YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
Which makes the thread's original question just silly.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Are people born inherently atheist?
- Thread starter eggyolk
- Start date
That also encompasses withholding belief, which excludes one from being atheist or theist.
The incoherence stems from the claim that lack of belief doesn't entail not believing if it is to be said of atheists.
As for the definition, it's just utterly useless. It means that we define atheism solely by whether or not someone uses two words. I think that a definition of atheism which can include the pope without changing any beliefs whatsoever just so long as the pope changes the term he applies to god to "Most High Lord" and no longer calls himself a theist.
That's certainly a consistent definition. In fact, it's just about the only way to get consistent definitions: define things such that they basically have no meaning. It's what we do in mathematics where ambiguity really can't be tolerated. It's also why we don't speak a language equivalent with any system of formal logic- the communication of concepts requires inconsistency. This is why. You've made the definition consistent and useless.
You are the only one I've ever encountered who believes that an individual can believe everything in any god or gods any theists do just as long as they don't use the term "god" as a descriptor of the entity/entities they believe in and in addition don't define themselves as theists.
Probably not, although I don't know anything about them other than your link, so I'm limited by my understanding. The way I use atheism is more inclusive than most. Strictly speaking it is the denial that god or gods exist, but that was because for centuries to be religious or spiritual almost always meant believing in god or gods. It doesn't today, so I tend not to categorize as atheists those who are religious in general unless their religious beliefs don't involve the supernatural. I accept, however, those who apply the term solely to a denial of the existence of god or gods.
Were that true, you'd think the most comprehensive dictionary in the English language would at least list this as a definition, if not a primary one. In my last post, I also quoted from a source explaining that a lack of belief means not believing. Your use isn't compatible with either. Before I bother, exactly what would it take (as in what kinds of sources and the number I'd have to provide) in order for you to take these as indicative of what the common usage(s) are?
No it doesn't. Not even if we grant your implicit assumption that belief is something that can be "withheld". Someone who "withholds belief" - if such a thing is possible - would be an atheist.
What I don't get is how the act of "belief" somehow gets translated into "those who believe," such that the negation of belief ends up eliminating people who believe, instead of belief itself.
WIthholding belief is something.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. "Lack of" a thing implies not having it.
Yes, because atheism is a term about the question of belief in god, and that's how we talk about belief in god. This is the point I tried to get through to you when I brought up polytheism vs. monotheism. Whether a person considers a thing to be a god is what matters when we decide whether to count their belief in that thing as belief in a god.
The mere fact that you can't figure out how to use the definition doesn't make it useless. Plenty of people use the term that way and manage to express meaning with it.
That's not true, and I illustrated it with that whole polytheism vs. monotheism discussion: when we're deciding whether a person who believes in angels is a polytheist, for instance, the relevant question is whether the believer considers angels to be gods, not whether angels meet some sort of objective criteria for "god".
This is how we talk about belief in god.
It wasn't a yes or no question.
What's "the supernatural"?
I'll have to take your word for what the full OED says, since I don't have access to it. I do think it's strange, though, that you think that Oxford is authoritative when we're talking about the OED, but you're willing to disregard it when we're talking about their other offerings:
atheist: definition of atheist in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)
Atheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BTW: that Wiki page cites the OED and quotes its definition of "theism" that suggests that theism and atheism are complementary ("Belief in a deity, or deities, as opposed to atheism"). Since you apparently have access to it, can you confirm this?
Also, how does the OED define "disbelief"? Oxford's free online dictionary defines it like this:
disbelief: definition of disbelief in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)
If they include lack of belief in their definition of "disbelief", then it would seem that their definition does reflect what I've been saying.
Yes, it is.
It would take you being right - IOW, a different situation than what actually exists.
Last edited:
I think we need to clear something up, since it seems like we're talking past each other:
Can you explain what you mean here?
I would've thought it was obvious to the point of not needing to mention it that either "lack of belief" or "not believing" refers, well, to not having the belief in question. However, it seems like you're interpreting "not believing" in a thing to mean something like "believing in the thing's opposite". Is this correct? If so, why would you interpret the term this way?
Can you explain what you mean here?
I would've thought it was obvious to the point of not needing to mention it that either "lack of belief" or "not believing" refers, well, to not having the belief in question. However, it seems like you're interpreting "not believing" in a thing to mean something like "believing in the thing's opposite". Is this correct? If so, why would you interpret the term this way?
This is where I stand on atheism. A belief is an attitude toward a proposition that holds it to be true. The negation of the attitude is the attitude that holds the proposition to be false.
If we take the proposition to be "there is a god or gods," and negate the attitude, then we hold the proposition "there is a god or gods" to be false. Similarly if we negate the proposition, then we hold "there are no god or gods" to be true. Either one is atheism.
