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It may make sense in the technical sense, but I for one have never met someone who claimed to be atheist that believed that humans had a soul that continued aft
by kaens 18y ago
It may make sense in the technical sense, but I for one have never met someone who claimed to be atheist that believed that humans had a soul that continued after death.
I've met ones that didn't discount it as a possibility, but not any that professed a belief in it.
- netcan 18y agoI think that a lot of the people that actively believe in supernatural things tend not to like to use inflammatory terms like atheist. But a lot of people that do not believe in god are interested in 'spiritual energies' or something similar that really amounts to a supernatural belief.
- time_management 18y agoSince when is "atheist" an inflammatory term?
- kaens 18y agoI don't consider it to be, but it certainly is for a large portion of the USAs population, mainly due to differing interpretations of what the word means, and the common perception (at least in small-town USA) of atheists being amoral as well.
- pchristensen 18y agoIt's kind of like "socialist" - many people think of it as inherently bad, instead of just a different set of relative values. I've lived in Sweden and can say that atheism, agnosticism, and socialism aren't bad, just different.
- kaens 18y agoExactly. It has a lot to do with the ambiguity of language, particularly english.
- netcan 18y agoIt is inflammatory. Not only to the religious but also to the very large percentage of people who see it as a strident position. For something to be inflammatory it only needs to inflame.
- kaens 18y agoI tend to agree. Most people I know who would label themselves as an atheist, myself included, do not have any supernatural beliefs, unless you get ridiculously nitpicky on the semantic side. The term itself doesn't exclude belief in the "supernatural", but it is (as far as I can tell) claimed largely by people who don't have any belief in the "supernatural".