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Author Topic:   An Atheist By Any Other Name . . .
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


(1)
Message 16 of 209 (657559)
03-29-2012 11:11 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by New Cat's Eye
03-29-2012 10:54 AM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
Catholic Scientist writes:
I find the agnostic atheists to be a much better group of people. I think the other groups of atheists are gonna smear your reputation a bit, so it might be a good idea to find another word. Be it via reclaim or whatever.
I actually agree with the sentiment (and the sentiment of Heathen's original idea).
I just don't see it working in any practical sense.
Yes, you're right. The term Atheist can mean many different things and many people take it to mean many different things.
Do you actually think that changing the term to "Heathen" or anything else will prevent this? Even "the perfect term" if you could think of it?
Whatever the term comes to be, there will always be those to take it to this extreme or that and shove themselves under the umbrella. That's just a part of human nature, some folk like to be "gotcha" assholes, they're not going to stop their "gotcha" moments just because a new word is being circulated.
I don't think it's the word "Atheist" that's so broad it can be taken advantage of. I think it's the whole idea. The pupose of the term (whatever it is) is to separate two camps. One that is god-believing, and the other that is not. That's a broad group on both sides. My take is that regardless of whatever term is used, there's going to be a lot of wiggle room for "gotcha's" and lots of other nonsense. Then, because it doesn't really matter, might as well just stick with what's there already instead of jumping through some (eventually useless) hoops.

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subbie
Member (Idle past 1254 days)
Posts: 3509
Joined: 02-26-2006


(1)
Message 17 of 209 (657560)
03-29-2012 11:16 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by New Cat's Eye
03-29-2012 10:59 AM


So now you think we just need more terms for different subsets of nonbelievers because some of jerks are giving the rest of us a bad name?
Thank you for your concern.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate
Howling about evidence is a conversation stopper, and it never stops to think if the claim could possibly be true -- foreveryoung

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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


(2)
Message 18 of 209 (657563)
03-29-2012 11:31 AM


Who is Rebranding?
Part of the problem, IMHO, is that it is theists who are actively rebranding what atheism stands for. Theists are deciding what atheism means, and that definition often differs from what actual atheists believe and do not believe. Atheists have been redefined as a cabal of goat sacrificing demons who are planning the destruction of western civilization.
As others have stated, atheism does not always indicate a definite belief in the non-exstence of deities. Even us atheists bend backwards and forwards with terms such as strong and weak atheism in an attempt to fit ourselves into how others are trying to define us.
The question is should we start to define ourselves and force others to fit their views into our definitions? Perhaps. I offered Brights and Normals as provocative and snarky examples. Probably not the best road to take. However, I did like Percy's offerings such as unbeliever and skeptic. These terms can actually be starting points for a more productive conversation between atheists and theists. For example, you could say that we are both unbelievers in Zeus, or that we are both skeptical of Bigfoot. Finding common ground may be better than using a term loaded with preconceptions.

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1.61803
Member (Idle past 1503 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 19 of 209 (657565)
03-29-2012 11:34 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Taq
03-29-2012 11:31 AM


Re: Who is Rebranding?
I'd like to add, unless of course one is being purposely provocative.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs

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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 20 of 209 (657568)
03-29-2012 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by Stile
03-29-2012 11:11 AM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
Yes, you're right. The term Atheist can mean many different things and many people take it to mean many different things.
Do you actually think that changing the term to "Heathen" or anything else will prevent this? Even "the perfect term" if you could think of it?
I guess you're right, that any term is going to be able to be hijacked. I just don't think that rebranding the term atheism to disclude the negative aspects is the best option and that a new term could be a better idea.
My take is that regardless of whatever term is used, there's going to be a lot of wiggle room for "gotcha's" and lots of other nonsense. Then, because it doesn't really matter, might as well just stick with what's there already instead of jumping through some (eventually useless) hoops.
A more inclusive, or general, term like "non-believer" wouldn't implicate you with the jerks just because they were non-believers too. There'd already be plenty of different kinds of non-believers that it wouldn't really add any qualitative descriptions. But if the term being used is already smeared, then shifting to a different one could be easier, or better, than going through all the rebranding.
The other hoops might be easier to jump through...

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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 209 (657570)
03-29-2012 11:42 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by subbie
03-29-2012 11:16 AM


I wouldn't call it concern
So now you think we just need more terms for different subsets of nonbelievers because some of jerks are giving the rest of us a bad name?
I was going the other way: a broader term, more inclusive, term to wash away any association with the jerks and, too, the historical connotations.

