outhouse
Atheistically
Because its often a negative term used by theist.
Why is it hard to understand, if one is not a theist, one is an atheist.
Implicit atheism is still atheism
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Are people born inherently atheist?
- Thread starter eggyolk
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Because its often a negative term used by theist.
Why is it hard to understand, if one is not a theist, one is an atheist.
Implicit atheism is still atheism
... by employing distorted versions of it, i.e. straw men.
It does, as I've explained repeatedly.
All you illustrated is that if you perform some mental gymnastics, you can get something that kinda sorta matches how people use terms if you don't look too closely at it.
If you're going to define atheism in terms of rejection of belief, then an atheist has to exclude all gods. Many theists reject most gods, and as I think you've conceded, a person can't simultaneously be an atheist and a theist.
So in your view, an atheist is not only a person who doesn't believe in gods, but who is capable of expressing that they don't believe in gods? Why would that matter?
You've heard non-English speakers say things like "what I believe in isn't a god?" :areyoucra
Says the person who tried to expand the definition of "god" to mean "anything supernatural".
To "deny the concept" of something, you need to have a concept to deny. Please tell us about what the concept of god entails.
As I said earlier, since I've never been able to find a coherent concept that matches how people use the term "god", I approach the term "god" as the label for the members of a category that's simply defined in terms of a list: for instance, Jehovah, Thor, Zeus, and Ahura Mazda are gods, while Superman and angels are not. And when we approach the category as a discrete list, yes, we do have to reject each member of the list individually if we're going to reject all of them.
Unless you can find some common characteristic, that is. So what is it? What characteristic (or group of characteristics) do Thor, Hera and Allah share that demons, Gabriel, and ghosts do not?
Then meet more people. I don't know what else to tell you.
I've met plenty of people who consider Raelians and Scientologists to be atheists, since the Raelians don't consider their "Elohim" to be gods, and the Scientologists don't consider Xenu to be a god.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I have plenty of beliefs about god; they're just not the things that make me an atheist.
Two possibilities come to mind:
- you don't understand my argument, so your response doesn't really speak to it.
- you need to explain yourself better.
You have two choices:
- define terms like atheism and theism in terms of what individual people accept (or fail to accept) as gods.
- define them in terms of some objective definition of "god".
I think the first approach works just fine; I understand you dislike it. However, this means that you need an objective definition of "god"; what is it?
Yep. And as I've pointed out, this is the same approach that we use for terms like "monotheist", and the approach we use when we describe pantheists and Sun-worshippers as "theists".
Yes, in exactly the same way that a monotheist can believe in everything a polytheist does as long as they only consider one member of the polytheist's pantheon to be a god.
When I do a Google search for "Raelian atheist", I get 106,000 hits. They're not quite fundamentalist Christians (they go topless way more than typical fundamentalists, for starters), but they do accept huge chunks of the beliefs of theistic religions. Apparently, a lot of people think that this approach works fine.
I understand that you have issues with my approach, but it's the only one that's actually workable when you get right down to it. It's kinda like what they say about democracy: it's the worst possible alternative... except for all the others.
... but if you disagree, maybe you can go over what your preferred approach is and we can look at whether or not it actually works.
It's defended by atheists and used by atheists (and almost always to describe their beliefs). I've seen it most frequently invoked when theists try to equate their beliefs with atheist by saying
1) Atheists believe there is no god
2) Theists believe there is a god
Therefore (so the incorrect argument goes) the two are just different beliefs.
Only this argument is flawed. We exploit this difference all the time, such as in logic or mathematics. It used to be thought all swans were white. You can look at a trillion swans, but even if they are all white, you cannot say there are no black swans. However, it takes only one black swan for the statement to be false. In fact, in logic and math, there are two kinds of proof and each one is due because of this difference. Inductive proofs demand that we show something is true for all members of some set. Such proofs are entirely different from the other kind, which is to prove X wrong by showing that if you assume X is true, you get a logical contradiction.
