[split] Hello everyone

[Whateverist]

But I'm not an anti-theist; I'm just not a theist. Hence a-theist. By the same token I'm not an anti-female simply because I happen to be male. You're ascribing to me positions I don't claim to hold. That's astonishingly dishonest.

Ok, but does the a- prefix not specifically deny being a theist then?

You can be nothing or anything and everything except a theist when you declare yourself as atheist. And yes you can be a boy, a girl, a male female or anything in between but not a theist when you call yourself an atheist. So already you need to know what a theist is before to deny to be one yourself as atheist.

"Atheist" is a label I accept, not one I tout. It isn't printed on my business cards. It wouldn't be put on my gravestone if I had one. It just doesn't tell you much at all about me.

But as for whether or not the label fits, I say it does. Even though I find the definition of gods so fuzzy as to leave me wondering just what it is we're talking about, I don't harbor any belief in them.

That's it. It doesn't mean much but to the best of my knowledge I am indeed what is known as an atheist. Big woopy doo.

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And unnecessary. There must be plenty of nits to pick without challenging the label. All any atheist is saying is no, so far as I can tell, I don't believe in whatever it is you're calling gods.

OK, so what I would call God you would call not-god.

To wit: You have three choices, either you know as gnostic, you do not know as agnostic and then there is the believer in between.

From here the believer can be enlightened or impoverished and that would be on a slippery slope somewhere between these opposites.

I think that is a believer-centric conception but hardly surprising given the source. There isn't just one continuum. There is knowledge and lack of it, you're correct. But there is also belief and the lack of it. A person can be agnostic and a believer or agnostic and a nonbeliever (like myself). And there are others who are gnostic nonbelievers or gnostic believers. Your belief position is not a happy medium between extremes.