BE:
-Not if you're sympathetic with the position of Frederick Rice.
-Rice maintains that atheists are those who merely lack a belief in
-God(s).  There's nothing in that definition that prohibits an
-atheist from saying, "God said so".
>Let not the quality of intelligence be insulted.  Mr.  Rice is an
>athiest and he believes that there is no God.
No, that is not true.
If you examine Rice's texts carefully, I believe you will find
that he says no more than that he does not believe that there is
any god.  He does not actually make the stronger claim, which you
attribute to him here, that he believes that there is no God.
Rice's claim does not quite reach the act of denying that God,
or gods, exist.
>Atheist
>organizations express there confidence that there is no God.
Not those in Holysmoke.  Earlier this year, there was a huge
debate in that Conference about what "atheism" amounted to.  I
strenuously argued, on the basis of many dictionary definitions
taken from Canadian, English and American dictionaries, that it
meant the doctrine or belief that gods do not exist.
I was practically hounded out of the conference for advocating
that position.
And all of my Holysmoke critics maintained that Atheism referred
simply to the lack of any belief in the existence of gods.
Rice was one of those critics.
The Holysmoke theory of atheism, in fact, is the thing which
permits them to argue that we are all born atheists.  (Obviously,
newborns don't have any beliefs; a fortiori, they don't have any
belief in the existence of gods.)
It is also the theory which causes them to assume that the theist,
not the atheist, has the burden of providing evidence: Since they
claim not to have any beliefs on the subject, they do not have any
burden of providing evidence.  But theists are not in that
position, since theism involves BELIEVING that gods exist.
Therefore, the burden lies entirely with theists.
This, I believe, is the whole trick to understanding what has been
going on over there in Holysmoke.
>And,
>my Webster's dictionary defines atheism as the denial that there
>is a God.  No, Mr.  Eyer, the term "atheism" is not a substitute
>for the term "agnostic."
Well I agree with you on the definition.  What I'm pointing out,
however, is that you will experience GREAT DIFFICULTY convincing
Rice, or any of the other regulars in Holysmoke, on that point.
Bob
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