Randi128 at aol.com writes: > Lady birdsleeps wrote> I suppose my belief in doorknobs is also a >religeon? It can be. When I took a course on religons, an example included The Great Broom. :) IMO, it involves two things: Axiomatic, non-derived truths...and religous practice (ritual). But like everything else, it's a fuzzy set. >I meant what I said. Atheists believe there is no god. Period. That's one definition. Another (older) one is that Agnosticism is a form of Atheism -- where all atheists are not theist (ie, do not believe in "god"), agnostics emphasise their lack of knowledge, where other types of atheists may have a certainty, or at least stronger belief in the lack of the supernatural, validity of faith-based religons, or whatnot. >To say that you no longer, or do not beleive in god does not make you >an atheist it makes you someone who has lost their faith. This, on the other hand, is bull pocky (which unlike "Men's Pocky", isn't particularly edible. It presumes a whole mess of garbage, from dualistic views of religion (ie, either monotheistic or atheistic) to all people under consideration being raised in a specific or specific religons. I'm a self-professed neopagan agnostic, who is tribally Jewish. I haven't "lost my faith" -- I have plenty of faith, in a variety of things...but I don't have any specific beliefs about what, if anything, is beyond the fields we know. And that faith I've discarded isn't "lost" -- it was taken to pieces and discarded as no longer useful. I find the phrase "lost their faith" to be somewhat insulting. -- Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\ _,,,--,,_ ,) --^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;' /\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\ /-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'