RE: Would you be an atheist if science and reason wasn't supportive of atheism?
December 5, 2012 at 1:05 pm
(December 5, 2012 at 10:09 am)Vincenzo "Vinny" G. Wrote: But I've been hearing a lot of equivocation on what atheism means, from other atheists.
"It's a lack of belief in God" "It's the claim that God does not exist"
All this means you get 30 minutes into an argument to find out the two of you agree with each other, but the definitions are different!
That gets my goat. That really gets my goat. Really really, and I don't mind admitting this to you.
Ugh. People using words with crazy definitions.
That's not crazy. Those two statements are saying fundamentally different things. A lack of belief in something is exactly that. It does NOT necessarily mean that you are certain that something does not exist but you currently do not believe in it for whatever reason. Nor is it an active process, like believing in God is - it's an absence. Stating that something categorically does not exist is an active belief and creates a burden of proof upon you to back up your claim.
Mixing up those two things is very often used by religious people to accuse atheism of being a religion itself so it is an important distinction to make.