However, the way to counter the arguments of the other side isn't to adopt ad hoc definitions that make little if any sense. For example, a lot of creationists assert that "evolution is just a theory". The correct response is not to say, like many do, that scientific theories are facts. The correct thing to do is show how "just" here seems limiting in a way that it isn't, from showing that evolution is also an entire interdisciplinary research field, that it is a framework which has allowed countless predictions that were confirmed, and so on. Not to claim that a theory is something it isn't.
The simplest reason is that one can only not be a theist if one doesn't believe what it is a theist does. So we have to define theist.
Another simple problem is linguistic: no word from any language is truly equivalent to a word in another, including theist. Theist is an English word, People who don't speak English do not call themselves theists. That doesn't make them atheists.
Also, there are those who call themselves theists but the god the believe in (e.g., the sun, other humans) is something I believe in too, I just don't use the term "god". So we have two choices: we can either decide that a theist is anyone who applies to anything the word "god" (and only English speakers are atheists) or realize that a theist is one who applies the concept god to something. The issue with this is that now we cannot use words to determine whether someone is a theist. We have to understand whether or not they have a concept that is similar enough to the one we refer to by the word "god".
Finally, defining atheism as "not theism" is problematic for a great many people (like me) who categorize themselves as neither atheist nor theist. It seems strange to me that we must accept without question the self-designation of any theist yet those like me are told it doesn't matter if we do not wish to call ourselves atheists, we are anyway.
Even if we define atheists as those who are not theists, then it still requires defining what it is theists are such that we can know when someone is not a theist. Again, if we merely ask, then only English speakers even could be theists. If we rely on what concept(s) a theist must have, then we cannot simply assert atheists aren't theists without saying what concepts it is that a theist must believe in to be one.
I'm not cherry-picking anything. I used what you provided.
Give me a break.
First, I point out that plenty of people use the definition for "atheist" that I gave. You respond by saying that my definition of the term isn't in the OED, as if that was some sort of authority.
Then, when I point out that when you unpack the terms in the OED definition, it does reflect the definition I'm saying, you downplay the importance of the dictionary.
I give up. I've tried my best to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're interested in an honest discussion, but I can't maintain the illusion any more. Your straw man antics were bad enough. This ridiculous moving of the goalposts has pushed me past the point where I give a damn about continuing.
Edit: I don't know what it is about this issue. Suggest that a baby might be an atheist and normally rational, reasonable people lose their freakin' minds.
To give this example a serious answer, it just reinforces what I said in my previous post, that atheism is not eliminative. We can consider a belief to be eliminated (there is either a belief or there isn't) but that's not atheism.
You can't "lack" what doesn't exist.
outhouse
Atheistically
#1 is incorrect.
#2 is correct
I dont have to believe anything to not be a theist.
One raised on a island with no concept of a deity, nor ever learned theism, is still an atheist.
I asked you several posts ago to say what you meant by that and again in a later post to tell me that if what I say doesn't follow from what you have, to say why. You responded repeatedly about definitions of theism when the entirety of my argument at that point was assuming that we accepted your definition.
For the sake of argument, let's say you have. Can you quote specifically what I said that you are labeling as a straw man and why it is a straw man (including what it is you believe I intended to show by it, which, if it was a straw man you know already)? We both keep repeating the same things and we clearly think we both are showing things the other isn't.
What about my definition is inconsistent?
In order to affirm one does not believe in any god, or disbelieves in all gods (which you say is equivalent to lacking any belief about gods), why does this requirement not hold? If someone claims that because of their training and mental state they have achieved the status of god, as many people with a particular belief set do, then what does it mean for an atheist to exclude them? If it is the application of a personal conception of god that they don't believe exist, then such persons are not part of that concept for they exist. That would make atheists theists, which is unacceptable according to you. If we say that atheists are those who aren't theists and avoid dealing with theists beliefs, than atheism is simply whatever one wishes to believe about anything including what almost everybody would agree is god, just so long as they don't call themselves theists. If it is a lack of belief in god, then there must be something that atheists believe about god which allows them to determine that the theists in question (those that believe, without invoking any supernatural properties, that they are gods) are not actually gods. But this means that theists have beliefs about what a god is, and it means they use to determine that entities theists claim to be gods are, in reality, not gods.
