RE: Atheism's Definition - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
November 14, 2013 at 9:57 am
(This post was last modified: November 14, 2013 at 9:58 am by Tonus.)
(November 13, 2013 at 7:55 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Good point, it is dumb but it really makes me mad, because it is so arrogant to try to define what someone else believes just so you can make a point easier. Maybe we should define Christianity for Christians.
Well, they have something like 40,000 definitions for it themselves. What's one more?
I think that the discussion on "what is an atheist" is usually used as a way to deflect from more substantive discussion. A theist who is trying to make sure that I understand the meaning of the word might better spend that time proving his own views and beliefs instead. But it seems to me that many of them spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince me that I might be wrong about some detail or other. I'd rather not encourage such useless exercises when there's more interesting discussion to be had.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
