Don't like the term "Atheist"?

[eyeammi]

I don't like the term atheist for 2 reasons:

1) I don't like having to describe myself in terms of things that I'm not. Eg, I'm not a person without blonde hair, I'm a person with brown hair.

2) The meaning of the word is unavoidably loaded & skewed by the theist majority with all the negative connotations they would like to imply. It's not enough to deny their definition. If it's all the same, I'd rather not give them a prepackaged word to impose their misconceptions of me in the 1st place.

[MrLittletomdj]

There's a big difference between saying that you don't believe in Santa or faries as opposed to saying I don't believe in God/s which is that Santa and faries & unicorns for that matter are entities with clearly defined attributes, (horns, beard, wings, red suit, four legs, reindeers etc.) Denying God from any particular literalist interpretation of a theology is one thing. Abstract concepts of God are multifaceted though & not so easily dismissed.

[JMUDoc]

I think the caller as a point - having to call myself an atheist gives tacit acknowledgment to the concept of a god.

The best possible answer to "do you believe in god?" would be "what's god?".

[bustermk2]

Actually I don't call myself an atheist. I call myself non-religious.

The reason is simply because not all religions have gods.

[GuacamoleKun]

@bustermk2 Ah, and that's a good reason. But there are also a lot of people who would say they're theists but not religious. I've said "I'm not religious" before, and people have said to me "I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about God!"

[necroticossuary]

The problem with this argument is that, while there PROBABLY ISN'T a god, (e.g. First Cause or what have you) there COULD be. There is no definitive, objective evidence one way or the other. No one (Hollywood aside) is claiming that Santa Claus or unicorns created the universe. There are, demonstrably, no magic horses or north pole toy factory, but there is obviously a universe that had to begin somehow. This whole argument is comparing apples to oranges. I'm sticking with the term "atheist."

[1eharv]

I like chicken!

[JMUDoc]

This guy was bang on the button: we don't have a-unicornists or a-Bigfootists - it's people who believe those things and EVERYBODY ELSE.

[thes54]

Im sure there is a word for everything, just take the essance of the word (whether it was originated in latin or nordic or even made for english) and slap a negative prefix to it (Atheist=not theist, Atheism=the stance or idea that a god doesnt exist) and make some words up people lol im sure theyd make sence even if they arent practical

[shangerboy]

when people say to me "oh, your an atheist"

i say no, i'm just normal.

[GoblinXXX]

@shangerboy "Normal", huh? What's that like? ;)

[xRocketNumber9x]

@GoblinXXX couldn't tell ya... I'm an anormalist

[GoblinXXX]

@xRocketNumber9x Me too. I've never actually met a "NORMAL" person. ;)

[necroticossuary]

@xRocketNumber9x as opposed to an aBnormalist?:)

[PregnantFox]

Atheists are people who acknowledge the "1"s and not the "0"s.

[dawnaliliaa]

You will all shat your pants in the following years!! That is ALL :)

[instereovideos]

Russel is right, but what Harris meant was that we don't need the term "Atheist" itself to fight Theists when they act irrationally. Harris wasn't suggesting that "if we ignore Theists they will go away," he is merely saying that we need to stop giving them labels (like "Atheist") to attack and polarize themselves against, ESPECIALLY since the use of the term suggests that we take the Theist position seriously. It's better to just be rational people who resist religious influence on policy, etc.

[MirageScience]

I don't like the term anarchist but it is what it is.

[rdeys420]

Low IQ = God did it!!!

[glorp896]

i like what MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR said, "THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN AGNOSTIC AND AN ATHEIST IS GUTS!"

lets throw in nontheist, or is nontheist at least closer to atheist than agnostic?

nontheists and agnostics are atheists, you're just trying to distinguish how you got there - A is without, THEISM is belief in god; nontheists and agnostics are without theism, thus atheists

[UnderlordZ]

@glorp896 Not entirely true; agnostocism merely acknowledges that we can never know for sure whether or not god exists. There are agnostic theists, but we simply say these people are going by Pascal's Wager.

[glorp896]

@UnderlordZ

it is entirely true that agnostics are atheists, as per the most basic technical interpretation of language within the yes/no dichotomy, as in believe or not in a god...

agnostics, like atheists, do not believe in a god, period. whether you think there is no way to prove it or not, or that you don't have enough info or not to prove god exists or not is IMMATERIAL because both atheists and agnostics DO NOT BELIEVE IN A GOD...

so except the premise and rules of language or not...

