RE: Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"
June 26, 2014 at 7:41 pm
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2014 at 7:45 pm by Whateverist.)
(June 26, 2014 at 1:10 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Except it isn't. Ask any person what they think an atheist is, and practically all of them will tell you something like "Someone who believes God doesn't exist."
Did your account get hacked? You're a lot better than this sort of argument. Are you alright?
(June 26, 2014 at 1:10 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: And this how words get their meaning, by how people use them. Online atheists basically just changed that for an attempted advantage on this topic.
You're not helping the case you want to make. Precisely for the reason you give here, the use of "atheism" has morphed to mean lack of belief, not disbelief. As to which is ahead in the polls, I don't care. The evidence just from the sentiment expressed here by so many users is that there is plenty of support for atheism = lack of belief.
Why do you think you are uniquely in a position to diagnose everyone's true motives for using the word in this way, and what burden could I possibly have for rejecting an undefined term supported by no evidence?
What need have I for proving the nonexistence of gods? I don't disbelieve in gods for any reason. I disbelieve because I am incredulous, dumbstruck really, by the boldness and absurdity of the theist's claims. I don't already have any disbelief regarding the existence of whatever it is that "gods" is supposed to signify until the theist makes his remarkable claim. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far that hasn't been forthcoming.
Now there are anti-theists, many of them here on this site (though I suspect the majority are agnostic atheists). And they really do have a burden of proof to assert what they do. But for me, I'm not eager to puncture anyone's belief balloon. I have no case to make against the existence of god and if I did, I might not make it anyhow.