(August 15, 2014 at 6:41 pm)Ben Davis Wrote:I disagree, anti-theism means being against theism, it doesn't mean theism is wrong, you could be a theist and an anti-theist. An anti-theist opposes god, the god idea or the belief in gods, the denial of the god proposition doesn't make you an anti-theist, or at least I don't consider the expression to be correctly used. If I simply denied the idea that god exists but didn't oppose it, then I would be just an atheist. Following your line of thought, we would have to assert theists who believe or claim a god exists are all anti-atheists, and we all know not all are.(August 15, 2014 at 2:20 pm)Blackout Wrote: That's not anti-theism... That's Gnostic/Strong atheism, the belief no gods exist. Anti-theism is the opposition to belief/god concept and not the assertion that god can't exist. I'm mostly an agnostic atheist and I'm an anti-theist.You're focussing on only one definition of anti-theism here, the one which represents your position but there's another definition which is missing from your other 3 (earlier in the thread). Broadly and literally, the term represents any position which opposes a theistic proposition; either the religion/organisation and/or the deity. Stating 'there is no <insert deity>' is an anti-theistic position. The term 'gnostic atheist' is used to mean the same thing although it's a slight misuse: it literally means 'knowledge of an absence of theism' (i.e. having knowledge that one's an atheist). That's why I prefer the term 'anti-theist' when I state a claim in the non-existence of a deity. That's just my personal choice. As I said before, common use definitions of 'gnostic atheist' mean the same thing.
Quote:My point was to assert that believing no gods exist doesn't correlate with anti-theism, but with gnostic atheismTo keep being pedantic, it correlates more literally with anti-theism than with gnostic atheism
If I claim a god doesn't exist, it means I possess knowledge to make the conclusion, it's a gnostic proposition. In my case, I'm a gnostic when it comes to some gods, agnostic when it comes to others harder to disprove (eg the deistic god)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you