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Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


(1)
Message 22 of 209 (657589)
03-29-2012 1:08 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Heathen
03-29-2012 9:50 AM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
I think the author realises this, and he states that he wants to reclaim (or claim) the word.
My point in the other thread. You are trying to give new meaning to the word heathen.
any connotations it may have/have had are not so fresh in the psyche.
Where does this idea that heathen has no negative connotations come from? Why is it more palatable than atheist? Why do you think there is a more palatable term and why is it needed?
It isn't the term the public at large has an issue with, it is that we do not believe in their sky fairies or what ever other supernatural god thing they believe in.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Heathen, posted 03-29-2012 9:50 AM Heathen has replied

Replies to this message:
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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


(8)
Message 23 of 209 (657595)
03-29-2012 1:50 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Heathen
03-29-2012 9:50 AM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
I guess the notion that "heathen" has been out of common use for a while, allows for easier re-definition. i.e. any connotations it may have/have had are not so fresh in the psyche.
This might just be me, but I have a much stronger averse reaction to the word heathen than I do to the word atheist. To me, a heathen incorporates visions of primitive people sacrificing virgins and dancing in the moonlight holding hearts over their heads.
Of course, I'm sort of contrary that way. I prefer to use the term atheist for myself just like I prefer to use the term liberal for myself. The opponents of both of these terms have done a great job of turning people against them. If I rebrand myself, I feel as if I'm letting "them" win and saying that my positions need to be tempered to fit into mixed company.
I'm a liberal atheist, and if you think that means I'm evil or something then that's your problem, not mine. (This is my thought for everyone, not specifically Heathen.)

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1.61803
Member (Idle past 1503 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 24 of 209 (657596)
03-29-2012 1:56 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Perdition
03-29-2012 1:50 PM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
+1 When ever I watch a western, the towns folks usually refer to the indians as savages, or heathens or savage heathens.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(6)
Message 25 of 209 (657601)
03-29-2012 2:20 PM


I'm honestly impressed by the amount of arguing that can be generated by what, at its heart, is an irrelevant semantic triviality. I even got sucked into it at first with the "Atheist Manifesto."
The words mean what the words mean, and the negative connotations that have grown around terms like "Atheist" grew because of cultural stigma associated with what the word means. Change the word, and the same cultural stigma will follow those who were already accurately described in the first place.
Attempts to shirk the negative connotations of non-belief in deities (that such people cannot be moral, are bad, are going to Hell, are somehow less, are defiant against God, are deceived, are lying to themselves, are unenlightened, etc) are merely yet more attempts to treat the symptoms, not the disease, and as such are doomed to failure from the start.
The entire debate strongly resembles a sports team deciding what to name themselves, rather than actual people identifying their beliefs based on the actual definitions of words. I am an Atheist, regardless what anyone chooses to call me, because I have no belief in gods and that's what the word means. This strange desire to label "ourselves" is just more tribalistic nonsense, playing into the human instinct to identify a clear "us" and "them" so that "we" can all know the "enemy."
The real problem is not a word. The real problem is not even that a word carries inaccurate negative connotations, or even that people are religious in a world where the evidence clearly does not support such philosophies - these are symptoms of the true disease.
The real problem is that humanity is, by default, insane. We don't think rationally on a consistent basis. We tie ourselves to solutions before seriously considering alternatives. We cling to beliefs out of a sense of comfort and fear of shame at some sort of betrayal of our tribe should we consider believing differently. When outraged, we enter into disgusting contests to see who can be more angry and propose the most unhinged retribution. We look to confirm what we already believe, rather than checking to see if there's actually a reason to change our minds to the point of ignoring contradictory evidence. We worship our own ignorance, impressing ourselves with unanswered questions rather than actually seeking the answers.
I am a Rationalist. I hold the truth (meaning an accurate internal model of objective reality) to be sacred, and I use real methods for discerning objective fact to attempt to become more sane, and less insane, than my mammalian brain tends to do by default. I try to shed false beliefs, and embrace ones that are more likely to reflect reality, even though this requires hardship when admitting that something I've believed in was false all along, or when forcing myself to accept that something is true when I really, really don't want it to be.
As a consequence of my goal to be sane and think rationally, I do not believe in gods or anything else that requires the strange fault in human cognition called "faith." This qualifies me as an Atheist, even though many others identify themselves as Atheists who have arrived at a lack of belief in gods through entirely different means. That all those who don;t believe in gods are Atheists is simple fact, and it's irrelevant if some Atheists hold beliefs or use reasoning that I find abhorrent. This isn't a fandom where we determine who is or isn't a "true" Atheist, this isn't a soccer match where we all take sides and oppose the other simply because they exist. The word Atheist has a definition, and if you fit that definition, you're an Atheist, whether you also choose or prefer to identify yourself as a Heathen or a Skeptic or a Bright. Perhaps next we can argue over whether to call ourselves the Unified Atheist League or the Allied Atheist Alliance; clearly the latter is preferable because it has three A's, right?
What word we use is irrelevant. The meaning represented by the word "Atheist" will remain. I don't believe in gods. Why bother trying to obfuscate that simple fact? To appeal to a segment of the population that irrationally hates and despises us? Why would we want to appeal to the insane, when we should be simply trying to combat the insanity itself? If not irrational thinking, then at least we could fight one simple aspect of irrationality and work to diminish the bigotry and stereotypes that cause inaccurate "negative connotations" in the first place!
Call me whatever you want; I've never been much of a sports fan anyway, so I don't really care what "team" someone decides to think that I'm on.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

  
subbie
Member (Idle past 1254 days)
Posts: 3509
Joined: 02-26-2006


Message 26 of 209 (657602)
03-29-2012 2:23 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Perdition
03-29-2012 1:50 PM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
To me, a heathen incorporates visions of primitive people sacrificing virgins and dancing in the moonlight holding hearts over their heads.
Absolutely. And we certainly don't want it to get out that that's what we're doing at the bi-monthly meetings, do we? I agree, shy away from heathens.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate
Howling about evidence is a conversation stopper, and it never stops to think if the claim could possibly be true -- foreveryoung