Because if I say I believe that no spirits exist, I am making a claim equivalent to "I believe that no gods exist" only about a different concept. I do not need to know every spirit to do this. All I need to express it is the word "spirit" which I use to refer to the concept I have, just like I would if I said "I believe no gods exist". You expressed the concept in your statement by using the word god. You cannot lack a concept of god and use the word as you do. As I said, apart from anything else, we can see this using neuroscience.
No. Which is why it is ridiculous to stick claim that we can use words rather than the concepts we mean by them to define anything. A person who says that the believe in "Gott" or "Dieu" can be a theist if the concept of these words is the concept we refer to by "god". And once we are forced to deal with the fact that a theist is defined by belief in a concept, then just defining it as those that say they believe in god is inadequate and by extension the definition of atheism.
I didn't. I was simply demonstrating how a set of properties could be used to deny the existence of a concept and therefore all gods. I didn't realize you were so mistaken you were literally relying on the use of English words.
I need to deny what it is I refer to by the word god (which is necessarily a concept). I detailed this at length and even explained to you in brief what it means to have a concept represented in your brain. You have one of god. If you didn't, you wouldn't be capable of having a discussion about atheism and theism with anybody or about any religious or secular topic in which the word "god" was raised.
The problem is that this is neither a list of all gods nor is it "discrete". As a simple example, although it is unlikely that most of the worshippers who worshipped an entity they called Zeus worshipped the same entity (and probably impossible for those who do so today to worship the same entity), Zeus was known by other names by those who called him Zeus. Also, different entities (like Jupiter) were said to be who Zeus actually was. That's not really discrete.
However, the really important problem is the idea that the list is necessary. If someone doesn't read Greek, but reads in a translation of Paul's letters that Paul believes in a god, the only thing that makes this conclusion justified is the fact that we feel whatever is conveyed by the English word "god" is sufficiently close to the Greek theos to say that Paul believed in god. This is true for someone who does not speak English as well. We are required either to admit to the list those things which we think belong to the concept referred to by the word "god", or we can only say that English speakers believe in god(s). The latter is ridiculous. The alternative, however, requires recognizing that your list is akin to what everybody has: a concept that the word "god" refers to and which the conceptualizer believes particular concepts/entities are representative of. In other words, in every mind there already is a complete list, just not of names or titles. It is the list of all properties, names, and relations by which one is able to use a word like "god". To deny all gods is to say that the concept referred to be the word does not apply to any entity.
First, it need not be a "characteristic" even if we required a complete list. We'd just need a set out of which at least one characteristic applies to all gods.
Second, you believe in the existence of the sun. That's something some call god (same for humans) It can't be said that you don't believe in god unless you disagree with the application of the term to the sun. There is something you believe about the sun that gives you reason not to refer to it as (a) god. If you lack any belief about god, but you believe in what others call god, why is it that you don't use the label god to refer to what you both believe in?
Finally, and most importantly, is why the above two remarks about characteristics is important. All those names like Zeus and Hera and Jesus are simply names. If one person calls the father of the gods Jupiter and another Zeus, or one uses an epithet for a god, or one uses a term other than god to refer to YHWH, it is not necessary to deny that any of these exist. They're just words. Either the concepts those who believe(d) in such entries exist as more than concepts, or they don't. To deny a list of names is meaningless. Nor is it meaningful to deny any "external reality" the names refer to, as the sun has an external reality. All that needs to be done is to deny that there is any entity whatsoever to which one's concept of god could refer. All the names people use to refer to what are generally called gods are to an atheist (agnostic too, for that matter) merely names. To require one to list all the names people have used to refer to a concept that might be equivalent enough to the concept one has of god is completely unnecessary if one holds that by definition any entity that this concept could refer to can't exist.
