Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Well, some of us at any rate.
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Are people born inherently atheist?
- Thread starter eggyolk
- Start date
That is it right there. It isn't up to atheists to define what theism is. Theism is based on an individuals belief. Atheists don't have to recognize the sun as a potential deity, they just have to recognize that people may worship the sun and therefore be considered theists.
Basically atheists don't accept anything as a deity and it only takes one exception to make them theist.
As I explained before, the person with no beliefs is a side issue. This person ends up being classified as an atheist if we choose the coherent approach to the term "atheist", but the fact of their atheism rarely matters.
What strawman? I thought your definition was a lack of belief in gods. I also assumed that because you said
1) atheists cannot be theists (fine, I agree)
2)
that there was something that "disbelief in all gods" must capture that had something to do with what theists believe about their gods. That's also because you said that the definition was:
Clearly, you believe in the sun. Apparently you are ok with defining those who call it god "theists". You also define theism now quite clearly:
However, if this definition is correct, then there must be a way of knowing who is and isn't a theist. If we use self-designations, which includes theists who are theists and differ from atheists only in that they apply a different or additional term to one or more things that atheists do believe in (like the sun or humans), then the only way to ensure there is no overlap is to define an atheist entirely by the application of the term "god" to whatever it is a given theist believes. That is, if a theist thinks the sun a god, an atheist is not a theist because they don't describe the sun that way. That is the only thing that can reliably differentiate theists from atheists thanks to the instances in which theists define themselves only because they call "god" that which atheists believe in, but do not call, god.
Therefore, an atheist is someone who can believe anything they wish just so long as they don't use the term god or call themselves a theist. It doesn't matter if they believe everything a rabbi or nun does so long as they don't call themselves theists or state that the entities they believe in are gods (after all, if we cannot restrict what theists apply the term to, then we are left only with the application of the term itself or there is overlap).
Google? Really? Is that because you don't know that the Google N-gram I mentioned is a project at BYU as part of the database in corpus linguistics in the US and one of the top in the world or just a generic insult?
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It isn't to point fingers. We don't start off with any specific beliefs so infants grow up not having beliefs in a great many of things yet we have one non-belief that has a specific term, as if atheism is a special sort of not-believing, well it isn't special. Atheism would exist even without needing the term to begin with. Theism only exists as a matter of faith in a very specific sort of belief, without a positive specific belief in any sort of deity, then not believing in ___ remains default.
Atheists can identify Sun-worshippers as theists as well as theists can...
I suppose that can be done but it isnt' a requirement for atheism. Atheists do not require knowledge of any concepts in order to not believe.You know what I'm going to say next.
Actively disbelieving in claims of "god" (or gods).
That we don't start off with any significant beliefs makes that we don't start off with a belief in god the very epitome of "superfluous."
No concept, nothing to stand against. Then an atheist may just as well be defined as "lack of belief" in nothing.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
That ignores the reasons that have already been given for applying the label "atheists" to babies.
outhouse
Atheistically
Stop it. Please.
That's right... and that describes what actually happens: Muslims and Jews believe in angels but don't consider them gods, so we call them monotheists. Pagans believe in beings similar to angels and do consider them gods, so we call them polytheists.
Heck, in some cases, Pagan gods were incorporated into Christian beliefs as "saints", but we don't consider them to be gods in that context... even though the exact same things are gods in a Pagan context.
We use self-designations all the time. If this offends you, I'm sorry, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation.
That's right: a Christian can believe in everything a polytheistic Pagan believes in, and as long as the Christian considers all of the Pagan's "gods" to be "angels", "demons", "saints", and "spirits", he's not a polytheist.
If your experience has been different, please share.
No insult intended - I'm sure it's awesome. Does it suggest that people tend to describe Muslims as polytheists?
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I said as much but the catch is that atheists don't have to reject sun-worship to be atheist.
I am many things but a liar isn't one of. I have no ******* clue what the **** you mean.
