Once, I got barked at by a Darwinist, an evolutionist, when I referred to his Darwinism, his evolutionism, by the apt terms "Darwinism" and "evolutionism". He complained something along the lines of:
"The terms 'evolutionism' and 'evolutionist' are offensive to me because I accept evolution, and accepting evolution is not a religion, so it is not an ism, and accepting evolution does not make me a religionist!" Which was quite amusing, see, because, not only had I not even said the word, "religion," nor implied that I'd be willing to use the word, "religion," to refer to his Darwinism/evolutionism (because I would not be willing to do so), but also, that very same Darwinist/evolutionist was proudly calling himself "athe
ist" and boasting about his "athe
ism". By his own, self-defeating testimony, he was out of the one side of his mouth calling his atheism "religion," which, out of the other side of his mouth, he would irately repudiate (effectively making himself transparently guilty of special pleading on behalf of his self-inconsistent, self-serving use of the suffix,
-ism).
One thing I've discovered is that
all that makes an atheist an atheist is his/her willingness, motivated by his/her hatred against God, to go about saying any of a number of a certain set of things, which set includes the following things (and variations thereof):
- "I'm an atheist!"
- "I lack belief in God!"
- "There is no God!"
- "God does not exist!"
- etc.