(June 30, 2022 at 3:57 am)Belacqua Wrote: For most of history, atheism has been defined as the belief that God doesn't exist. An atheist is a person who says "God isn't real."
Recently, especially on the Internet, some people have started using a different definition. They say that atheism is simply the lack of belief in God. To them, atheists are people who say "I don't believe in God."
Philosophers of religion have been known to refer to the latter, new definition as "Lacktheism."
*Shrug* Semantics. Exactly why I said I tend to use "skeptic" instead. Starting with "atheist" instead, at least where I live, brings out the naysayers who want to help you define the terminology of what you are instead of talking about anything of substance.
For what it's worth, though, I'm pretty new to the "atheist" world, so perhaps I can provide my perspective. I have sponged in as many books, articles, videos (youtube, film, television, whatever) and other sources that I have bandwidth for over recent months. I do not recall more than the odd outlier asserting there is no god - it's almost universal that modern usage, in my anecdotal search, is lack of belief. I'm not a giant Dawkins defender, but it's sort of his 1-7 scale, and almost no one says 7 - not even Dawkins. As I also said elsewhere, that definition varies for each person, most likely, but I think the popular usage has entirely flipped if history records it as you assert - I'm not claiming it doesn't assert that, I just find it irrelevant to me.