Second, you believe in the existence of the sun. That's something some call god (same for humans) It can't be said that you don't believe in god unless you disagree with the application of the term to the sun. There is something you believe about the sun that gives you reason not to refer to it as (a) god. If you lack any belief about god, but you believe in what others call god, why is it that you don't use the label god to refer to what you both believe in?
Finally, and most importantly, is why the above two remarks about characteristics is important. All those names like Zeus and Hera and Jesus are simply names. If one person calls the father of the gods Jupiter and another Zeus, or one uses an epithet for a god, or one uses a term other than god to refer to YHWH, it is not necessary to deny that any of these exist. They're just words. Either the concepts those who believe(d) in such entries exist as more than concepts, or they don't. To deny a list of names is meaningless. Nor is it meaningful to deny any "external reality" the names refer to, as the sun has an external reality. All that needs to be done is to deny that there is any entity whatsoever to which one's concept of god could refer. All the names people use to refer to what are generally called gods are to an atheist (agnostic too, for that matter) merely names. To require one to list all the names people have used to refer to a concept that might be equivalent enough to the concept one has of god is completely unnecessary if one holds that by definition any entity that this concept could refer to can't exist.
The word "god" is by definition a collection of entities, real or no. The corresponding concept is a class of all entities that could be referred to by god. If I say "I don't believe any person can live forever", I don't need to list the names of every person that ever lived, lived, or will lived and say "that person specifically won't" nor do I need to wonder whether in some distant land there is some person who is unlike any I refer to when I use the term that might be different. That's nonsense. It means any belief claim that is collective of some set, must be known to be true for all elements of that set when that is what concepts are: sets of things which are classified as members of that concept.
I've met people who believe that there are haunted houses. Do I have to list every haunted house to say I don't believe any houses are haunted?
What are "terms like" these? Do I need to do the same when people call creationism a science or can I say that, despite there existing any such thing as an objective definition, creationism is not a science?
You and specifics. My issue is your definition itself, which means that anybody can be an atheist if they don't use two specific words and, in addition, only English speakers can be atheists.
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Right. My first statements to you about dictionaries in this thread were downplaying their importance:
And I repeated it:
No, it is one part of an entry I provided, and if I knew you were going to ignore half the line I would have made sure to include what I did after just in case you cherry-picked from that one line and then claimed it meant what you said it did.
How many times must I say that the definition itself (even the "lack of belief" one, I simply disagree what that entails) isn't my issue. It's the fact that you claim it is somehow logically consistent while the definition that atheists deny the existence of all gods is not and the reason you do so. If we make your definition as logically consistent, valid, and precise as you require a definition based on rejection to be, then we find that an atheist can believe anything so long as they don't use two words. No atheist believes this that I've ever met because atheists that agree with your definition don't require that it be so precise and consistent as you assert here. Pointing out a few groups that some consider atheist even though others might not does not mean that atheists who use your definition (that atheists are those that aren't theists and that a theist is anybody who says they are) do not believe that the pope would immediately be atheist if he decided that the word god applies to something other than what Catholics worshipped and that as this is true Catholics aren't theists.
I've spend the last several posts accepting as true your definition and trying to explain that what it entails fails if we demand the precision and consistency you do definitions like "atheists deny the existence of all gods". If all I needed was the authority of a dictionary there'd be no point of doing this. I could just point to the dictionary and say "you're wrong". I'm not. I'm saying your objection to the definition "an atheist denies the existence of all gods" or "an atheist believes no gods exist" is just as consistent as your own, both by noting how it is and how yours, if we apply it as consistently as you demand, leads to conclusions that nobody but you seems to believe. People disagree about who is and isn't an atheists. It isn't your definition itself, it's when we hold it to the standard that you demand that it fails. Because nobody believes that an atheist could have every religious belief that any theist has and be an atheist solely because they use a label for themselves other than "theist" and don't refer to whatever entity or entities they worship as "god" or "gods". Especially because without a better definition, one needs to be an English speaker to be a theist.
