To quote the The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (EOP): 'No definition of "atheism" can hope to be in accord with all uses of this term." The EOP article continues with a discussion of various definitions and reasons for them. The article includes the following comment: 'On our definition, an "atheist" is a person who rejects belief in God, regardles of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that "God exists" is a fales proposition.' George H. Smith in his book Atheism: The Case Against God writes: 'Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god.' Within the past year I attended a lecture by Mr. Smith and during the lecture he indicated that his formulation was being preferred by scholars in the field while the one given by Jim Choate was still used in the popular culture. Thus I think it is inappropriate to criticize the definition of atheism used by pjm@spe.com. Fred At 05:02 PM 9/20/98 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

Forwarded message:

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From: pjm@spe.com Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 20:13:38 +0200 Subject: atheism (was: RE: Democracy... (fwd)) (fwd)

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No, they are not. The distinction is crucial to the main point I evidently failed to make in my previous message: Atheism is not a set of beliefs that constitutes a personal philosophy. There are Buddhist atheists, Universalist-Unitarian atheists, objectivist atheists, Wiccan atheists, etc. Atheism isn't even a belief, it is merely the statement of a lack of one particular belief.

No, atheism is the statement that "God could exist, but doesn't". Whether one chooses to hang 'Bhuddism' or 'Wiccan' on is irrelevant. We aren't discussion labels but rather characteristics. Fundamentaly *ALL* atheism states:

While it could happen that way, I don't believe it does.

Which is identical in meaning to:

While it could happen that way, I believe it doesn't.