"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

[JWeinCom]

VGPolyglot said:

JWeinCom said:

An apple, so far as I can tell, has no concept of being an apple.  Yet, it is still an apple, because it has all the qualities that we have defined for apples.

Likewise, an atheist can be an atheist regardless of whether or not they can explain it.  

Let's define an atheist as someone who is convinced (believes) that god (in this case yahweh) exists.  Suppose we had a person in an uncontacted tribe of people.  That person is fully capable of forming concepts like gods, but has never heard of yahweh.  Would you say that this person believes in god or not?  It's a binary position, so it has to be one or the other.  I'd say he does not believe is the accurate answer.



Of course, if you define atheism as actually rejecting god, then you would need a concept to reject.  Because rejecting, like believing, is active and not passive.  But, I don't believe I've personally met or seen any atheists who define atheism in that way.  

The difference being that an apple is a state of being, something that is composed in a specific matter in a specific way. On the other hand, atheism specifically refers to beliefs, thus you need to have a certain belief in order to be one.  I don't understand your second paragraph, I assume you mean to say that an atheist is someone who believes that God doesn't exist, rather than does exist? I don't have a belief that narrowly defined myself, as mean deities in general. Obviously it's impossible to know every single deity, but if you are actively aware of the deity/deities, and aware that the non-belief of the deity/deities exists, then you can be an atheist if you choose to not believe in the deity/deities. So, he may be an atheist in that he doesn't believe in the deities that he's aware of, but you still can't say he rejects Yahweh if he is not even aware of him. Yes, he may not believe in Yahweh, but not believing in something is not the same as rejecting something. I consider atheism to be the rejection of the existence, as I said before calling a baby an atheist doesn't really do anything to advance the debate.

Apple and atheist are both labels that we give to things that have certain properties.  If the thing has that properties that fit the label, then that's what it is.  

I meant is not someone who does not believe got exists, which is an important distinction from someone who believes god doesn't exist.  I refer to a specific god in this case, because depending on the god you propose, I may or may not call myself an atheist.  

I'm aware that the baby doesn't reject yahweh, and that's the point I was trying to make.  That there is a difference between rejecting (which is active) and not accepting (which is passive).  Most (pretty much all that I've seen) atheists define atheist as someone who does not accept that a deity exists.

I think it does advance the debate, because you need to agree to the terms beforehand, so we don't wind up with the same argument about what atheist means like we did 50 fucking times in this thread.  Once you agree, then you could move on to something of more substance.