Is atheism a belief?

[Amarok]

Huggy will be old and in a wheelchair with a nurse emptying his diapers and he'll still bring up Denmark to anyone and everyone he can.

Pretty much

[Whateverist]

Now we're talking. I was about to post a new topic on a thread but thanks Nakara for providing some food for thought.
I like the analogy, its the best one I've heard.

If I ask "do u believe there is a God?" there is yes, no or I don't know. Three options, not 420.

Sorry, but belief does not work that way.

Belief is defined by cognitive scientists and analytic philosophers as, the psychological state in which one accepts a premise or proposition as being true (or likely true).

Belief is a binary mental state. Either one accepts the premise that a god exists as being true, or they don't accept that premise. There is no 3rd possibility.

Please note, Agnostico, that "accepts God does not exist" is not the binary alternative to "accepts God exists" which Simon is talking about.  Accepting or not accepting the proposition that God exists are the only two choices.  This is not a false dichotomy, thought "believes God exists" vs "believes God does not exist" would be a false dichotomy since other possibilities do exist.

Otherwise, screw it:

[T0 Th3 M4X]

"Atheism" originated as a term used by "theists" to specifically identify those who didn't believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Later it became a loosely used derogatory term that could apply to anybody. You could be a "theist" and still be an "atheist" because you were an opponent to someone, but it could be applied that way to just about anything, even for political reasons or just because you didn't like someone. Today it is most commonly used as a term that applies to people who don't adhere to a belief in any God or gods.

[Angrboda]

"Atheism" originated as a term used by "theists" to specifically identify those who didn't believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Later it became a loosely used derogatory term that could apply to anybody.  You could be a "theist" and still be an "atheist" because you were an opponent to someone, but it could be applied that way to just about anything, even for political reasons or just because you didn't like someone.  Today it is most commonly used as a term that applies to people who don't adhere to a belief in any God or gods.

I'm pretty sure the Romans were using it to describe people who didn't pay deference to the Roman gods before Christianity was even around much.

(I also vaguely remember something about Plato and how he was regarded, but don't have the reference ready at hand.)

[Amarok]

"Atheism" originated as a term used by "theists" to specifically identify those who didn't believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Later it became a loosely used derogatory term that could apply to anybody.  You could be a "theist" and still be an "atheist" because you were an opponent to someone, but it could be applied that way to just about anything, even for political reasons or just because you didn't like someone.  Today it is most commonly used as a term that applies to people who don't adhere to a belief in any God or gods.

Nope history fail

Atheism has specific meaning it's simply been misused and abused .

This crusade to turn it into religion is just sad

[ignoramus]

Theos = Greek for God.
Atheos = Greek for man without God.

Heathens go back to thousands of years bc.

[Amarok]

"Atheism" originated as a term used by "theists" to specifically identify those who didn't believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Later it became a loosely used derogatory term that could apply to anybody.  You could be a "theist" and still be an "atheist" because you were an opponent to someone, but it could be applied that way to just about anything, even for political reasons or just because you didn't like someone.  Today it is most commonly used as a term that applies to people who don't adhere to a belief in any God or gods.

I'm pretty sure the Romans were using it to describe people who didn't pay deference to the Roman gods before Christianity was even around much.

Don't get him started you will be bashing your head against his insistence atheism is loosey goosey term forever .

[T0 Th3 M4X]

I'm pretty sure the Romans were using it to describe people who didn't pay deference to the Roman gods before Christianity was even around much.

Don't get him started you will be bashing your head against his insistence atheism is loosey goosey term forever .

We went through this yesterday.  Oh, I know though. You still believe Encyclopedia.com is making it up.


Atheism - Early modern Christian writers often failed to distinguish between non-belief in "the true God" and non-belief in a supreme being per se, and atheism usually meant the assertion of the non-existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Strictly speaking, however, atheism is the denial of the existence of a divinity.

As such, it is different from agnosticism (a suspension of belief on the question of God's existence) or simple theological heterodoxy. In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, however, the term atheist was used without great precision, even carelessly. The epithet was applied to religious dissidents, political enemies, and debauched libertines, usually with little concern for a person's real beliefs on the question of God's existence. Thus, when the sixteenth-century French cleric and writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) was accused of being an atheist because of the fun had at religion's expense in his comic novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, he lost no time in returning the charge at his sectarian opponents. Agnostics and religious skeptics; rationalists, deists, pantheists, materialists, members of dissenting religious sects, or those belonging to no recognized confessional religion; moral, religious, and political subversives; and general non-conformists as well as true unbelievers were all called atheists. In this respect, the early modern period was no different from earlier historical eras.

As Socrates himself had discovered, "atheist" was a convenient label for any person who did not believe what everyone else believed and who showed independent, critical, and iconoclastic tendencies.

...

[Amarok]

We went through this yesterday.  Oh, I know though. You still believe Encyclopedia.com is making it up.

Atheism - Early modern Christian writers often failed to distinguish between non-belief in "the true " and non-belief in a supreme being per se, and atheism usually meant the assertion of the non-existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Strictly speaking, however, atheism is the denial of the existence of a divinity.

As such, it is different from agnosticism (a suspension of belief on the question of God's existence) or simple theological heterodoxy. In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, however, the term atheist was used without great precision, even carelessly. The epithet was applied to religious dissidents, political enemies, and debauched libertines, usually with little concern for a person's real beliefs on the question of God's existence. Thus, when the sixteenth-century French cleric and writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) was accused of being an atheist because of the fun had at religion's expense in his comic novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, he lost no time in returning the charge at his sectarian opponents. Agnostics and religious skeptics; rationalists, deists, pantheists, materialists, members of dissenting religious sects, or those belonging to no recognized confessional religion; moral, religious, and political subversives; and general non-conformists as well as true unbelievers were all called atheists. In this respect, the early modern period was no different from earlier historical eras.

As himself had discovered, "atheist" was a convenient label for any person who did not believe what everyone else believed and who showed independent, critical, and iconoclastic tendencies

Re posting something I already addressed won't help you

[T0 Th3 M4X]

We went through this yesterday.  Oh, I know though. You still believe Encyclopedia.com is making it up.

Atheism - Early modern Christian writers often failed to distinguish between non-belief in "the true " and non-belief in a supreme being per se, and atheism usually meant the assertion of the non-existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Strictly speaking, however, atheism is the denial of the existence of a divinity.

As such, it is different from agnosticism (a suspension of belief on the question of God's existence) or simple theological heterodoxy. In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, however, the term atheist was used without great precision, even carelessly. The epithet was applied to religious dissidents, political enemies, and debauched libertines, usually with little concern for a person's real beliefs on the question of God's existence. Thus, when the sixteenth-century French cleric and writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) was accused of being an atheist because of the fun had at religion's expense in his comic novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, he lost no time in returning the charge at his sectarian opponents. Agnostics and religious skeptics; rationalists, deists, pantheists, materialists, members of dissenting religious sects, or those belonging to no recognized confessional religion; moral, religious, and political subversives; and general non-conformists as well as true unbelievers were all called atheists. In this respect, the early modern period was no different from earlier historical eras.

As himself had discovered, "atheist" was a convenient label for any person who did not believe what everyone else believed and who showed independent, critical, and iconoclastic tendencies

Re posting something I already addressed won't help you

Oh, you mean your posts that claim the encyclopedia, National Geographic, and some of the science journals are all making things up?