You're still not getting it. It’s not a category mistake. A category mistake happens when you assign a property to something that doesn’t belong to its category — like saying, "a chair is thinking about God." That would be absurd because chairs don’t belong to the category of beings capable of thought or belief.
First off, you have above said that by your own reckoning, an atheist is someone who actively believes that God does not exist. So, by your own reckoning, a chair cannot be atheist, which rules out one sort of anti-theist at least.
Second, you are employing an anthropomorphic fallacy, attributing human characteristics i.e. of 'lacking belief' or being 'not-theist' to things inanimate. When you say "A non-theist is, by definition, "not a theist." the 'definition' here is of opposite theological positions. But you are attributing a chair a position in human theological discourse which it does not, and cannot, 'hold'.
It merely echoes a human negative in being mute. A subtle but crucial difference. Is 'not-theist' a natural and reasonable attribute of a chair, in the same way as polish or the number of legs is? It's daft and sounds a little desperate your logic, no matter how strictly correct; rather like saying' rocks don't appreciate art'. That doesn't mean it is is useful or sensible to call rocks 'philistines' - or even that it tells us anything more that is meaningful about them. Rocks don't 'appreciate' anything and aesthetics, like theology, is a human trait.
or there is this to which things can be boiled, since we all like logic
1. If a chair does not hold theological positions
2 and anti-theism is defined as a "theological position"
3 then a chair does not hold to be anti theist.
In formal logic, "non-theist" means "not a theist,"
And yet, just above you expand the meaning to include "anyone who lacks belief in a god for any reason" which brings, as already said, nothing of the precision you prize. As you say I might be anti-deist, agnostic or, er, a chair. So why specifically 'anti-theist'? . A reason why Flew's two-fold distinction is so useful and I will stick with it.
He wasn't making a category error and neither am I.
The theological position of this chair is non-theist' is a category mistake, just like 'the number of blue is 7' is.
My point, still, is that while one can be an anti-theist not believing in a (theistic) God it is useful to distinguish between those atheists who go on to assert that God does not exist, and those others who do not - something which the bald 'anti-theist' label does not. Hence, once again, Flew's widely accepted and useful distinction plays best as a tool.
reply
share