You have to believe that whatever it is that defines a theist, you don't fit that definition. If that thing is a belief in god, then you must not believe in what it is a theist calls god. However, as some who call themselves theists believe humans are gods, and others believe the sun is god, you have to believe that you believe in things that some theists call god, but you don't think they are gods (otherwise, we'd all be theists). If the only thing that makes one a theist is calling themselves one, one can believe in god and be an atheist.
outhouse
Atheistically
Love ya brother.
But you will not be able to convince anyone with credibility and hold that position.
The VERY definition of theism is [belief in atleast one god]
That simply isnt true. Belief is not require to NOT be something. One can not be something by simply, not being one.
No conscious decision or choice is required, to NOT be something. You just are NOT something.
We break down the wide definition of atheism, one falls in two defined catagories. Imlicit and explicit. Period.
AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Huh? Am I misreading you? Did you really cut Legion's statement in half, discard his conditional clause, and then deny that the second half is possible? Yikes. I love you, too, brother, but if I'm right, that's unconscionable. Probably immoral.
Legion did not say that one can believe in God and be an atheist. Read it again. He said:
If the only thing that makes one a theist is calling themselves one, one can believe in god and be an atheist.
I happen to agree, by the way. I think that the only thing which makes one a theist is calling oneself a theist. And I both believe in God and am an atheist. Actually I'm both a prophet of God and a hard atheist.
And obviously I am 'anyone with credibility.'
Chew on that for awhile and upchuck me something interesting.
There are no such things as theists and atheists, of course. What nonsense.
I don't hold it myself. However, as AmbiguousGuy stated, I didn't say this was the case. I was saying what follows assuming (that's the "if" part) that we define an atheist as not being a theist. If we define atheism as not theism, then we have 2 choices:
1) We can define what it is to be a theism as anyone who says they are a theist even if that someone says, for example, that they are a theist because they believe in humans
or
2) We can define a theist in terms of criteria that allow us to determine that even if someone says they are a theist, if they don't meet these criteria then they should not be considered one.
Of course, it's natural to define a theist as one who believes in at least one god, but as some self-identified theists believe that certain humans are gods (and I don't mean those like Jesus who said to have supernatural abilities but humans who have no properties that are supernatural). Also, some suggest that we have no acceptable option but to use their self-designation:
So, if we define an atheist as someone who isn't a theist, and we require further that a theist must believe in at least one god, then we can choose to say, as some theists believe, that certain humans are gods because they can achieve a mental state through experience that is entirely compatible with the sciences. Of course, these theists do not believe in any entity that an atheist wouldn't. So we'd be forced to say that atheists believe in the same entity, in this case, that these theists do, just that they don't use the label "god" for these entities (who are human and are not held to be gods for any supernatural reason by the theists who call them gods).
Alternatively, we can say that just because someone calls something "god" doesn't mean we are forced to classify them as theists. We can respect their decision to self-designate but we should be no more forced to agree with their self-imposed labels than we are when creationists label creationism a scientific theory. I opt for this approach, as it is how language works. It is not a consistent approach but language is, alas, necessarily vague, mutable, fuzzy, etc. I just don't think that because it has these properties we should be forced to say that anybody who says they are a theist is, anymore than I think we should be forced to consider the pope an atheists if he doesn't change any beliefs he holds now, but simply changes two words by
1) saying he isn't a theist
2) saying what he worships isn't a god but something else.
So a person is not required to believe in anything to not be an atheist?
