What is in a label?

[Purple Rabbit]

CoxRox - 01-02-2009 - 05:02 PM -- Purple Rabbit, I'd be interested in your views on Kyu's post:http://atheistforums.org/thread-526-post-7929.html#pid7929

Why is the label important at all? My experience is that one can have very long discussions on fora about the exact and precise meaning of words like weak and strong atheism, principled agnosticism and practical agnosticism, non-theism and anti-theism. Many times ending up in public attempts of mind reading like: "if you say that you are an atheist you deny the existence of my god and all moral" or "if you say you're an agnostic, you must have great doubts about atheists". But when I say forget the label, belief in god(s) is absent in me, all strung up argument evaporates.

Personally I tend to side with Sam Harris that having a label for not believing is like defining some subculture, making it into a flea of theism. Absence of believe is not a subculture, worldview or movement but resides in all people, anyone should be able to relate to that. Do you believe in astrology, racism, abductions by aliens, Atlantis, whichcraft, that there was a JFK conspiracy? We have no need for labels like non-astrologers, non-racists, non-alien-abductance-believers, non-whichcraft-followers, non-philatelists. Atheism is not a worldview or a movement. If you wanna call yourself an agnostic, it's fine by me, but what you really wanna tell me seems in most cases to be the fact that you haven't sufficient belief in god(s). That seems a lot like someone who calls himself an atheist because he/she hasn't sufficient belief in god(s).