Neil Degrasse Tyson

[Confused Ape]

Perhaps this discussion has wandered away from the real point.  Atheism and Agnosticism can overlap but there's this on the current NDT Wikipedia page.  I've bolded the relevant bit.

Neil deGrasse Tyeson - Spirituality

So what people are really after is my stance on religion or spirituality or God, and I would say if I had to find a word that came closest, I would say agnostic ... at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all.

Is it right to insist that he label himself as an atheist when he'd rather not be put into any category?  It comes across that he's only classified himself as something because a number of people insisted on giving him a label he didn't want.

And it's a nice point of view (well, not really, but I'm not here to argue philosophy, personally I think it's a bullshit POV), but massively sidetracking from any kind of point and is totally irrelevant. A definition that directly implies claims like this is somewhat of a dodgy definition IMO.

A quick google search reveals that atheism does overlap with philosophy.  Here are an article from the Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy - Atheism

Section 2 - The Epistemology of Atheism - is making me go cross eyed.    This indicates that a simple, dictionary definition doesn't satisfy everyone so they've got to make things hideously complicated.

Again, his idea is not a definition. It's just his idea. All these people seem to have differing ideas of what agnosticism is and by your own admission here, don't view themselves as what actual definitions would describe them as. Well I'm sorry, the individual person doesn't get to pick and choose what words mean and dictate to everyone else that this is what it should mean specifically for them. Definitions exist for a reason.

Even a definition of a word is just an idea which majority opinion accepts as being true. Majority opinion can change, though, so a word can end up with a different meaning.

Maybe it depends on which philosophers people have been reading, though.  All I know is what Ramachandran said but I have no idea where he'd place himself on Richard Dawkins's Spectrum of Theistic Probabillity when it comes to some Hindu deities. He could be a 4, 5 or 6.

1 Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know."
2 De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. "I don't know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."
3 Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."
4 Completely impartial. Exactly 50 per cent. "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable."
5 Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical."
6 De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
7 Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one."

And I come back to the whole point here: saying it's rude that NDT is labelled as an atheist on his wiki page, when by all accounts he is one, is pretty stupid IMHO.

When NDT discovered that he'd been classed as an atheist in a Wikipedia article about him he asked for this to be changed to agnostic.  A week later he went back and discovered that it had been changed again to say he's an atheist. I just think it was a bit rude to go against his wishes in the matter.  The current Wikipedia article now has various quotes from him on the subject of spirituality with the only real declaration being his own - "if I had to find a word that came closest, I would say agnostic ... at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all."

It's not these people who get to dictate what the definition of a word should be though.

Here is an article from The Atheist Scholar website - Atheist Activism

The 21st Century has seen the rise of the New Atheism, which has had an energizing and beneficial effect on the atheist community, not only on morale, but on the numbers of new members to swell our numbers and influence.

The New Atheists believe that scientific discovery has advanced so greatly, that it is now time to not only champion atheism, but to critique religion. They do not feel that religion should be accommodated, but rather criticized for its mistakes, bigotry and immoral history down through the ages.  New Atheism’s proponents believe that religious fanaticism, cruelty and superstition should be vigorously questioned, contradicted and quelled.  The New Atheists maintain that a naturalistic world outlook is sufficient to explain the origins of the universe and species, and with the dawning of neuroscience, human consciousness itself.  They do not believe that any supernatural entity or agency is necessary to human understanding or experience of life. They hold that religion’s supernatural claims are neither salient nor robust, and that those claims are not sacrosanct, but testable by science.

If you're going by a straightforward definition of atheism, the term 'New Atheism' is nonsense. It's also suggests some kind of ideology even though the straightforward definition indicates that it's impossible for atheism to be an ideology. The term has entered the English language now, though. Language isn't static because it changes all the time and that includes word definitions. Take the word 'gay' for example.  When I was young it just meant lighthearted and carefree or brightly coloured; showy. If you look at the Oxford Online Dictionary definition, these old definitions are now classed as dated and the primary definition is "(Of a person, especially a man) homosexual." (I came across an old children's book where Robin Hood was described as the gay outlaw. This conjured up a very interesting mental picture because of the new, primary definition of the word.)

The term New Atheism hasn't made it to the Oxford Dictionary yet but it's likely to if the New Atheist movement doesn't fizzle out in the near future. It's even possible that the idea of atheism being a movement will eventually become the primary definition of the word with the current primary definition being relegated as dated.

Maybe we need a new definition for people who would have been happy to declare themselves atheists before the New Atheist movement came along.  Having said that I couldn't say if that would apply to NDT.

Here's a video which raises questions about the human brain.

Literally, nothing to do with anything.

I found that it raised some interesting questions.  Was he an atheist with an unconscious belief in God before the operation or did his right hemisphere only start believing in God after his corpus callosum was severed?  If the latter, why?

How would you, personally, classify this man? Is he an atheist because of what his left hemisphere said or is he a believer because of what his right hemisphere said? On the other hand, do you think that the question of atheist or believer only applies to people whose brains are in one piece?