(June 23, 2016 at 5:11 am)Red_Wind Wrote: So what is the right definition?
For any claim: X, you can believe X is true, believe X is false, or have no belief either way.
Person A: belief X is true, no belief X is false
Person B: no belief X is true, no belief X is false
Person C: no belief X is true, belief X is false
16th century: The word "atheos" was taken from the Greek, in full, and an "ist" suffix was added to it. Regarding belief, it meant "someone who believed no gods exist". "Atheist" was defined as C.
17th century: The word "theos" was taken from the Greek, and an "ist" suffix was added to it. There was no word "theist", to attach an "a" prefix to, for almost 100 years after the word "atheist" was put together. For another 100 years, this word "theist", referred mainly to deist types. "Theist" was defined as A.
18th century: You can find opponents of D'Holbach, representing the common usage Christian majority, using a faulty logic that said not believing X = believing not X. So, while "atheist" was defined as C, it was being used on B and C.
So, they were offering a false dichotomy ... you either believed X is true, or they considered you to believe X is false.
19th century: That was still the way things were, when Huxley came along. Huxley then defined B. He was a scientist, above all else. He saw the scientific method in picking apples at the market. The agnosticism Huxley defined amounted to a form of demarcation. No objective testable evidence = a subjective unfalsifiable claim. Results: unscientific and inconclusive. No belief as to the truth, or falsehood, of the claim. It is not compatible with athe-ism, the belief gods do not exist, or the-ism, the belief gods do exist.
"Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe." ~ Thomas Huxley, 1884
20th century: The turn of the century saw a number of writers calling it the "age of agnosticism". Defining B was quite popular, and caught on in a big way. In the 20th century, the likes of Einstein, Popper, and Sagan, identified as agnostics. What also came along was a push to use a broader definition of "atheist". George H Smith gave us implicit, explicit, and the basis for weak and strong, a-theism. Antony Flew gave us negative and positive a-theism.
"In this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels ‘positive atheist’ for the former and ‘negative atheist’ for the latter.
The introduction of this new interpretation of the word ‘atheism’ may appear to be a piece of perverse Humpty-Dumptyism, going arbitrarily against established common usage. ‘Whyever’, it could be asked, ‘don’t you make it not the presumption of atheism but the presumption of agnosticism?’" ~ Antony Flew, 1984
That is still not the more popular definition outside of a-theist circles. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, which uses Flew's terminology, itself, still fully admits that the narrow definition of "atheist" is still the more common. It also acknowledges agnosticism to be purely a form of negative a-theism, with no belief, either way. Even amongst non-theists, on surveys, more choose "nothing" or "agnostic" than choose "atheist". Even the majority of the people who a-theists consider "atheists", don't seem to be using their definition or label.