DWill wrote:stahrwe wrote:I support the position that the word atheist is not necessary and suggest that BT set an example by not using it. Therefore, I suggest that the ATHEIST box be removed from the BT homepage, and the Atheism and Freethought Forum be renamed Rationalism and Freethought.
I wouldn't go that far. Not labeling oneself "atheist" doesn't mean that atheism isn't a useful word in the discussion of religion. It's interesting, though, that I almost never see anyone defend theism, except some who don't believe in a god at all. I see defense of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, but rarely from any believer defense of just the idea of a supervising god, regardless of brand name. There isn't, among theists, any appreciable "we're all in this together" spirit. There appears to be more esprit de corps among those who do call themselves atheists.
Fundamentalist Christians have very specific ideas of a personal God and so are more likely to defend their religion. Someone who brands himself a theist, on the other hand, would probably have a very vague notion of "God." God is love, God is "infinite consciousness" etc. There's very little there to be defensive about. On another thread we see that Deepak Chopra has devised a rather extensive pseudo-scientific mythology around the idea of "God", but it is specious at best. Chopra's very livelihood depends on selling (to the converted) superficially plausible explanations for a New Age deity, and he's actually very good at it. Someone like that is invested in this particular belief system and, therefore, he would defend it.
We have talked here about the the difference between "agnostic" and "atheist." The two words address different domains: "agnosticism" has to do with
knowledge and "atheism" has to do with
belief. Someone who has distanced himself from a personal god and is willing to entertain notions of a
universal god could be described as an agnostic or an agnostic theist. It should be pointed out that all "atheist" means is without belief in god. But an agnostic typically would be as much an
atheist with regards to the Abrahamic God as an atheist is. And both are atheists with regards to the Greek pantheon. So you can see that "atheist" can be pretty meaningless word. You would have to first define "God" before you can truly get a sense of what an atheist is, but you can't because there are so many different concepts of "God".
What "atheist" has come to mean in our Christian-centric society is someone who doesn't buy into that particular myth. But in an increasingly pluralistic world, "atheist" becomes more difficult to pin down semantically.
I like to think of myself first and foremost as a skeptic. But a skeptic has to address religion in a world that frequently assumes Christianity or Islam as undeniable truth because those assumptions affect us all.