| Jumpin said: Atheism as "lacking belief in God" is an incredibly poor definition due to its broad/wishy-washy nature; it's fairly useless when defined like that. As Neil Degrasse Tyson put it, you don't define someone as an "aGolfer" because they don't golf. In addition, one who lacks belief in God or gods could be a deist agnostic rather than an atheist; since agnostics don't deny the existence of God or Gods, but they don't believe in them either. The most broadly accepted definition of Atheist is "One who denies the existence of God or gods." This is a useful definition, it is precise, and there isn't confusion about conflating its meaning with anything else. |
What you said is false.
Here's what atheists.org says about the matter:
Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.
Older dictionaries define atheism as “a belief that there is no God.” Clearly, theistic influence taints these definitions. The fact that dictionaries define Atheism as “there is no God” betrays the (mono)theistic influence. Without the (mono)theistic influence, the definition would at least read “there are no gods.”
Edit: Here's the source for further reading, before we get to the True Scotsman situation that always pervades these discussions https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/
Last edited by fielding88 - on 27 December 2017
