(July 2, 2014 at 12:28 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Strictly speaking an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in someone else's favorite deity although he believes in his own favorite deity. The French Catholics invented the word "atheist" to curse the French Protestants because the Protestants had rejected the Catholic church. Theoretically they both believed in the same ethnocentric Jewish religious fairy tale but they had different rituals to express their beliefs.
If a person believes in the slug worm god TutuBluto who lives in the Sombrero Galaxy will religious fanatics respect him for believing in God or will they say that he's a fruitcake and want to burn him at the stake?
Sorry - but the word "ATHEIST" actually refers to a person who doesn't accept the existence of ANY deities.
The word origin is Greek - Atheos - from about the 5th century BCE- and literally means "no gods". The word actually appears in an Epistle on a third Century CE Papyrus. So the word origin is MUCH older than your claim about the French Catholics.
