• saltesc@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-ism

    I don’t know what to say. We haven’t changed the language, the construction of Greek morphemes within Greek etymology, made a recent exception, or changed the meaning of Atheism to suit a collective of people recently misunderstanding fundamentals of philosophical and/or psychological stances on topics.

    I don’t want to sound patronising, but I really did not think this needed sources.

    If you can think of any other word—just one of the thousands—ending with ism that breaks any of these common understandings, where ism isn’t a suffix to the thing that precedes it, rather is attached to an existing ism and the prefix morpheme is actually the defining stance of the word, please, share. To my understanding, it simply doesn’t exist and one ism has never been nor suddenly is an exception.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Could you please cite the part of the Wikipedia article that supports your point? I looked through it and couldn’t identify it.

      It seems to me that you’re arguing from a linguistic point of view, and missing the forest for the trees. Again I pose my question - are animals that existed before humans non-human?

      • saltesc@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        What you’re asking has no relevance to positions of belief. It has relevance to physical things. These aren’t isms.

        Did humanism exist before humans? No.

        Did non-human things exist before humans? Yes.

        If you’re saying atheism is a lack of theism, that’s fine—loosely. But it will be confusing to other people if you don’t clarify that stance. people with English as secondary language, other atheists or theists, people that delve into atheism, or people that are curious about how their stance fits in etc.

        Deism is without theism, that doesn’t make it atheism. The article is quite clear. Being a position of belief is indicated by the ism. The part before it defines the position of belief. Whether disbelief/lack of belief of the gods, or belief in no gods. It is not being without the belief of the belief in gods. That’s just anything that’s without theism which is soooo many things.

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Deism is without theism, that doesn’t make it atheism. The article is quite clear. Being a position of belief is indicated by the ism. The part before it defines the position of belief. Whether disbelief/lack of belief of the gods, or belief in no gods. It is not being without the belief of the belief in gods.

          Now please clearly explain the difference between the position “no belief in gods” and “no belief in gods because the concept doesn’t yet exist”. That’s what your entire position hinges on, and you haven’t given any arguments for it.

          Also, the article is quite clear in not supporting your position. It says:

          -ism (/-ˌɪzəm/) is a suffix in many English words, originally derived from the Ancient Greek suffix -ισμός (-ismós), and reached English through the Latin -ismus, and the French -isme.[1] It means “taking side with” or “imitation of”, and is often used to describe philosophies, theories, religions, social movements, artistic movements, lifestyles,[2] and behaviors.[3] It is typically added to nouns.

          No mention of requirements regarding pre-existing concepts or anything similar.