To quote a friend's .sig file

[prog]

"Good job everybody."

Also:

• Is this the first time a sitting U.S. president gave a shout-out to nonreligious Americans in a major speech? (He used the word 'non-believers', which I also approve of.)

• I was glad that there didn't seem to be much chanting after his speech. The time for that stuff is done; now is the time to get to work.

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

I personally favor (and identify as) 'nonreligious', but the word he chose was close enough for me.

I find 'agnostic' and 'atheist' laden with too much cultural baggage, and am happy he didn't use them. I'd suspect that other labels (such as Humanist) would prove insufficiently meaningful to a global audience.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

i'm just glad it didn't get lumped in with "other".

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

It's a complicated word choice, esp since there are those who follow religions without gods or believe in a god but adhere to no religion. I prefer non-beleiver in this context, because it makes it clear he's not just talking about the "non-denominational" group but those who actually lack religious belief as well as religious affiliation.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I'd have preferred "humanist" because it's more positive, albeit less inclusive. The text of the speech I read online had "and non-believers" separated by an em-dash from the rest of the sentence, but I don't know if it was transcribed from the spoken version or an official released version.

Either way it was a wonderful thing to hear. Well done, guys, and welcome back to the world.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately a lot of people (citation required, I know) out there think that "humanist" means "wants to ban religion". The "-ist" suffix makes people think it's a competition. I'm not a believer but I'm not out to dissuade people or stop their practice, so calling me a "humanist" might give people the wrong impression.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I find a lot of people having this reaction to "atheist", too.

Many years ago I called myself "agnostic", but lots of people take this as meaning "just not sure" or "questioning", which doesn't fit me either.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Luckily for me I rarely find myself on the spot to pick an adjective. I can't remember the last time anybody put me on the spot with a "what are you, anyway" question. At a family gathering I might explain that I wasn't with my folks at a particular church service because "I don't go to church", that's all. I don't get asked "well what are you, then" much, if at all.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should try that. Some Jehovah Witnesses came to my door once and when they went away, my upstairs neighbor asked who they were, I told her, she asked if I were a J.W. and I said no, but that wasn't enough for her. She said, "What are you?"

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I believe people mostly see in others what they find in themselves, and on that basis I'd say any religious person who is threatened by "humanist" isn't responding to an innocent suffix, but to their own dreams of ideological conquest.

I am not about to change my language to make nice with such people, because they are my enemies, pure and simple, and I AM out to change their beliefs, at least to the extent of getting them to accept my right to believe in what I believe in just as I accept theirs.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

And I'm not about to change my language to antagonize people who are not my enemies, but are merely deluded, for the sake of the semantics of words that demonstrably mean different things to different people.

I wasn't talking about not wanting to change people's beliefs in human rights; I was talking about not wanting to dissuade people about the existence of deities.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I never liked "humanist" because it sounds like what PETA would call its enemies. But I guess that's more typically "speciesist".

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

Yup.. i agree about that -- 'atheist' has the baggage of being 'arrogant and anti-religous' whereas 'agnostic' just sounds wishy-washy.