From: "Fred C. Moulton" <moulton@moulton.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 00:32:06 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: atheism (was: RE: Democracy... (fwd)) (fwd)
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19980921053419.00a3a104@shell7.ba.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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To quote the The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (EOP):
   'No definition of "atheism" can hope to be in accord with all uses of
   this term."
The EOP article continues with a discussion of various definitions and
reasons for them.  The article includes the following comment:
   'On our definition, an "atheist" is a person who rejects belief in
    God, regardles of whether or not his reason for the rejection is 
    the claim that "God exists" is a fales proposition.'

George H. Smith in his book Atheism: The Case Against God writes:
    '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 a god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the 
     existence of a god.'

Within the past year I attended a lecture by Mr. Smith and during the
lecture he indicated that his formulation was being preferred by
scholars in the field while the one given by Jim Choate was still
used in the popular culture.

Thus I think it is inappropriate to criticize the definition of 
atheism used by pjm@spe.com.

Fred

At 05:02 PM 9/20/98 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>
>> From: pjm@spe.com
>> Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 20:13:38 +0200
>> Subject: atheism (was: RE: Democracy... (fwd)) (fwd)

>>      No, they are not.  The distinction is crucial to the main point I
>> evidently failed to make in my previous message:  Atheism is not a set
>> of beliefs that constitutes a personal philosophy.  There are Buddhist
>> atheists, Universalist-Unitarian atheists, objectivist atheists,
>> Wiccan atheists, etc.  Atheism isn't even a belief, it is merely the
>> statement of a lack of one particular belief.
>
>No, atheism is the statement that "God could exist, but doesn't". Whether
>one chooses to hang 'Bhuddism' or 'Wiccan' on is irrelevant. We aren't
>discussion labels but rather characteristics. Fundamentaly *ALL* atheism
>states:
>
>While it could happen that way, I don't believe it does.
>
>Which is identical in meaning to:
>
>While it could happen that way, I believe it doesn't.
>