[extropy-chat] Atheism in Decline

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:03 PM 3/7/2005 -0500, Jeff Medina wrote:

>Hate to break it to you, Mike, but you're an atheist. Atheism is lack
>of theism, no more, no less.

That's consistent with such usage as `apolitical', which means `indifferent 
to politics', not `against politics', let alone `one who maintains that 
politics does not exist'. `Adiabatic' means `neutral with regard to heat, 
neither giving nor receiving', by contrast with `diabatic', meaning 
`involving heat transfer'.

But usage is what gives language its meaning, for otherwise `momentarily' 
would means `very briefly' rather than `any minute now', and `presently' 
would mean `any minute now', rather than `at this moment'. And contemporary 
usage seems to be, alas, that `a-theist' means `one who denies the reality 
or possibility or even intelligibility of any deity or claims thereof', or 
even `wickedly opposed to the True God, and therefore deserving of hatred, 
contempt and exclusion from the company of all decent God-fearing Men'. 
Paradigm lost.

Damien Broderick