The Conflated and Misunderstood Terms series is designed to discuss terms commonly used but are often mistaken. The hope is to make people aware of the different uses and hopefully prevent some of the endless semantic battles that happen on social media, preventing us from ever moving forward.
[show_avatar email=1 user_link=last_post display=show_name,show_nickname,show_biography,show_postcount,show_last_post]Language and linguistics are one of those things that I get an odd sort of pleasure looking into. As a lay person, I lack training in this field and I often discover things about words I’ve used for years that I never knew. Sometimes it’s a case of delving into the etymology and not just…
Read More “The Relationship between the Suffixes -Ism, -Ist, and -Ic” »
The burden of proof is often discussed, and it is no secret that we constantly see the burden being shifted in debates. Quite often, something is presented with no justification and when asked for is met with: “prove I’m wrong“, “do your own research” or threats. This sort of behaviour can be explained simply through…
Read More “Why Do So Many Misunderstand The Burden of Proof?” »
There is a small nuance between ‘a belief’ and ‘I believe’. There’s also a misunderstanding around the logical entailments of beliefs. In this short piece, I hope to explain the difference. Basic definitions of Belief A belief is: But “a belief” isn’t just that. It should be considered more in the noun sense. A belief…
Read More “What is a Belief? What does it mean to Believe?” »
‘Hypothesis’ is a word I see being thrown around social media; sometimes it just doesn’t sit right. This inspired me to look into various technical resources to see if any types of hypothesis actually fit the use I saw so many insisting was “correct”. This article hopes to address the use of hypothesis in the…
Logic is a lot harder than people give it credit for, and logical fallacies are no different. Both are frequently misunderstood and misused on the internet, and it can often be us atheists/sceptics and other folks that claim to be logical that make the mistakes. Sometimes there is the idea that because we know the…
Scepticism(or Skepticism for our American readers) is often seen simply as doubt. For those that are desperate for a simplistic definition of scepticism, reasoned and reasonable doubt might be more suitable than just doubt on its own. Please note, a simplistic definition is rarely going to cover the inner workings and, whilst is a good…
Read More “Scepticism: Doubt, Denial and Dogmatism in The Skeptic Community” »
“Atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods” is probably one of the most common definitions and phrases you’ll hear on social media, especially if you get involved with any sort of theological conversation. It will be no surprise, then, that these same people will say things like “atheism is not a philosophy!”…
Atheism is a word that has quite a rich history going all the way back to ancient Greece and the definition of atheism has changed quite a lot throughout the years. There’s also quite a contentious view pushed by some people who identify as atheists that there is only one definition of atheism. This is…
I’m an atheist, I believe gods do not exist, though atheism is polysemous so not all atheists use it that way and I want to address a term some atheists use known as agnostic atheism. This article is the written form of the video, so, if you prefer to watch, please check the below: Agnostic…
One of the problems with contemporary social media discourse is jumping around and ahead in the conversation, misusing terms, axioms, and similar and not taking the time to actually have a discussion and understand what the other person is saying. We are too quick to judge people based on the group we think they belong…
Confusion is rife on the internet, especially on places like Twitter where people seem more interested in “beating” the last tweet in a discussion than maintaining a coherent thought process. Many of us atheists might think these contradictions might be limited to god claims, holy books, and fundamentalists but that is far from the case….
Read More “Confused Claims, Contradictions and Incoherence” »
Knowledge, is it just things you know? What do we mean by know and knowledge? Why does there seem to be muddiness in its application? For the most part, when I discuss knowledge I am talking about epistemic or propositional knowledge, but what does that mean? What are other uses of knowledge? Is there a…
The null hypothesis is used in science, and we atheists tend to have a lot of respect for science, the scientific method, scientific and empirical evidence. We think of ourselves as logical and rational people. We feel we know a lot about the topics we discuss, especially when it comes to science. In conversations with…
Read More “Misunderstanding The Null Hypothesis and Knowledge.” »
‘Hypothesis’ is a scientific term that, whilst it may have some colloquial application, is defined as: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Oxford Languages Or an idea that proposes a tentative explanation about a phenomenon or a narrow set of phenomena observed…
You often hear it said that England and America are two countries separated by a common language. Whilst this is tongue in cheek, it holds some truth to it. A prime example is how in America “chips” refers to what Brits would call “crisps” and what Brits would call “chips” Americans would call “fries”. We…
The repetitious nature of folks trying to prescribe a singular definition of atheism, and claiming that other definitions are, “talking about something else” or are “wrong”, seems to never die. What’s worse, these folks who take you saying that there are actually multiple uses of atheism claim that YOU are the one being prescriptive and…
