Are You A Dictionary Atheist?

[Will]

IMHO, we're all dictionary atheists. We're all more than that, of course, but we're that.

I 'd offer to email PZ, but I suspect he's getting an earful from a lot of atheists over this one.

[Yuffie]

Babies are all atheists or I'm an atheist by default, because I was raised without religion. Nope. Uh-uh. Same problem as the Dictionary Atheist â€" it implies atheism is simply an intellectual vacuum. Babies aren't Christians or Muslims or Hindus, and they aren't atheists, either, because we expect at least a token amount of thought is given to the subject. If babies are atheists, then so are trees and rocks â€" which is true by the dictionary definition, but also illustrates how ridiculously useless that definition is.

I can somewhat agree with this quote, assuming the rocks and trees part is sarcasm. I would think babies would be born Agnostic or just something between Atheist and Theist, since they don't really have an opinion on whether there is a God or not.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I disagree.  The "herd of cats" analogy is apt because atheists tend to be distrustful of group identities.

I don't think it's that...I know tons of atheists who are more than willing to identify with meetup groups; even going so far as to proudly wear t-shirts, logos etc related to the group.

The analogy comes in because even within those groups it's hard to get a bunch of free thinking people to agree on any one direction.  So, as with herding cats, you have to figure out what the hell the cat wants in order to end up with all the cats generally agreeing that they should head in the same direction.  Anyone who has owned a cat knows how hard it is to figure out what it takes to get a cat to want to do something.

Yeah, I was just speaking from  my own experience, which is apparently different than yours.

[terranus]

I am telling you the obvious fact that you aren't blind followers of the dictionary

Hail the almighty Dictionary! :twak: