Is U.S. Becoming Hostile to Science?

I'm sorry, words are ultimately our servants, and they bend to meet our changing needs.
I notice that no-one has put forward any word in common use to mean "positively believing that god does not exist".

There are beyond doubt three different states of belief here.

1. Positive belief.
2. No decision either because of happenstance lack of evidence, or perhaps because of believe in unprovability.
3. Positive disbelief

We need a word for each, and common usage assigns

1. Theist or believer or religious person
2. Agnostic
3. Atheist

The insistence that theist/atheist is a straight dichotomy, uniting (2) and (3), can be defended on grounds of pure logic, but does it fit with how our language is used, which is the ultimate determiner? I think not. A noun with the not-prefix does not usually refer to the mere absence of the thing negated, but its actual negation.
See:
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&field-12668446=atheism&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact&sortorder=score%2Cname
"atheism • noun the belief that God does not exist."
The Oxford English Dictionary is surely the authority (at least outside the USA)

However, a poll of online definitions comes up about 50/50, with the university/academic ones biassed towards that given above rather than defining atheism as mere absence of belief in god.

My conclusion is to remain agnostic on the question of which definition is correct. To strongly assert that anyone using either definition is wrong is therefore definitely to err.

So calm down Chip, and don't lecture us. Either use is acceptable, and none of us should be getting bossy. I prefer one, you prefer the other, thats all.

I go with the OED. You don't. But its just a preference. No hassle.

What we now need (since we can't agree) is an unambiguous word for positive disbelief in god, or rather in anything divine exterior to the material world. Anyone got a candidate to suggest ?

Then I can put "a-" on the front, and begin the argument all over again

My sentiments exactly! (except that it makes for a fascinating topic of discussion). For the record, I don't think anyone in this forum is a fool. If I did, I wouldn't bother to engage them. Also for the record, I wish Ulrika and others would strive for more tact. Defending things out of principle makes me have empathy for those who defended Prokofy, and that makes my brain hurt.

Ellie, sorry but I'm an atheist. When people misrepresent what I believe (and what most atheists believe) I feel it's rather important to correct their misconceptions, as would anyone in similar circumstances.

Why exactly do you choose to call yourself an atheist, rather than simply calling yourself an agnostic?

Your definition of weak atheism fits with agnosticism, so it seems odd to try and redefine a word like atheism, which already has a set definition.

As I said before, you can really call yourself whatever you like.. you could make up your own words, if you want. But you should then accept the fact that most people are going to misunderstand you, because they will be applying the widely accepted definitions of the words, rather than your own internal definitions.

Man, I thought we had this cleared up...

You DO NOT believe in any god, is this correct?

You MIGHT change your mind if there were any emperical evidence showing you there was a god, is this correct?

As long as we know this IS your definition of what athiesm is, we can go from here.

All I am trying to do is make sure there is no more 'moral high grounds' to tumble over

Are you serious with this Chip ? It's not a troll because you're bored?

You find something intellectually dishonest in:

3) I positively believe that the material world, as we observe it, is all there is, that death is obliteration, and that no divine forces or consciousnesses exist.

This is the position of many of the people I know. Why do you deride it so totally ?

Some justification please ?

It is true that a person who hates sweets also "doesn't like" them, but it doesn't mean that hating can't happen. Shall I look at the wikipedia to name your error ?

Ellie, it's not at all a troll and I'm completely serious. Theism and atheism adress only those two positions and nothing more. If you claim that atheism is belief in the opposite of theism then you are tacking more meaning on the word atheism than it actually carries. You are either a theist or you're not. "I don't know" counts as "not" because it precludes you from being a theist. It's utterly and completely bizarre to me that people struggle with this so much and react so emotionally to it. Everyone is either a theist or an atheist. It's an either or thing, not a sliding scale. If you're all the way up the scale at "amost but not quite a theist" you're still an atheist. It really doesn't get much simpler than that. I'll shut up now since all I'm doing is repeating myself.

I think the issue that people have with your definitions, Chip, are that you have broken atheism into two separate belief structures.

This is largely unnecessary, as agnosticism already covers the territory which you have defined as "weak" atheism.

If you insist on using the term "weak atheism" instead of agnosticism, then logically you should make sure that you define yourself as a weak atheist, rather than an atheist. TO simply say "atheist" under your set of definitions is unclear, because it could mean either weak or strong atheism.

For this reason, I think it makes more sense to break the terms into Theism, Agnosticism, and Atheism. Each of these then has a fairly clear meaning.

Yeah, but Chip ...

There is a distinction between those who "don't know" and those who "are sure" vis-a-vis the existence of the Ultimate! Supernatural! Being!

And in my experience --- which is uneducated and about as common as one can get, tyvm --- "Agnostic" tends (at the very least) to mean Those Who Say They Are Unsure, and "Atheist" tends (at the very least) to mean Those Who Say They Are Sure.

Regardless of the correctness and precision of what you point out above, still, there's got to be some consensus on the basic meaning of words for any arguments or considerations to progress ...

Like, if you call a spider a bug, well, that's just wrong. It is, strictly speaking, not a bug; because it's not an insect and it's certainly not in the subsection of insects known as True Bugs (hemiptera, if I recall correctly) . But, dayum, man ... whereas I can get all riled up if someone calls a spider an insect ... even I have to accept that, okay, a spider is a goddam bug. Because when you get to that level of precision, you lose too many opportunites for discussion or conversation --- unless you're dealing with entomologists --- if you insist on proper technical nomenclature. Sometimes, you just have to let it go.

Of course, sure, it's much more difficult if what's being labeled is what you consider yourself to be. I can let it go easily enough ... but would a spider tolerate being called a bug?

Ah --- words, words, words!

You guys sure make the forums interesting!

Yes, absolutely, and that's actually my point. They are both atheists. If you claim that all atheists are the latter, you're misrepresenting all of the former (who vastly outnumber them, btw). It's not really any different than claiming that all Christians are fundamentalists. They're not, but they are all Christians.