Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[rexbeccarox]

And you should take the same advice.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

[Simon Moon]

I disbelieve in Santa AND I also believe Santa does not exist.

Yes, and if you ask people what they mean by an atheist, they're talking about the latter with regards to the existence of gods.

And if they mean the latter, I will correct them so they understand that lack of belief is also atheism.

There are 2 truth claims when it comes to gods;

1. god/gods exists

2. god/gods do not exist

Atheism is a response to the first truth claim, it is not necessarily the second.

Many atheists do take the second position, but only being unconvinced of the first is what defines atheism.

Except pretty much no one actually USES the word that way. Usage determines what words mean, so it's kind of important to actually answer what's being asked.

As an intellectually honest person, I'd rather have someone correct me if I am misusing a word. I expect the same of others.

I do not mind at all spending the time explaining atheism to people.

I value using terms correctly, and correcting people when they use them incorrectly.

Well that's funny, seeing as you're using a definition of a word hardly any english speaker would expect.

Then I take the time to educate them.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

When the French Catholics invented the term "atheists" they used it as a curse word to describe their enemies, the Protestants, who had renounced the Catholic church. So it generally means anyone who doesn't believe in the fanatics' religious doctrine even though they may believe in the same deity. Branches of the same basic religion accuse other branches of being atheists all the time. It's like home town sports fans hating other teams although they need the other teams in order to play the game. So don't take it seriously. Everyone is an atheist in someone else's eyes.

[Whateverist]

Except it isn't. Ask any person what they think an atheist is, and practically all of them will tell you something like "Someone who believes God doesn't exist."

Did your account get hacked? You're a lot better than this sort of argument. Are you alright?

And this how words get their meaning, by how people use them. Online atheists basically just changed that for an attempted advantage on this topic.

You're not helping the case you want to make. Precisely for the reason you give here, the use of "atheism" has morphed to mean lack of belief, not disbelief. As to which is ahead in the polls, I don't care. The evidence just from the sentiment expressed here by so many users is that there is plenty of support for atheism = lack of belief.

Why do you think you are uniquely in a position to diagnose everyone's true motives for using the word in this way, and what burden could I possibly have for rejecting an undefined term supported by no evidence?

What need have I for proving the nonexistence of gods? I don't disbelieve in gods for any reason. I disbelieve because I am incredulous, dumbstruck really, by the boldness and absurdity of the theist's claims. I don't already have any disbelief regarding the existence of whatever it is that "gods" is supposed to signify until the theist makes his remarkable claim. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far that hasn't been forthcoming.

Now there are anti-theists, many of them here on this site (though I suspect the majority are agnostic atheists). And they really do have a burden of proof to assert what they do. But for me, I'm not eager to puncture anyone's belief balloon. I have no case to make against the existence of god and if I did, I might not make it anyhow.

[MindForgedManacle]

And if they mean the latter, I will correct them so they understand that lack of belief is also atheism.

Are you even listening? If people mean something by a particular term, it makes no sense to say they're using the wrong term. Words are used to convey concepts, it's no use to question the word if it's clear what concept they're referring to. This is just the nature of language. I can use the word "red" to refer to what we'd ordinarily call "blue", and the only real problem with that is that I'm not using the word people expect, because meaning in language is just usage. You're being a language essentialist, which is basically in contradiction with, well, the entire field of linguistics.

As an intellectually honest person, I'd rather have someone correct me if I am misusing a word. I expect the same of others.

I do not mind at all spending the time explaining atheism to people.

This has nothing to do with intellectual honesty, this has to do with what people usually mean with these words.

Clearly I don't mind either, or I wouldn't continue posting.

Then I take the time to educate them.

This isn't about educating them. It's about actually responding to what they're asking.

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When the French Catholics invented the term "atheists" they used it as a curse word to describe their enemies, the Protestants, who had renounced the Catholic church. So it generally means anyone who doesn't believe in the fanatics' religious doctrine even though they may believe in the same deity. Branches of the same basic religion accuse other branches of being atheists all the time. It's like home town sports fans hating other teams although they need the other teams in order to play the game. So don't take it seriously. Everyone is an atheist in someone else's eyes.

That's silly. You do realize that words change over time, don't you? It doesn't matter that French Catholics supposedly invented the word (I say supposedly, since I don't actually know), as words change because they have no essential meaning. To say that words have an essential meaning is to basically say that the fields of linguistics and etymology are bogus.

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Did your account get hacked? You're a lot better than this sort of argument. Are you alright?

You do realize this is accepted by basically all linguists, right? All I said was that atheism's 'meaning' is the position that no gods exist because that's how the word is predominantly used.

You're not helping the case you want to make. Precisely for the reason you give here, the use of "atheism" has morphed to mean lack of belief, not disbelief. As to which is ahead in the polls, I don't care. The evidence just from the sentiment expressed here by so many users is that there is plenty of support for atheism = lack of belief.

