Antitheism, also spelled anti-theism, is the philosophical position that theism should be opposed. The term has had a range of applications. In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity.

Etymology

The word antitheism (or hyphenated anti-theism) has been recorded in English since 1788. The etymological roots of the word are the Greek anti and theos. The Oxford English Dictionary defines antitheist as "One opposed to belief in the existence of a god". The earliest citation given for this meaning dates from 1833. The term was likely coined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Opposition to theism

Antitheism has been adopted as a label by those who regard theism as dangerous, destructive, or encouraging of harmful behavior. Christopher Hitchens (2001) wrote: "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.'"

Opposition to the idea of God

Other definitions of antitheism include that of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1953), for whom it is "an active struggle against everything that reminds us of God". The definition of Robert Flint (1877), Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh was similar. Flint's 1877 Baird Lecture was titled Anti-Theistic Theories. He used "antitheism" as a very general umbrella term for all opposition to his own form of theism, which he defined as Flint wrote However, Flint also acknowledged that antitheism is typically understood differently from how he defines it. In particular, he notes that it has been used as a subdivision of atheism, descriptive of the view that theism has been disproven, rather than as the more general term that Flint preferred. He rejected the alternative non-theistic

Other, similar terms

Opposition to the existence of a god or gods is frequently referred to as nontheism, or dystheism, or misotheism. Examples of belief systems founded on the principle of opposition to the existence of a god or gods include some forms of Atheistic Satanism and maltheism.

Different definitions of "antitheism"

Christopher New (1993) proposed an altered definition of the word antitheism as part of a thought experiment. He imagines what arguments for the existence of an evil god would look like, and writes New's changed definition has reappeared in the work of W.A. Murphree.

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