The thread should really have been a statement of explanation with no room to debate. I realise that would have immediately spawned two websites:

1) http://www.imdefinitelyanatheist.org.nz, and
2) http://www.therighttodebateslogans.org.nz

And sadly I also realise that we can never close this thread – everybody wants to have the last word.
(Slowly shakes head; heartfelt sigh)

Oops. ‘Shama’ sounds like ‘Sharma’ in my inner monologue.

@Thereare:

Ha! Was I showing off my l33t HTML skillz? ^_^

I didn’t actually realize I was using it. I work with HTML for a living – it just slips in.

As for the topic we should be getting back to: I thought that this thread was dedicated to the use of the word ‘probably’ in the campaign, rather than the campaign itself.

Doesn’t that mean that all our sublime pontifications about the using the term ‘probably’ in the statement ‘There is probably no God’ surprisingly on-topic?
(he asked, quite contentiously)

To be clear: The above is all tongue-in-cheek. I’m happy to drop the topic.

Let’s not turn this into an esoteric and circular argument about what things mean. We ALL believe there’s no god, but you can’t prove that something doesn’t exist.

And we all know Daniel’s been practicing his HTML.

Now can we PLEASE move on to the purpose of the campaign? I’m trying to remember what it was.

your response was just plain rude

@simon-

I have to confess I’m no where near as smart as E.P.F. Schumacher!

Agnosticism and Atheism explained.

Sorry to harp on about a subject that’s already been well-covered. I just think that repetition is an important part of keeping an idea alive, and patience in communication is an important part of dealing with people who may not understand us very well.

Yes, we wind up repeating ourselves. A lot. But just because we may have gone over a subject hundreds of times, that doesn’t mean everyone else has.

Greta Christina explains the problem well over at Atheism and Patience.

An aside:

It really gets my goat when someone tries to tell me what my own self-identified labels should mean, and that because of that I don’t qualify and should stop using that label. Not sure of your motivation exactly, so I’m not gonna get all bent out of shape over it… It’s just a pet peeve of mine.

Briefly:

I think you’re mistaken. Atheist fits us perfectly by any reasonable definition of the word.

1) If I consider that there is probably no God, and;
2) Because of this I have provisionally rejected the premise that God exists, then;
3) As I lack the belief in God, I am an atheist.

Verbosely:

Depending on what you mean by ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’, the terms aren’t necessarily exclusive.

The common understanding seems to be that atheists are certain there is no God, agnostics don’t know, and theists are certain there is a God.

I’ve always found that distinction to be unfairly simplistic – the reality of people’s actual beliefs are far more complex than that. If we’re to represent them fairly, we need to be more nuanced in our approach.

It seems fair to me to state that Theism is (in part) the belief that God exists (Theos).

Atheism is the absence of that belief.

Gnosticism refers to knowledge (Gnosis).

Likewise, agnosticism is the absence of knowledge.

So we can have:

1) A gnostic theist – believes in God, and claims to *know* God exists.
2) An agnostic theist – believes in God, but considers their belief a matter of faith in the face of the unknowable.
3) An agnostic atheist – doesn’t believe in God, but accepts that we can’t really know for sure.
4) A gnostic atheist – someone who doesn’t believe in God, and claims knowledge to that effect.

2) and 3) strike me as the ‘normal’ case for theists and atheists.

This framework for the theist/atheist and gnostic/agnostic spectra is a much fairer representation of the nuanced range of beliefs that people hold and express. It’s not perfect, I’ll grant you – but it’s much better than the overly simplistic ‘yes/maybe/no’ split that most people seem to consider to be analogous with the terms ‘theist/agnostic/atheist’.

It’s important to represent people fairly and on their own terms, and to not box them up in convenient labels of our own choosing.