Thread: Atheist zealots a heavy cross to bear
View Single Post
Old 09-20-2010, 07:14 AM   #59
WT Sharpe
Bah, humbug!
WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.WT Sharpe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
WT Sharpe's Avatar
 
Posts: 39,073
Karma: 157049943
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Chesapeake, VA, USA
Device: Kindle Oasis, iPad Pro, & a Samsung Galaxy S9.
Quote:
Originally Posted by weateallthepies View Post
I'm not sure this analogy works. I don't have a firm belief in no cake, I just have not been provided with enough evidence to suggest there is one.

This is how I see my atheism, I only see the need to define myself as an atheist because of the prevalence of religious belief within society. I've never seen it as a belief position, it's the default before evidence is provided much like anything else I have no belief in.

Quiz was fun...You took zero direct hits and you bit zero bullets.
I agree. All atheism in itself implies in a lack of theistic belief. The prefix "a" simply implies "not", so an a-theist is one who lacks a belief in a god or gods. That is all the term in itself implies.

In Atheism: The Case Against God (1974), George H. Smith wrote, "Atheism in its basic form is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god." That's as good a definition of an atheist as I've ever read. An individual atheist may deny that there is a god, but the term in itself does not imply that he or she denies anything. It simply states that this person lacks a theistic belief.
WT Sharpe is offline