Can a potato be an atheist?

[genkaus]

I've recently heard various people attempt to redefine atheism.

I'm personally not cool with that. The act of one person enforcing their definition of atheism onto others seems very authoritarian and religious in its style. And I don't like atheists who try to turn atheism into a religion.

Is that so? Then stop claiming that everyone can define atheism however they want - as you did in the other thread.

But there is this popular notion that atheism is "merely a lack of belief in Gods".

Yes, and that is how definitions are made - by popular notion.

This definition needs teasing apart. Is anybody, or anything that possesses this property an atheist? What about rocks and plants and trees? Surely this definition isn't enough. It must be limited to people who lack belief in God.

Look up the suffix "-ist"

-ist
 
a suffix of nouns, often corresponding to verbs ending in -ize or nouns ending in -ism, that denote a person who practices or is concerned with something, or holds certain principles, doctrines

Since it specifically corresponds to persons, repeating that information in the definition of every word that contains an "-ist" would be redundant. So yes, that definition is enough.

But okay, so maybe we all decide it's better to limit it to human beings. But here too, we have some problems. Are infants atheists? And senile old women atheists simply by virtue of not having the capacity of remember or understand, let alone believe? What about people in a coma? Are they atheists?

Depends on how you define "persons". If they come under that category, then yes, they are atheists.

Strictly speaking, a potato can be an atheist, as long as a potato merely "lacks belief in Gods".

Strictly speaking, it can't. Because it's not a person.

Quite evidently, I think this definition comes with some problems of its own.

Earlier in our history, the definition of atheism was quite different. When atheists were intelligent, atheism was typically defined as "A denial of the existence of God". But when it was quickly determined that this belief isn't rational, the definition fell by the wayside.

On the contrary, that is still a part of the definition:

a·the·ist
   [ey-thee-ist]
noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

It is not used as often because atheism and theism are more concerned with what one believes and not says.

You see, when people were so-called strong atheists, I think rationality didn't matter. Whether or not there was evidence for the belief didn't matter. What mattered was what they believed, and how they lived, and what they wanted. And they WANTED to live without this God-concept.

I think that is the essence, the spirit of atheism. A desire to live without the intervention of God into our daily conscious lives. And whether or not God actually existed was irrelevant.

Bullshit. It is because rationality matters so much that people actually become atheists. It is because they don't simply want to believe what they want to believe but want their beliefs to be rationally justifiable that they consider the matter and espouse atheism. I'd say that whether or not god actually exists is very much relevant to that.

Think about it- would any of us really be surprised or shocked if it turned out that God existed?

I know I would.

Would we weep and mourn and cry and beg for forgiveness and try to become Christians hoping God wouldn't notice?

I would weep and mourn and cry - for the loss of the rational and logical universe that I thought I lived in.

So let's not kid ourselves that we're doing this for the evidence. I know I'm not.

That much is obvious - that you are not concerned with evidence, that is. After all, you are a theist who just pretends to be an atheist.