If you are not a materialist, you do not need to believe anything to be so?
If you are not pro-life, you don't need to believe women should ever have the right to an abortion?
DallasApple
Depends Upon My Mood..
One time there was an aritcle in Time magazine called the "God gene" .I will try and find it.I think the gist is its human nature to "need" to believe there is an after life.
DallasApple
Depends Upon My Mood..
Found it.
DallasApple
Depends Upon My Mood..
outhouse
Atheistically
ya his qualy went right over my head.
But I dont know anyone at all calling themselves theist that dont follow some sort of deity. Thats why the qualy didnt register.
outhouse
Atheistically
Since in my opinion all deities exist in the imagination of those who believe, if you believe someone or something to be a god, your still a theist.
Its the same case as history shows us, men define deities, deities have never defined themselves.
So Yes to #1
Yes again.
Belief in atleast one deity of chosing.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
More or less with a few distinctions. Agnostics are not atheists by default as you seemed to hint. There are Agnostic Theists (as in they don't know that god exists but feel they believe in something). So atheist-theist and Agnostic-gnostic are two different qualifiers talking about two different but very connected qualities when determining such things.
Though I find it very incorrect to assume any degree of atheist/theism is apatheism as that stems more from the degree of concern rather than actual belief or knowledge on subject matter.
All I ask is reasonable arguments or evidence from them that thier pre-concieved notion is correct.
I have come across agnostic theists. I have heard other definitions but I certainly wouldn't argue with the definition you gave as I don't find the nomenclature itself either useful or clear. However, I have heard people describe themselves with too many labels I can't even decipher, let alone dispute, to try to argue with self designations. Some of the more exotic ones I've heard include: "Christian Satanist with Hindu influences", "Agnostic Faerie Witche", "Eclectic Wissard Deist", "Atheist Wiccan Pagan". Personal labels will always be that, but if we wish to be able to communicate then we must at least strive towards some manner of standardization. Recently (and by that I mean after a few centuries or more of use), the term "atheist" has been used to describe positions that seem to me indistinguishable from agnosticism. I can see a certain amount of rationale for some of this, as it makes sense to distinguish between
1) those who don't know if there is a god, or some "mind" behind the universe or intrinsic to it, or some cosmic order, or whatever, but who couldn't care less and don't spend anytime considering
2) those who don't know if any of the things mentioned in 1) exist, but who do consider it and to whom the answers regarding religious questions are of importance
Both agnostics and atheists, at least if we deal with common usage (not to mention historical and what the actual words themselves refer to by their etymological roots), differ from theists. However, agnostics hold that at least some god might exist, while atheists do not. The difference is between believing no gods exist (atheist) and not believing any gods exist but believing (a) god might (agnostic). That's why, for those who are almost atheist but aren't prepared to say that they believe no god exist I prefer something like apathetic agnostic. At its root, agnosticism is "not knowing" while atheism is "not believing". That's why we have the term agnostic: Huxley was pressed to describe his belief, but as he neither believed in god nor disbelieved in god (but did not know), there was no label he could used. So he coined agnostic.
In the end, people will call themselves what they wish. However, that doesn't mean we should strive to use words according to more standard methods whenever possible. In general, if I say I don't believe something exists, it means I believe it doesn't. If I don't believe it exists because I am not sure and don't know, then I just say that I don't know. And that is quite literally what agnosticism means. If this is inadequate to describe those who don't know but also don't care enough to bother with the possibility that (a) god might exist, then I don't mind a new term. It seems to me, however, that after four hundred years of using atheism to mean a denial of god not to mention the later creation of a term (agnostic) for the very purpose of describing those who don't believe only insofar as they can't believe in what they are not sure exists, why muddy the waters by extending atheism to cover a position that already exists?
