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Posted 2008-06-25, 07:40 PM in reply to Demosthenes's post "Atheism vs Agnosticism"
Just like how star can refer to a giant ball of burning gas or a really popular/well know person all of these words have multiple definitions.
That people almost always use them without enough accompanying information to establish which they are using can be quite irritating but this doesn't automatically default them to the most common definition.

It's like when a tacher asks her class if humans are animals. By one definition human qualities are exactly what makes them not-animals but by another they are most certainly animals as they are large motile organisms that don't photosynthesize and yadda yadda yadda. The teacher might be a decent person and give the students a little debreifing about how English works and why none of the answers were technically wrong for any reason other than that they assumed they knew what meaning she had for animal, or they may just elave it to the students to figure out even though they won't but will go on pissed off at each other until something else comes along to polarize them.


So in the end if you don't supply this information or enough context to make it clear that these definitions are the ones in use then it is your fault if anyone comes along trying to make things fit into their prefered definitions. And besides, with a quality so varied as "thoughts about the nature of God" you really shouldn't expect to be given one word that perfectly sums up your views in the first place. Sorry pal, aint that easy.
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Tensa is neither ape nor machine; has so far settled for the in-betweenTensa is neither ape nor machine; has so far settled for the in-between
 
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