If we eliminate the belief, take it out of the picture entirely so that it was never there, there is no opportunity for anything to be negated because there never was anything to negate. Atheism is negation, rather than elimination, of belief.
Much of the head-butting about people being able to (have the capacity to) believe before they can be called atheist is from people who understand this. The other group conflate elimination ("no X") with negation ("not X").
If we take the proposition to be "there is a god or gods," and negate the attitude, then we hold the proposition "there is a god or gods" to be false. Similarly if we negate the proposition, then we hold "there are no god or gods" to be true. Either one is atheism.
If we eliminate the belief, take it out of the picture entirely so that it was never there, there is no opportunity for anything to be negated because there never was anything to negate. Atheism is negation, rather than elimination, of belief.
Much of the head-butting about people being able to (have the capacity to) believe before they can be called atheist is from people who understand this. The other group conflate elimination ("no X") with negation ("not X").
I don't. It's also not my issue.
Let us grant, as is not the case, that most atheists define atheism as a "lack of belief in god or gods" (I'm not saying many do, they don't). What nobody I've ever encountered does is say that one can believe whatever they wish and be called an atheist as long as the substitute two words for some other two.
Disbelief means don't believe. From the OED: 1. trans. Not to believe or credit; to refuse credence to
If by "lack a belief" or "not believe" we mean the person makes no belief commitments, then this is equivalent to complete ignorance. It means that if I don't know what the 1,000,000,000th decimal of pi, I don't believe in it. This is the way in which babies genuinely "lack a belief" in god. It is not the way that self-described atheists do, the way the term is used in books on philosophical and theological discussion of atheists, the OED, etc. The reason for this is simple- to be able to use the word "god", and not simply imitate the sound the way a parrot could, necessitates understanding a baby doesn't have. You have a concept of god that you are using when you use the word. To not believe in god means that for any thing x, if you can classify that x under the concept you have of god, then you believe that this x does not exist.
However, it can be useful to distinguish between atheists like Dawkins who don't believe in god and assert the non-existence of god, and those who don't believe in god but their lack of concern to even think about what it is they don't believe exists is so minimal that the concept they are rejecting as having an existence is too vague to make the kind of assertions Dawkins does. And I accept the importance of pragmatic definitions.
I did. You believe in humans and the sun, which some theist call gods. Therefore, either you aren't an atheist, or being an atheist doesn't mean rejecting anything except two words in a description. So we can define atheism as "the belief that any entity an atheist calls god either doesn't exist or isn't a god".
If I do not believe in any gods, then there is no god G that I accept. Therefore, given any god G I reject that god.
The reason for the pragmatic distinction between the atheism of Dawkins and apatheism or weak atheism is that the latter does not bother to worry about, define, or clarify the gods they are rejecting. Telling an atheist that they must believe in gods because some theists define certain humans as gods will not get you the response "I do not believe in the word god" but "humans aren't gods".
If you are interested in usage, then you have defined atheist to include those no atheist I've ever encountered ever would.
It is wrong only if one takes the opposite view from the platonic ideal (all concepts have one and only one true form which is external to all conceptualizers). Language is intersubjective. No word is defined by one person or even many, because were this so language would not be possible. I opt for the middle ground which is used by everybody anyway. We can't ever hope to define words perfectly, but that doesn't mean any use is correct.
But that doesn't require disbelief, since "does not believe" includes people who lack belief about gods: people who do not believe or disbelieve.
How can you tell if a person actually believes in god other than what they say? Your entire argument revolves around the many uses of god including those which define things everybody believes in as god. And there are many people who believe what theists do but do not call what they believe god. Your definition applies to every belief providing the absence of two words, as this exception can't work:
So if people don't believe the entity they believe in to be god, because, for example (and this is a real example of a real group of several ex-wiccan neopagans I knew) they believe that god is what Christians and those with similar beliefs think exists, they are atheists even if the entity they believe in is equivalent to probably most Christians' god and a great many other? Or is this a euphemism? These people don't call god what most would, so they're theist, but those that call humans god aren't simply using a euphemism or otherwise misusing the term. That's no inconsistent and arbitrary?
Last edited:
Maybe you'll see the problem if we use the same structure in a different context:
"You don't need to have a car to be an American."
"No Americans have cars."
Are these statements equivalent? Does the first imply the second?
If the irrationality of your argument is "not your issue", that's your call, I guess.
Do you think people use your alternative, where a person has to reject every single god (where the meaning of "god" is based on some objective definition, not their own judgement) is how people use the term? Since this isn't even possible, I'd bet good money they don't... even without looking at usage statistics.
