Do you acknowledge that not holding a belief an rejecting a belief are different things?
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Are people born inherently atheist?
- Thread starter eggyolk
- Start date
I certainly don't think "not theistic" is a good definition for an atheist. I don't think defining people (myself included) who have thought long about our beliefs and decided an appropriate label should be told we're also atheists because after a few centuries of defining atheism as the disbelief in god, a definition still reflected in usage and dominant in dictionaries, suddenly atheism isn't supposed to have a definition other than what it isn't. Apart form the application of the label where it isn't wanted, there's the fact that although plenty of words are defined at least in part by contrast or opposition to another, within each pair both still have definitions. Then there's the fact that the "theism" the word "atheism" was defined in opposition to was that of Christianity. As that changed, it stopped being used in opposition to just theism and became a disbelief in gods.
However, atheism is frequently not a system of beliefs. The argument could be made that atheism is a system for those who organize much of their worldviews around an opposition to religion. Most atheists are little more concerned with what atheism means to them than they are with not believing in Santa. And even those for whom it is a concern, but only insofar as they worry about things like education, politics, culture, etc., being negatively effected mostly by specific beliefs of specific religious groups, I wouldn't call atheism as system of beliefs. When theism meant "Christianity" and atheism meant "not a Christian", it made more sense as one's worldview revolved around disbelief in what wasn't just a norm but deeply and actively embedded in culture.
Finally, a lot of the worldview atheists have, at least in the West, is Christian-based. From Marxist teleology and progressivism to the Western languages are influenced by or result from Christianity (and usually, therefore, indirectly from both Judaism and Greco-Roman philosophy). In other words, even for atheists whose atheism is an active rejection of religion and influences the way they vote, respond to religious iconography, etc., that same worldview is influenced in ways they don't know by religion.
The similarity makes them atheist. The difference is a claim to knowledge.
outhouse
Atheistically
How so?
So they are not different things. They are both "applications to the lack and disbelief of theism"?
outhouse
Atheistically
See I don't see that at all as an atheist.
I hate the label for that stigma, and hate how people perceive the term atheist. Much how Neil Degrasse Tyson said he would rather be viewed as agnostic due to the negative stigma attached to the term.
outhouse
Atheistically
Your forcing a narrow definition, where a narrow definition does not fit.
The difference is a claim of knowledge. And what is the similarity?
How and why does it not fit?
Not theism.
outhouse
Atheistically
Understood.
The only thing is that definition #2 is not clear about a conscious rejection
definite belief about is where, I believe a conscious rejection is required.
outhouse
Atheistically
because your forcing explicit atheism as the only definition, when implicit atheism also applies.
So what of people who identify as atheists who profess to hate god?
In what way does it not fit, though?
They sound confused.
As do many others.
No! Go right ahead. It's not really about denying, just about negating a word.
(Kind of like the way belief is all about the Bible.)
So what precisely is it you're not believing in?
Really?