I get that. It's irrelevant to my last post. You've already indicated that you are using, apparently, self-designations. I don't give a **** I am only concerned with the questions you continually do not answer. Let's see if we can't make this clear:
I defined atheist as someone who doesn't believe in any gods. You claimed that this is untenable because it is impossible to reject all gods. You also claimed that defining atheism in terms of a lack of belief means you don't need a clear definition that you implicitly claim we would otherwise. I could not care less about this polytheism ********. I am only interested in whether your assertions about the removal of problems in your definition are true, and further that they are in ways mine can't be.
What I explained in the last post, which you either didn't read or couldn't understand, had nothing whatsoever to do with polytheism or any of that junk you keep repeating. I accepted your definitions as true for the sake of argument and covered the logical consequences. The logical consequence is that a person can believe absolutely anything and everything a theist does as long as they neither use the term "god" to describe the entities they believe in and that they do not call themselves theists.
That was it. Instead of even attempting to address whether this conclusion of my wasn't actually entailed by what you said (or if you agreed, for that matter), or that I had formulated my premises in ways that mischaracterized your definitions, you seem to have thought I was in some way arguing against using particular definitions of theism or something and for some reason I can't fathom thought that polytheism could make the slightest different to the logic of my argument which took your definitions for granted. Let me repeat: The post that you responded to first tried to clarify your statements, in particular to ensure that "lack of belief" isn't the definition of atheism according to you (although it may be true of all atheists) but that it is only that an atheist isn't a theist, no matter why theists are said or believe themselves to be theists.
I also gave you another definition earlier which is every bit as consistent as yours and which requires disbelief: an atheist is someone who either does not believe that any entity exists which theists call god, or believes that that entity is not a god.
Your definition requires us to hold that if a theist refers to some entity, like the sun or a human, as "god", then an atheist still does not believe in that entity but only because they do not ascribe to that entity the term god. I accepted as ******* GIVEN that we are not trying to define theism for the conclusion I gave. That conclusion was
1) given we accept a self-designation of "theist" for those who believe in entities that atheists also believe, such as human beings
and
2) given that an atheist cannot be a theist
then
the only difference that ensures no overlap is that an atheist doesn't apply to any entity the label "god" and that the atheist doesn't consider themselves a theist.
Which means that an atheist can believe everything any theist believes as long as they don't use the terms "theist" to describe their beliefs and "god" to describe whatever supernatural omniscient omnipresent entities they believe in.
In other words, by defining atheism as you do you limit it to the statement that one does not use two terms but that any other beliefs whatsoever are compatible with atheism. The pope can be an atheist by changing 2 things: calling the god of the catholic church The Great One (or anything else other than "god") and referring to his position as "belief in an entity that has all the properties catholics ascribe to god" rather than "theistic".
If you don't think your statements entail this, then feel free to read the last post I made and actually address the points in it.
It doesn't really matter if "lack a belief" is incoherent when your definition for atheist means people can believe whatever they want and be atheist just so long as they don't use two terms.
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Its not about using specific terms, its about belief. So long as a person doesn't believe in any deity concept they are theist. They only have to answer yes to one deity concept to be theist even if it is worshipping milk jugs. People don't even have to agree with it, only that individual can say with any degree of certainty what it is they believe.
I agree. What you quoted was neither my belief nor logically entailed in what I hold to be true. I was addressing what followed from the definitions of another, not from me.
Trying to follow. If the pope called himself an atheist, who am I to judge someones belief? I might even debate the pope is actually theist but it doesn't matter. The belief is on that person to say.
The pope need not according the definition. An atheist, according to this definition, is not a theist. The pope could call himself a worshipper of the most high and be an atheist. He could believe that an entity created the universe, caused his pre-existent son (who is also somehow himself) to be born and rise from the dead, and so on, yet be an atheist because the only two necessary criteria according to the proposed definition is:
1) the person does not identify themselves as a theist
2) the person does not apply the term "god" to any entity.
So the pope need not identify himself as an atheist and is free to accept everything he does now as being true so long as he doesn't use the term "god". Because apparently atheism is solely a matter of whether you use two words in your descriptions of your beliefs. You can believe anything at all and be an atheist just so long as you use words other than these two when describing your beliefs.