[ExI] Atheism

[Ben Zaiboc]

William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

 > Now think of meeting some stranger with whom you are sharing a table 
at Starbucks.  You strike up a conversation and find that both of you 
are atheists.  What other points of similarity are there? Perhaps none 
at all.  There are liberal and conservative atheists, authoritarians and 
libertarians, and so on.

 > If in fact you have no similarity with that other person than that 
you are both atheists (and maybe for very different reasons), then I say 
that atheism is not a belief system.


I think that's beside the point. My point is that it's a simple matter 
of the definition of the word. It means, literally, a lack of belief in 
gods.
What It doesn't mean - and this is what confuses so many people, it 
seems - is a belief in a lack of gods. Maybe some atheists do have such 
a belief, but if so, that isn't what makes them atheists. You could 
reasonably argue that they aren't in fact atheists, but something else. 
Anti-theists, maybe.


Ben Zaiboc