Six types of atheist

[Ben Davis]

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Hopefully no-one else has posted this yet:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...of-atheist

And the question du jour is:

Which type are you?

I think I am an intellectual atheist - just to start off with but possibly with a touch of anti-theism thrown in.

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There are some problems with the base definitions. For example the categories suffer from the conflation of atheism & agnosticism so some extra rigour around definitions would likely have yielded slightly different results. Also there's no attempt to describe the crossover of these categories: I envision a Venn or Celtic Line diagram to describe the commonalities. That said, it's really good start at getting some consistencies around the labelling.

I found the psychometrics interesting and their relation to stereotypes/common misconceptions although I'm sure that those of you familiar with those tests are aware of the flaws. Those flaws will be exacerbated by the inaccuracies in labelling & consequent profiling I mentioned above. But once again, a good start as this research will clearly be useful in combatting those stereotypes/misconceptions.

I'll look forward to the follow-up research as I'm sure that the professionals will spot the same problems as I did and try to address them.