Chuck Missler had a copy of the wrong dictionary!

[Nashy19]

This is the only definition of abiogenesis found at dictionary.com, which I suppose is better than the Firefox English dictionary which doesn't even think the word exist.

-noun Biology.
the now discredited theory that living organisms can arise spontaneously from inanimate matter; spontaneous generation.

I did a some searching and apparently dictionary.com is terrible with scientific terms. People have been confused and complaining about it for over a year :?

Also look at the first word list here: http://www.bookoncreation.com/glossary_definitions.htm :|

I thought dictionaries were professional.

 

[borrofburi]

I thought dictionaries were professional.

They are: they sell to the masses. In general, people want to know words they hear others use that they don't understand, and these are in general not scientific terms.

But this flaw in dictionaries is exactly why (well one of the reasons why), in academic circles, you don't ever cite a dictionary definition in your paper, but instead supply your own definition that precisely means what you are trying to say.

 

[Durakken]

It's part of what the problem is with many things...

General English has no set meaning for any word or any set number of words for any meaning.
Dictionaries use the generally accept meaning of a word.
This means that if 90/100 people asked claim ice is hot and fire is cold then that is exactly what will be in the dictionary

So what this means is Atheism does mean immoral and devil worshiper because 70+% of people claim that is what it means and thus is what should be in the dictionary.

This leads to divisions of language such as...
Proper
Colloquial
Slang/Ebonics
Scientific

Proper definitions are those definitions that can be argued for with dictionaries, construction, and etymological roots.

This is what we are arguing when we say atheism is x and agnosticism is x. We are saying this is where it came from, this is how the word is constructed and this is why we should use this definition regardless of what someone else' opinion might be.

Colloquial is largely opinion based. I think this is what a word means and/or it is what someone told me the word means and/or this is how i use the word, so that is what the word means.

Slang is funny because it means. This is not what the word means in any other way, but I am using it in this way as to mean something that is an accepted meaning, but not any of the other meanings...

Scientific words are words that have been precisely defined to have a specific meaning regardless of proper, slang, or colloquial. It is like slang but it's precision and fact it won't change sets it apart from the others.


So to say someone is using a word wrong you have to mean proper or scientific, because the rest are changing constantly.

 

[stratos]

It also doesn't help that these online dictionaries often use very old sources that have come into public domain, meaning that they will often be 50+ years out of date.

At least, that's what Erin McKean says in a talk she did. Which btw is quite awesome and not all that off topic on the topic of dictionaries.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1588634025806636713#