Dear Banjo,

>>George tells me that I am a Christian because I was baptised as a baby<<

Where did I tell you that? Besides, (assuming you were born in Australia) you are an Australian by birth, although you never chose to be born there, and if you even grew up in Australia, it will show, whether you like it or not. That is one way of defining what it means to be an Australian. Another way is by citizenship. Although you became automatically an Australian citizen by virtue of your birth, you can relinquish your citizenship, and there are many Australians, i.e. Australian citizens, who were not born there.

I am sure you can work out the analogy with different definitions of being a Christian, by baptism, by membership of a Church, by beliefs/convictions, by a life actively and consciously following what are considered Christian tenets and values. And by some hybrid of the above.

Squeers,

You seem to be appealing to an inability to reach absolute certainty in order to question the usefulness of reason, but absolute certainty is useless and a red herring.

I only spoke of what the use of the word ‘faith’ implies (I should have said “may imply”). But when people speak of a trust or belief disparagingly (attempting to make it sound religious or dogmatic), then they'll often use the term 'faith', otherwise there's little reason to not just say "trust" or "belief" instead. I never refer to my trust or confidence in something or someone as 'faith' for this reason.

Many rationalists may be hostile to other claimed ways of knowing, but that's because a lot of harm comes from irrational beliefs, not because rationalism necessitates it.

Dictionaries can handle context too; it's often added to the end of a definition in brackets, and atheism has no such context applied to it because you are making that part up. The day you are right, I will stop calling myself an atheist (as will virtually everyone else, I suspect) and will have to take the long way round of stating that I am a person who doesn't believe in any gods since I will have lost the convenience and brevity a word, until a new one is coined, at least; ready to be made useless again by those who feel attacked by it.

As for agnosticism, I would think it's developing more of a meaning that describes middle-ground (according to popular use), which still doesn't contradict atheism, as theism and atheism (in the broadest sense of the word) are binary (i.e. Law of the excluded middle). But I'm happy with 'sceptic' too, if that's what you prefer, because it doesn't contradict atheism. Indeed, I am a sceptic first and an atheist second. My atheism is a result of my scepticism.

Continued...

...continued

Atheism only has the context you apply to it for those who feel attacked by it (or in your case, feel attacked by "New Atheists" and therefore mistakenly equate atheism with rationalism). Words may be cultural constructs, but that doesn't mean the cultural influence needs to be anything more than the fact that some in our culture believe in gods (and an atheist isn't one of them).

Atheism is not a worldview no matter how much you want to make it one, and it is this type of reluctance to use the term (or worse, skew it) from those who fit the description that feeds prejudice towards disbelief. Worldviews can be atheistic, but atheism itself is not a worldview.

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Dear George,

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Nice to hear from you. In responding to Squeers, I indicated :

« George tells me that I am a Christian because I was baptised as a baby »
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Which prompted you to ask :

« Where did I tell you that? »
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I am afraid I do not keep a note of such things and it was a long time ago. However, I sifted through some of Peter Sellick’s 139 articles on OLO and finally came across the one he published on 14/3/2014 entitled “The awful funeral” where I made a comment under the heading : “What does it take to be a Christian ?” :

« As regards my current status, my guess is that I am still labelled as a Christian but I should welcome the considered opinion of anyone who wishes to express one. Personally, if I have any choice in the matter, I should prefer to avoid being labelled an “atheist” - simply because I find it a bit silly for anyone to define himself in relation to something (a god) which does not exist. »
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And you kindly replied :

« Dear Banjo,

I agree that nobody should be labeled “atheist” if he/she does not like it. The same with Christian, except that there is a formal definition of a Christian as a baptised person, which does not say anything about that person’s worldview. »

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16112#279996
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Please let me know if I have misinterpreted your reply.

Many thanks,

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Dear Banjo,

>> there is a formal definition of a Christian as a baptised person, which does not say anything about that person’s worldview. »

Please let me know if I have misinterpreted your reply. <<

No, it agrees with what I wrote in the post above (about different possible definitions of being an Australian or being a Christian), without telling you what you ought to call yourself.

I've just thought, Squeers; regarding the postmodernist nonsense you've used to obscure the definition of atheism, all I really need to do to address your points about cultural constructs and context is to remind you of the Sokal affair.

As a postmodernist, I'm sure you're all too familiar with it.