Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

Cat Sci writes:All you are doing is insisting that people conform to your usage of the words.

How's that working out for you? After 90 posts in this thread, how many people have you convinced?

Obviously it doesn't work that way. People get to use words how they want to use them.

You don't get to make that decision for them.

ringo writes: I don't think it is, as I've already pointed out. Juries deliberate because they don't know what to believe.

Cat Sci writes:Other people use it differently. They're not wrong as you are insisting.

ringo writes:They are required to make up their minds what and whom to believe.

ringo writes:I don't know whether Bigfoot exists. I am agnostic about the existence of Bigfoot. That's why I have to fall back on belief. I only have a belief because I'm agnostic.

ringo writes: That doesn't make any sense at all.

Jon writes:Are you high?

Cat Sci writes:If you don't believe god exists, you're an atheist. If you don't know if you believe there's a god, you don't believe in god. You are therefore an atheist.
Sure, that's one way to use the words. Another way is like this:Theist = takes the positive position that god exists.Atheist = takes the positive position that god does not exist.Agnostic = Everyone else. People who don't take a position either way.

There's nothing wrong with using the words that way, and you're wrong to insist that people conform to the usage of the words that you prefer.

You're confused because you've swallowed this invented agnostic nonsense. Agnostic as a word and concept that didn't exist at all until 150 years ago. Humanity existed without it perfectly well through the the great philosophical eras of the Greeks and even the Enlightenment.People quite clearly understood that belief had nothing to do with knowledge. The along comes Huxley who is an obvious non-believer (because he says so) and decides that he can't think his way into belief because god is unknowable. Then he makes this huge logical error and simply invents a non-position. The agnostic. The agnostic is someone who doesn't know whether god exists or not.But knowledge is NOT belief. So I'll try yet again.When I say god, I mean god, gods, God, Gods - any and every god we've named and those we'll invent in the future.When I say I don't believe in any of them - that's it, nothing else. In exactly the same way as you don't believe in fairies and Santa Clause. (And, what's more you have no name for it.)Where you're confused is when I also say that I'm an agnostic. Well of course I am. I don't actually KNOW god doesn't exist. No-one posibly can. Atheism is just a lack of belief. Belief is a positve step beyond knowledge which you have or don't have. That's why agnosticism is a nonsense, we are ALL agnostic whether we like it or not. Belief is not knowledge it's an emotional state.We only know whether we believe or not. That's why I say I'm an atheist - it is a matter of belief or not. Huxley was an atheist, he didn't believe. His not knowing is irrelevant, because none of us know.You are an atheist and you are an agnostic - big deal, the agnostic part is redundant. The agnostic tag is simply a bit of philosophical snobbery to denote that you've thought about it.(i'm using 'you' in a general sense, not you personally, but I expect it applies to both of us.)

dwise1 writes:So why don't those voters vote for atheists? That is the entire reason for this topic. So why does nobody dare address the topic?

dwise1 writes:Are you truly so ignorant of Scripture? Do you indeed not know these words?
Why choose to not know your enemy?

dwise1 writes:Whom was I addressing?

Are you truly so ignorant of Scripture? Do you indeed not know these words?

why choose to not know your enemy

Who the fuck knows? Only those who understand something about what the voters think.
So why the fuck do you think that I keep asking that question?

ringo writes:I thought you already acknowledged that knowledge and belief are two different states.

Since they are two different states, there is no problem whatsoever for me to not know and yet believe. Or I could not know and not believe.

ringo writes:That isn't true, as I've already pointed out. There's also, "I don't know what to believe."

Remember juries?

And you were wrong. There's "I don't know but I'll go along with the majority." You don't know. You might believe or you might not believe.