- Frank Segro
- Poultney, VT
- United States
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Abolishing the use of the term Atheism.
We all know that the term "atheist" means without god. However, as an atheist I often find it annoying when people talk about it as a belief system. Lack of belief does not constitute belief in anything else. No one would call me an a-paleontologist simply because I'm not one. Simultaneous to being an atheist I may be a rational empiricist or follow some other set of beliefs. I believe that we should stop using convenient designators such as atheism when we "classify" ourselves to others or are classified by them, because there is simply nothing behind it.
Thoughts?
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Frank Segro
Theos = Greek for God, Deity,
A, an, anti, ag = not/no
Atheos = no god
Nostic , gnosis = knowing
ag = not
agnostic = not knowing
Whats ironic is the attempts by many to unify atheists around this lack of belief. Being an atheist tells you nothing about me. I may believe in reptoids, or Santa Claus. You cannot form a base on a non-belief.
English is a semantically closed language. The statement “This desk is flat” has dual content. We read a sentence and again we presuppose that there is an actual physical desk in the world and that it is flat. Tangible content.
However, there also exits the semantic content “ The sentence this desk is flat is a true statement”. This is totally non-visceral and is referring to an abstract statement that doesn't exist anywhere.
“Did you just say, this desk is flat?”
What this means is that a negative term can be talked about as a positive one, a negative term (not god) not god can now be taken as a semantic object.
Atheist refers to a lack of something, we can now talk about it as if it is a belief system. And I don't like that it lumps me in with one of the most hated groups of people on the planet.