Atheist is a definition AND a label

Spend a little time in the atheist blogosphere, or on the Internet, and you will quickly come to someone who wants to give you a definition of the word "atheist." Quite possibly different from what you thought it meant. It seems like everyone has an opinion about the meaning of "atheist." The problem is, these debates focus largely address the words instead of the people. I think that's the problem. Atheism is now a civil rights social movement, and atheist is a term people use to identify themselves.

In other words, atheist is a label--its definition is inextricably linked to the people who wear it. When you define it smaller you deny people the right to use it, and when you define it bigger you include people who might not want it. When you saddle people with a bad definition it makes it hard to answer the question "you're a what?" successfully.

The reason things get really emotional is that the definition (and label) has been messed up by centuries of religious bile: "immoral," "irrational," "God hater," "communist." It has absurd strawman definitions like "an atheist is one who is certain that no God could possibly exist." And the fact is, these useless and hateful terms have spilled over into the public's understanding of non-believers.

Echoes of this backwards definition spill into the definition debates between non-believers. Some people try to define the word "atheist" so that it reflects themselves and the spectrum of people who call themselves atheist--the inclusive definition "does not happen to believe in a God" is a result. Some people try to define the word "atheist" so that there is room in non-belief for someone who does not want the label--thus "atheists believe there are no Gods" (or the even more extreme "atheists are certain there are no Gods").

At least when you see it on the Internet, most of the argument about "atheist" focuses on the definition instead of the label. Non-believers need to recognize this as the wonderful opportunity it is: there are enough definitions, even in the dictionaries, that we have some latitude to decide for ourselves what we want to be.

A consensus seems to have organically developed among those who call themselves "atheists," and I tend to agree with it and will expand on it at some point ... but the debate is needed. We just need to focus on the right criteria: picking a label we can wear with pride.

I'll close with this thought: "Geek" doesn't look anything like it did 30 years ago, because those saddled with it owned it and changed it. We can do the same with "atheist."