My larger concern, however, is the motivations for some of the changes and the larger context into which they must be understood: the influence of the so-called New Atheism. There was a time when the great atheist minds were forces that changed the faces of theology and philosophy through devastating critiques. Not just the standard names like Nietzsche, but those like Russell and Freud as well. Flew shook even C. S. Lewis' faith. Today, however, the most outspoken atheists are popular writers and scientists. Brilliant though they may be, they have neither the philosophical depth, nuance, nor background to compete with their forebears. As a result, popular debate is fed by defenses based upon weak definitions, rehashed arguments made by atheists from previous generations that add nothing but are less articulate than before, appeals to emotion, and in general too many argumentation techniques that might be seen on Fox News. Theists have their share of the same, of course, but whereas the big name atheists are mostly those like Dawkins, Hitchens, Stenger, Pinker, & Maher rather than those like Dennett, This isn't true for the other side. People like Craig, Kreeft, Plantinga, & Moreland are certainly neither more intelligent nor more educated, but their background is in just this kind of issue. That's what they do: peruse the hundreds of years of writings by the greatest minds on the issues of theism (the problem of evil, the arguments for and against god, the issues with language, formal logic, etc.).
Atheism has a lot more going for it than claiming some default epistemic position or playing the definitions game. Yet if you look through the main English language corpora for the phrase "lack a belief" you find almost without exception it occurs in the context of atheists defending their position to avoid having to say that they "believe there is no god". As I said earlier, the way to argue against the incorrect claim by some theists that atheism is just like theism, except one is a belief that god exists and one is a belief that god doesn't exist isn't to engage in wordplay but to point out that 'belief in x" and "belief in not x" may have the same syntactic structure but from this by no means entails an equivalent epistemic stance. It doesn't.
Gnosticism is a modern term applied (poorly, as we later learned) to early Christian groups of a particular sort. Today, it describes Christians who view themselves as continuing that specific religious tradition. Without a radical redefining, it isn't really an opposite to agnosticism.
I pretty much agree. However, there is a link of sorts between belief and concern. If doubts that there is a god but this matters so little that to them even considering it, let alone trying to study the issue, is a complete waste of time, the lack of concern will influence both likelihood that the individual will come to the conclusion there is no god and the conclusion that there is.
Good luck with that one. Let me know if you find someone who can provide anything even close.
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Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I know of the roots of Gnostacism. And as you know that the Christian Gnostacism movement was based off of the older pre-christian greek philosophy of gnosis which is the active rejection of the physical realm for a spiritual or metaphysical one. For the greeks this was somewhat more difficult as their gods were nature or natural in reguards to their understanding of the world (as many scholars believe the roots of the mythology they believed was more or less evolved from folklore that was used to explain natural occurances they had no scientific understanding of).
So the christian gnosis based movement then derived from the philosphy the idea that esoteric knowledge granted either by god or within us already was far more important than the exoteric knoweldge that we gather from our surroundings. The core of this resonates today in many anti-scietnific notions (ToE is false! Earth is only 10k years old! Tides come in, tides go out YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT!).
I've even been in debates with people on the semantics of the idea of a Gnostic Atheism, which would roughly translate to mean someone who "knows" there is no god in the same esoteric way that someone would have "knoweldge" or gnostic belief in a god. However this is playing fast and loose with farthest boundaries of the terms already.
Well yeah. Apathetic Atheism is almost always weak atheism in that they "don't care" ergo they wouldn't have a strong opinion either way. However it doesn't work in the reverse that all weak atheism is apatheism. That was the only distinction I was trying to make.
Thank you. Generally I ask it continually for two reasons.
1) On the very rare occasion they may say something that is enlightening or I can learn from it. This has only happened....twice?
2) Hopefully it forces them to look at their own beliefs a little more critically through the obvious question. It happens more often than 1 but still very very rare. Though it has been my experience that people who are very religious that then give up their theistic ties often do so because of several events such as this accumulating into something more in their minds.
Well and numer three if I had one would be in the spirit of debate I would give them at least a chance to argue on their behalf.