Actually it does, a·theist literally means not·theist. Everyone that is not a theist is an atheist....

 

Yes, I realize that is one of the definitions of the word. It is unfortunately not the only one.

Yes, I realize that is one of the definitions of the word. It is unfortunately not the only one.

 

Why unfortunate? It simply means that there are some atheists of faith under one definition and some which are not of faith that fall under another definition. Many words have multiple definitions. There's nothing wrong with that. It's the users of a word that can only see one definition, the one THEY want, that are unfortunate....

Since the above two definitions are not compatible, atheism, like many words, has no clear meaning, but must be taken in the context intended, which is often not clear.

This is what I was talking about above. Call it atheism or don't, the position is still the same.

And for those of you who don't like the fact that science is technically in the "weak atheism" position you can replace this with any word you like' date=' including agnosticism seeing as how agnosticism (or what agnostics will tell is weak agnosticism lol) is commonly confused for this position.[/quote']I'm not trying to equivocate this definition of atheism with the agreed upon definition of strong atheism. They are two completely different concepts but if you take the Latin both have the word "atheism." And because of this a lot of people do not want to accept that science is [weak] "atheistic" and instead like the more neutral word "agnostic" even though they mean the exact same thing. The social stigmatizims associated with the actual word is what makes people all defensive, not the concept itself (which they verbally admit to agreeing with, they just call it something else). And so I leave you with this observation,

Take doG for instance. It's obvious his position is that he doesn't know whether god exists or not' date=' so he doesn't believe either which way. But despite that, he's still accused of having "faith" that god doesn't exist because he's using the label of "atheist". We already know that he's not saying that god doesn't exist, yet he's being assailed as so.

 

This is because we're using imprecise labels to justify attacking belief, rather than what the person really believes. That, too, is intellectually dishonest, in my opinion.[/quote']

I'm a Baptist... I know, I know...

 

The actual theology of the Baptist church isn't that bad. It's really pretty liberal. The leadership is just screwy.

Is that the religion where instead of being sent to Hell, you're shot in the thigh?

 

And each day seems like half a year.

I am an atheist but I think that this label is not good enough.

 

I would prefer to call myself anti-dogmatist ( or anti-dogmatic for simplicity ).

 

To understand better what I am talking about. Watch this video:

 

lucaspa,

 

I'm curious you invoked Gould's NOMA a few times to say that science can have no say whatsoever on matters of God, but then you say that there is in fact evidence of God in the form of personal experiences / revelations, etc. But wouldn't fields of science such as psychology, neuroscience etc. have a say in such things?