“No atheist believes in God” is a factually correct statement. It’s like saying “One does not equal two” - a verifiable, objective truth that does not rely on anyone’s opinion.
Therefore, person B make a contradictory statement, and person A would be correct in responding “Then you aren’t an atheist”, because person B stated a verifiable falsehood. Same as saying “One equals two”. We all know it’s wrong.
Christianity has a much looser definition. You quoted it yourself:
A Christian (/ˈkrɪstʃən, -tiən/ ⓘ) is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
So anyone who follows this religion and calls himself a Christian is a Christian. Nothing in the definition says “You must follow the Bible to the exact letter” in order to be one. There wouldn’t be ANY Christians if that were true.
So that leaves us with a whole bunch of people who all claim to be Christian, but have different opinions on…
- how strictly do you have to follow the Bible,
- racism are condoned or forbidden by the Bible,
- if slavery is forbidden by the Bible,
- who you can fuck,
- what kind of funny hat you have to wear,
- what food you can or can’t eat,
- if you have to kill any non-believers,
… et cetera, et cetera.
And all of these people claim the others aren’t the true believers.
Now here’s a very simple question: What gives you the confidence, why should we believe you that it’s YOU, out of all these people, who follows the correct interpretation of the Bible?
That’s why the No True Scotsman fallacy applies to the whole bunch, including you, when you claim the others are no true Christians. Not a single Christian can objectively, verifiably prove that their individual view of Christianity is the correct one.
snooggums@piefed.world 2 days ago
Person B is an idiot who doesn't understand words because atheist is
To be a Christian someone just needs to identify as a Christian. They don't actually have to do anything specific with that self identification that aligns with the Bible or any particular denomination's practices. That is because belief and faith and religion have a massive spectrum of beliefs and practices wrapped up into one. A large number of people who attend religious ceremonies don't even believe in the deities or take things literally, they are there for the community.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 days ago
According to Christ himself, this one is pretty central:
If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there’s not much left to a claim of following Christ.
And these people are people who attend religious ceremonies, not Christians.
Same as someone attending a meeting about Atheism doesn’t become an Atheist by attending the meeting but by being convinced that God doesn’t exist.
Is that so? A lot of agnostics call themselves atheists. In general, if you ask atheists specifically about what they believe, quite a few of them actually describe agnosticism, as in they do not firmly believe that god doesn’t exist, but rather believe that there’s no basis in believing that god exists.
glorkon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The difference between atheism and agnosticism has no practical meaning to the vast majority of unbelievers.
You can’t positively state that something does not exist. You can’t logically be 100% certain there is no God. We know that. So if you love going by definitions, yes, most unbelievers are agnostics, not atheists.
So why do we keep calling ourselves atheists? Because we view the likelihood of God’s existence as so infinitesimally small, the difference between agnosticism and atheism becomes negligible. If we rate the odds of God’s existence at 0,000000001% we can as well just call it zero.
In other words, stop whining about atheists not using the term you’d prefer. We don’t tell you what you should call yourself either.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yes, you do, that’s what the whole thread here was about.
And you mistake my position on belief as well. I am mostly agnostic.
And yes, the difference between agnosticism and atheism is huge, except if you are too uneducated to understand the difference, which makes it weird that you have such a strong opinion on the matter.