It has not morphed into anything, EXCEPT among atheists. If you don't care about the "polls", then you don't care about what people actually mean. And that is what I've been driving home here. People aren't asking you if you simply lack belief in god when they ask you if you're an atheist. They're asking why (if you do) believe no gods exist, or probably don't exist. So even if you just ignore that you're equivocating on what people mean, you're not even answering their question.

Why do you think you are uniquely in a position to diagnose everyone's true motives for using the word in this way, and what burden could I possibly have for rejecting an undefined term supported by no evidence?

I'm not uniquely positioned, nor have claimed to be. The reason I think that atheists do that for this purpose is because whenever they get into a discussion about the existence of gods online, they ALWAYS start off by saying that atheism is a lack of belief, so they don't have the burden of proof. If the two weren't linked in terms of motivations, they wouldn't make the argument that way so routinely.

An undefined term? God or atheism? What word are you talking about?

What need have I for proving the nonexistence of gods? I don't disbelieve in gods for any reason. I disbelieve because I am incredulous, dumbstruck really, by the boldness and absurdity of the theist's claims. I don't already have any disbelief regarding the existence of whatever it is that "gods" is supposed to signify until the theist makes his remarkable claim. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far that hasn't been forthcoming.

I'm sorry, but those are contrary to one another. If you disbelieve because you think the theists' claims are absurd, that's why you disbelieve.

And again, like Simon you're making an argument that contradicts your position. You say that atheism is just a lack of belief, right? If that is the case, then atheism DOES exist prior to theists making claims about gods, because everyone would be an atheist under your definition. The only thhing is that no one would be spelling that out. This is another reason why this argument about this "lacktheism" atheism is that it makes absurd notions like this what one must accept if they are to be consistent.

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I usually like QS' videos, but he's doing exactly what I said atheists are doing: changing the definition of what people most often mean by words and then reordering the conversation around that redefinition, and then saying that those who hold to the redefined version of the word don't have the burden of proof.

[SkepticismFirst]

I'm not a heliocentrist, I just lack belief in geocentrism.

[MindForgedManacle]

This is a good discussion on the topic I think, even if it's long. It has 2 atheists defending the "lacktheism" definition, 2 against it, and a few theists, two of which are linguists.

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[Fidel_Castronaut]

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I usually like QS' videos, but he's doing exactly what I said atheists are doing: changing the definition of what people most often mean by words and then reordering the conversation around that redefinition, and then saying that those who hold to the redefined version of the word don't have the burden of proof.

Anyway, regardless, this is how I identify as an atheist. I have never once had a 'disbelief' in all deities because that would be absurd and logically inconsistent. For how would one know unless one has confronted and rejected all claims?

For the same reason QS posits in his video, one can disbelieve and lack a belief simultaneously with ease. One can reject the claims of a proponent for a given reason (irresolvable, contradictory etc) whilst still lacking a belief in the general concept of a deity or deities.

I've been an atheist from day one of my existence. I certainly wasn't born a person who disbelieved claims of things I hadn't even heard or understood yet.

I've noticed in other posts you've indicated that using lack of belief as a term for atheism is Internet-centric. And to that I have to vehemently disagree, on two points.

1. Atheists online are also real people in meat space. I define atheism exactly the same way both on and offline.
2. I have debated atheism's definition offline amongst atheists and theists in the past, and held to the same conclusion of lack of belief. This has been accepted and rejected by theists during these debates but almost universally agreed upon by atheists. The first time I had this debate was as an undergraduate at trinity college some 9 years ago, so I think to claim that this is Internet-centric is off the mark.

Whilst I agree with consistency upon the utilisation of words' and their 'proper' meaning, you yourself admit in various posts that words mean only what value people ascribe to them. Surely, then, you can see that using this as your main thesis actually adds weight to the arguments of those that disagree with you rather than diminishes it, no? Like you imply, language is fluid, so is it not contradictory to argue for a rigid unmoving definition, especially when so many people agree and identify with LOB?

[jesus_wept]

You can keep saying it over and over again, but atheism is not the assertion that there are no gods. That's anti-theism.

I've always thought that an atheist was somebody who doesn't believe in any gods (for whatever reason) and an anti-theist was someone who opposed religion and/or theism. For example it's possible for someone to not believe in god but still think religion has it's good points and is worth keeping, whereas an anti-theist is somebody who opposes religion and/or theism because they think they are harmful to society and would be against them even if they were true. So you dont necessarily have to believe that there are no gods to be an anti-theist, if it were proven tomorrow that god exists there would still be anti-theists, and I dont think there is anything to stop a deist being an anti-theist today.

Or have I had it wrong all this time?