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True even if your movement has pure intentions and is run mostly by capable idealists, which is rare in itself. Power corrupts.

Money makes the world go round

In a dictionary a word can have more than one meaning and context matters.

Precisely. Which is why you can make the case why the distinction is important to you, and why other people should care about and respect the more specific definition.

But you didn’t make that case. You took the position that there’s exactly one valid definition and the other person was factually, self-evidently wrong, and needed not to be convinced but to be condescendingly corrected. That is not conducive to your goal of conveying your position, it doesn’t represent the community position well to outsiders, and it rubs me the wrong way simply because it’s self-absorbed and extremely rude. Hence my sarcastic initial reply.

If you seek a discussion that others can meaningfully engage with, purely out of self-interest you need to be able to center other people’s perspective, not talk down to them about how they could be so obviously wrong and stupid.

Being perceived as less of a total ass is just a bonus.

You’re completely missing the point. This isn’t about a community no matter how much you’d prefer otherwise. This was a conversation in a public forum.

The word “sceptic” has a generally understood meaning regardless of how the community feels about it, because the general public isn’t paying attention to what the community wants.

You can either change your mind or stick to your beliefs despite the evidence.

How kind of you. Word of advice, don’t resort to statements like this. It’s transparent ego stroking that makes you sound like a self-centered asshole and doesn’t help your argument in any way.

The community’s use isn’t the correct point of reference. It is also naturally biased, because the community seeks to avoid association with these people.

It’s not crazy or outlandish to label Harris or Dawkins as skeptics in the common use of the term. It’s core to their branding whether you like it or not. That’s what matters when you talk to people outside the community, not the insular definition you treat as objective fact.

I don’t even see a point in litigating this, other than the one I mentioned already. It was clear from context what they were talking about.

Just check out his other videos I guess. I think he can be quite funny, and this video isn’t the best example. But he’s built a lot of goodwill by other means with the blender community over the years, he didn’t become popular as a comedian.

“I utilize a narrower definition of the word, shame you are too closed-minded to comprehend that I’m right. Now let’s force a debate on semantics to maximize our time wasted.”

Fascinating. I wonder how the millions of Chinese Catholics feel about this use.