Aspergers and atheism

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Honestly, there are so many terms and rejections of terms that I don't even care who goes with what. I mean, there are humanists, then there are people who hold to a similar basic framework and group identity that reject humanism on grounds of speciesism, or on its perceived political slant, and there is the fact that humanism isn't actually an anti-religious philosophy, but rather religious humanism preceded secular humanism. I mean, there are skeptics, but then there is an overlap with philosophical matters, there is criticism on whether these people are really that "skeptical" and they might not be, and so on. And it goes on and on, and really, there is likely no precise term for the category of people that are being labeled in the situation anyway, as our labels were not designed to deal with that problem, and so there is a worry about getting overly wordy.

I can share an example of that from over here in the UK The BHA wanted to advertise about there organisation on public transport. There was debate regarding if it was right to do so or would offend faith groups. Then there was the issue of the wording of ad its self as the BHA to use the phrase "There's no God", on the end there got the ok for ads if they used the phrase "There's probably no God".

Atheism is foremost a philosophical position. The New Atheists came later. I may agree intellectually with Richard Dawkins, but I don't always agree with his approach. Atheism often fits into a scientific, rational ideology, but it can fit into others.

Definitions of words are just that, definitions. Foremost, lattermost, I almost find myself yawning. Wake me up when we start getting into a discussion on angels and pins, as otherwise, who really cares about the contrivances of some ontology of language people want to invent? cdfox7 associated atheism with the public atheist ideology, that's that.... I don't really care much further. It could even be that in some distant age atheism only refers to that ideology, and the philosophical position takes another title. But... yeah, whatever.

So what? Given that when the word 'humanism' is brought up by secular humanists, its reference is towards 'secular humanism', not other branches of humanism or a generalized concept, just secular humanism, so the mention of christian humanism is irrelevant. The only critique that I think it can be made is that the word is being monopolized towards just a single branch, and just that.

Christianity isn't synonymous with the Moral Majority.
Islam isn't synonymous with suicide bombing.

In that same vein,
"Atheism" cannot be defensibly used interchangeably with this-or-that movement advocating Atheism, or this-or-that philosophy of naturalism or humanism that are sometimes resultant of Atheism.

Well, ok? The issue is that sometimes it really isn't. For instance, if we "humanism" as our substitute word for the atheist/whateverist movement, we're likely also going to call some people who don't identify as secular humanists, for whatever reason, as secular humanists.

Even further, the term "humanist" if just mentioned in a conversation, will also not really establish what cultural group if a person is aware of religious humanists. This isn't a huge problem, but it is somewhat of a problem if the word "humanist" is to do the job.

Ok, but if we used the word "Fundamentalism" or "Conservatism" or "Evangelicalism", the word could be used as a substitute, even though not all people of that category would fit. The problem here is that the association between Christianity(all Christians) and the moral majority is weak.


OOOoooh, you're trying to reason by analogy, the issue is whether the analogy succeeds. Most Christians are not part of the moral majority. Most Muslims are not suicide bombers. A very large number of self-identified atheists share common beliefs and culture with the atheist movement, at least in certain nations. As such, like it or not, I don't see the analogy as that successful, especially given that we don't really have a good word for that group anyway. (After all, no existing term has perfect overlap)

Nope. "Moral Majority" denotes a group of people who vote for specific candidates for a specific reason.
A Christian being "fundamental" doesn't mean he or she votes a specific way, or at all.
A "Conservative" is not synonymous with a Christian.
An "Evangelical" is not synonymous with voting a certain way, or at all.

They are not, therefore, substitutes at all.





The analogy is valid, the only question being what DEGREE of misrepresentation you'd apply to a group- "Less than most" versus "a very large number".

There is no rationality in using group labels interchangeably when they are not, ya know, INTERCHANGEABLE-
regardless of whether a buncha ("a very large number" is comparable in preciseness with "a buncha") people within the group subscribe to a similar worldview or philosophy.

We can talk about what Christians by virtue of being Christians inherently believe,
and any other known religion or sect.

We cannot discuss what Atheists by virtue of being Atheists inherently believe,
as there isn't anything.

Last edited by Bethie on 12 Apr 2011, 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

We do it all the time. It is not avoidable. Every time someone says something about "fundamentalists" or "conservative Christians" or whatever have you, a large number of times, they are going to be talking about only a large number of these people, not all of them. Terms that accurately get everybody, without overlapping another category or excluding people from a category, are not easy to find, as most words were themselves meant to solve other problems. We just, in order to be reasonable, use these words now in something that vaguely fits the category.


