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On 23/04/2020 00:18, Adrian Tymes wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:mailman.8.1587597491.2298.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
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<div dir="ltr">On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 3:51 PM Ben Zaiboc via
extropy-chat <<a
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
moz-do-not-send="true">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
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rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 22/04/2020 18:39,
Adrian Tymes wrote:<br>
> agnosticism is a lack of belief in gods. Atheism is
a belief in the <br>
> lack of gods.<br>
<br>
This is patently false. Agnosticism has nothing at all to
say about <br>
belief, it's about knowledge (from the greek, 'Gnosis',
meaning <br>
knowledge). Agnosticism is the position that you
don't/can't know.<br>
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<div>And thus, a lack of belief.</div>
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Not necessarily.<br>
Many religious people will freely admit they have no definite
knowledge about their particular god, but still choose to believe in
it. I know that's a logically contradictory position, but belief
knows no logic. In fact it rejects logic.<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
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rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Atheism, in it's most
common form, is the lack of belief in gods. Some <br>
people define a 'strong', or 'hard' form of atheism that
is an assertion <br>
that no gods exist, but that is a minority view.<br>
<br>
These things are easy to look up.</blockquote>
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<div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism</a> <br>
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<div>"Atheism is, in the broadest sense, an absence of
belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism
is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In
an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the
position that there are no deities."</div>
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<div>I guess both meanings are in use.</div>
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<br>
Yes. And one is overwhelmingly more common than the other.<br>
<br>
When I say I'm an atheist, I don't want people to assume I subscribe
to a minority interpretation of the term (mainly because, to me,
it's not so much the non-existence of gods that is the important
thing, but the not believing in things ('believing' as in accepting
things as true without a shred of evidence, and even in the face of
contradictory evidence).<br>
<br>
The narrowest sense is the one that needs qualification, not the
broadest one. This is true of job titles and many other things, not
just world-views.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
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