↪TheMadFool It's not a belief to be unconvinced. It is to be unconvinced. — Mac

Its about how people interpret/understand the word and use it just as you are doing now. many people have many interpretations of the word and use it in various ways, very few of which are actually correct. and this causes communication problems.

[reply="atheism (n.)
"the doctrine that there is no God;" "disbelief in any regularity in the universe to which man must conform himself under penalties" [J.R. Seeley, "Natural Religion," 1882], 1580s, from French athéisme (16c.), with -ism + Greek atheos "without a god, denying the gods," from a- "without" (see a- (3)) + theos "a god" (from PIE root *dhes-, forming words for religious concepts). A slightly earlier form is represented by atheonism (1530s) which is perhaps from Italian atheo "atheist." The ancient Greek noun was atheotes "ungodliness."

(As you can see...from about 1580.)

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=atheis


theism (n.)
1670s, "belief in a deity or deities," (as opposed to atheism); by 1711 as "belief in one god" (as opposed to polytheism); by 1714 as "belief in the existence of God as creator and ruler of the universe" (as opposed to deism), the usual modern sense; see theist + -ism.

(As you can also see...from about 1670)

Those are not referring to the the same thing. the first is a Greek to middle french translation of "godless", and has no relevance to the current understanding of the word theist. Also one cannot possibly create an opposition without something to oppose. so theos or the middle french théisme must first already be understood/understandable.

I grok what you are saying here, SoaG, but the problem with your argument is that the word "atheism" came into the English language before "theism"...by almost 100 years...

...so it could not possibly have derived that way. — Frank Apisa

according to google, etymology of theism places its origin in the mid 17th century and atheism in the 18th century.

I grok what you are saying here, SoaG, but the problem with your argument is that the word "atheism" came into the English language before "theism"...by almost 100 years...

...so it could not possibly have derived that way. — Frank Apisa

Looked it up this isn't true

Appeal to popularity fallacy. Colloquial is as colloquial does ... :yawn: — 180 Proof

It is not an ad populum. It takes into account how people understand the word on a large scale. Also there is nothing false about that definition. Many people take it to mean just that.

Unless, of course, one claims 'no theism' because its claims are false or nonsense - instead of 'no g/G' because g/G does not exist - in which case one is not making an object-statement of "belief" (re: g/G-Token) but rather a meta-statement of critique (re: g/G-Type), as I pointed out in my prior post (and elsewhere), which is demonstrable and not "precarious and untenable" in the least.
~ 180 Proof

It is not about how you can rig the translation of Atheist to make it say what you want it to mean. In fact, this is precisely the problem with the word. The Greek prefix "a" can translate to the following: no, not, is not, non, un, without, cannot be; for instance, for the word atom (a-tom) the translation is read as such, "cannot be cut". for the translation of Atheist you must apply all possible logically sound variations of "a" to the an accepted definition of "theism". Since the vast majority of the people in the world are not scholars the definition usually chosen to work with is the colloquial definition (theism colloquial definition: belief in a god). Then you make the translations and any of these is valid: "no belief in a god", "Without belief in a god", "cannot be belief in a god". The other translations of "a" are grammatically unsound, but there is one of these unsound translations that many atheists seem to be constantly drawn towards: "non", however, it is not grammatically sound to define things in terms of exclusion, just as one would not define a civilian as a non-military person. As for all of the valid translations (no, without, cannot be) these are all claims of disbelief, or a belief of the negative persuasion.

Ok, now I have shown you the valid definitions of atheism, but this dose nothing to stop people from doing silly things like using the "non" translation, or claiming the grammatically invalid "no theism", and that is on top of the people using the word to express a disbelief in god. All of this confusion because the average person is not a scholar or genius. To me this word is far to confused to be of any real use.

Agnostic is a much better word, which basically means: No Permanently occulted/esoteric knowledge, or in other words: present the evidence and reason for your claims, otherwise why should we even listen to you.