"Atheism is a personal opinion that there is no evidence to support a belief in God."
NO that's agnosticism, but thanks for proving yet again that you can't be honest for even a moment.
Atheism makes a positive truth assertion that "THERE IS NO GOD"
Cultural Dictionary
atheism [( ay -thee-iz-uhm)]
Denial that there is a God. ( Compare agnosticism.)
As WLC puts it
Such a re-definition of the word “atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of atheism, for on this definition, atheism ceases to be a view. It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all. On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as atheists! In fact, our cat Muff counts as an atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist, which is the question we’re really interested in.
So why, you might wonder, would atheists be anxious to so trivialize their position? Here I agree with you that a deceptive game is being played by many atheists. If atheism is taken to be a view, namely the view that there is no God, then atheists must shoulder their share of the burden of proof to support this view. But many atheists admit freely that they cannot sustain such a burden of proof. So they try to shirk their epistemic responsibility by re-defining atheism so that it is no longer a view but just a psychological condition which as such makes no assertions. They are really closet agnostics who want to claim the mantle of atheism without shouldering its responsibilities.
This is disingenuous and still leaves us asking, “So is there a God or not?”
by William Lane Craig
Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/definition-of-atheism#ixzz2rf2CilmV |
