de-conversion

Agnosticism & Atheism

Promoting science, logic and reason as the best tools for understanding the world and fighting against the negative effects religions have on society are endeavors common to atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, naturalists, brights, skeptics and most secular humanists. There is a rather loosely defined online community of these individuals and they’ve been arguing since long before this blog was conceived about the meaning of the word “atheist”, whether atheists can be fundamentalists or extremists, what is the right way to promote science and reason, and what these different terms mean. This is my take.

First, let’s look at the terms “atheism” and “agnosticism” and what they might mean. “Atheism”, in popular use and many dictionaries, is the outright denial of the existence of any god, i.e. an atheist is a person who’s absolutely sure that there is no god. However, this is not how self-described atheists use the term. They use it to mean “lacking belief in god”, thereby including many who consider themselves agnostics…

Continue Reading May 21, 2007 at 12:00 am 10 comments