(October 12, 2013 at 5:47 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The ones here are constantly saying exactly that.
I have to say, I don't the weak definition of "atheist," since my beagle and my bunion both lack a belief about the existence of God/gods. I prefer a ternary choice: yes/no/I don't know. Since I also lack the belief that God/gods DON'T exist, I believe "agnostic" is a more sensible choice for me, and don't like the word atheist.
But I don't have control over the dictionary, and the "weak" position is one of the valid definitions: a + theist = not a theist.
It doesn't matter if you don't like the word.
If you do not hold the premise that a god exists to be true, you are an atheist.
Agnosticism is not a ternary choice to the question about BELIEF. It is a position that concerns knowledge.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
"Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it"
If your belief of the existence of a god is anywhere above nonzero, you are a theist. ANYTHING else is atheism.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