[41RobLow]

evidence for divine design can be found in our own species. We are the only species of mammal that exhibits consciousness, the ability to appreciate art, and the ability to make moral judgments

[RockBanned]

@41RobLow False. Elephants display all these things. Chimps too..try again.

[41RobLow]

@RockBanned o ok elephants and chimpanzees can appreciate art?

[UnderlordZ]

@41RobLow You say we're the only mammals that exhibit these traits; are you implying that there are also some birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians that do so, as well?

And can you actually PROVE that we're alone as mammals in this sense?

[41RobLow]

@UnderlordZ spliting hairs

[TokayGris]

Problem is this here: You have to identify what is the thesis and what is the antithesis.

If you make a claim (scientifically speaking) you have to back it up.

Since you can't prove a negative, the positive claim is the thesis and has burden of proof.

So "we've been to the moon" IS actually the thesis. But "There is no god" is NOT.

"We have not been to the moon" IS the antithesis (the null) and does not have burden of proof, same as "There is no god".

[TokayGris]

Ups. Just to make that clear. The claim "We have been to the moon" IS the thesis and has burden of proof, AND provided said proof.

So the thesis ("we have been to the moon") is adopted (held as true) and the antithesis is rejected.

(Same goes for "There is gold in Alaska")

Just to make clear that I am not one of those guys that think Apollo 11 didn't happen. It is just an example of logic.

[grubelsucht]

Any moral nonbeliever would desire to scorn and ridicule religion out of existence, thus Hitchens offers the term "antitheist." "Atheist" is a blandly passive term.

[ByeCruelWorld]

The term 'atheist' is just a label theists use for the people who reject their religious explanation of how the universe works.

The big problem is that our rejection is defined in dictionaries from a biased, theistic perspective.

Further, theists dictate that atheism is a political, social or philosophical ideology, whereas there is really only one indirect tenet - to live life using evidenced, debatable rationale as opposed to fantasy - and not all atheists even subscribe to that!

[xNightmareBeta]

i with call myself a anti Santa Clausist Who cares. If the conclusion to that position is valid who gives a fuck this is just pedantic bullshit.

[alin10bigg]

PEARLIST is great...

[konor23]

Nobody's mentioned the word "Skeptic". Heck, that one's just perfect.

[InLucidReverie]

I have found that you get better reception by saying that "I don't believe in any gods" instead of "I don't believe in God."

[RockBanned]

@InLucidReverie Sweet..I'll be sure to say "I don't believe in God" from now on.

[PurushaDesa]

Russell was right for the most part because if 80% of the world DID believe in Santa Claus then sadly, you would have to articulate the antithesis of that belief as something like 'aclausist' or whatever. It just so happens that gods made it and everything else like Santa and the fairies didn't.

But I think it's even worse than Russell's saying. Yes, in most everyday situations you can engage normally with theists, but these 'mostly normal' people provide theism with the most legitimacy.

[bombarderoazul]

I prefer to be called a rationalist.

[Bekll]

4:25 "But they don't go away."

Uh, yeah they do. I had bullies as a child. What did I do? Ignore them. What happened? They went away. It really is that easy. They get bored with people they bully who don't respond.

[forger42]

Well, his point was, unlike bullies, the theists, in general, won't go away. If the atheists just ignore the theists and allow them to make policy decisions that would hurt freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, that would be the opposite of them going away.

[Bekll]

That's true. And to think that sometimes theists ask atheists why we bother debating with them.

[CanadianNew]

Here is a term: I am A-bullshit-st

[civwarfan]

I second that!

O and do you like Canada's health care system? My dads a Republican conservative and he seems to think that Canada's system sucks and you have to stand in line or something?

Cheers!

[CanadianNew]

Are you kidding me??????? Tell you daddy, he is greatly misinformed. We have one of the best health care the world. It is certainly higher then #37 (USA) on the world health rating system. It will an improvement if you have this king of system. In the US, if you have money, then you get medical treatment. According to Canada, your health care system is barbaric!

PS: Tel your Dad to stop watching Fox Noice

[civwarfan]

Thanks for the heads up my wonderful northern brother/sister!

I tried to tell him about Canada and Europe's system but he NEVER listens!

Do they really put you guys on a list? To receive treatment?

