[Skybird]

Atheist conventions? I am not aware we have that over here, and if it happens, it is happening outside the reach of my radar screen. But beside the conspirating Catholic church and the dummy protestants, we only have Islam sabotaging our society, but no radical militant Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, so there might be a difference between Europe/Germany and the US here.

But i can imagine that it is different in America, where radical evangelists and born again Christians and fundamentalists are acting much more aggressive and even militant than in any Western country, so atheists may see freedom and secularism being under much heavier fire from religious rightwingers in the US and thus feel a greater need to organise themselves and coordinate resistence to that.

- When considering that for example many atheists fear for the wellbeing of their family and their job if they would reveal their atheist attitude and happen to live in some conservative community in the bible belt ( this is being illustrated in so many stories and interviews I read over the years that I have stopped to count them),

- or when you consider that there are many regions and high ranking public offices that you are in practice unable to ever reach or get voted into if you tell the public you do not believe in God (you are better off to admit you are a believing Satanist, but never-never admit you believe nothing!) ,

- or when you consider that an American president gets away with saying that he thinks Americans who do not believe in God are not even true Americans and of course also are no patriots even when they put their life at risk for their country in wars;

- when you consider that nationwide bible swingers try to push biblic ideas of world creation into public education plans, and where they fail to get it implemented in the law tell their people in the system to present it beside the offical education plans as a "alternative" that pupils should be strongly encouraged to examine (this is missionising imo, nothing else, and undermining the education sector);

- if you consider that 3 in ten Americans take the bible literally,

- when you consider that 4.5 in 10 Americans believe in creationism;

- when you consider that it is claimed time and again the foundign fathers founded America as ex explicitly Christian nation,

- when you consider how religious lobbying has penetrated the secular basic order and brought the referance to the Christian god both into the Pledge of Allegiance and onto coins and bank notes,

- when you consider the murderous militancy of opponents of abortion,

- while many of these man-loving humanists at the same time go hysteric when shouting their soul out of their throats in front of a prison and cannot get a execution candidate killed soon enough;

when you consider all these examples and many others, then you may get an idea why atheists maybe find the secular state order of the US in danger and themselves under pressure and thus decide that they want to organise their resistence to all this religious madness - to increase their own chance of survival, to defend freedom (last but not least the freedom FROM relgion), and to defend secularism.

u_crank, I just had a brief look at two dictionaries I have on my shelve here, and then compared some terms on the german and the English wikipedia site as well. All definitions were different a bit, so I fear your list of entries only illustrate the diversity in different understandings, but in no way mark the final word on the meaning of a term. And the meaning I pragmatically tend to base on is how the word most often is used in contemporary language, or I explicitly refer to the original latin or greek origin.

Dictionaries - in the end are about spelling only, not about encyclopedic definition. They give a hint on the meaning terms maybe - but these are usually subjective and vary from publisher to publisher.

However, I have given earlier explanations of how I use the terms you questioned. And much earlier I also explained my - as I admitted: very different - use of the terms religion and spirituality, and what I mean by both.

As your seocnd-last posting is concerned and to which i referred, "prophets of atheism", it was clearly meant as somethign derogatory, an attempt to destroy a reputation of somethign or somebody without needing to deal with its/his arguments. And these arguments stand on a basis of scientific strong fact, and use of logic and reason. Counter these arguments on thesame terms, if you can. Dawkins is not giving a dogma, a prognosis on basis of nothing, or a prophecy quoting hear-say - that is religion's business, not his. He is giving conclusions that are the results of examination and analysis and implementation of quite uncomplicated logical thought. And I can only take serious opposing views that are able to meet these conclusions on the ground of right these principles. "But I believe differently", and leaving it to that, is just not good enough.