semanticsI think it would be interesting to come up with positive synonym to atheism by several reasons:
to understand better what is atheism and what it can give to religious person.
The problem with a positive synonym for atheist is that atheism is, by nature, a negative assertion. Depending on how you see it, it refers to the lack of a belief or the belief of a lack. Atheism is the null position, held by default in absence of any contradictory beliefs, so defining it in an additive rather than a reductive sense is linguistically difficult.
Naturalist or Free Thinker are close. A-theist is stating a lack of theism.. you could go with something mundane like “Non religious”, or a “non Believer”.
Rationalism is in common use already, as well as humanism.
I always liked “critical thinker.” It takes the focus off what you don’t believe or think, and points out how you think — not blindly, but carefully.
As Winter Wombat has already mentioned, atheist is strictly speaking a negative assertion. But, this is a very limited view of the term. We could fit the Pope and Ken Ham in the list of atheists provided we were talking about Shiva. Or we could also fit in someone who believes he has been abducted by extraterrestrials but doesn’t believe in any god. I think generally on this board and elsewhere, when we have atheism in mind we have certain characteristics before the eyes that are not shared by the popes and abductees of this world. Among them, are a fair dosis of skepsis and of scientific knowledge and methodology.
So I think “scientific skepticism” could fit the bill, although it does tackle a larger spectrum of problems than just the belief in deities.
We don’t need a ‘positive synonym’. ‘Atheist’ does exactly what it says on the tin. Don’t let those who wish to imbue it with a whole raft of negative connotations and false dogma for their own agenda pervert the meaning of the word so as to serve their propaganda.
Yes, it is a negation of the word ‘theist’, but like ‘theist’ isn’t a positive word, ‘atheist’ isn’t a negative word.
I believe a simple godless would suffice, as it does not imply any hostility towards theism, which is why some have moved away from the atheist label, and is states completely the notion of a lack of the supernatural.
to understand better what is atheism and what it can give to religious person.
I’m not sure what this means. Are you asking about how to explain atheism to a religious person, or how atheism would benefit a religious person?
If it’s the second, then bzzt wrong question! We should care about what’s true, not what would be nice if it were true.
If it’s the first, then remember that it can be surprisingly difficult. Many religious people find it very difficult to wrap their minds around the idea of Not believing in God. (That’s why they’ll often claim that atheists hate God.) One way is to talk about other religions which have very different God-beliefs. Monotheism and animism are very different, but both are religions. This dilutes the God-concept and makes it easier to accept the lack of any God-concept. (Something like this worked for me personally, but I’ve never tried it on anyone else.)
Another tack I like is igtheism: I’ll tell you whether I believe in God once you’ve defined the word. It’s actually a surprisingly tricky word to define. And if they try to say that everyone knows what god means, tell them that it has several different meanings, and you want to be clear which one you’re discussing.
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