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Originally Posted by the ikara cult
"Atheism" is a purely oppositional position, it just means what it says. Its not a worldview on everything, it says you dont believe in any of the Gods that people have conceived. If you think thats fundamentalist, you dont know how to use words.
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In responding to this, I would like to refer back to my example of the chair in the closed room. An atheism of this definition assumes both hard atheism and agnosticism. By atheism, let's say it is achairism. There is an assertion of the lack of a chair and a suspension of a lack of a chair. To further answer this question, we must contrast belief from knowledge. What would we call
knowledge that there is no chair? Achairism? No, that can't be. To be charitable, we must consider not an assertion of a lack of a chair but the opposition to the belief in an chair. So, considering the etymology, we get an a-chairism and an a-chair-ism. That is, 'not a belief in chair' or 'a belief that chair is not.' This distinction is schismatic and we return to the question: what would we call the knowledge that there is no chair? What is atheism as both opposition and denial? I mean denial here in the sense of making a conclusive metaphysical statement (or, rather, a denial of metaphysics). As we should see, agnosticism makes a perfect statement of the suspension of a lack of god/chair. Thus, this leaves atheism as an affirmative statement against the existence of God and not the belief in the existence of God.