Talk:List of converts to nontheism

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List of former Muslims

More to add... Minussquareofa (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Distinguish
This article needs to be clear on how it's distinguished from List of atheists. Is it a list of people who originally considered themselves religious but now reject that? As opposed to those who were raised as atheists or who never considered themselves religious? ... disco spinster   talk  16:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a list of formerly religious people who later adopted Atheism... I know it's confusing but I created it as an analog to the other List of converts to Foo articles. =/ Ncboy2010 (talk) 19:25, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Rhetoric
Almost half of the converts to atheism are christians, moreover there are many jewish atheists as well, where are they?Is this list a target to a particular religion?Skashifakram (talk) 06:44, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm a little late here, but I've added some more Jewish names. I'm not sure on Jack Cohen (scientist) and Émile Durkheim, but mostly I think they all seem solid.--T. Anthony (talk) 08:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I've also added a Hindu section. Although some schools of Hinduism were atheistic the two I named weren't, from what I can tell, raised as non-theistic Hindus.--T. Anthony (talk) 08:32, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Childhood conversions?
I'm not sure about Richard Dawkins. So he was raised Anglican and became an atheist in his mid-teens. It seems like he was an atheist pretty much since he began to think about religion at all. Maybe not, maybe he belongs on this list but it seems like there ought to be a threshold somewhere. If someone notable was baptized Christian as an infant but then identified as an atheist at age 5, do they belong on this page? Hugetim (talk) 22:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Name change?
I was wondering might it make more sense to call this List of former theists or List of former theists and deists? Making it more directly parallel to List of former atheists and agnostics.--T. Anthony (talk) 06:20, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This makes senses to me. Especially after section name change, chaning the article name to List of former theists keeps naming in a consistent style. Minussquareofa (talk) 17:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in List of converts to Nontheism
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of List of converts to Nontheism's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Kirkpatrick": From Benito Mussolini: Mussolini: A Study In Power, Ivone Kirkpatrick, Hawthorne Books, 1964. ISBN 0-8371-8400-2 From Mark Zuckerberg:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 02:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 23 December 2014
List of converts to Nontheism → List of converts to nontheism – No reason to capitalise a common name. I request a move in accordance to the encyclopaedia's guidelines. --Relisted. Andrewa (talk) 19:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC) Revamers (talk) 22:20, 23 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I find this 'guideline' bewilderingly retrospiritual. Were it up to me all philosophical positions would be capitalized -- Theism, Deism, Pantheism, Pandeism, Agnosticism, Ignosticism, Atheism, Nontheism, Antitheism, Pantheism, and so on. DeistCosmos (talk) 20:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. Not a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:08, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - by common convention, nontheism is not a proper noun.   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 04:12, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
Relisting comment: Need to think about this one and suggest others might too. We don't capitalise nontheism, agnosticism, theism etc. but do capitalise Islam, Sikhism, Baha'i etc., that seems the pattern. Two questions... is this convention documented anywhere, and is it suported by normal English usage? Andrewa (talk) 19:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * How does this require cogitation? We capitalize proper names but not generic words.   Done.  If you think atheism or agnosticism is a religion, look at any of the online guides that tell you no; e.g. .  Dicklyon (talk) 18:05, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, the whole basis of the title is pretty messed up, since "converts to nontheism" is a stupid concept. You can be a convert to a religion, but can if you reject a religion's beliefs in a god, you might be termed a nontheist, but to say you're a convert to nontheism is just people with religion trying to label you as having a conflicting religion.  Let's see if we can think of a better title for people who have renounced a belief in a god.  Dicklyon (talk) 18:12, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It's tricky. The term religion in common use is ambiguous. Many reject the whole idea of religion and of course then also profess not to belong to one. But many if not most of those who belong (unambiguously) to a religion (disclosure: including myself) regard both agnosticism and atheism as religions. Adopting either approach is POV. None of the potential non-POV alternative terms (eg belief system) have come into common usage, at least not with this meaning, and IMO are not likely to, simply because of the POV implications. Andrewa (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)


 * PS and just to further underline how tricky it can be, see the section below, or the articles on nontheism and nontheistic religions. Lots of food for thought here... it's claimed that some religions are nontheistic, and others contain both nontheistic and theistic traditions. I'm still getting my head around that myself. And of course there are several streams of thought within Christianity that are happy to recite the ancient creeds but interpret them in ways that seem to directly negate their meaning. The Veggietales album Veggie Rocks has a song The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything which seems aimed squarely at such ideas. Andrewa (talk) 02:18, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that nontheistic religion complicates matters, but I don't see how you can regard non-belief in something as putting someone into a religion. Dicklyon (talk) 19:42, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

From Buddhism?
How can one 'convert' to Nontheism from an already nontheistic position? Buddhism is Nontheism!! DeistCosmos (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Good question. So you can be both religious and nontheistic, at the same time. Jainism might be another case in point, I didn't know that until a few seconds ago. Interesting. Andrewa (talk) 20:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)


 * In fact, whether Buddhism is a religion is still questionable. In old times, most oriental cultures and languages did't have a word for religion. It was due to western infulence in recent times, they invented a word for translating the notion of religion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Minussquareofa (talk • contribs) 17:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Napoleon's nontheism
Source does not state Napoleon was a nontheist. It rather refers to him feigning atheism to "faire sa cour" (roughly: woo somebody) at the Tuileries (i.e. the center of power back then). Furthermore, the source clearly mentions "Au fond, il était déiste avec une nuance de respect involontaire et de prédilection avouée". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.219.187.253 (talk) 15:56, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

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Inclusion of Adolf Hitler is inappropriate
None of the references describe Hitler as nontheistic. Rather he is reported to be disgusted with Christianity and many aspects of Christian religion. Rejecting Christianity and the Catholic church is **not the same** as converting to nontheistm. In particular, the first edit adding this item is CLEARLY politically motivated because of its irrelevant inclusion that "Killed 14 million people." See Change Comparison I would say that edit is politically motivated vandalism. The additional citations provided by Illegitimate Barrister were part of a broader attempt to substantiate uncited claims more broadly in the article, but unfortunately focuses on only one side of the issue. I don't believe Illegitimate Barrister's edit was malicious.

Hitler has long been a "hot potato" between religious apologists and atheists. There is no conclusive evidence on his beliefs because his public and some of his private writings stand in conflict. See this Wikipedia page for more detail.

Muskr (talk) 16:22, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Nontheism erroneously being equated with irreligion
I noticed that this list includes people who are religiously unaffiliated, including those who may still believe in a deity while being irreligious. The problem with this is that not all irreligious people are nontheists, so it would be blatantly lying if we put irreligious theists on this list. For example, Ariana Grande left Catholicism, but she now follows the beliefs of Kabalah, but she was put on this list anyway. Sausage Link of High Rule (talk) 23:01, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Is Scientology theistic?
It seems like the answer to that question could add a number of people to this list. Cwallenpoole (talk) 17:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)