Except there isn't a clear line on what Christians inherently believe. There are unitarian Christians, Christian atheists, Christian buddhists, evangelicals, liberals, etc, etc, beyond the point of even really counting. If a philosophy exists, there is a Christian version of it. So.... I don't think this works. You probably just aren't aware of the existence of Christian atheists, as well as the other anomalies, either that, or you are invoking an essence when words are signals given out to describe.


Ok? We can discuss what they tend to believe, and their cultural movement.

In any case, I don't understand the point of the discussion. I somehow doubt that this is really driven by some great and deep philosophy of language or real sociological criticism of what I've said so much as just a bizarre hatred of the idea that one could use the term "atheist" to describe a cultural group.

Fundamentalists and conservative Christians enjoy the tyranny of the majority, in that most of Western society is centered around what they believe or do not believe. It might be prudent to not misrepresent Atheism as being something it is not, by definition. The public at large is wholly ignorant of philosophy, and tends to redefine words by virtue of repeating their misconceptions to one another incessantly, as evidenced by the untold number of atheists who call themselves "agnostic", which they see as a convenient fence post to sit on between theism and atheism, which they've likely only heard mis-defined as essentially strong atheism.

That's like saying vegans aren't vegetarians, and liberal feminists are not feminists. The term "Christian version" would mean a philosophy adapted to the INHERENT beliefs of Christianity, that being centered around the divinity and moral teachings of Jesus Christ. "Christian Atheist" is an oxymoron, a Capitalist Non-capitalist, and a joke. An Atheist who follows the moral teachings of Jesus Christ is....an Atheist who follows the moral teachings of Jesus Christ.

Sure. With a liberal dousing of qualifiers that neither is actually ATHEIST per se.

Think what you will. Declaring me bizarre and hateful doesn't change my objections, that being that atheists do not make up a cultural group when said cultural group is a subset within it, and indeed, even exists OUTSIDE it.

A what? I think you're starting to confuse Christianity for Judaism/Jewish nationality. Christian is not an ethnicity.

Except that I am not. There are Christian atheists. There are Christian Buddhists. It is not a Christian ethnicity person as an atheist or buddhist, but rather a melding of those beliefs. The issue is that Christian atheism removes most theological distinctives enough where the commonality between it and other Christian beliefs is rather strained.

A Christian atheist theologian of note is Thomas Altizer.

Bethie, your example of "agnostic" is itself just a sign of how contested the word "atheism" is. I mean, the distinction of negative and positive atheism isn't universally accepted, and the agnostic as middle ground position is justified by a common definition of atheism as positive disbelief.

You somehow leap from the definition you prefer to some normative point about the proper definition. The problem is that the "proper definition" of words isn't a real concept. We have common definitions, and we stigmatize uncommon definitions as those disrupt the workings of language, but you can't really create a justification against a common definition.

In any case, this kind of crap is a product of the atheists themselves ANYWAY. I mean, a lot of groups describe themselves as "atheist" and also promoters of a certain set of values and so on and so forth. And *that* is in part a product of the fact that certain belief-types are more likely to become atheist in our society, and that atheism is a stigmatized minority causing it to unify in opposition to those who oppose it.

Your entire intellectual structure though seems to me to be crap though, as you are trying to contest point 3, that language is defined by use, in that thing that I showed to Vex. The issue is that if use doesn't define the meaning of words, then what does??? The personal preferences of atheists? Atheism is a contested word. Fine. This is a result of a lot of heated debate over the meaning and nature of it. Some have also argued that religion is also a contested word. I really don't care though.


Ok???? Atheists do make up a cultural group and the atheist cultural group is a subset of the total population of atheists. Did you miss the issue about words having multiple definitions??? You are acting as if everything good(quality) has to be good(moral). John could be "good" at killing folks, but killing folks can be bad. The issue of multiple definitions and contested definitions and all of that, is pretty obvious, pretty clear in our own experiences involving words. Ever noticed that Websters often has words that have definition 1, definition 2, etc? Yeah.... this isn't a difficult point or issue.

There's one fellow who seems to hold analogous views to AG.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 ... theist.php

Ok, so its just a really poor/confusing labeling system. I just hope they don't start talking about atheist theists or theist atheists.