But O yeah he still thinks Bush did no wrong and BillO is great guy! Gays choose to be gay, our health system is boss, and don't get him started on his son's vaunted Atheism!

I love him I do but he has the most bigoted ideas sometimes. O and he wants me to read Coulter's book!

[CanadianNew]

To your first question, the answer is NO! As far as your Dad, go see a video on my channel called "Feeding the dinosaurs in Alberta"

[jkzl1008]

I know that you have to wait in line in Emerg down there too, if not critically ill. And that there is some wait for non-emergency surgeries. Ditto for specialist appointments. Maybe not as long, but when you talk to real Canadians, you find out it is not as some US media reports it to be. Surely you have really bad examples in the US, and would hate to see them used to paint the who country's system. And as far as choice goes, insurance companies and HMO's seem to remove a lot of that!

[CanadianNew]

I'm going to guess. "some US media" is Fox Noise

[acme181169]

I can't wait for episode 666. maybe they should delay episode 666 so that it is broadcast in 2012!!!!

[TheHabbadasher]

I think you're going a bit too far there. After all personally I would say that the freedom bullshit is far more important than atheism and if religion was indeed outlawed we would be making ourselves guilty of some of the crimes that people often commit in the name of religion. Myself I don't think the most important thing is spreading atheism but rather spreading logic and reason. After all there's no point being an atheist if you're an atheist for bad reasons.

[toddfreeride]

The caller sounds like RabidApe here on youtube.

[forger42]

I agree, but I can't remember RabidApe ever saying anything against using the word Atheist.

[1RadicalOne]

It should be illegal to attack others' lifestyles - or lives - with one's religion, that's for sure.

[Monki02]

i've always thought this actually, in the same resepect i thought it was farsical for the bible to take up such a vierment attitude towards witchcraft, surely by saying this you are legitimising it as a 'threat' to your religion. Silly Christians.

[Bekll]

Farsical? Vierment? Are these real words? They're not even in the dictionary...

[inersphobia]

I call myself an atheist for 3 reasons:

1) I don't want anyone to get confused and think I consider it a serious proposition that their conception of a God exists.

2) I agree with these two: it's engaging in make-believe to say we don't want to treat Theism seriously, so we won't call ourselves Atheists. Theism is very real. Pretending it isn't won't make it go away.

3)Even if there is some humongous being that created the universe, who says it's a Deity?

[Bob06460]

I have had this caller's (and Sam Harris') position for awhile. Similarily, I don't like the term non-smoker. I would love to have a term for non-smoker that does not use use a counter position.

[47f0]

Well, Bob, there's a problem - while it seems silly to have a label for every "non"-belief, it becomes slightly less ridiculous when you realize that atheists are hugely underrepresented in our government - and our policymakers worship demographics. Consider, there are more atheists than Jews - yet which has more political muscle?

When Bush Sr. says, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." we need to be visible to be counted.

[AshillaBeige]

I'd say that I don't like the term "atheist" anymore is because it makes people lead to many assumptions. It's why a lot of market anarchists now refer to themselves as "anti-statists" or "non-statists".

[Cafeeine]

There are IMO 2 problems with an attempted change.1st the term atheist was not initially self-applied. If we say take a new term eg PEARList & denounce the atheist label the believers'll still think of us as atheists in denial. 2nd, there is no way to make any change stick. You'll have atheists, agnostics, sec.humanists, brights that all have essentially the same position, so therell be no effective change.Therefore the best move is to simply appropriate atheism & remove the false assumptions.

[AshillaBeige]

Yes, but I don't want people to assume I'm a secular humanist and the secular humanist movement has kinda taken over the term (atheist), so I'll just say I'm not a retard.

[EziekielNightwind]

They also like to refer to themselves as "Libertarians" or "Republicans."

We refer to them as tea baggers, screamers and birthers.

[AshillaBeige]

Though I'm not a Republican, I'm an advocate of liberty. We refer to you as Obama cultists and statists.

You're just like the right-wing nuts who supported Bush. Same shit, different (and more annoying) asshole.

This is really why I don't call myself an atheist - most atheists are ideological statists and, therefore, violent people. Very similar to atheistic Maoists.

[Muchodelcrazy]

I don't know who you're talking about, but everything except for the "most atheists are ideological statists and therefore violent people" part is dead on.

[Scoforever]

I thought dialectic materialism was also called Marxism-Leninism.