From: utzoo!henry Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: atheist/agnostic Article-I.D.: utzoo.2763 Posted: Thu Jan 20 17:27:33 1983 Received: Thu Jan 20 17:27:33 1983 tektronix!rich misses a point: just because the atheist under fire says "God help me" does not mean he is sincerely appealing to the Christian God for help. The heavily Christian heritage of our culture has promoted a number of such phrases to common idioms, to the point where they are used without consideration of their original meanings. Example: "goodbye" is a contraction of "God be with you". In the context of artillery fire, "God help me" could mean anything from its literal meaning to "shit, am I ever in trouble". It is a mistake to interpret a common idiom, used without thought of the historical meaning, as implying a religious conversion. He also missed an important category of people in his list. This is best illustrated by rephrasing his definitions in terms of answers to the basic question "what is the nature of God?": - Atheist: There is no God. - Agnostic: I don't know the nature of God, and I don't believe you do either. [This is the strict meaning of the word; for a looser and increasingly-common meaning, omit the second phrase.] - Christmas Christian: [Not really a separate category. The selective church attendance is seen by True Believers as hypocrisy, but can arise for other reasons including avoidance of oppression (yes, Virginia, there are still places where one must bow to social convention to avoid being hassled endlessly).] The category he missed, which lacks a formal name, is the following: - Unreligious: I am unconcerned with the answer because I do not consider the *question* interesting/relevant/important (circle one or more). I am willing to believe in God(s) if presented with solid evidence of his/her/their/its existence, but have seen no such evidence to date. Hearsay doesn't count, especially when there are hundreds of different, contradictory versions. [This category is sometimes called "humanist", but that word has come to have more complex implications in some quarters.]