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Charlemagne_III
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That goes without saying. But then you are saying the atheist does not really take a position, whereas I believe he does or he wouldn’t call himself an atheist.
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rstrats
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As alluded to by ThinkingSapien and others, the base meaning of a-theist is someone without theism. With regard to belief, there are two possiblilities: 1. a person who simply does not have a belief - a convictioin - one way or the other about the existence of deities and 2. a person who believes - is convinced - that deities do not exist. The latter is usually referred to as a strong atheist.
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tonyrey
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Nothing could ever convince me that the teaching of Jesus isn’t true! God bless you.:thumbsup:Tony, here is another take on Pascal in my opinion : Even if it were only 10% possibility of Gods existence that’s a whole lot to bet against ?
God Bless
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Charlemagne_III
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When I was a young man this was called an agnostic. I guess that over the decades definitions can change, but I think they cannot change officially just because someone wants to change them. I’m sticking with my original definition of agnostic in my old Random House Dictionary: that God is unknown or unknowable.
T.H. Huxley coined the term in 1869, but agnosticism about anything other than science and mathematics was advocated long before that by David Hume in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. According to him, you could consign all writings on theology and metaphysics to the flames.
But I have never known an agnostic who posed any arguments in favor of God, whereas the agnostic who have posed argument against God are legion. So I think there is not more than a dime’s worth of difference between an atheist and an agnostic.
The agnostic and the atheist both have reasons to fear hell, since they have come down on the devil’s side rather than God’s.
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ThinkingSapien
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Check out the book “Bad English” or take a look at the process by which dictionaries update definitions. It seems that definitions in dictionaries are the result of how people use the words. It’s why “literally” is now also defined to mean virtually/figuratively, which is the opposite of how it had been used.
That’s fine. But realize when someone labels themself with the “atheist” word they are not necessarily using that definition nor is the person necessarily making the declaration that God doesn’t exists. BTW: “Bad English” has some interesting things to say about “original definitions” too. There seem to be a lot of words that many of us use that have moved away from what seems to be their original meaning. Language evolves with tie.
I’m not sure that someone presenting an argument against a god-concept is trying to disprove it. Sometimes presenting apparent contradictions, questions, or arguments is a way to get answers to questions. The difference is in the intentions.
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PRmerger
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Thinking Sapien? Could you please answer the above?
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Charlemagne_III
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The intention behind Clarence Darrow’s “Why I Am an Agnostic” is pretty clear. He had no use for God.
The intention behind Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am not a Christian” is also fairly clear. He had no use for God.
It is a book like *Bad English *that helps to create confusion by spreading the philosophy of linguistic relativism. The author of *Bad English *does not get to set down rules of the language. The individual atheist also doesn’t get to define what atheism is. This is to personalize and make language subjective to a point where, if unchecked, people will not be able to communicate with each other because nobody knows what anybody else means when they use a certain word.
Recipe for yet another Tower of Babble .
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inocente
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I see what you mean but when the following lyrics were written, gay meant festive or carefree, and troll meant to sing or chant merrily. Although maybe it’s more humorous with the modern usage.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
'Tis the season to be jolly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Don we now our gay apparel
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la.
Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.
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ThinkingSapien
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Okay, if they see god-concepts as something that have no utility to them that’s fine. Their apatheistic statements don’t argue that no deities exists.
It traces through the history of semantic drift for a lot of words and their changes in meaning. Ammon Shea has also got another book called “Reading the O.E.D.” in which he writes about the experience and his findings of deciding to read a complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary from start to finish where many of the findings for “Bad English” seem to have been found. He’s also now a dictionary consultant for Oxford University Press.
He’s not making any rules at all. He’s sharing observations. "…]Almost all words change their meanings. This is one of the aspects of language that is firmly established. It ought to be evident to all of us that words will take on new meanings as we generally find it confusing to read writing that is more than a few hundred years old. Many of the words carried a different significance than we give to them today…]"
In modern times people tend not to use the word Egregious to mean “remarkably good” or “awful” to express positive attributes. “Girl” is no longer used to indicate a young person irrespective of their sex. And if I use the phrase “gay guy” the first thing that comes to your mind probably is not a very happy Guy Fawkes. The language that you and I speak and write with is derived from previous forms. Those forms continue to evolve.
Changes in language is it’s own field of study and it has it’s own typology. Narrowing, widening, metonymy, synecdoche, meiosis, degeneration,and elevation are all terms for types of semantic changes that occur.
