To not apply definitions because you feel they are more about something else, purely because of the example given, is a fallacy. Unless, of course, you can show that the example given is the only area that definition is used?
The meaning of "deny" in "deny a motion" is distinctly different from the primary meaning. Sure, you can deny a request, a petition, an entreaty, a whine from your five-year-old, or a command from a cop, but that sense of "deny" is qualitatively different from denying the validity of an assertion.
And you seem to think atheists can't be agnostics, and agnostics can't be atheists, despite one being a matter of ontology and the other a matter of epistemology.
Yes, that is the way I use the words. What's the point in having both if they overlap to the point of vagueness anywhere but in a graduate philosophy seminar?
- An atheist is a person who is certain (or certain beyond a reasonable doubt if he's a scientist) that there is no supernatural universe whose forces and creatures whimsically, often petulantly, and almost always illogically perturb the operation of the natural universe and make a mockery of the laws of physics, blatantly denying the fundamental premise of science: that the natural universe is a closed system (layman's definition) whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical evidence of its past and present behavior.
- An agnostic is a person who isn't certain, perhaps by holding what he considers a reasonable doubt.
So what do you consider someone (other than irrational) who does not know whether god exists or not but still believes that god does exist?
I call that belief a "hunch." But as for the person, I do indeed call him
irrational if he is reasonably well educated. It is
unreasonable to believe in an extraordinary premise for which no extraordinary evidence has ever been discovered. Detectives have hunches based on evidence.
I'm sure there have been pockets of godless societies throughout civilization's history.
Jung says no. Belief in the supernatural is an
archetype, in modern terms an instinctive belief pre-programmed into our synapses by evolution. Either it was a survival trait in an era whose dangers we can't imagine, or it was a random mutation passed down through a genetic bottleneck.
Even today I don't see any "pockets of godless societies" unless you count the people who find each other and form humanist associations. There are no physical atheist communities; we're too rare to actually do an Ayn Rand and build our own little village. People who called the USSR an atheist society ignore the fact that communism is an offshoot of Christianity. Marx's slogan, "To each according to his need, from each according to his ability," is a paraphrase of a quote from the Book of Acts. Can you imagine self-respecting Jews, Hindus or Confucians founding a movement based on the premise that what a man takes from civilization does not have to correlate with what he gives back? That's irrational and defies the laws of economics. The only way that society can survive is through divine intervention; the collapse of the USSR after decades of producing a "negative surplus" can be seen as evidence of the missing god.
My family is godless. I never heard of religion until I was about seven, and I assumed it was one of those funny stories that kids make up. We all seem to have a mutation that eliminated or overrode the instinct to believe in the supernatural. I'm sure there are others. But hardly enough to create a society.
Dictionaries record usage of a word. The usage is commonly wrong.
Excuse me, but by choice or by chance you're living in a community whose language is democratic. Words are not defined by an academy of scholars, as in Spain, or by the government, as in Germany. The meaning of an English word is
exactly what the preponderance of speakers and writers use it to mean in their discourse. To say "the usage is commonly wrong" is an oxymoron when applied to English.
I'm an atheist, I simply do not believe in any of the gods people have tried to sell to me.
So what? You're just waiting for one to come along that you like? You have no problem with the
concept of an invisible, illogical supernatural universe, you just don't like the way it's been dressed up by various cultures? In that case you're an agnostic, waiting for an excuse to believe in something that's unreasonable.
You know what the etymology of the word 'atheist' is . . . .
It's from Greek
a-, "without," and
theos, "god." It literally means "one who is without gods."
Well, most people I know who are atheists hold that position exactly because of reasoning like that you posted.
I'm willing to stretch the definition of "disbelief" to include "a science-based refusal to believe something that is unreasonable."
We believe in millions of things because not to do so would be unreasonable. In aggregate it's obvious that a few of them will be proven wrong. Even canonical scientific theories are occasionally overturned, or at least highly modified. But we have no way of knowing which belief will turn out to be wrong. That's no excuse for being unreasonable.
An extraordinary assertion, completely lacking in evidence, which claims to falsify the fundamental premise of science, seems rather low on the list of beliefs likely to be overturned by future evidence.
