Well, there’s the way the term “atheism” has been watered down to encompass mere non-belief in God, as opposed to belief in no God. This is discussed in the following article, which traces the etymology and formally recognized usage of the terms:
To deny the existence of anything is to adopt a dogma. As soon as one has determined that something is “true” or “false”, one has abandoned skepticism.
Prove that “skeptic” automatically means “good”.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/skept.htm
While atheists religiously deny being “dogmatic”, any belief held is a dogma. It doesn’t matter how many arguments are piled up upon it, if it is accepted as “fact” or “true”, then it is a dogma. Skepticism is not “It is false.” Skepticism is “I do not know.”
Dogface, the skeptic would think more along the lines of : “I find no satisfactory evidence for that theory, so I will reject it until better evidence comes about”
You obviously haven’t paid attention to the atheists here in SDMB; perhaps a few have said they “deny” the existence of any gods (we would call them strong atheists*), but the overwhelming majority of us have always maintained that we simply do not believe in god(s) pending further evidence to the contrary. How that equals “dogma” in your mind is beyond me.
Hmmm…First you argue that I’m not a skeptic, then you argue that skepticism is not a good thing. You seem to be working at cross-purposes.
Patently false. Dogma is “a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds”. It is not “any belief”.
*Even among strong atheists, most deny the existence of specific gods, e.g. the Christian God or the Muslim God, based on the contradictory characteristics of those gods as advanced by their respective religions. Rarely, if ever, do I recall any atheist claiming that any god is a priori impossible.
I disagree. This statement is the essence of dogmatism.
Parsing the sentence a different way, one comes up with “I will reject it until better evidence comes about, because I find no satisfactory evidence for that theory.” The person is deciding to take one side based upon lack of evidence for the other, not becuse of any sufficient evidence for his own viewpoint (assuming this is a two-choice situation.)
A dogmatist says “I am right,” for whatever reason. A skeptic says “I don’t know.”
I disagree. This statement is the essence of dogmatism.
Parsing the sentence a different way, one comes up with “I will reject it until better evidence comes about, because I find no satisfactory evidence for that theory.” The person is deciding to take one side based upon lack of evidence for the other, not becuse of any sufficient evidence for his own viewpoint (assuming this is a two-choice situation.)
A dogmatist says “I am right,” for whatever reason. A skeptic says “I don’t know.”
If a theist were to say that he will default to a belief in God until sufficient evidence is shown to the contrary, I’d wager that many folks around here would call our theist friend a dogmatist.
For those whom “bright” bothers because it seems presumptuous and condescending, how is “rationalist” any better? I believe that I am rational.
What does that have to do with what I said? More importantly, what made you feel compelled to resurrect this thread after a month of inactivity?
To build on what someone said before, the word “gay” is a specious comparison to this.
“Gay” with the meaning “licentious” was originally applied to prostitutes, then to male prostitutes who were known as “gay boys;” from there the meaning expanded to any homosexual man, and then to women as well, first as a slang term, then adopted as a self-describer in regular discourse. It’s not clear whether it was originally applied to gay men by gay men themselves or by others. It wasn’t a conscious choice, such as this, nor a euphemism exactly (as noted, it stemmed from the meaning of licentious, not merry.)
First, I was pointing out that defaulting to a belief because of lack of evidence to the contrary is dogmatist.
Second, it was linked to in an active OP, and I wasn’t paying attention to the timestamps. 
But I said we “do not believe in god(s) pending further evidence to the contrary”. I didn’t say we believe in not-God. You’re saying that the lack of a belief is a belief. Who are you, George Orwell? Whether you admit it or not, your default is to not believe a thing until you have reason to believe that thing. As another poster (I forgot who) asked awhile back, do you check the brake lines on your car every day to make sure gremlins didn’t cut them? Why not? Do you dogmatically believe in not-gremlins?
Blow
Can a demand for evidence become itself dogmatic? (Not that it is in your particular case, just can it?) Especially if the demand is for, say, subjective evidence such as an experience?
Lib, I’m not demanding anything. You ask if a demand for evidence can be dogmatic. The question seems irrelevant since we aren’t talking about demands for evidence. Having said that, I don’t begrudge anyone their own subjective experience. Were I to have an objective experience(s) that were sufficiently powerful and convincing, I might very well develop a belief based on it. On the other hand, were I schizophrenic, I might believe that the government was beaming thought-waves into my brain. I say that not to denegrate or make any kind of comparison, but merely to point out that another’s subjective experience is quite a different thing from my experience, and I certainly don’t demand anything of the kind. The fact is that I have not had such an experience, and have yet to hear any other person’s experience described to me that is sufficient to convince me. If there actually were a lot of convincing evidence for God, and I still rejected that evidence out of hand, then that would be dogmatic; but that is not the case. These subjective experiences may very well be emotionally powerful to those who have experienced them, and I do believe that emotions exist. I just don’t happen to think any of them that have been described to me thus far are sufficient to prove that supernatural entities physically exist. To put it blithely (and admittedly oversimplifying), your happy feelings are not valid towards demonstrating the physical existence of God to me. You can call that dogmatism if you like, but then our definitions of dogmatism would be wildly different.
That’s not to say atheists can’t be dogmatists; they certainly can. I just don’t think anyone is justified in saying that we ALL are, or even that the majority of us are.
That may be, but that doesn’t mean that the default is not dogmatic.
And yes. I’m not ashamed to say that I dogmatically believe in not-gremlins. No, I have not found sufficient evidence for not-gremlins.
Your definition of dogmatic differs from mine.
I still don’t understand the need for another word for atheïst.
Since when did atheïsts get a bad press?
All the time. Things are different here in the U.S.
One of the most egregious examples:
Did George Bush really say that atheists should not be considered citizens?
(scroll down to where it says: “George Bush on atheism and patriotism”)
:rolleyes:
Imagine the firestorm in the press if he had said such a thing about blacks, hispanics, women, etc.
I just got an e-mail on Michael Shermer’s e-Skeptic mailing list regarding this topic. Here’s a link to his article, “The Big ‘Bright’ Brouhaha”.
It would have been nice if these sorts of studies had been done before, for example, Rush Limbaugh got a chance to lambast the “Brights” on his show.
Just a couple things:
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Why don’t atheist, agnostics et al decide IF they want a generalterm for allof them and then THEY decide how to be called.
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Bright is bad and would make you folks catch too much flack.
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Be carefulwith the name, because other changes have gone bad, e.g.: Are Semitic Egyptian-Americans also African Americans? (Egypt is is Africa) are Israeli-Americans or Pakistani-Americans also Asian-Americans?(Israel and Pakistan are in Asia, are American Indians, First Nations, Original Dwellers, Indians,First Peoples, Pre-Columbian Inhabitants…I’m always one name late)
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Atheist (like hispanic or Jew) is not demeaning termon themselves, but they can be used like that.The n-word has, OTOH, no “good” use
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I move that we Catholics change our name too. Some options
a) Rome-based Christian
b) Vaticaner
c) Pope-People
d)Non-Protestant-Non-Orthodox-Christian
- What’s next on the name-changing thing?