A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language. What we should note from this is the word NEARLY. Nearly does not mean the same, but close to. This can cause problems when people conflate normative uses of words with various…
Read More “Sin-onyms; The sinful use of synonyms – CMT: Volume 9” »
I often ask people, ‘What things are defined just by what they lack?’ – interestingly there are very few answers to this, but feel free to shoot some over and I’ll add them to the article. The reason I ask this is largely because of commonly heard, ‘atheism is only a lack of belief in…
Read More “Ontology and the things we lack… (lacktheism or rocktheism?)” »
Language is descriptive. It is defined through use. People might describe their use of words in slightly different ways, be that through regional differences, common usages, or indeed there might be contextually correct usages of words. So what is this Normative thing all about then? When we speak about ‘Normative’ usage of words we largely…
Read More “So what is this ‘Normative’ thing all about anyway?” »
On a recent podcast, I made a comment that most things that could be considered a fallacy could also not be fallacious. There are some that argue these things are always fallacious. This post hopes to explore a number of common fallacies and see if they are always fallacies, and also when folks might erroneously…
Continuing our miniseries of Bad Atheist Arguments on our quest for self-improvement I bring you a number of contradictory claims and statements I have seen many of my fellow atheists making, and indeed have possibly made myself in the past. Contents Words are Defined by Usage and ContextFaith, Atheism, Belief ONLY mean… Morality Is SubjectiveExcept…
Read More “Bad Atheist Arguments – Vol:4 – Contradictory Claims and Statements” »
It is commonplace to hear these terms Agnostic/Gnostic as a modifier to atheism these days rather than Agnostic being that withholding judgment position. Please note, atheism and agnosticism are polysemous, and language is defined through common use. What I hope to do is draw your attention to the difference between the colloquial definitions and the normative ones….
“Nonbelief is a belief? Who knew…” – an often said sarcastic comment by many fellow atheists as a retort to theists calling atheism a religion or belief system. Whilst I agree atheism is not a religion, and that it is a polysemous word which has moved from the classical disbelief in the existence of gods…
Even though I have already published my first article in this series, I thought I owed my readers an introduction to political philosophy in order to get them well and interested. It is an important and weighty subject, after all, and it is important that we are all clear on what exactly we are talking…
Unbelief (or non-belief) and disbelief are two words that seem to be conflated by many folks on the internet. I’m not sure if this is down to a misunderstanding of their definitions, or just due to how they are quite similar words. I’ve recently written a few articles that are worth reading before this article,…
Read More “Unbelief and Disbelief – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms – Volume 6” »
“We are all born atheist!” is something we have heard a lot. I’ve said it in the past. I am sure if you are an atheist you have said it too. But how true is that? What is an Atheist? An atheist is someone who subscribes to atheism. Atheism is polysemous (has many definitions).We have…
When people say “I don’t believe” it is unclear what they are saying. When many folks say this, they are discussing a psychological state rather than disbelief in a normative logical sense. But what does that mean? Logic and Belief Propositions By belief proposition, I am essentially saying believing a proposition to be true, or…
Read More “I Don’t Believe – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms – Volume 5” »
Sticks. In the Fresh AiR Podcast, S01 E01, I referred to religion as just “one of many sticks we use to beat each other upside the head”. I also named a few other sticks, like race, wealth and class. On Twitter I had a discussion with one of the podcasts listeners about these sticks and…
Read More “Political Philosophy: Sticks and how to use them” »
My fellow atheists and I often have extreme reactions to certain words*. I think due to the debate and some of the people we attribute them to, we have a knee jerk response. Whilst I understand why in some instances, it’s because we have a single minded view on the definition, in others it is…
Read More “Dirty Words – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms Volume 4: Belief, Faith and Evidence” »
This article is to define and discuss objective and subjective, morals and morality. As with any article on AiR we don’t always agree. Where science is concerned and the evidence is irrefutable we of course accept and believe it to be true. When it is opinion or something philosophical we may have differences. As such…
Often in debate folks identify their position as one of the 3; Theist, Atheist, Agnostic. Some folks will sometimes use a combination e.g. Agnostic Atheist/Weak Atheist. It might surprise you, as it did me, that some of the definitions of terms we use are not strictly accurate, or at least logical. Language does indeed evolve,…
Read More “Conflated and Misunderstood Terms – Volume 2: Theism, Atheism, Agnosticism” »
Freedom of Speech Freedom of speech. An essential and beautiful right, that we all use to near exhaustion. We all have our ideas, our opinions and things we think “must be said”, and we have the freedom to say them; to communicate our ideas, present our opinions and to say what “must be said”…
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