What do you think of self-proclaimed atheists that spell the word wrong?

It doesn’t bother me that much – as long as they at least understand the concept.

Eh, it bothers me, but not as much as “Nuke-you-lar.” shudders

Perhaps thy don’t believe in spelling rules.

I think it’s a rather silly observation on your part. And totally meaningless.

If you want to denigrate atheists, at least do it on intellectually defensible grounds. Spelling is a lot art, whether it is the word ‘atheist’ or any other word. How man times have you seen ‘it’s’ instead of ‘its’? And so on and so forth.

Bottom line: if you have an issue with people who don’t have the same life view on you, then debate the issue on real honest grounds. Spelling is not one of those.

WTF? ^^ I’m an atheist, which is why I asked this question in the first place…

I think it’s as odd as a believer in Christ writing “Christain.”

It also reflects a misunderstanding of the word itself (“the” being the same component as in “theology” and meaning “god”: “atheos” = “without god”), as well as a poor job of recognizing the difference in English between the suffix ”-est,” which normally means the superlative (oldest, nicest, funniest, etc.), and ”-ist,” which is typically a practitioner of something (dentist, nudist, columnist, etc.).

And yes, it does bug me. It’s hard for me to regard such a person as having much conviction if the word itself doesn’t merit any attention.

The misspelling of any one word, no matter how common, may not be a terribly important matter. But a general satisfaction with ignorance and an indifference to rudimentary language skills spell trouble for a society.

Agreed! ^^

Who cares? Is it really an indication of anything regarding their faith? It’s just a simple mistake. Not everyone is well read enough to have perfect grammar and spelling.

He’s dyslexic?

@Jeruba, r u serious?

“Moving back into the eighteenth century, we find the puristic movement at its height. Utterances of dismay and disgust at the state of the language followed one another thick and fast, expressed with far greater urgency than we normally find today. Famous outbursts included one in 1710 by Jonathan Swift. Writing in the Tatler, he launched an attack on the condition of English. He followed this up two years later with a letter to the Lord Treasurer urging the formation of an academy to regulate language usage, since even the best authors of the age, in his opinion, committed ‘many gross improprieties which . . . ought to be discarded’. In 1755, Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of the English language was published. He stated in the preface that ‘Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration’, urging that ‘we retard what we cannot repel, that we
palliate what we cannot cure’. In 1762, Robert Lowth, Bishop of London, complained that ‘the English Language hath been much cultivated during the last 200 years . . . but . . . it hath made no advances in Grammatical accuracy’. He himself attempted to lay down ‘rules’ of good usage, because ‘our best Authors for want of some rudiments of this type have sometimes fallen into mistakes, and been guilty of palpable error in point of Grammar.’
In short, expressions of disgust about language, and proposals for remedying the situation, were at their height in the eighteenth century.”

—Language change: progress or decay?

Was the archaic language of the aforementioned old farts superior to today’s “best” usage?

Not everyone spends time learning about language structure and roots and all that. Athiest actually makes more sense to me, phonetically. So they misspell it? Maybe they learn language differently. Maybe they’re dyslexic. Maybe English is their second (third, forth) language. Maybe their atheism is more about a lack of belief in deities than a study of that lack of belief in deities. It doesn’t mean anything.

ETA: “self-proclaimed” atheists? Is that like when they say they’re an atheist, but you know better?

God spake unto His creatures saying ”thou shalt place I before E, except after C or when sounded as A, as in neighbour or weigh”

Dumb fucks.

Oh.My.God. I’m not an athiest atheist, but…...... I think I’ve done that before. <hangs head in shame>

Edit: Okay, phew! Apparently, I’ve only done that due to typo. I just did a search on all my own “atheist” comments. :D

I’m sure there’s people out in the world who can’t read or write, and happen to not believe in a God. Who cares.

It falls into the ‘life is too short to worry about this’ category for me. And yes @WillWorkForChocolate, it could be a typo or someone is dyslexic or perhaps, shame on them, they can’t spell.

The only thing I would think is that the person is not the best speller in the world. That’s all. Having a belief in a god, or a lack thereof, and being a good speller have nothing in common.

Any misspelling bugs me (especially my own!), but not overly so.

It would support my contention that only theists commit spelling errors, and would therefore refute that person’s self-proclamation. ~

I think nothing

It’s meaningless if it happens once. Everyone is prone to typos every now and then. However, people who value education should at some point notice incorrect spellings. I think athiest versus atheist is easier to notice than Ghandi versus Gandhi.

The term athiest will give you almost 8.3 million Google hits. That’s quite significant. Even searching for athiest and fluther will give you 1270 hits. However, we cannot deduce that it’s mostly atheists misspelling the word. There are lots of theists talking about atheism.

@mattbrowne: I notice ‘Ghandi’ versus Gandhi. Ghandi is a curse word unfortunately >_>

Maybe the part of the brain where belief in the supernatural originates, is the same part that determines spelling skill.

I thought my answer was so funny and I didn’t get one single GA! Come on people where is your sense of humour!!!! (or humor, if you prefer)

I don’t know why human beings have such a hard time with spelling, but they do, in general, in all areas, and yes, it is annoying all the time. It just looks uneducated.

@deni Because the English language is some freaky-deaky combo of Germanic and Romance languages, which means for every rule there’s also lots of exceptions. Atheist does violate that “i before e, except after c” rule.

@Aethelflaed I know it’s a crazy language, but that isn’t an excuse for not being able to spell and having been through at least 12 years of school for most people. Something as simple as your/you’re. NO EXCUSE.

@deni See: dyslexia and other learning disorders, ESL, how “your/you’re” is pronounced in various regions. EXCUSED.

@Aethelflaed Those are specific issues that most people don’t have. Come on. I’m from Pittsburgh where people say YINZ rather than your or you’re. It’s a word, it does not change from region to region, except in the way it is pronounced (or altogether changed to a different word when speaking….Yall, yinz, etc) and regardless that is definitely not an excuse to not know how to spell one of the most common words in our language.

@deni It’s pretty common to have LD/dyslexia. It does change from region to region in pronunciation, which many people go off of when typing, and autocorrect isn’t going to tell them they did it wrong.

I’d rather be overly understanding than judgmental over one of the smallest mistakes a person can make.

So what does the OP think about this?

@bookish1 – Ghandi is one of the most common misspellings. 35 million Google hits and I don’t think many hits are about the curse form. The correct spelling Gandhi only yields 26 million hits. Amazing.

Well, it’s pronounced “Gh…” not “Ga.”