Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
But if you are even .001% open to the idea that there may be an unexplainable form of afterlife, does that disqualify you from Atheism?
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I would say in theory yes, though I would imagine that it really all depends on how you want to define it and yourself.
As even people in this thread are defining it differently and 'experts' are defining it slightly differently, I guess you get to decide how, if at all, you want to label yourself.
Atheists believe in no god and therefore no afterlife. Though, there does not have to be a god to be an afterlife I suppose. However, it's still a spiritual notion that hints at some sort of larger plan being behind things. If you are open to ideas like that, even slightly I'd say that's agnosticism. But if it's only at such a small level that you are basically just saying 'hey, I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I don't have the ego to conclude that I am,' like your 0..001 example, it's probably correct to call yourself an atheist too. In fact I think Photon's chart had a section for that.
EDIT: Yeah, agnostic-atheist. Doesn't believe in god, but doesn't claim 100% certainty. Page three. But since that classification uses both the terms, I guess it's all in how you want to define yourself. I've never seen that chart before, it does make sense, but I've also seen people explain it differently. At this point your probably splitting hairs.
I guess it also means that certain viewpoints don't necessarily exclude (preclude?) other viewpoints.