John T wrote:Ben C. Smith wrote:
John, I feel like you are playing with words. Specifically, I feel like you are trying to bait me with the word "real" in your expression above ("real atheist"). I gave
several instances of Dawkins both claiming to be an atheist and implying that he is an atheist. They evidently are not good enough for you, which means that you are defining words differently than both he and I would. Furthermore, you yourself pointed out that he places himself at #6 (going on #7) on his own scale, a degree which he defines as follows: "
De facto atheist.
Actually, it is Richard Dawkins that is playing with words. Hence the reason I asked you to watch his TED talk.
It sounded like you wanted me to watch it so that I could see that he never mouths the words "I am an atheist" or some such. Which would be silly. What
exactly do you want me to watch for? (I have started the video, and will have time to finish it later, but not if you do not tell me what exactly I am looking for.)
I remind you that in his book he admitted to being an agnostic and denied being an atheist according to his own ad hoc definition.
That is simply not true, at least not in the terms that you are presenting. Please provide quotes that actually support the words you are using.
A de facto atheist, a pseudo-atheist, a non-theist, a bright, I'm moving towards the direction of becoming a strong (real) atheist, all those things fall short of being what quantifies/qualifies as an atheist.
Again, that is not true. All it takes is not to be a theist. By definition.
Dawkins always leaves room for the probability of a creator/deity, however slight that may be.
This is the crux of it, I think. Simply put, an atheist can do that. Allowing for a tiny bit of probability that God exists does not make one a theist, any more than allowing a tiny bit of probability that fairies exists makes one a believer in fairies. There is a 5% of rain tomorrow, but I do not truly believe that it is going to rain. Probability and belief can correlate to some extent, but they are not the same thing. You are using
your definition of atheism to trump almost literally everybody else's.
By definition that makes him an "agnostic" but he hopes you can't figure out his little word game.
You are simply mistaken in your definitions. That is all there is to this.
Atheism: The doctrine there is no God or gods.
That is not a complete definition. These are closer:
a·the·ism
ˈāTHēˌizəm
noun
disbelief
or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
— Google
Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear:
Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is
a lack of belief in gods.
—
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resou ... ut-atheism
a :
a lack of belief or a strong disbelief
in the existence of a god or any gods
— Merriam-Webster
Atheism is, in the broadest sense,
the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist.
Atheism
That is why I spoke of the Greek prefix
a-. One merely has to demure from belief in a G/god to be atheist; one does not have to actively, aggressively believe in the doctrine that there is no G/god.
During the TED talk it is obvious that Dawkins' ploy/goal is to silence creationists (read fundamentalist Christians) and is pandering to the real atheists in the audience in hopes they will become militant enough to join forces with him.
The age ole, the enemy (atheists) of my enemy (creationists) is my friend tactic.
I care little about his tactics and even less about your assessment of them. I care about what an atheist is (especially since
I am one, and am not going to sit in silence while you try to explain away what atheism really, actually is).
I used to call my college self an agnostic, based on how the terms were treated by some people around me (mainly theists, incidentally). But, once I looked into the actual terminology (sparked originally by the knowledge that early Christians were called atheists sometimes, and long before I ever read Dawkins), it became obvious that I had been an atheist, plain and simple, and am one currently, as well.
Atheism and theism correlate, the former being the lack of the latter. Atheism and agnosticism
do not correlate. They may even overlap, depending upon how one defines "agnostic" (about which I care little).