Contemporary atheism has forgotten the
difference,
Whose "contemporary atheism" does this refer to; the
atheism of Hitchens, Myers, Dawkins, Coyne, my son-in-law, … (just to
pick the first few that come to mind)? Part of the oversimplification I
referred to above includes ascribing irrelevant characteristics to words and
their referents, much the same as non-believers (and believers alike) are prone
to ascribe the beliefs and behaviours of one christianity (judism, islam,
buddhism, etc.) onto members of other christianities (resp.
judisms, islams, buddhisms, etc.).
There is no objective (i.
e., usable) definition of christianity, beyond something giving special
status to someone called Jeshua bar Yusuf of someplace in the Levant
ca 20-30 CE. Definitions of the judisms, islams, buddhisms, etc.
have similar mushinesses. Likewise, there is no definition of atheism beyond the
dictionary property of "without belief in any gods."
PZ Myers is a
contemporary atheist of the strong agnostic flavor: he maintains that gods
cannot be said to exist unless and until an objective definition is given to the
words involved, a definition sufficient to distinguish a god from any other
phenomenon of existence.
Richard Dawkins characterises himself a
weak-agnostic atheist.
I don't know what subcategories Christopher Hitchens,
Jerry Coyne, and my son-in-law — or anyone else — would place (or
in Hitchens' case, would have placed) themselves.
Calling out 'contemporary'
atheism seems to intend to exclude more historical atheists, such as LaPlace,
Pascal, Clemons (Twain), Ingersol, Mencken, Kaufman (again, to pick a few off
the top of the head). Just like the 'contemporary' atheists, these folks all
well recognized the difference between the rational and the irrational, between
logic and the illogical, between the subjective and the real. Is there a reason
to exclude them?
In other words, the term "[c]ontemporary atheism" fails for
lack of pertinence to reality due to indefiniteness.
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--Bill. NAL:
question the answers, especially mine. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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