Individuals and groups make words and assign meanings. In response to this others might ignore, reject, or adopt (possibly with modifications) the term or usage. With enough popularity of a usage the word or usage ends up in dictionaries and other references. If you’d like to ignore or reject that’s fine. But that may also be the source of a communications barrier between you and others.
Yet it doesn’t seem to be that bad unless you are trying to read something that was written by people hundreds of years ago (try reading the original Beowulf). You might have trouble understanding English dialects from an area outside of the one in which you live. Ignoring the regional variations in word usage without your home country you’ll find that English nations outside your country will have evolved some words, phrases, and idioms differently. I’m sure some you’ll recognize and can translate without seeking references (ex: football). Some might cause confusion such as “table” (which could mean to remove an item from discussion for now, or open it up for discussion now). Others, such as “naff” will probably have no immediate meaning to you. Language changes within a culture don’t tend to be the huge problem that they’ve been rumored to be.This is to personalize and make language subjective to a point where, if unchecked, people will not be able to communicate with each other because nobody knows what anybody else means when they use a certain word.
Recipe for yet another Tower of Babble .
BTW: Here is a section from Beowulf in English. ref]
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ThinkingSapien
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The next time I read a post from you as a precaution I must be sure to put down any beverages. I almost spat my morning tea over my new Mac Book Pro.
BTW: Thanks for translating that article earlier.
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ThinkingSapien
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You might not recall, but we’ve had that conversation multiple times. I’ll instead ask you to refer to our previous discussions on the question.
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PRmerger
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PRmerger
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Incidentally, there’s really only 3 ways to answer:
yes, God exists.
no, God doesn’t exist.
or
I don’t know.
Which is your position?
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Charlemagne_III
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So now you say Darrow and Russell were apatheists? What’s an apatheist?
Someone who is apathetic or indifferent about the existence of God.
But that Darrow and Russell would go to the bother of attacking religion in their respective essays indicates they were not apathetic. They were hostile.
As for changes in language, I never argued that never happens, so your very long explanation of how changes occur was really not necessary and a tad patronizing.
Wikipedia I do not take as an authoritative source for anything.
The word “apatheist” is not in my dictionary. Is it in yours?
Why anybody would be indifferent to the existence of God strikes me as a monstrosity of logic.
It makes all the difference in the world whether God exists, and all the difference even more if that God is the Christian God.
People who think otherwise are whistling in the dark.
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ThinkingSapien
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The statements that you presented (no use for God) sound apatheistic. While I say this about the statements, I don’t know enough about either one of the individuals that you named to definitively state their religious disposition. But the statements do express some level of disinterest with the concept of God and religion. An apatheistic attitude would not prevent them from being agnostic or atheist.
Okay, then you understand that what may be labeled as an “original definition” might not be an actual original definition. It also might not be the final definition. That individuals and groups can and do assign new meanings to words and repurpose them.
All dictionaries are necessarily incomplete. Not that it’s their job to determine whether or not something is a word. I would explain further, but it sounds like you would be uninterested.
I’ve encountered it from other sources, such as an article in “Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy” (Apatheism: The New Face of Religion, 2003) and other papers.From the named article:
"Apatheism:The New Face of Religion:
From another book simply titled “Morality without God”:
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong:
I don’t know where it might be freely available online. While I can’t share those with you I provided the wiki link so you’d have a clue as to what I was talking about. If you’ve got access to a university library there may either be print copies of this and other articles (or available through their online system) but I thought that might be too much to recommend for this online interaction. So wiki seemed satisficing for making the intended meaning clear.
You’d have to be able to see it from their perspective to make sense of it. I think you may be taking your own perspective, experiences, and knowledge, feelings and noticing that when you process them you don’t come to the same position as people that have different experiences, perspectives,feelings, and knowledge.
You’ll find there are a lot of things for which different people think and feel differently. There’s variation among people.
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Charlemagne_III
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Yes, there is. Some of the variation is reasonable, some of it is not. But that is mere descriptive proposition. Prescriptive proposition says that all variation should be reasonable.
It is not reasonable to say that the existence of God does not matter. No one in his right mind says this.
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ThinkingSapien
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Sure they do. And keep in mind not everyone is working with the same god-concept.
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rinnie
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Where it is compatible and what counts the most is this, Hell is total separation from God. Some call it a state, some a place, but no matter what it is, it is without having access to God in our life ever.
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Charlemagne_III
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No they don’t. And it doesn’t matter what God concept you are working with.
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rinnie
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[SIGN][/SIGN] I disagree. Here is why, Anytime someone presents a against god-concept there has to be a reason for it. Why would a true believer in God, who pray’s and worships him every single day, who gives him thanks for everything, even want to produce a case against God?
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