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Secular vs Atheist - What's the difference?

secular | atheist |

As adjectives the difference between secular and atheist

is that secular is not specifically religious while atheist is of or relating to atheists or atheism; atheistic.

As nouns the difference between secular and atheist

is that secular is a secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules while atheist is a person who believes that no deities exist especially, one who has no other religious belief.

secular

English

Alternative forms

* (archaic)

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Not specifically religious.
  • Temporal; something that is worldly or otherwise not based on something timeless.
  • (Christianity) Not bound by the vows of a monastic order.
    • secular clergy in Catholicism
  • Happening once in an age or century.
    • The secular games of ancient Rome were held to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next.
  • Continuing over a long period of time, long-term.
    • The long-term growth in population and income accounts for most secular trends in economic phenomena.
    ''on a secular basis
  • * 2006 , The Economist, Economics focus: Dividing the pie
    • The skewed distribution of productivity gains is thus less a new phenomenon than a secular trend.
  • (literary) Centuries-old, ancient.
  • * 1899 ,
    • The long reaches that were like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped past the steamer with their multitude of secular trees looking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings.
  • (astrophysics) Of or pertaining to long-term non-periodic irregularities, especially in planetary motion.
  • (atomic physics) Unperturbed over time.
  • * 2000 , S. A. Dikanov, Two-dimensional ESEEM Spectroscopy'', in ''New Advances in Analytical Chemistry (Atta-ur-Rahman, ed.), page 539
    • The secular A and nonsecular B parts of hyperfine interaction for any particular frequencies ?? and ?? are derived from eqn.(21) by ...

    Synonyms

    * (not religious) worldly

    Antonyms

    * nonsecular * (not religious) religious * (not religious) sacred (used especially of music) * (not bound by monastic vows) monastic * (not bound by monastic vows) regular (as regular clergy in Catholicism) * eternal, everlasting * frequent * unpredictable * non-recurring * (finance) short-term * (finance) cyclical

    References

    * Webster's English Dictionary

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
    • (Burke)
  • A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
    • (Busby)
  • A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.

    • Anagrams

    * ----

    atheist

    English

    (wikipedia atheist)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (narrowly) A person who believes that no deities exist (qualifier).
  • * {{quote-book, date = 1571-10-20
    • , first = Arthur , last = Golding , chapter = The Epistle Dedicatory , title = Psalmes of Dauid and others, with M. 's Commentaries , url = http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/calvin/cc08/cc08004.htm , passage = Ageine, the Atheistes , which say in their hartes there is no God; }}
  • * {{quote-magazine, date = 1953-11-03
    • , first = Bertrand , last = Russell , authorlink = Bertrand Russell , title = What is an Agnostic? , magazine = Look , url = http://scepsis.ru/eng/articles/id_5.php , passage = An atheist', like a Christian, holds that we ''can'' know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the ' atheist , that we can know there is not. }}
  • (broadly) A person who rejects belief that any deities exist (whether or not that person believes that deities do not exist).
  • * {{quote-magazine, year = 1843
    • , title = A Reciprocal Dialogue , first = G. J. , last = Holyoake , authorlink = George Holyoake , editors = Paterson, Thomas , magazine = , volume = 2 , issue = 64 , page = 89 , url = http://books.google.com/books?id=1apbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA89&dq=atheism , passage = Minister—Are you really an Atheist ?
    Atheist—Yes.
    M.—Do you deny that there is a god?
    A.—No. I deny that there is sufficient reason to believe there is one. There may be a god, but I think it rather unlikely. }}
  • * {{quote-book, date = 2006-09-18
    • , first = Richard , last = Dawkins , title = The God Delusion , publisher = Houghton Mifflin , location = Boston , chapter = The God Hypothesis , page = 51 , edition = 1st Am. , isbn = 978-0618680009 , lccn = 2006015506 , id = , ol = 7606171M , url = http://books.google.com/books?id=yq1xDpicghkC&pg=PA73 , passage = Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist . ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’ }}
  • (loosely) A person who has no belief in any deities, such as a person who has no concept of deities.
  • * {{quote-book, year = 1772
    • , original = Le Bon-Sens, ou, Idées Naturelles opposées aux Idées Surnaturelles , by = , year_published = 2004 , title = Good Sense without God: Or Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas , location = London , publisher = W. Stewart , section = §30 , page = 21 , url = http://books.google.com/books?id=vTqR5r1_DqYC&pg=PA21 , passage = All children are born Atheists ; they have no idea of God. Are they then criminal on account of their ignorance? }}
  • * {{quote-book, year = 1910
    • , title = The Vermont Digest 1789-1905 , publisher = Free Press Printing Co , location = Burlington , volume = 2 , url = http://books.google.com/books?id=HlgWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR137 , passage = Atheists. One who does not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, an atheist , is incompetent as a witness, being incapable of being sworn. [...] Changed by Acts of 1851, No. 12 (P. S. 1593), under which, no question can be raised as to a witness's "opinions on matters of religious belief." }}
  • (loosely, uncommon) A person who does not believe in a particular deity (or any deity in a particular pantheon), notwithstanding that they may believe in another deity.
  • * {{quote-book, year = 1840
    • , first = Edward , last = Gibbon , authorlink = Edward Gibbon , title = The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , edition = new , volume = 1 , chapter = 16 , page = 183 , passage = Malice and pejudice concurred in representing the christians(SIC) as a society of atheists , who, by the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. }}
  • * {{quote-video, year = 2002
    • , month = February , first = Richard , last = Dawkins , title = Richard Dawkins on militant atheism , work = TED , url = http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html , passage = An atheist' is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all ' atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. }}

    Related terms

    * atheism * atheistic * atheistical * atheophobia * pantheist * polytheist * theist * monotheist

    Synonyms

    * nontheist

    Antonyms

    * theist

    Hypernyms

    * (neologism)

    Quotations

    See also

    * agnostic * deist * pandeist * ignostic * apatheist

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Of or relating to atheists or atheism; atheistic.
  • * ,
    • He would have been seven times more Epicure and atheist than he was.

    Anagrams

    *

    See also

    * English terms with alpha privatives English words suffixed with -ist