muichimotsu
Holding All and None
This question has persisted in my mind and there are many inquiries to put forth about it, but these three seem to suffice for a beginning discussion. I will start a new topic if new questions come up in the discussion at present with these three questions
1)How do you define atheism in its degree? The prefix a tends to only imply a lacking, similar to words like apathy and ataxia. To say that an atheist believes there is no God or says "There is no God" would seem mistaken by the very etymology of the word in question. To properly qualify a person that says there is no God would be to call them a contratheist. And then there are people that say that the concept of God is a heinous/unethical or otherwise objectionable thing to believe in, which would be what I would term an antitheist.
The term nontheist might be said to only cause more confusion, since its similarity of prefix with the a prefix would suggest they are basically similar. But it could actually serve as an umbrella term for a larger variety of differing beliefs held in relation to God, all of which are essentially not belief in God in any sense, be it through skepticism, rationalism or other related modes of thought one could posit. This would be to distinguish systems of thought that don't speak about belief in God but about God's relevance and meaningfulness, which range from agnosticism and skepticism to ignosticism, igtheism and apatheism, which I can explain if one is confused by the novel words I introduce.
2)A less considered difficulty of defining atheism is defining the part of the word that varies by the believer in a deity or deities. How do you define this term and justify it in contrast to other definitions, such as the deist and pantheist conceptions of God, not to mention the polytheist conception of deity as well as the bitheist description, where God is two complementary natures/forms/entities of sorts? If you define an atheist as one who does not believe in one God but could believe in multiple gods, the term becomes very convoluted to accurately define. It is usually easier to just suggest that an atheist disbelieves in any personal deities, but then this suggests that you can be an atheist and believe in a transcendent non personal force (like the Force in Star Wars for example, or the Tao in Taoism). So the term is then extended to a lack of belief or disbelief in the transcendent. But then this becomes difficult to define as well, since we can have transcendent experiences and believe in them, but not believe that they are supernatural, so the definition extends to supernatural. But as far as we try to define it, we keep coming up with new difficulties of language in relation to anything connected to divinity.
3)Related to this idea is how to define the extent of the person's beliefs or lack thereof about God. For example, a newborn child or a person that has not been exposed to any beliefs about monotheism for example could be considered atheistic. But in that same line of thought, many people have accused Deists and pantheists of being atheists because they deny certain qualities of God to be part of God's nature. Pantheists deny both God's personal and transcendent nature and Deists deny God's personal nature primarily. In short, the term atheist could actually even be extended to polytheists, since they believe not in a single personal deity, nor commonly in a transcendent deity, but in fact multiple deities with human characteristics and many of which are immanently present in the universe.
1)How do you define atheism in its degree? The prefix a tends to only imply a lacking, similar to words like apathy and ataxia. To say that an atheist believes there is no God or says "There is no God" would seem mistaken by the very etymology of the word in question. To properly qualify a person that says there is no God would be to call them a contratheist. And then there are people that say that the concept of God is a heinous/unethical or otherwise objectionable thing to believe in, which would be what I would term an antitheist.
The term nontheist might be said to only cause more confusion, since its similarity of prefix with the a prefix would suggest they are basically similar. But it could actually serve as an umbrella term for a larger variety of differing beliefs held in relation to God, all of which are essentially not belief in God in any sense, be it through skepticism, rationalism or other related modes of thought one could posit. This would be to distinguish systems of thought that don't speak about belief in God but about God's relevance and meaningfulness, which range from agnosticism and skepticism to ignosticism, igtheism and apatheism, which I can explain if one is confused by the novel words I introduce.
2)A less considered difficulty of defining atheism is defining the part of the word that varies by the believer in a deity or deities. How do you define this term and justify it in contrast to other definitions, such as the deist and pantheist conceptions of God, not to mention the polytheist conception of deity as well as the bitheist description, where God is two complementary natures/forms/entities of sorts? If you define an atheist as one who does not believe in one God but could believe in multiple gods, the term becomes very convoluted to accurately define. It is usually easier to just suggest that an atheist disbelieves in any personal deities, but then this suggests that you can be an atheist and believe in a transcendent non personal force (like the Force in Star Wars for example, or the Tao in Taoism). So the term is then extended to a lack of belief or disbelief in the transcendent. But then this becomes difficult to define as well, since we can have transcendent experiences and believe in them, but not believe that they are supernatural, so the definition extends to supernatural. But as far as we try to define it, we keep coming up with new difficulties of language in relation to anything connected to divinity.
3)Related to this idea is how to define the extent of the person's beliefs or lack thereof about God. For example, a newborn child or a person that has not been exposed to any beliefs about monotheism for example could be considered atheistic. But in that same line of thought, many people have accused Deists and pantheists of being atheists because they deny certain qualities of God to be part of God's nature. Pantheists deny both God's personal and transcendent nature and Deists deny God's personal nature primarily. In short, the term atheist could actually even be extended to polytheists, since they believe not in a single personal deity, nor commonly in a transcendent deity, but in fact multiple deities with human characteristics and many of which are immanently present in the universe.
