Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

I'm not telling you anything about your beliefs. You can believe, not believe, or not know whether you believe whatever the hell it is you want to believe, not believe, or not know whether you believe. Who? Certainly not me... Who are these people? I've only been following a few of the posters here...Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Am I an a-axemurdererinmyhouse-ist?
Are you?
Am I an a-leprechaunundermybed-ist?
Are you?Are these "positive positions"? Are these strong or weak 'a-ist' positions as defined by you?If my stance on gods is identical to all the things that we could sit here for a lifetime identifying and expressing 'a-ist' positions on, most of which we haven't even thunk up yet and which we are silently 'a-ist' by default towards, where does that leave us?I'd say it leaves us in a situation where usage of the term 'atheist' as a "positive position" that somehow requires more justification than any other 'a-ist' position is to embrace the special pleading that theists apply to their preferred concepts.For obvious reasons someone who is suggesting that gods/God/GOD/whatever should not be privileged to such special pleading is going to be reluctant to embrace terminology that has that special pleading innately embedded.

And when they don't know, their verdict is not guilty. It's not 'I don't know.'If you don't know whether you believe in god, the verdict is that you don't believe in god.

I suggest you do search for the words "positive" and "fundamentalist" and see what comes up for this thread.

There's no such word. There's no such word.You, and several others, are attempting to use logic.Natural language is a cultural practice, not a logic calculus.

No. It doesn't work that way. A jury is required to come up with a verdict and the default is not guilty (or the case is thrown out).In personal beliefs there is no default. Don't know is the largest category. It's only an arrogant minority that claims to know, one way or the other.

Strong. You're an atheist. You take the position that gods do not exist. Don't you? But you do have justifications for not believing that there is an axe murderer in your house, and leprechauns under your bed, and gods existing.That's why I don't have a problem calling you an atheist.If instead, you were saying that you don't believe that there is not an axe murderer in your house, but rather you just lack that belief that there is one because of insufficient evidence, then I would say that the term agnostic is better used to describe that.Especially if you were a self-proclaimed a-axemurdererinmyhouse-ist but then said that you didn't go so far as to believe that there was not an axe murderer in your house.'Cause that's just silly.

Also they back away looking frightened of you - or at least that's my experience of Colorado. Nobody ever asks in New York (Or Vegas or San Francisco for that matter.) Good luck :-) This is the nggard - do you believe in nggards? Correct. But it's a fake position. If it's cheese, belief is not required. I can see, touch, taste and smell it. Belief doesn't come into it. Sorry, you're making a category error - confusing knowledge with belief. I don't really want to attempt to distinguish between passive and active beliefs - both are beliefs in god so qualify as fully theist. It's only those that pause when asked the question 'do you believe in god?' are forced to say that they don't know that are by default atheists - simply because they don't believe in god. If they just say 'I think so, but I'm not really a churchgoer, and I don't believe in all that Satan stuff etc etc' - they're still theists.

Yes that is my point.The word 'atheist' in and of itself reflects the cultural bias towards special pleading gods over other concepts which are just as evidentially (un)worthy of consideration.

For as long as you - and others - use knowledge (know and don't know) as a simile for belief, we're never going to meet.It's the arrogant few - of which Faith and I qualify - that claim to *believe*. In Faith's case that there is a god, and in my case that there is not.I differ from Faith in that I also claim to not *know* whether god exists or not. In fact I say that it is impossible to know or not know god. For the Huxley reason.

You're the one who's conflating knowledge with belief. A jury doesn't know. They believe. So you're an agnostic. Get used to it.

No thanks.

Okay, yeah if you're just going to dig your heels in and insist on your usage while failing to consider the usage that other's prefer, then I'm not going to waste my time anymore. No shit - you're claiming that all belief is active and that passive beliefs cannot exist. And you'd rather stick to your guns than challenge your own thoughts. The non-pedants knew exactly what I was talking about. Again, that's just your preferred usage of the term. Other people prefer to use the words differently. And they're not wrong to do so.

So according to you we are all (the vast majority of the world's population) "strong atheists" towards leprechauns under the bed and pretty much every un-evidenced concept we can think up.Why are all those people who don’t believe in leprechauns under their bed (presumably the vast majority of the world’s population) strong a-ists with regard to that but those who hold an equal non-belief in god would be defined by you as agnostic? How does that work?Can you explain why the effective default for all this infinite array of things that we could spend our time listing (but won’t) is strong atheist (as defined by you) whilst the default for gods is expected to be agnostic (as defined by you)?

Why should I use language that *some* other's prefer if I (and others) think it wrong? I am absolutely not. Re-read what I wrote. Of course people believe in different way. But whether you call it active or passive, it's still a belief in god. Nice, but not a winning argument. If fact, not an argument at all. The difference between belief and knowledge is the entire bloody argument. You can't just call it a 'preferred' usage and hope I'll agree. If you do not make a distinction between the words, you're missing the whole of the point.