Vylo

I have been considering the defintions as they appear and must correct one thing I believe I have overlooked. Atheist as defined in english would still fall within nontheist. However, one can be a nontheist without being atheistic. Atheism simply notes that you have been exposed to the concept of a deity, god, higher power etc., and have rejected it or ignored it as outrageous. So I must correct myself in that anyone who is atheist would infact be also a nontheist.

I seriously doubt the dictionary was made without any atheist influence.

Besides atheist these are words with greek entymology, atheist is a word with french entymology.

A-long is used as the example for against.

Interesting point, I don't think negative atheism would be a belief system at all, and it would be stretching somewhat even to call positive atheism one.

Vylo

Further explaining my error before when I tried to say atheist was not incluisive to nontheism:

Both newborns and atheists have this lack of belief, so both would be non-theists. However by definition a newborn would not be an atheist.

Llyricist

Vylo,

I found an explanation about how atheist is actually french and therefore has a different meaning, and it was, surprise surprise, by a theist. The origin of the word IS greek (a-theos) then modified by the french (athieste). But that doesn't change the fact that the original meaning was without a god.

Excuse me, "THE dictionary"??, it has already been pointed out that there are dictionaries that give the more "honest to the original meaning" definition as well as those slanted theist definitions. So apparently THOSE are the dictionaries that had an atheist influence (that wasn't overruled).

a-long is derived from old English and-lang, and- being a derivitive of anti-

Try again

Vylo

what are your sources for this information?

And are you saying along means without long?

Llyricist

The source is here:
http://www.etymonline.com/a3etym.htm

or here:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=along

And no, I'm saying that along is now a word unto itself that was derived from a compound word with the prefix and- that DOES mean against or opposed.

whereas atheist is close to its original derivation of a-theos with the prefix a-, meaning not or without.

JGL53

From m Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary:

n. [Fr. atheisme, from Gr. atheos, without a god;...] the belief that there is no God...

It goes on to give some pro-god quotes. A secondary definition given of 'atheistic' is 'impious'.

'Impious' is defined, among other things as "irreverent toward the Supreme Being" and as 'profane'.

All of the definitions of 'profane' are quite perjorative, making it quite clear that a 'profane' person is immoral.

- - - - - -
What a load of dogshit. OBVIOUSLY, the word has been defined by theists, who have loaded the word's definition with their own personal prejudice. Fuck them and the god they road in on.

It is also my understanding, like the other atheists here, that atheism = non-theism. It is the lack of belief in god or gods. This SHOULD be the definition listed and WOULD be if a atheist had any input.

I think turn about is fair play. If theists want to be the definers of 'atheist', then fine. Let's let a dictionary committee of atheists define 'christian', 'god', 'soul', etc.

DMB

No, because "long" and "along" have Germanic origins and are not directly connected to ancient Greek.

Vylo

I can call myself a cat, define myself as a cat, have a few other people define me as a cat, but I am still not a cat.

Yes in the same whay that catholic = christian. However christian does not always = catholic. While an atheist is always a non-theist, a non-theist is not always an atheist by the definition in the OED, which has a long list of documentation on the word usage, and is a highly credible dictionary. If you were to define atheism as wimply "without god" then yes newborns and us alike would be atheists, however you must acknowledge that we have been exposed to concepts of gods and deities and that newborns have not, and therefore our interpetation of those concepts is not identical, because newborns have no interpetation of them.

Vylo

Atheism similarly has its origins in the french language and is not directly connected to greek.

DMB

Well, out of curiosity, I just looked up the prefix a- in my Petit Robert Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, which, despite its name is not small.

The entry said:
So it says that it comes from Greek and expresses either negation (not) or lack (without).

There is also another entry for when it comes from Latin, in which case it is from the Latin ad and expresses direction, the goal to be attained. Clearly this is not the meaning of the prefix in "atheist".

Curiously, there is no mention of it meaning "against".

When I look up ATHÉE, which is the French word for atheist, it says that the whole word comes from the Greek atheos. The definition is:
So the first part of this definition is someone who does not believe in god. The second is someone who denies the existence of any god.

Now Le Petit Robert is just a French dictionary that I happen to have to hand. I do not claim any special authority for it. But it hardly seems to bear out your argument about derivations and meaning.