Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on December 12, 2010 at 4:32pm

• For  'theism' we find the explanation "Belief in one God as creator and supreme ruler of the universe, without denial of revelation", while a 'theist' is "One who holds the doctrine of theism."

They left out the 'mono-' prefix.

• An atheist (1571 is its oldest known use in English) is "One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God", or "One who denies God morally".

I have no problem with the second verb of the first statement.  I also have no problem, personally, with the second statement.  God is an immoral monster, and I deny a good number of his moral commandments.

• The OED authors seem to presuppose that 'God' exists and that atheists deny this.

I dunno, you could be reading a bit into that.  I have an issue with the word deny.  I haven't seen that in most of the dictionaries in which I've looked it up.  I prefer the Collins English Dictionary version:

atheist  (ˈeɪθɪˌɪst)
— n
1.	a person who does not believe in God or gods
— adj
2.	of or relating to atheists or atheism

• But surely no: atheists are, instead, pro-rationality, pro-reason, and pro-logic first of all ...

Should be, should be.  I know exceptions.

Permalink Reply by Rudy V Kiist on December 13, 2010 at 2:15pm

I agree wholeheartedly! The Collins dictionary is spot on and to generalize and say all atheists are, "pro-rationality, pro-reason, and pro-logic..." is not right, as I too know plenty that are not. At least not in my opinion (^_-). And as atheism becomes more popular/mainstream, it's inevitable that a much wider cross section of the public will be joining the ranks. 

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on December 15, 2010 at 2:40pm

That's why I prefer to be known as a "6" or "Sixth" - that gets them every time and has a riot in L6 atheist as discussed elsewhere on the site.

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on December 15, 2010 at 5:36pm

riot? Ooops - that would have been "roots" if the spelling checker hadn't got a bit out of hand.

Permalink Reply by Matthew Newman on December 16, 2010 at 9:14am

Well, Terence, my contention is that the atheist movement is almost a counter-culture movement.  Basically we're having to poll against a bizarre inhumanity and moralist regress which has long permeated our culture and society, but now finds itself at a bit of a snare, as it is outmoded, yet refuses to grow beyond its original confines and flourish.  I had always thought that Darwin would have agreed with me when I said "it's adaptation or death", but as a shadowy fellow I once read remarked, God is on life support!

 

If you really stop to consider it, if there was no erroneous attestations as to there being a mythical beared fatass in the clouds listening to harp music and raining burning sulphur down on us whenever he got bored, there would be reason for an antithesis.  Hence, atheism is just a movement, albeit a valuable one.

 

Christianity has/had its purpose... to quell the masses and blanket the fire of ingress.  However, now it's a cancerous growth that must be cut away so new ideas and ways of being may propagate themselves.  Christianity was always used to bolster the herd in lieu of what were, in the end, political movements.  Atheism, on the other hand, offers no such discrepancies... only that people think for themselves in want of the empirical collection of data we need to understand the reforming landscape of our world, which we call 'science'.

 

So, in closing, the atheist movement will come to an end in its own time, I believe, after mankind has a more rational understanding of life, the universe, and morality.  Hence, the fact that Christians have created these terms is fitting, because they will be their undoing.

Permalink Reply by Joseph Karel on December 16, 2010 at 9:04pm

Well, I don't know why the dictionary would capitalize the word god, because there is no "God" in any religion. The Christian god's name is YHWH, which is pronounced Yahweh.

Here is how Wikitionary defines Atheist:

1. One who lacks belief in the existence of any god.
   • 1772, Paul Henry Thiry baron d'Holbach, Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas, chapter 30:

     All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.

   • 1930, Bhagat Singh, Why I am an atheist?,

     That very day certain police officials began to persuade me to offer my prayers to God regularly both the times. Now I was an atheist. I wanted to settle for myself whether it was in the days of peace and enjoyment alone that I could boast of being an atheist or whether during such hard times as well I could stick to those principles of mine. After great consideration I decided that I could not lead myself to believe in and pray to God. No, I never did. That was the real test and I came, out successful.

   • 2006, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 51:

     Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist.

2. Especially, one who lacks any religious belief; an irreligious person.
3. One who believes that no deities exist.

The word Atheist come from the Greek word ἄθεος (atheos) which means "without god," so it make sense that the dictionary would define an Atheist as "One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God" but they should remove denies. It makes us sound mean.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on December 17, 2010 at 6:20am

But we are mean.  We put up Satanic billboards at Christmas.