Well, that's off topic. But it does bring us back to the far more interesting other issue regarding belief/disbelief. Do you agree that one may disbelieve without asserting the opposite?

I dunno PE I like to think I am practicing agnostic.

I occasionally pray, I respect religious traditions when I come across them because I believe they might be true, but I also go my own way on morality. In fact what I have just described is part of me going my own way.

I do pray, you can say it's out of habit, but I say it's thinking directed toward a deity that may or may not be listening.

And should this being be omnipotent, he will know that I think he is possible but I am not convinced he exists.

I do think there is such a thing as a pure agnostic. I don't identify with either "agnostic atheist" or "agnostic theist" try though I have to adopt one of the two so as to identify with a movement.

I'd be curious what you think of this.

Re: YJ's criticism, I am similarly agnostic about everything else that "doesn't exist" such as Cthulhu, pink unicorns, the like.

I've been on this forum long enough that you guys probably remember I'm an epistemological skeptic on all things, not just the question of God.

@hecks - roseus is latin for rose colord aka pink.

@Ora,
"i suspect you're missing the point, do you believe in all the deities which countless civilizations have come up with but you've never heard of? I mentioned one earlier in the thread (which i had just found on wikipedia, that was this thread, right?) Do you 'disbelieve' or do you simple not think about things you've never heard of?"

Wait, what? Back up. I'm not opposing the noncognitivist position. I'm just saying that not all agnostics are atheists. They *can* be, but they aren't necessarily.

And @YJ, yeah, it's my position that disbelief is active assertion of the opposite. But I'm not sure dictionary definitions will back me up. My good old trusty m-w.com is calling disbelief "withholding of belief," which doesn't support my view. Goddamn facts, getting in the way of what I want them to say. *grumble grumble grumble*

@Draug
(Yeah, I know)

Oh, and sorry, but no, I'm not comfortable leaving the definition of "atheist" undefined, but if you've got nothing to add, we can just let it drop.

For the record, I believe anything is possible, hence I believe the Hebrew God is possible (this is ostensibly the one I pray to because of my upbringing), I also believe Descartes' deceiver might be real, or Zeus, or Esu-Elegbara, or some combination of these, or none.

And on.

@hecks, sup! I'm 21, a former Southern Baptist and, as much as I understand of secular humanism, identify with it. I know exactly where you're coming from, although I personally converted away because of an evaluation of what evidence I had for the hypothesis. I am however familiar with such feelings of guilt and am glad you appear to have found something that fits.

@YJ: More or less, yes, the agnostic modifier does cover this. It's helpful to imagine two axes -- "knowing"/agnostic, for left/right and theist/atheist, for up/down. ("Knowing" can simply mean "not-agnostic" here, I just don't know a good antonym to agnostic, because "gnostic" is something else altogether.) The vast majority of atheists lie in the lower-right quadrant, though there are a few in the lower-left quadrant. I'm actually not certain where to classify most theists and would not want to speak for them, but there are certainly plenty theists who fall into either upper quadrant.

I think it is more helpful to see the question as having two dimensions rather than one; certainly a statement of one's knowledge and a statement of one's belief are separate things, and merit their own modifiers.

haha hecks it's OK, it's a philosophical tidbit of a point for most any practical application, but it does become VERY important when words like "atheist" come into play, because the very definition I propose as most suited depends on the acceptance that one can reject a claim without asserting the opposite.

Haha thanks PE, I posted a chart showing exactly that a few pages ago :)

Usually I yell at people for not following along, but since you're agreeing with me I'll let it slide.

18 pages with my attention span? ain't no way ;)

Also, I've had this conversation with others and I expect it is relevant now.

There is a dictionary definition of atheist under which I might be called atheist because I profess no religion.

However I strenuously reject this characterization, chiefly because the dictionary is only a response to the way words are used, and hasn't caught up to the fact that in modern (America at least), the word atheist connotes not just a person who affirms that there is no God, but also a person who believes that religion is misguided and even immoral.

It is a movement, in this sense. You may not like that, I don't really like it, but it is what it is. And if you have any sense at all and are a linguistic descriptivist rather than prescriptivist, you will see why many non-religious people reject the atheist label, such as myself.

@YJ - I am of the view that disbelief in something = belief in a lack of it's existence.

@YJ,
I'm going to concede, for two reasons.
1) That word I keep using - disbelief - I do not think it means what I think it means.
2) I don't consider myself agnostic. My belief that there's no god is fairly strong. Thus I consider myself an atheistic Secular Humanist. Thus, I won't get all that upset if you want to lump agnostics in with me. If there's an agnostic out there who takes umbrage at being put into my column, I'll let them take up the fight.

