Back on March 29, 2019 (http://kohlmiller.net/blogWP/?p=101 ), I wrote a blog post talking about the word “atheist” and why some people seem to work to avoid using it. In the March/April issue of the Humanist magazine, Nathan G. Alexander wrote about the history of the word “agnostic”. It was invented by T.H. Huxley as a more respectable label. It could be argued that the need to create distance between non-believers and the atheistic descriptor is still strong today. For example, consider how quickly atheism gets linked to Stalin, Pol Pot, Madilyn Murray O’Hair, China, and so on.
Alexander points out that a British MP named Charles Bradlaugh tried to reclaim the word “atheist” in 1864. I show here the same Bradlaugh quote that Alexander does.
The Atheist does not say “There is no God,” but he says “I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me.”
To me, we are using distinctions that have no differences. Atheist, agnostic, non-believer are all saying the same thing, to wit, they have no God-belief. I would also include those who make the probability argument, i.e. the possibility that a God exists is so unlikely that it need not concern us at all. Alexander says that he hopes those calling themselves agnostics will discard the label.
