from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
- n. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Belief that no deities exist (sometimes including rejection of other religious beliefs).
- n. Rejection of belief that any deities exist (with or without a belief that no deities exist).
- n. Absence of belief that any deities exist (including absence of the concept of deities).
- n. Absence of belief in a particular deity, pantheon, or religious doctrine (notwithstanding belief in other deities).
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
- n. Godlessness.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The doctrine that there is no God; denial of the existence of God.
- n. The denial of theism, that is, of the doctrine that the great first cause is a supreme, intelligent, righteous person.
- n. A practical indifference to and disregard of God; godlessness.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the doctrine or belief that there is no God
- n. a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods
So if you wanted to see a load of tweets about atheism, you would search for #atheism in Twitter search, and find a load of hashtagged results!
Atheists can point out flaws in our beliefs – which is perfectly in keeping with the term atheism, as atheism often arises in reaction to a specific form of theism.
Refusing to use the term atheism might be more trouble than it's worth.
Since its first coming into use the term atheism has been very vaguely employed, generally as an epithet of accusation against any system that called in question the popular gods of the day.
One of the things I liked about Sweeney (other than her total honesty about something so personal) is that she rejects the term atheism out of hand because it describes her lack of belief in religious terms.
I have already addressed some of the features of what I call "atheism lite versus Christianity lite."
Dawkins not only admits his atheism is a personal, subjective choice, but he roots it is his FEELINGS!
Pew studies tend to be fairly carefully done, but I get a bad feeling when "atheism" is lumped in as a religion - they clearly don't get the idea of what the null set means.
The "ultravalcinist hypothesis" holds that contemporary American atheism is actually a variant of Mainline Prote ...
CB: So before everyone comes up with their comments about how wonderful and ethical atheism is ... would someone mind explaining how atheists managed to slaughter (and continue to this day) the mind-boggling number of people they did in the last century and seem to have no problem with gulags or re-education camps, etc?