Thank you for the clarification.

I’d say the semantics arguments come from countering religions’ manipulative perversion of language.

Many religions use tricky language to confuse, conflate and abuse. One such example is that Christian apologists have conflated atheist with heretic for the better part of two millennia. Which is of course absurd, as most Christians are atheist towards Hindu gods, and are thus definitionally more atheist than Hindus.

Yet atheist/heretic/apostate remains as a dirty label, and includes judgement of character, and in many parts of the world persecution or lesser worth.

Reclaiming the word serves in part to actually give it usefulness beyond a boogeyman, to allow for discussions on fundamentals of belief, epistemology, and the contrast of belief vs reasons vs knowableness.

It also helps bridge some of the damage religion has done. When religious people get some nuance to the boogeyman term, they typically are more open to seeing the human cost of stereotyping and shunning people because of that label.

Other perverted terms common to religious trauma are gnosticism (ofc), but also love, grief, acceptance, morality and righteousness.

Things that us having to break free from religion all had to relearn the hard way, and typically while hiding from our still religious close ones.