(July 23, 2012 at 12:29 pm)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:(July 20, 2012 at 12:31 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: Atheists are generally very clear that they want atheism to be defined as a lack of belief in God, and not the belief or claim that there is no God. If this is so, why aren't cats and trees and birds and mentally challenged people who cannot think about things like the supernatural realm atheists?--they all lack belief in God too.
Short answer is cats and trees and birds aren't atheists.
Neither are they theists.
So atheism isn't defined as the lack of a belief?
I'll renew my claim that atheism refers to a class of belief systems--specifically, those systems which do not include (or imply) the proposition, "At least one god exists". In this way, in order to be classified as an 'atheist', one must have a belief system that falls into the Atheist class; cats and trees don't have belief systems, so in particular they don't have belief systems that fall under Atheism.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
