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Apparently no-one's never heard this one before. It's at least 20 years old in my experience. Even if your first point were true, it would merely be an appeal to consequence, but it's not true. It's quite easy to show that by their taxonomic definitions all men are apes. That does not render...

Oops, apologies for the absence, I was unwell. Sorry if I've misunderstood, but what do you mean by counter-belief in your earlier statement? Moving on. Actually, I assumed you were smart enough to tell the difference. Yup, you can call yourself what you like as far as I'm concerned...

Thanks, Ciraric. Squawk, the definition of theist I used was someone with a theology. Do you know of any theist who doesn't have one?

Really? Only I've managed to get people to agree to those definitions at every stage. It's like those "1=2" maths proofs, you lead them on in small stages to an absurd conclusion then leave them to try and find where they went wrong. By the way, Joe, you're not actually the final arbiter of...

No, but I think some people are well on their way to one: "Atheism is lack of belief, period. Having a counter belief is something outside of atheism, as far as I can tell, and as far as the correct definition goes." "I'm quite happy to disagree with the dictionaries if need be. The etymology...

Where's the lie, I'm quite open about my definitions in the above statement? 8-)

Besides, we're all theists anyway. Since a theist is anyone with a theology, and a theology is a set of beliefs about god, deists and strong atheists are theists, as they believe god is an impersonal force or a non-existent entity respectively. But neutral atheists are theists too, since they...

It's alright, I'm just stirring, not getting antsy. That's fine, I just take issue with the idea of a 'correct' definition. There's your definition, and someone else may have their definition, but that doesn't mean either of you is right, or - in the case of language - wrong. Think about...

So someone telling you what atheism means is bad, but you telling others what theism and deism means is okay, But that's not hypocritical because presumably you define hypocritical to mean large and yellow with pink spots or something. I wish I knew where you were all getting your universal...

So presumably dwarfism would be belief in the existence of dwarfs, feminist would be belief that you're a woman, journalism is the belief everyone should keep a diary, witticism is the belief that you are being funny, and globalism is the belief that the world is not flat like it says in the...

Pushing IJ's metaphor a little further... If only the creotards would have a go at climbing the mountain of scientific evidence, they would find you can see so much further, even if you only get a little way up. Instead they seem content to stand on their bibles and shout "Look at me! I'm king...

Ah, Melo et al is available as a PDF here. I probably followed a link to it looking for something else. That's a relief, for a moment I thought I might have begun channelling PZ Myers!

The next paragraph of the Matzke/Forrest paper says much the same thing. "Decades ago, creationists began to use microevolution and macroevolution idiosyncratically. Creationists' use of "microevolution" is not dissimilar to that of evolutionary biologists, although they apply it not just to...

The etymology is from the Greek "a-theos" meaning "without god(s)". Where is the mention of belief? Similarly, "anti-theos" would mean "against god(s)", which again does not specifically describe belief (Online Etymological Dictionary). It originally didn't even mean being without all gods. The...

So the correct definition doesn't appear in Encarta then? "unbelief in God or deities: disbelief in the existence of God or deities" Or Merriam-Webster? "a: a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity" Or Cambridge? "the belief that God does not exist" Or the...

Atheism isn't just a "non-belief", some atheists actively do believe there are no gods. To characterise atheism as exclusively meaning the "weak atheist" position is both presumptuous and flat wrong. There are atheists who actively dismiss the concept of gods, that deny gods do or can exist (see...

But isn't this just someone else telling me what I believe? What if I don't agree with his definition of my atheism?

Quite right, which is why I used examples where speciation had occurred. The point is that while lots of little 'micro-evolutions' can lead to macro-evolution, that is just one (most likely predominant) way in which macro-evolution can occur. Even where hybridisation and/or polyploidy is not...

The macro/micro-evolution distinction is more than just a useful shorthand for lots of accumulated allelic variation. The common argument that macro-evolution is simply micro-evolution plus time is fallacious, it is an affirmation of the consequent, i.e. if all A is B, all B is A. This is...

"There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum...