Why Agnostic and not Agnostist?
On my walk today, I was considering a number of conversations I’ve had recently with folks arguing for default states and atheist rocks and some of the things I’ve said in response. IST and ISM One of the key points I brought up is an IST is a follower of an ISM, which is why we can’t be born an IST. It’s also another why describing atheism purely by the absence of a psychological state doesn’t really work for an......
Atheist Community?
It’s common to hear folks say things like “there is no atheist community” and “saying atheist community is like saying non-stamp collector community, I don’t see one” and on the surface this is understandable, you generally don’t see a community of non-stamp collectors or non-believers in Bigfoot, but can we say the same for atheists? What is a Community? a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. the condition of sharing or......
It Begs the Question…
Begging the question is a fallacy in which the premises of an argument assume the truth of the conclusion instead of supporting it. You may have also heard of this being called circular reasoning. The phrase begging the question originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which in turn was a mistranslation of the Greek for “assuming the conclusion”. The most common example of this we see on social media is variations of “It......
Is The ‘lack of belief’ Definition of Atheism The Most Common One Used?
There are some people that like to claim the lack of belief, or absence of belief, definition of atheism is the most common one. I contest that, whilst it is common on social media due to political parties like the American Atheists and American YouTube shows like The Atheist Experience, it isn’t that common outside of the internet and certain circles in America. Ways to Discuss Atheism Atheism is polysemous. That means there are many definitions. With the way language......
Hitchens on Antitheism
It’s come to my attention in the last year or so, that many are conflating the classical/philosophical definition of atheism with antitheism (sometimes spelt anti-theism). Regardless of your preferred use of atheism and atheist, over the centuries and still today atheism is the belief/proposition/claim there are no gods, with the atheist accepting (believing) this is true. There are other definitions, of course, Flew famously tried changing the definition in 72 to ignore the agnostic label for a “positive atheist” –......
Do Non-Theists Live as Atheists?
One of the common objections I hear from both theists and atheists about the distinction of the various ontological positions held by non-theists is that they all live as atheists, so they may as well be regarded as one anyway. In fact, when I was writing Etymology vs Use/Definition: Atheism there were some that used atheist in a derogatory way in regards to theists that were immoral, or didn’t act in accordance with the bible. They were regarded as ‘practical......
Etymology vs Use/Definition: Atheism
Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. The etymology of a word is not exactly the same as the use or definition. Consider how a direct translation of a phrase from French to English might not always make sense, but we would translate it into a form of English that did make sense. The same can be said for the etymology of a word. They quite often......
Agnostic Atheism – CMT – Vol: 13
It is very common to hear folks use the term agnostic atheist to describe themselves, and others. Let me say that you are free to identify how you like, though I would suggest you don’t be prescriptive with your identification on to others. If you wonder why; consider if you are the sort to tell others what their gender is. Yes, gender is a more sensitive topic, but we are speaking about identity here. That said, I think it is......
You won’t believe this… (Logic and Belief)
I’ve been trying to think of another way to explain beliefs as I still hear folks saying they are ‘absent of belief in regards to x’ or ‘have no beliefs’. Whilst I am sure they believe what they are saying, it makes me feel I have failed in my explanations. Rather than spray out the propositional logic or all the different definitions of a belief, I started thinking about how something like this might be represented in a database, perhaps......
“If atheism is true…”
Introduction When it comes to asking questions about atheism, there are many malformed questions that the theist may put forward. Anyone who has been an atheist and active on any social media platform will have come across such questions. Those questions that make us kind of tilt our heads and go ‘huh?’. Two of those questions that often make some atheists go ‘huh?’ are ‘If atheism is true…?’ and ‘Can you prove atheism?’. When these two questions are posed by......
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