David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > > rone at ennui.org (definitely what) writes: > > > Erik Dahl writes: > > I find this recent trend towards defining atheism as a religion of > > non-belief very disconcerting. Instead of maintaining that atheism > > is "belief in no god," or "belief there is no god," can't we say > > instead that it is "no belief in god?" For me, at any rate, it is > > more about not believing in something than believing in something > > opposed to something else. > > I'm aiming for accuracy of the term; I don't wish to offend anyone. > > > > That's traditionally called agnosticism. > > Since I've got the OED up, here's what they have to say about that: > > agnostic: > A. n. One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind > material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) > unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are > subjects of which we know nothing. > [Suggested by Prof. Huxley at a party held previous to the formation > of the now defunct Metaphysical Society, at Mr. James Knowles's house > on Clapham Common, one evening in 1869, in my hearing. He took it from > St. Paul's mention of the alter to 'the Unknown God.' R.H Hutton in > letter 13 Mar. 1881.] > > Atheist is much simpler: > > 1. One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God. > > And dates to at least 1568. And before that, in Latin and Greek. I always have distinguished (and have moved in a world in which others distinguish) between four distinct sets of people: 1) Atheistic agnostics, who tend to the view that there is no god, but that this cannot be / has not been proved one way or the other; 2) Theistic agnostics (yes, the term really is used like this), who believe in God but who distinguish between belief and knowledge and hold that the existence of God either has not been proved or is incapable of proof in the strict syllogistic sense. Lorenzo Valla was one of these; so would many theologians who disagree with natural theology. 3) Theists who believe in God and either equate belief with knowledge or hold that God's existence can be proved by some mix of a priori and a posteriori arguments. The first set to me represent shoddy thinking; the second the various schools of natural theology, mainly Thomist. 4) Atheists who hold that God does not exist and that this is provable. Unfortunately, the term "gnostic" has been pre-empted for application to the third and fourth sets of people. The fourth set of people can be held to have a "belief system", at least by people in any of the first three sets. But I don't think it would be fair to call them "religious". One of the peculiarities of the debate over the last couple of centuries or so is that the old cosmological arguments -- which were pretty marginal to more traditional theologians and philosophers of religion, even when they were accepted; Aquinas doesn't base much on the Five Arguments -- have become more focussed on, and the old arguments from history, which _were_ taken to be central, have been pretty well marginalized. This seems to have been a result of the deist phase of Western Europe. -- James Burbidge jamesandmary.burbidge at sympatico.ca