An Atheist By Any Other Name . . .

So we should exchange one word with negative connotations with another word with negative connotations.In the words of Billy Connolly
"Brilliant, just f'ing brilliant"

Look, It's pretty clear from the article in question what the intent was.
read it again. I'm getting tired of re-explaining it.You seem to have assumed that this is all somehow my idea or that I am an apologist for it. This is not the case. I am not the author of the article.Like I said, I posted it as a discussion point, not to be held to task for its contents.Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.

You seem to have taken my criticisms personally. That is your issue not mine. I have pointed out issues I have had with the concepts presented by the author and yourself. If you do not support the authors ideas quit defending them.

Do you understand the intent of the author when he talks about finding an alternative title?
Do you understand what he means when he talks about "Reclaiming" a word in the same way the originally derogatory words 'Gay' or 'Methodist' or 'Quaker' were reclaimed by the people they describe?Do you understand that the meanings of words can and do change over time depending on their use? eg "Gay" The only issue you seem to have is the use of the word heathen, this is a minor part of the article as presented, yet you seem hung up on it.anyway, this is the wrong thread to discuss the Original article.

As the topic of this thread is about names for Atheists , why would I be discussing anything about the article but the use of Heathen for Atheist.
Other issues about the article were discussed on the other thread as is right. I think others did a very good job tearing it down in that thread.I am not sure I know what you expect people to do when they disagree with you and the arguments you bring to the forum. Do you want me to agree with you? Probably ain't going to happen on this issue.I agree the following should be for the other thread but as you posted it here I will answer here. Yes, but I think it is unnecessary and ultimate stupid and harmful. Yes, but I think he is doing a little revisionism and presenting a skewed reality of these terms. I find huge issues with his idea that these people "reclaimed" these terms. Sounds like some new age scholarship woo. Quit being insulting. It demeans any semblance of an argument you have.You can answer in the other thread, but I doubt you will have anything new to support the article which you misrepresented from the start.

I didn't misrepresent anything. I provided a summary in bullet points, (so as not to post a bare link as per forum guidelines), including what I thought was the main thrust of the article,
(the "re-naming" as someone mentioned above (Rahvin maybe?) being a semantic triviality.)

This really comes down to semantics. This is where we separate evidenced beliefs from faith based beliefs. Religious belief is based on faith where there is no evidence. Scientists use evidence to arrive at conclusions which is the opposite of how religion works. Using a definition of belief that covers both religion and science is a copout as well. Like many of us have said, you are free to hold whatever belief you want.If someone arrives at the belief that the Hindu pantheon really does exist after a lifetime of study, mediation, introspection, and life experiences would you feel compelled to believe in the Hindu pantheon as well? If not, then why should atheists feel compelled to believe in your deity for the same reason?

I would think that very few people who refer to themselves as atheists are going to confessional and taking communion "just in case".If a 1,000 foot Zeus came down out of the sky and threw lightning at your feet would you believe in the existence of Zeus? I would think that you would, as would I. Does this mean that you are hedging your bet? No. It is just a very simple admission that if strong evidence is presented for a claim that you will accept the claim as true. That is not hedging your bet. That is being reasonable.

It's not that they are saying 'there is no supernatural; there maybe a supernatural' which would be odd. What they are saying is 'There is probably not a supernatural. It can't be absolutely ruled out. However, there is no reason why we should believe there is.'. They may criticize you for making certain errors in reasoning that is used to justify those beliefs, but that doesn't come into tension with their underlying belief that 'the unfalsifiable cannot be falsified (ie., we cannot rule out the supernatural)' When the majority of people are making the kinds of reasoning mistakes that can lead to disastrous or immoral policy decisions...I think it's perfectly fair for the atheists to be provocative.

I never suggested atheists shoud believe in a deity. I said I was suprised that, according to the info supplied by
Catholic Scientis, that some atheists admit that there may be a diety.I would think one would be an atheist or an agnostic.

Only if you assume they're mutually exclusive. That is, that "atheism" is a gnostic position.But that's the point that the soft atheists are making, that their's is not a gnostic position, they don't know that god doesn't exist, but they also lack any belief that he does. They're both agnostic and atheistic.Its only when atheism is taken as a positive position that god does not exist, that it it moves out of agnosticism.

Surely you've been around here long enough to know that there are atheists who aren't close-minded dogmatists. So what's the surprise ?

Yes, but as I mentioned before, I admit that there may be a God only in the same sense that I admit that there may be an invisible dragon in my garage;

quote:

---

The Dragon In My Garage

​

by Carl Sagan

​

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

​

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

​

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

​

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

​

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

​

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

​

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

​

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

​

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

​

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

​

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

​

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

​

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

​

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

​

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

---

I am an a-dragon-ist in the same sense that I am an atheist. I think that characterising atheists into a position where we have no shred of tentativity regarding the existence of gods is an attempt to shoehorn us into an unreasonable position that very few of us hold.I have a tiny scintilla of doubt over whether gods exist. To have any less doubt would be arrogant. If this makes me an agnostic, then I would suggest that any theist who does not possess 100% certainty of God's existence must be an agnostic too. To my mind, the term "agnostic" implies considerably more doubt than this, otherwise what's the value in these terms? All but the most deluded zealots would be agnostic, leaving us with no useful terminology to describe more reasonable positions.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

As the others have said, agnosticism and atheism dela with two different ideas. Atheism and theism deal with what one believes (or doesn't believe), while agnosticism and gnosticism deal with knowledge. This gives us 4 possibilities:

In the same way that we admit that there may be leprechauns. Surely you are not so dogmatic that you would claim, with absolute knowledge, that there are no leprechauns. However, I doubt you also spend time worrying that there are leprechauns. The same for atheists and your deity. It is not hedging. It is merely an admission that our knowledge will always be imperfect. Agnostics are atheists. Agnostics do not have a positive belief in any deity. They claim that one can not attain knowledge of the supernatural (a--without, gnost--knowledge). Many of us have argued that agnosticism is the halfway house for those who have just become atheists. Due to a lifetime of fearing atheism the word "atheism" it is much more palatable to be an agnostic. For all intents and purposes, they are the same thing.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.