You know, it infuriates me when my theist mother tells my atheist self that I'm probably a theist without realizing it. I won't take any of that "If you're a X, you're probably just a Y without realizing it" nonsense.
Well, I do believe there is no god. And theists define themselves as not believing in the absence of a god. I mean, I think your linguistic objections are pretty disingenious.
"Atheism isn't a belief in something being true, it's a belief in other people being wrong."
I believe it is true that there is no god. And I'm pretty sure theists have a belief that me and the other atheists (and those of religions other than theirs) are wrong.
edit: Didn't capitalize "god" intentionally.
I'm not saying that atheism doesn't exist. I'm saying that it's not the same as agnosticism. Agnostic isn't defined in terms of being anti-theist. It just doesn't really believe in the validity of the question.
It's like the classical, "Are you still beating your wife?" An agnostic doesn't think that the question is framed in an answerable way.
Atheism as a term seems to be more popular in the (much more religious than the rest of the west) US where it is perhaps a minority defining itself in terms of the majority. In places where being religious is the exception, rather than the rule, it seems less sensical for those who are not religious to define themselves in terms of not holding a belief that the minority hold.
As for the negations, do you believe that atheism would have a meaning if there were no theism? Or that there's any specific substance to the term atheism, other than (usually actively) rejecting the beliefs of theism?
When this poll was first posted, I worried it would. Then a bit later I saw the number of comments and knew that it had.
What a tar-baby the topic of religion is. A forum just can't seem to touch it any point without dragging in the whole thing.
I think this is a step towards HN being able to handle the topic maturely. Such a process is probably best done by not posting inflammatory articles. I tried to not make the poll inflammatory, though I forgot the agnostic option.
People change, and people are different. Grouping the understanding of life of Einstein or Gates in the same category as every 15-year old who just rejected religion is a limitation I strongly hope we'll overcome in the coming years.
(I don't get why you've been downmodded to -1, I have just +1'd you)
As another poster wrote, often times agnostics approach the question as one of knowledge, whereas most theists as well as "weak" atheists see it as a question of belief. We all (well, almost all) believe all sorts of things that we do not truly know.
I was barked at by numerous dogs. http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+barked+%22numerous+d...
http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/on_atheism.htm
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. [...]
I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.
I've met many agnostics who weren't aware that there are different types of atheists, including many who don't know one way or another but lean toward disbelief, which is very close to agnosticism.
The typical misunderstanding of atheism from self-described agnostics is that atheists claim to be certain that there is no God. Some atheists do that, but that's not the only kind of atheism.
Another problem with agnosticism is agnostics seem to believe that one cannot assign any probability without perfect knowledge. Yet you do it every minute of every day, in ever decision you make. We live by probabilities and beliefs (and disbeliefs). I don't see why certain concepts in life should be off limits for assignment of probabilities.