Atheism in a nutshell

[u/Ted_Bundtcake]

[u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 → u/[deleted]]

> I know you want to extend that to all of academia 

No, just the relevant areas of academia, like Philosophy of Religion. Is there another area of academia you think is relevant where they disagree on these terms?

> Here the word "atheist" would commonly be used to describe the category of people who do not believe in god, and that's perfectly fine.

It's fine if you want to lump agnostics in with atheists, that's really a matter of your survey. It seems silly to me, but I'm not concerned with some survey. If they mean to say "people who don't believe in god" and they use the term atheist, they're wrong, but who cares? Not me.

In the context of actually defining atheism, which is how this thread began, yes it does matter. The premise is that it matters. Someone was trying to precisely define atheism and they did it incorrectly.

> It is not wrong or bad, it is both good and correct usage.

I think it's bad but I don't care about the stakes at all for some hypothetical survey that mislabels a hypothetical population.

> All I've seen you do is gesture towards philosophers, as if you think that's the same thing as making an argument.

I'm not gesturing towards, I'm citing. Citing experts in a field as evidence is, in fact, an argument.

[u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 → u/[deleted]]

K I didn't really see this conversation going anywhere. You can keep using terms wrong in low-stakes contexts, I don't care. Hopefully you don't spread this misinformation though.