If that understanding doesn't cover all gods, then have you really rejected all gods?
What if your meaning for the word "leprechaun" doesn't cover all leprechauns? There are a great many putative beings that I believe are mythical--gods, angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, goblins, fairies, ogres, leprechauns, dragons, etc. My judgment that they are mythical is based on my understanding of those words and my experience of the world. I don't see a big problem here. If someone else has a special interpretation of the word "god", I'll listen to what it is and decide whether it falls into the same category as my concept of "god". If that person has evidence or a good argument for their god, I'll examine it.
Okay... so then however you define your category or "model", it does have to generate all possible gods, correct? If not, then when you reject the results of the model, you haven't rejected all gods.
Suppose you see something that is halfway between a door and a hatch. If everyone calls the thing a door, you might extend your internal door "model" to cover it, or you might invent a new word--"hatch-door"--or you might consider that usage just another usage of the same word, or you might refuse to call it a "door". All of these possibilities are within reason. What sounds unreasonable is to claim that you do not know what "door" means because you haven't examined everything that someone might choose to call a "door".
But at the same time, you acknowledge that you can't tell whether every single god actually falls into the category you've rejected. So how can you honestly say you've rejected all gods?
There are always borderline cases. Semantic vagueness does not bother me. It is a natural phenomenon in language. I reject belief in all gods because of the properties they have and the flawed way in which people try to justify belief in them. I have spelled out my reasons for rejection in detail before, and I will do it again. I could be wrong, of course. I am certainly wrong about some things I believe, but that doesn't mean I have to go around mincing words about whether or not my rejection is a "belief" or opinion. Of course it is.
I was just trying to say that if you come up with a rejection that works for all supernatural entities (for instance), I'd accept this as a rejection of all gods as well. The important thing is that the category "gods" is entirely contained within the category "things I reject".
Well, I have come up with a rejection that works for all supernatural entities, and gods do fall within that class of beings. Have I been unclear about this in the past? Generally speaking, gods are not subject to the laws of nature. They can manipulate reality in ways that natural beings cannot. Some call it magic. I believe in sleight of hand, not magic.
Up to a point, but it is hard to judge every case because of semantic vagueness.
But if you can't reject all gods, then how can you claim to be an atheist, which you say requires rejection of all gods?
We were talking about classifying something as a "god", not whether that thing would be a believable being. If you can find a bona fide entity that qualifies as a "god", then I'll revise my opinion. Right now, they are looking very unreal to me.
I'm confused. It seems like you agreed that this person couldn't be a communist, but then your expanded answer seemed to suggest that you thought the label would work. Which is it?
It is whichever sense of "communist" you are using in a given context. Sometimes you reserve the label "communist" for a member of a communist organization. Sometimes you use it for people who just believe that we should live in communes and not own private property.
I think you got off-point there. My point was that saying my use of the term "atheist" is a case of special pleading implies that we're treating the term "atheist" differently from how we treat other similar terms. It seems to me that you've acknowledged that there aren't really any similar terms, which makes me wonder what point of comparison you used to decide that special pleading was going on.
Every word is unique. So what? Atheists are a type of religious skeptic--a type that denies the existence of gods. The world is full of skeptics, and there is nothing special about the word "god" that makes it impossible to reject belief in gods. The fact that we do not have similar labels for leprechaun-deniers and centaur-deniers tells us more about the social status of god-deniers than the special linguistic nature of words like "god" and "atheist".
If you say so, but the prefix "a-" does not productively attach to nouns in English. It attaches to adjectives.
Yes... adjectives like abiogenesis and aphasia, right?
In English linguistics, "latinate morphology" refers to the class of words derived from Latin and Greek. (Such terms often mix morphemes from the two languages.) I doubt that very many people think of "aphasia" as even having a prefix, since there is no corresponding "phasia", and it is characteristic of latinate terms that many do not appear to lack English stems. We do have "biogensis", so "abiogenesis" has a more salient prefix. You can go to a dictionary and find a lot of Latinate terms that begin with "a-" and "an-", but there is no general productive "privative a-" prefix in English other than the one that attaches to adjectives. The word "atheism" does happen to have a corresponding "theism" stem, but it is not formed by a productive morphological process. The word was borrowed into English that way, and it is in more common usage than "theism". If you do a Google search on "theism", you get 1.6 million hits. The word "atheism" gives you 12.4 million hits--an order of magnitude higher. Lots of people misspell "atheist" as "athiest", but few misspell "theist" as "thiest". So I don't think that the prefix is all that significant to speakers.
Perhaps if "geologism" were an accepted word, you could get away with an analogical attachment of the prefix.
You realize that it was a made-up word, don't you? I wasn't trying to say that "a-geology" is a real word; I was just using it for an illustrative example.
Yes, but it only underscores my point that you cannot use "a-" as a productive privative prefix on nouns. It attaches to adjectives much more easily--
asymptomatic, asexual, amoral, acausal, asequential, etc. While you can find it on nouns occasionally, English does not support such a productive prefix. The prefix "un-" is similar. It doesn't like to attach to nouns, which is why "uncola" sounds funny. The prefix "non-" is productive for nouns. Welcome to Morphology 101. That is just one of many non-geology courses.
Put these together and you need to have a way to actively reject all gods before you can apply the label "atheist" validly.
Yes, and I maintain that that is just what atheists do. They reject belief in all gods. If they don't, then they do not merit the coveted title of "atheist". I'm not really trying to exclude them. We can still all belong to the "non-believers" club.
It's just that the word has a centuries-old usage in English that is still perfectly good.
But skeptics don't reject belief in all things either. The whole point of skepticism is that a claim (either positive or negative) should not be accepted until it has sufficient support. It's not a matter of active rejection.
Really? I think that "skepticism" implies active rejection. Again, we disagree on word usage.
The audience may form an opinion about what I mean to say, but my actual intent is an act by me and me alone.
Yes, but you do take your audience into account when you say things, don't you? We calculate how the audience will judge our intent.
Really. So it was a different Copernicus who wrote this?
Move that empty set outside of the rejection space, and you have an accurate description of my definition and no division by zero.
Yes, and I haven't moved anything. Read my words. If
you move that empty set out of the rejection space, then
you have my original definition and no division by zero. You were the one who erroneously moved it in there in the first place. I have not changed my definition.
And exactly what percentage of people agreeing with me would be low enough for you to conclude that my definition is invalid?
On the "atheist baby" survey, I was actually surprised to get that many in your favor, but I think that that had more to do with partisanship and the discussion that ensued. The Secular Cafe survey had almost no "atheist" hits until someone started spouting off with the "lacks belief" definition. Then it picked up a few more, the stats are still 2-1 in favor of saying that the label is inappropriate.
In the general public, a substantial percentage of the people say that atheists believe in God, but are just rebelling against him. If usage is the be-all and end-all of meaning as you suggest, shouldn't you work that in somewhere?
No. What distinguishes atheists from other people is that they actively deny the existence of gods. Theists may feel that they are delusional and rebellious, but they still use the term "atheist" appropriately. Beliefs about a category of people are not necessarily useful in defining that category.
So what's the number? What percentage of people need to use a term a certain way before the usage is considered "valid"?
There is no number. Lexicographers rely on usage panels, who analyze citations and debate word senses.
