I'm typing quickly in a cab so pardon my spelling and sentence structure.
What good does it serve at this point to place a large emphasis on whether a person is a theist or atheist? I don't see it as being that helpful nowadays. Your position on the god claim tells me precious little about you. Whether you choose to act on and how you act on those positions is a different matter and not intrinsically linked to saying yes I believe or no I don't believe. Is there any rational, helpful reason to place a large emphasis purely on whether or not the next person you bump into on the street is a xtian, anti-theist, buddhist, or sunni?
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Well, yes, if the adjacent person thinks that i deserve to burn for eternity, it helps me understand the level of mental damage that person has.
One doesn't need to have position on the god claim to think you deserve eternal torture Jeff and unless that person acts on that belief that you should (says it for example) then you would not know. So...
I would
If someone calls himself a christian and doesn't know that he is automatically putting himself in a selected group that can avoid hell, then it helps me to understand that they either do not understand their actual position or they embrace it.
In either case, some level of mental damage is clear.
Someone's position on the god claim tells me a valuable amount about them. Certainly it in no way tells me the amount I'd like or may need to know. However, I scrape quite a bit from it.
I'm not sure how the 'nowadays' part fits in.
I do agree that how a person acts in relation to how they think is quite a big deal and, actually, the crux of the biscuit. Knowing what they think or believe, though, tells me what they choose to wrap their arms around and provides me with information that may assist me in my interactions with them.
Cyber LN made fun of an awkward term I unnecessarily forced into a sentence again..I'M TELLING MOM!!
Kidding aside, I'm not saying that knowing if a person is an atheist or a wiccan isn't helpful at all. I just don't see it being worthy of major emphasis or importance in and of itself. Me saying that I'm an anti-theist doesn't tell you whether I'm a misogynist, antivacccer, or a person that never, ever tips at restaurants.
Go right ahead and run to mom. Typical. She always liked you best anyway! (Sound of LN making raspberrys in Ellie's direction.)
I agree that a declaration of a/theism doesn't tell me enough to know if I think you're a complete ass or a decent sort of person. It's a part of who you are and how you think and therefore important to me. It is just ONE of the many things I want to know. So it sounds like we actually agree. (No cracks about that being shocking.)
If theists didn't try to use their archaic and for the most part down right stupid rules to try to meddle in politics, science and education, I wouldn't care nearly as much as I do.
The term atheist seems to me like it's mostly confusing. People tend to bring all kinds of associations into the word, so as a "title" I think it's pretty useless.
You have a point Pragmatic. If not for the legal ramifications and social stigmas attached to groups that don't believe in certain deities or any deities, there'd be no major significance attached to thoughts on the God claim.