This has been bothering me for some time now. It was pointed out to me by a good friend who happens to be an atheist – an actual atheist (which is a distinction I’ll clarify further down), not a mis-named atheist.
The reason I say this is that most atheists are strict materialists. They do not believe in the existence of anything that isn’t directly provable either by human senses or by sufficiently reliable instruments. They do not believe in anything supernatural.
And there is a logic to that position, but it still leads to an inaccuracy in their naming of themselves. It’s true that God is supernatural in nature, but God is not all that is supernatural.
God is not, for example, a vampire. He’s not astrology or tarot cards. He does not turn into a wolf each full moon, nor appear in a half-fish form to lure sailors to their doom.
If your version of atheism includes a disbelief in the supernatural, as well as in God, then you are not an atheist, or rather,, you are not just an atheist.
You’re something more than that – an athaumatist (from the Greek thaumato, meaning wonder or wonders). Atheism is a sub-section of Athaumatism, and the vast majority of self-proclaimed atheists should probably use language more carefully.
Or maybe that’s just me. I’m pedantic like that. Which is why I’m an agnostic in the first place.
Feeds
@CentreCantHold
Well, actually you’re not completely right. It depends on the context. For instance, if I said I was atheist in response to someone specifically inquiring about my religion, then I think that I would be correct.
I have never heard a skeptic respond to questions of astrology or fortune telling with “I’m an atheist!” Regardless, there are plenty of complaints to be made about using the term but replacing it with a more general term, for the sake of language only, isn’t really that relevant.
Now, if it was to clarify a position, well, maybe then I would go for it. I just think there are better terms we could use.
Oh, you’re quite right about enquiries specifically in regard to religion – I should have made that clearer in the post, I suppose – my objection is to the use of atheist as a broader term than merely the opposite of theism.
Likewise, I prefer not to use the term skeptic, because I think that it’s as frequently abused by its proponents as the term atheist is – the self-proclaimed skeptics that I have met all seem to believe that skepticism = knee-jerk disbelief. I’d prefer open-minded enqiry, which is why I class myself not as a skeptic, but as a zetetic.