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> well, atheism is "I don't believe in a God" You're jumping from atheism to anti-theism far too quickly: atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not the
by lloeki 10y ago
> well, atheism is "I don't believe in a God"
You're jumping from atheism to anti-theism far too quickly: atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not the belief of non-existence, which is a subset referred to as explicit atheism, from which anti-theism is rooted as an even smaller subset. This is the distinction between "I don't believe in a deity" (which includes agnosticism) and "I believe no deity exists" (which includes "I consider it true that no deity exists", referred as strong atheism). Wow, now that was some serious nitpicking on my part :)
- beaconstudios 10y agoyeah, I see your point - in my experience people who proclaim "atheism" tend to lean towards believing there is no God rather than not personally being faithful, and that the latter tends to be reserved for agnosticism. I see your point though, and I guess agnosticism does belong under atheism if treated as an umbrella term.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- baldfat 10y agoYou just defined Agnostic vs Atheist. It's in the very word's semantics and history. I love talking about this in academic circles and I always find it frustrating if the talk is over semantics. Occam's razor, "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected" So if it's impossible to prove a negative let's move on to the side where you can prove. The disregard of if or if there isn't a deity as opposed to there isn't.