RE: Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"
June 27, 2014 at 2:33 am
(This post was last modified: June 28, 2014 at 8:20 pm by Fidel_Castronaut.)
(June 27, 2014 at 12:10 am)MindForgedManacle Wrote:(June 26, 2014 at 5:58 pm)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote:
I usually like QS' videos, but he's doing exactly what I said atheists are doing: changing the definition of what people most often mean by words and then reordering the conversation around that redefinition, and then saying that those who hold to the redefined version of the word don't have the burden of proof.
Anyway, regardless, this is how I identify as an atheist. I have never once had a 'disbelief' in all deities because that would be absurd and logically inconsistent. For how would one know unless one has confronted and rejected all claims?
For the same reason QS posits in his video, one can disbelieve and lack a belief simultaneously with ease. One can reject the claims of a proponent for a given reason (irresolvable, contradictory etc) whilst still lacking a belief in the general concept of a deity or deities.
I've been an atheist from day one of my existence. I certainly wasn't born a person who disbelieved claims of things I hadn't even heard or understood yet.
I've noticed in other posts you've indicated that using lack of belief as a term for atheism is Internet-centric. And to that I have to vehemently disagree, on two points.
1. Atheists online are also real people in meat space. I define atheism exactly the same way both on and offline.
2. I have debated atheism's definition offline amongst atheists and theists in the past, and held to the same conclusion of lack of belief. This has been accepted and rejected by theists during these debates but almost universally agreed upon by atheists. The first time I had this debate was as an undergraduate at trinity college some 9 years ago, so I think to claim that this is Internet-centric is off the mark.
Whilst I agree with consistency upon the utilisation of words' and their 'proper' meaning, you yourself admit in various posts that words mean only what value people ascribe to them. Surely, then, you can see that using this as your main thesis actually adds weight to the arguments of those that disagree with you rather than diminishes it, no? Like you imply, language is fluid, so is it not contradictory to argue for a rigid unmoving definition, especially when so many people agree and identify with LOB?