sometimes there is overlap but more often than not, most non-religious fit into one of these categories.

The Radical wishes to tear down the system of power, government, or religious control. They are almost entirely driven to their goal or are open about their intentions to remove from power whichever group they hyper-focus on. They almost have a religious zeal to their actions, and often orient towards far-left ideologies. In this case, an unreachable Utopia is their driving factor.

The Scientist/Science Driven secularist often is hyper focused on science, the scientific or the feeling of awe that science can bring. They replace their religious experiences, explications, etc. with the scientific, and scorn those who place value on the religious often, though many instead choose to hold their ideas to such a high regard that it's difficult for them to connect with the religious at all. In this case, the greater good is their driving factor, at the detriment of their connection to their fellow man.

The Philosopher can be split into two categories: the purely atheistic and the historian. The purely atheistic seeks to argue in defence, or to advance atheism as a philosophy. The driving factor in that case is the need to reason others out of their beliefs, a common-sensical view of the world. Problem is that reality doesn't function on common sense, neither does the human experience, so this kind of atheist has little to offer to replace the lost value system with, leading to nihilism.

The Philosopher Historian tries to mine through history, through religion, and discusses many aspects of them openly. This kind of person offers a great deal of dialogue, believing little of it literally, instead enjoying the goodness of debate. The driving factor, then is pure discourse. The detriment is that it takes a lot of energy to be in this group, and often this group will slip into another to ease the burden of constant discourse, which itself damages the purely debate-based view of the world.

The Spiritualist is very vague, very open about their lack of belief in a literal god but instead offers you their feeling, their acknowledgement of an aspect or aspects of the world that could exist beyond their perception. Their driving factor is emotion, and a need for self-discovery. Their limitation is that they often cannot reason, or discuss logical facts, isolating them from other kinds of non-religious person and even the religious. Their beliefs are so personal too that they cannot properly articulate their ideas to others. This kind of person is very insular.

The Nihilist fits the typical bill of nihilism. Nihilism is the necessary result of self-exploration and the discovery of a lack of a "godly" universe. It is therefore a result of individual choices. The over-abandonment, or lack of a replacement philosophical idea will lead to great amounts of sorrow, pain and suffering. Often this is a phase, and you move beyond it over time. There is no positive aspect to this kind of ideology, except in that it allows you to walk that thin line between sanity and insanity that is necessary for creation, but it often leads to regression into negative behaviors, radicalism or other problems.

It's worth mentioning too that there are many analogous, religious variations on these themes. There are plenty of spiritual, nihilistic, scientifically driven, philosophy/philosopher historian and radical religious people. They are kinds of people, or types of them if you'd like, and they are very much so focused on the kind of person you are rather than what you believe, but a sudden instant like the discovery of faith or the discovery that faith isn't something you have any longer can, and most likely will lead to personality changes.

At some point or another I have been all of these, and I am still a couple of them. To be a combination of the best aspects of each, whether religious or not is what it takes to be able to effectively function in society, it's just a lot more difficult when you're without the emotional crutch religion gives you.

I hope this has been in some way interesting to some of you. Thanks for reading.

#religion #atheism #debate #personality #discourse