Thread:User talk:Armondikov/More meaningless words/reply (6)

It's mostly about avoiding unproductive arguments, really. I've already mentioned the 80 post discussion over "should we respect religious beliefs" that was completely pointless because one guy meant "don't go out of your way to be a dick to people" and the other thought "bow down in reverence to religion". The argument lasted several hours but got nowhere, and when I butted in to point this out it turned out they both actually agreed with each other.

The whole "ah, but you're an agnostic atheist!!" thing is exactly the same (and since I accidentally lost my essay on it, I'll recreate a point here). People hear "atheist" and immediately assume you've taken a faith position with infinite confidence. I don't think that's true of anyone who identifies as an atheist, and it certainly wouldn't be to anyone who identifies as a skeptical empiricist too (which would make the "agnostic" prefix entirely redundant). Yet you still get "ah, but you're an agnostic atheist!!" as if appending "agnostic" to your "atheist" was more important than the time spent unpacking your belief, what evidence you'll accept and whether it's reasonable.

It's not about defining words specifically so that they only ever have one meaning. They're just arbitrary combinations of vowels and consonants, they're not important. In fact, such specificity is pretty much the opposite and is about letting go of such emotional attachment to simple vowels and consonants.