You can't let people who are trying to screw with language ruin language for you. Militant atheists do it, militant Christians do it. It's something you do if you want to seem right regardless of whether or not you're actually right.
Actually, I don't think it's something done by militant anyone. In the case of "animal", it might be a misunderstanding or it might be a deliberate fallacy. "Animal" has several definitions, but the two relevant ones are (from dictionary.com) "any member of the kingdom Animalia..." and "an inhuman person; brutish or beastlike person". If we're having a discussion on humans' relation to other organisms, then the first definition is clearly the one being used. The problem occurs when the second definition gets mixed up, either deliberately or accidentally. An example of deliberate misuse is the following argument:
- I am ethical and compassionate and not brutish
- Therefore I am not an animal
- Since I am not an animal, I must therefore be set apart from other multicellular/responsive/heterotrophic (etc.) eukaryotes.
This is the fallacy of equivocation, whereby two or more definitions of a critical word are used interchangeably. A somewhat more humorous example:
- An old hotdog is better than nothing
- Nothing is better than an expertly-cooked steak
- Therefore, an old hotdog is better than an expertly-cooked steak
It's like how the word "faith" gets used to refer to religious belief and methodological naturalism. Words have to be kept in line.
"Faith" is another excellent example of a word that's often used in arguments that are fallacious due to equivocation. Apologists often use the "confidence or trust in a person or thing" or "belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc." definitions interchangeably with the "belief that is not based on proof" or "a system of religious belief" definitions. An example:
- You trust your family to do the right thing
- Therefore you have faith
- I believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, not due to any observation, but due to my religious beliefs. In other words, due to faith.
- Since you have faith, it is completely hypocritical of you to criticize me for my faith.
Yet another example germane to the C/E discussion is the use of theory. Scientists use it one way, and creationists often equivocate that to "guess or hunch" in order to claim that "evolution is
just a theory".
In my opinion, it's not a matter of using new definitions or self-defining words so much as it is a matter of being as clear as possible in what you're trying to communicate.
