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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482214)	5/21/2009 9:10:23 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) of 1575910

atheism is derived from the word theism, with the a prefix generally indicating without or the oposite of, but it doesn't mean "without theism". It doesn't mean lack of belief in a personal active God (that would be part of it, but by itself it wouldn't make you an atheist), a deist or agnostic is not an atheist. Atheism is the belief that there is no God/god/divine being/supernatural creator/etc. Its a belief as much as Christianity is. Agnosticism is the only broad category of religious belief that requires no leap of faith. Well words are defined by their usage and atheism is sometimes used to indicate a lack of any belief, but doing so unnecessarily muddles things. You already have a term for a lack of belief, agnosticism. If you expand atheism to include a lack of belief than you have to come up with sub categories like "strong atheism" or "explicit atheism". Its simpler to just use atheism for the belief of the negative in terms of divine beings and agnosticism for uncertainty, and that's also the most common usage.

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