From atheism to tentative agnosticism

[Cyberman]

It doesn't really matter what one labels a view, what matters are the arguments that can be mustered for it. I think it is a shame that so many debates get sidetracked into tedious semantic discussions about what exactly terms like 'atheist' mean.

It's not merely a matter of semantics, tedious or otherwise, if one side is defining a term to mean more than it actually does to reinforce their own points, or to reach conclusions which may possibly be erroneous given that their starting definition is flawed.

I use the term 'atheism' to refer to the view that no god or gods exist. I use the term 'atheist' to refer to someone who believes atheism to be true. This is how everyone I've met uses those terms as well. But, well, it is what I understand by them. If someone means something else then they're welcome to use the term to mean whatever they like.

Fine, but expect to be called out on unconventional and frankly unrealistic uses of basic terminology.

I would understand the term 'theist' to refer to someone who believed in the Judaeo Christian god, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.

Not wrong, but rather parochial. Believers in J/C God = theists, however theists =not necessarily= J/C God believers.

I think it would be unusual for someone who believed in, say, Thor to describe themselves as an 'atheist'.

Such a believer could be quite entitled to call themselves an atheist about gods they consider fictional. Interestingly and on the same point, it seems the early xtians were among the first to be referred to as atheists by the Romans, because they didn't believe in the Roman gods.

So I assume atheism - as currently used - does not refer to the view merely that no theistic god exists, but that no supernatural agencies of any kind exist. I think that's how Dennett and Dawkins etc would use the term.

If those two Horsemen and their companions used the term in anything like the way you did in this paragraph, they would be called out on it as well. Atheism, quite simply, is not the view that no theistic god exists; rather it is the disbelief that they do exist. Neither does the term apply to "supernatural agencies of any kind" - that would be scepticism (or skepticism if you really must), of which atheism is a specialised subset.

But anyway, it does not really matter.

Unless you are basing your interpretation of reality on a faulty first principle, obviously.