In other words, "I yield! Agnostics are atheists! Uncle!"

Okay hecks I take umbrage lol, as I said above.

@Draug

Unfortunately our language is completely ill-suited to epistemological nuance because it is predicated on the assumption that knowledge is possible.

If I say "Draugnar wrote that in the last thread" I am making a knowledge claim implicitly. This is unfortunate for a skeptic like myself who would prefer to insert "it seems to me," or "I believe" into the meaning of every one of our sentences, but does not for practical considerations.

from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disbelieving
Definition of DISBELIEVE

transitive verb
: to hold not worthy of belief : not believe

So it depends on if one disbelieves transitively or not. :-)

@Draugnar - I disbelieve the claim that you are a huge fucking idiot, but that sure doesn't mean I think you're in any way smart ;)

@hecks - cool man. You might just be the 2nd person in the history of webdip who can do that :)

@thucy I'm not sure if I'm about to restart the same conversation with you I've already had, and I don't know if I have any more to offer along those lines.

@Thucy,
Great! I pass the baton. It's your fight now. Enjoy.

@Thucy,
"the word atheist connotes not just a person who affirms that there is no God, but also a person who believes that religion is misguided and even immoral."

That's why I prefer to call myself a Secular Humanist. I ascribe to lower-case a atheism, but not to what you outline, a movement that I like to call Evangelical Atheism.

"the word atheist connotes not just a person who affirms that there is no God, but also a person who believes that religion is misguided and even immoral."

I don't agree with that at all. That someone is an atheist in no way suggests that they consider the religious belief of others to be "immoral".

@Thucy I guess it doesn't matter.

The only reason that I push the definition thing so much is because the lack of agreement between what self-identified atheists believe and what many theists CLAIM self-identified atheists believe creates an opportunity for a massive straw man, which is exactly what fasces did to get us started down this path.

At the heart, I really don't care whether you call me an atheist or an agnostic or a theta-multiplier-B12 so long as we ALL understand exactly what is implied by that term.

@YJ - Actually, the more I look at that definition, the more I, like hecks, start to realize my preconceived ideas are wrong there as well (in other words "me too!"). Not worthy of belief doesn't have to mean actively does not exist.

As far as my intellect... My new university just gave me a 20K scholarship for acing their entrance exams. Does that help convince you I'm a huge fucking dick and an absolute genius?

@Jamie,
"That someone is an atheist in no way suggests that they consider the religious belief of others to be "immoral"."

It *shouldn't* suggest that. But there is a very active group of atheists out there (google the FFRF) who have taken up that aggressive mantle for themselves, and they're appropriating our word, "atheist," a word that should rightly belong equally to kinder, gentler unbelivers like you and me.

@draug:

cool man, you can be dude #3 :)

Congrats on the scholarship!


Don't worry about the belief/disbelief thing. It's a really easy and tiny thing, almost a philosophical side note, and it almost never matters - but when it does matter, it matters a lot.

hecks they aren't really appropriating it so much, are they, so much as living as a subset of atheism?

I don't feel anybody operating in that paradigm is insisting that the word atheist ought to require a belief in the immorality of organized religions. Now, that is a very popular belief among atheists, but I a person does not need to ascribe to it to be one, and I don't know anybody who says that a person must.


Website is big.... can you guide me to where it says that?

Well, maybe not appropriating it, but dominating it.
Also, of course they're not going to *say* it that way on their website. But if you want some examples of religion-mocking from their membership, just check their facebook page.

My point is just that there is real, pervasive reason that a lot of non-religious people reject the label "atheist."

They feel they are not atheists, and so they are not.

I am not an atheist, I am an agnostic. I think God might be real. I feel this makes me fundamentally different from your average self-described atheist, even if, when concerned, he will admit he is not certain God does not exist. We are still different because despite this statement, he assumes God does not exist, whereas I do not assume that.

Again, the nuance is hard to parse out on paper but it is clear enough. I am the type of guy that bows my head when people pray. Atheists are generally not those types of guys.

haha hecks well I openly mock religion all the time, and appreciate it greatly when others do as well. I also happen to believe that many religious teachings are, indeed, immoral. I don't know if that is a dominant attitude among atheists, but what I do know is that none of those beliefs are required for atheism. Mantle or no, I think we all agree that the kind and gentle atheist is still an atheist.