In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.

Since in practice it is not worth contrasting a zero probability with one that is nearly indistinguishable from zero, he prefers to categorize himself as a " de facto atheist ".

The CPC is officially atheist, and prohibits party members from holding religious beliefs ( though this ban is, in many cases, unenforceable ).

The perception of Hume as an atheist with an axe to grind is an oversimplification and contrasts his views on extremist positioning.

He also claimed that " the atheist is activated by engrams as thoroughly as the zealot ".

Hume himself was uncomfortable with the terms deist and atheist, and Hume scholar Paul Russell has argued that the best and safest term for Hume's views is irreligion.

Dennett is a firm atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement.

Mayr was an unconventional atheist, stating he was an atheist towards " the idea of a personal God " because " there is nothing that supports "

Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir Zelman Cowen were Jewish ; Bill Hayden is an avowed atheist and he made an affirmation rather than swear an oath at the beginning of his commission ; the remaining Governors-General have been at least nominally Christian.

Toscanini, in a taped interview, described him as " an atheist ", but " agnostic " is probably the most accurate description.

In the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Ética and Iniciales " there is a strong interest in publishing scientific news, usually linked to a certain atheist and anti-theist obsession, philosophy which will also work for pointing out the incompatibility between science and religion, faith and reason.

Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish.

There followed the materialist and atheist Jean Meslier, Julien Offroy de La Mettrie, Paul-Henri Thiry Baron d ' Holbach, Denis Diderot, and other French Enlightenment thinkers ; as well as in England, John " Walking " Stewart, whose insistence that all matter is endowed with a moral dimension had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of William Wordsworth.

He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the " Koran of the courtiers ", that " he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends ".

A different approach to the problem of evil is to turn the tables on the atheist, by arguing that any argument from evil is self-refuting, in that its conclusion would necessitate the falsity of one of its premises.

There is an ancient tradition of skepticism about theology, followed by a more modern rise in secularist and atheist criticism.

By this, Guru Nanak meant that there is no distinction between religion in God's eyes, whether polytheist, monotheist, pantheist, or even atheist, all that one needs to gain salvation is purity of heart, tolerance of all beings, compassion and kindness.

* Albania is officially declared an atheist state by its leader, Enver Hoxha.

He is of Russian Jewish descent, but describes himself in interviews as an atheist who sometimes believes in God.

Lucretius ( an atheist writer ) and Jerome ( a Christian priest ) also write for opposing purposes, and whether or not Jerome had attempted to disparage Lucretius ' work as the work of a madman is an open question.

`` And if the dive goes OK he has the exclusive import rights to your line for this country, is that right ''??

In fact it has caused us to give serious thought to moving our residence south, because it is not easy for the most objective Southerner to sit calmly by when his host is telling a roomful of people that the only way to deal with Southerners who oppose integration is to send in troops and shoot the bastards down.

As it is, they consider that the North is now reaping the fruits of excess egalitarianism, that in spite of its high standard of living the `` American way '' has been proved inferior to the English and Scandinavian ways, although they disapprove of the socialistic features of the latter.

Historically, however, the concept is one that has been of marked benefit to the people of the Western civilizational group.

While the pattern is uneven, some having gained more than others, nationalism has in fact served the Western peoples well.

But it is more than irony: one of the main reasons why nationalism is no longer a tenable concept is because it has spread throughout the planet.

While sovereignty has roots in antiquity, in its present usage it is essentially modern.

It has nothing of the proud stride of the trained runner about it, it is not a lope, it is not done with style or verve.

It is softened by the saltbush and the bluebush, has a peaceful quality, the hills roll softly.

The music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, has molded his group into a prominent musical organization, which is his life.

`` Now that Bruno Walter is virtually in retirement and my dear friend Dimitri Mitropoulos is no longer with us, I am probably the only one -- with the possible exception of Leonard Bernstein -- who has this special affinity for and champions the works of Bruckner and Mahler ''.

Even though in most cases the completion of the definitive editions of their writings is still years off, enough documentation has already been assembled to warrant drawing a new composite profile of the leadership which performed the heroic dual feats of winning American independence and founding a new nation.

It is interesting, however, that despite this strong upsurge in Southern writing, almost none of the writers has forsaken the firmly entrenched concept of the white-suited big-daddy colonel sipping a mint julep as he silently recounts the revenue from the season's cotton and tobacco crops ; ;

But the South is, and has been for the past century, engaged in a wide-sweeping urbanization which, oddly enough, is not reflected in its literature.

In the meantime, while the South has been undergoing this phenomenal modernization that is so disappointing to the curious Yankee, Southern writers have certainly done little to reflect and promote their region's progress.

An approach that has appealed to some choreographers is reminiscent of Charles Olson's statement of the process of projective verse: `` one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception ''.

The process stipulates that the choreographer sense the quality of the initial movement he has discovered and that he feel the rightness of the quality that is to follow it.

Harris J. Griston, in Shaking The Dust From Shakespeare ( 216 ), writes: `` There is not a word spoken by Shylock which one would expect from a real Jew ''.

His birth, education, and fortune, he says, have all been ridiculed simply because he has spoken with the freedom of an Englishman, and he assures the reader that `` whoever talks with me, is speaking to a Gentleman born ''.

There's more reading and instruction to be heard on discs than ever before, although the spoken rather than the sung word is as old as Thomas Alva Edison's first experiment in recorded sound.

Dominant stress is of course more than extended duration, and normally centers on syllables that would have primary stress or phrase stress if the words or longer units they are parts of were spoken alone: a dominant stress given to glorify would normally center on its first syllable rather than its last.

In I knew you when you were a child, and you were pretty then dominant stress on then implies that the young woman spoken to is still pretty.

It is clear that patterns of stress sometimes show construction unambiguously in the spoken language where without the help of context it would be ambiguous in the written.

In the first of these sentences if by is the complement of come and Tuesday is an adjunct of time equivalent to on Tuesday, there will be strong stress on by in the spoken language ; ;

Since Russian was being spoken instead of Spanish, there is no violation of artistry or logic here.

The most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic ( including all its colloquial varieties ), with 230 million native speakers, spoken mostly in the Middle East and North Africa.

Augmentative and alternative communication ( AAC ) is an umbrella term that encompasses methods of communication for those with impairments or restrictions on the production or comprehension of spoken or written language.

An alphabet is a standard set of letters ( basic written symbols or graphemes ) which is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes ( basic significant sounds ) of the spoken language.

An African influence is evident in music and dance, and is moulding the way in which Portuguese is spoken, but is almost disappearing from the vocabulary.

Austrian German (), or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol ( Italy ).

With German being a pluricentric language, Austrian dialects should not be confused with the variety of Standard German spoken by most Austrians, which is distinct from that of Germany or Switzerland.

In the variant of German that is spoken in Germany, the words stehen ( to stand ) and gestehen ( to confess ) are identical in the present perfect: habe gestanden.

Also, the preterite ( simple past ) is very rarely used in Austria, especially in the spoken language, except for some modal verbs ( ich sollte, ich wollte ).

* Vorarlbergerisch, spoken in Vorarlberg, is a High Alemannic dialect.

Simple words in the various dialects are very similar, but pronunciation is distinct for each and, after listening to a few spoken words it may be possible for an Austrian to realise which dialect is being spoken.