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 Message 23 by Perdition, posted 03-29-2012 1:50 PM Perdition has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 27 of 209 (657604)
03-29-2012 2:48 PM


My feelings on this are similar to Jonathon Miller's below. I was well into my 40s before I even had to use the word and that was in the USA where I had no idea a non-belief was so controversial. Back home nobody I knew was a 'believer' in the creationist sense, so the idea that my non-beliefs required a name never occurred.
It's only the fact that there are extreme believers that require us atheists to have a name they can use for us.
We are allowing ourselves to be named by those we disagree with.
Jonathan Miller: Let me say right at the outset that I've always been very reluctant to use the word "atheist," not because I'm embarrassed or ashamed of it but I think that this view scarcely deserves a title. No one has a special name for not believing in witches--I'm not an "a-hexist"--and I don't have a word for not believing in ghosts or anything of that sort. So the idea of there being a special name for what I've never had--which is a belief in God--seems to me to be odd, to say the least.
Still, my attitude toward the notion of a supernatural being is identical to that of those who do call themselves atheists, though I hold this view without any sort of vehemence or enthusiasm or evangelical drive. In that sense I'm rather unlike Richard Dawkins, for example, who is a zealous proselytizer for atheism. And I think one of the reasons for the difference is autobiographical--that he is what I call a "born-again atheist:" he started his life as a Christian, was a Christian until he was about sixteen, then read Charles Darwin and, as a result, became an atheist. I come from a Jewish family but was never brought up with any sort of Jewish practices at all. And I don't even know what being a Jew is--I'm a Jew for anti-Semites and that's really all. So I'm what I would call a "cradle atheist," insofar as I am an atheist.
Page not found - TheHumanist.com

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

Replies to this message:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 28 of 209 (657606)
03-29-2012 3:03 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by Tangle
03-29-2012 2:48 PM


We are allowing ourselves to be named by those we disagree with.
So what?
We are who we are, we believe what we believe, and a name doesn't alter any of that.
Does the identity of the namer alter the accuracy of the name? I understand that language changes over time and so meanings and definitions also change, but the basic meaning of Atheist certainly seems to fit.
People often bring up the lack of a term for "non-racist" when discussing the need for a term like "Atheist," but these people have forgotten that there did exist terms for people who were not racist back when such positions were held by the minority. We simply prefer not to remember them, because they were abhorrent. But terms like "nigger-lover" or "race-traitor" are still sometimes (though thankfully more rarely) used today as derisive terms for one who was not racist as the majority was.
The term Atheist exists to identify a subset of the population as distinct from the majority. Walking down the street, most of the people you meet are in fact Theists, and so the distinction is at least relevant; if someone asks your religion, what are you to reply? Remain silent? You'll have to reply using the term Atheist or something that means the same, like "I'm not religious" or "I don't believe in gods."
I see no rational reason to complain about the word itself. I find plenty of reason to oppose the inaccurate negative connotations people like to apply...but I don't think that racists think differently about people of African descent whether they self-identify as Black, African, Colored, or any other term, and I don't think that a random person on the street will be somehow convinced to cast aside the "negative connotations" of the term "Atheist" simply because we try to use a different word. People are irrational, they're insane, they're usually not (that) stupid.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Tangle, posted 03-29-2012 2:48 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
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ringo
Member (Idle past 411 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(2)
Message 29 of 209 (657608)
03-29-2012 3:21 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Perdition
03-29-2012 1:50 PM


Re: ...is still an Atheist
Perdition writes:
To me, a heathen incorporates visions of primitive people sacrificing virgins and dancing in the moonlight holding hearts over their heads.
To me, "heathen" connotes an adherent of the wrong religion rather than an adherent of no religion.
"Atheist" is defined in terms of what one is not instead of what one is. I prefer to think of myself as a realist or a rationalist regardless of whether I'm religious or not.

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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 30 of 209 (657610)
03-29-2012 3:23 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Rahvin
03-29-2012 3:03 PM


Rahvin writes:
We are who we are, we believe what we believe, and a name doesn't alter any of that.
Which is my point really. I never had cause to call myself an atheist until I met people who believed in lots of crazy things that I didn't.
Why have a name at all? it's not necessary.
[btw in Ireland i'm an Apixie too]

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

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