July 30, 2007

“Atheist” as a label

Posted at 11:15 am by Richard and tagged , , , , , . Popularity: 18% [?]

I started thinking after reading this comment – why do atheists feel the need to call themselves atheists at all? Certainly a hard/strong atheist would be justified in doing so since they have a specific belief to describe, but since most of us do not explicitly deny the possibility of God’s existence (and rather, claim that we simply “have no belief in God”), why should we have a label like this at all?

I don’t go around calling myself an “a-redhead” or an “a-woman”, or saying that I have “a-green” eyes, I’m not “a-artistic” or “a-Swahili-speaking” (feel free to translate these words into Greek for the proper effect). Similarly, a Deaf person wouldn’t go around calling themselves “a-hearing”1. Why, then, do atheists insist on using a commonly misunderstood negative label2 to describe their lack of belief in God? Aren’t we just “not theistic”?

What other positive words or terms could we use to describe ourselves?

Popularity: 18% [?]

  1. Although “hearing impaired” is a commonly used term, a “culturally Deaf” person who uses sign language and associates with the Deaf community would never use this term to describe themselves. [↩]
  2. “a-theism” means, “without a belief in God”, which, one would assume should be the default position. [↩]