What came first, the atheist or the theist?

[Tiberius]

Fourteen fucking pages on this!!!!

I know. This is turning into the "0.999... = 1" thread all over again.

[Spencer]

Scented nectar, I understand your point, do you understand mine?

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Before that everyone was by default atheist, (without belief in god).

No, because those terms had not been created then. It is what we call them NOW, but not then.

You can have your opinion and I can have mine, try not to get to excited.

[Tiberius]

No, because those terms had not been created then. It is what we call them NOW, but not then.

Yes...and that is our point. By today's definitions, they are atheists. Ergo, atheists were around before theists.

[Spencer]

Which goes back to me questioning the OP. What exactly he meant.

[Scented Nectar]

Scented nectar, I understand your point, do you understand mine?

I think so. You are refusing to accept that the true definition of atheism is the so-called 'weak' atheism. You are convinced that only the so-called 'strong' atheism counts.

The reality is that the 'weak' one IS atheism. The 'strong' one simply has an optional, additional thing to it which DOES require theism to exist first. Only the 'weak' one is the actual definition of atheism. There is no need for the additional 'strong' stuff to be there.

Did you understand what was meant by the differences between the 'weak' and 'strong' forms?

[Paul the Human]

I think some of Spencer's confusion is coming from the fact that the word 'atheist' did not exist before the word 'theist'. That is very much true. However, before there were theists, no one believed in god(s). That lack of belief, in today's language, is 'atheism'. Just because those pre-theism people did not have the word 'atheist' at their disposal, does not mean that they were not atheists. It only means they did not have or need the word 'atheist' yet. Which means that, in answer to the question posed by the OP... the atheist came first... but the atheist wasn't called the 'atheist' until after the coming of the theist.

Make sense now? o.o

[Tiberius]

Which goes back to me questioning the OP. What exactly he meant.

I think Cecco made it quite clear with his wording:

"What came first, the atheist or the theist?"

Note the article "the" used before both atheist and theist. This indicates that the subject of the question is regarding actual atheists and theists, not the words, or even the concepts. If you expand the question by inserting the definitions for atheist and theist, the result is unambiguous:

"What came first, the person who didn't believe in God or the person who did?"

We've shown that people who don't believe things come before people who do, by the same logic that people who don't own cars come before people who do own cars.

Regardless, it isn't really important what the OP said, since the conversation has drifted in all sorts of directions to discuss the types of definition that can be used. What is important is how the discussion has evolved.

[Spencer]

I think some of Spencer's confusion is coming from the fact that the word 'atheist' did not exist before the word 'theist'. That is very much true. However, before there were theists, no one believed in god(s). That lack of belief, in today's language, is 'atheism'. Just because those pre-theism people did not have the word 'atheist' at their disposal, does not mean that they were not atheists. It only means they did not have or need the word 'atheist' yet. Which means that, in answer to the question posed by the OP... the atheist came first... but the atheist wasn't called the 'atheist' until after the coming of the theist.

Make sense now? o.o

I could agree with that. Atheist's the people came first after the invention of god(s).

[Tiberius]

That isn't what he said at all.

He said atheists came first, but atheists weren't called atheists until after the invention of god(s). You keep trying to say that atheists came after the invention of God, which is simply not the case.

[Edwardo Piet]

Also, the actual word for atheism would not exist without theism there first.

Exactly my point.

Which isn't the topic of the thread. This is about 'which came first the atheist or the theist'.