You've never encountered someone who referred to a Sun-worshipper or a pantheist as a theist? Or do you think that everyone considers the Sun and the Universe to be gods?
No, it's not equivalent. The definition includes complete ignorance but doesn't require it.
I can draw a Venn diagram for you if you keep on having trouble with this.
Do you consider people who believe that humans and the Sun are gods to be theists?
Categorizing all of them as types of atheist doesn't mean you can't subdivide the category into smaller groups as you see fit. I agree that this is often useful.
You know, responses like this really don't help your claim that you aren't engaging in straw man tactics.
I'm not sure what to say except that maybe you should widen your horizons and encounter more atheists.
I realize that different people will vary in the definitions they use. I'm talking about something else: where a single individual will, for instance, acknowledge a pantheist as a theist, an atheist who goes to seances as an atheist, a Christian who believes in angels as a monotheist, and a Pagan (who believes in a pantheon that's very like a collection of angels in most relevant respects) as a polytheist.
Practically, we probably can't, though the fact that people sometimes lie doesn't stop us from describing their beliefs in other respects.
Just as there are many monotheists who believe what polytheists do but do not call what they believe "god", except for one of them. Again, I'm sorry if this bothers you, but this is how it normally works.
Why not?
Well, do they believe in something that they believe to be a god or not? Answer that question and you'll have the answer to your own.
I asked a question earlier. Maybe you can give it a try:
Say I show you a jar of pennies. If you don't accept that the number of pennies in the jar is even, does this mean that you necessarily accept that the number of pennies in the jar is odd?
Last edited:
Not having is often pretty simple. I wish I had trouble trying to determine if I had millions of dollars. However, we are dealing with things like mental states and propositions. Beliefs are, or can be formulated equivalently with, epistemic statements. In this case we are concerned with the epistemic claim "I believe in god(s)". To lack any belief means that one is incapable of understanding anything about the claim the way that a baby would or if I asked someone who doesn't speak English "Do you believe in god?". In fact, we are in a time when we are not limited to philosophical, philological, logical, and semantic reasons for saying this. We can actually show how atheists (and everybody else) organizes (and re-organizes) their brains to reflect their beliefs about concepts such as god.
Atheists, materialists, apathetic agnostics, etc., tend to show similar cortical activity when processing words/concepts that relate to religion in general (rather than religious people whose own religious commitments are more salient), but they also represent through activation in specific areas words/concepts like evolution, stem cell, marriage, etc. not only as distinguished from the religious concepts but as similar in ways that aren't for religious people. An atheist's conception held of god is attributed properties that the atheist groups as similar to some things and dissimilar to others that differs from theists. The reason for this is because simply using and knowing the word necessarily entails classification and attributing to the concept properties that define it in relation to other internal classification. That's what definition (in the brain) is.
One who does not have any concept of god has no neural representation of that concept. Atheists do. That neural representation cannot exist accept by defining properties of the concept. Without such properties, the neural representation can't exist. The concepts atheists have of god has properties and some of these are properties that represent relations between other concepts classified as similar or dissimilar to the concept god. These alone are beliefs atheists have about the concept god.
How we talk about it is limited to the language that we use. The concept is not. For example, Germans do not talk this way. Neither do the French. If we wish to define it by words, then we must determine which words in other languages are the ones that should correspond to god. We devoted something like a half an hour in my 4th semester Greek class to how to translate daimon, variously translated "god", "spirit", "demon", "divine entity", etc., and the professor finally said "just translate it as demon for consistency but with the understanding that we all know that's not what it is".
The question about belief in god is not about the term but the concept.
I got your point. It's irrelevant to my own. We have two ways of deciding whether a person considers a thing they believe in to be a god. We can either rely on their use of the word god, in which case any belief goes and anybody who doesn't speak English is an atheist, or realize that what matters is the concept. And the concept cannot be defined so simply. You first have to contend with the many ways in which a language has no parallel for god but has many possible ones. And even in English, according to your earlier post we now have to determine what is and isn't a euphemism for god. Of course, "human" is a euphemism for what some theists believe to be gods and "sun" or is a euphemism for what some others do. So that fails too.
For the billionth time, great. If the definition of god is whether or not people call what they believe god, then everyone who doesn't understand English is an atheist and anyone who does can believe anything they want, including an all-powerful omniscient entity who created the world 6,000 years ago and still be an atheist. FYI- that is not how the word is used.
That which isn't natural. "What's natural"? etc. This is language. It is neither entirely objective nor entirely subjective. To force a definition consistent with all usage is to make communication impossible. There will always be disagreement and the answer isn't simply to say that we have to define "god" to be consistent with what every theists refer to by the word. That just makes both god, theism, and atheism meaningless. And no, people do not typically use this.
Wrong:
I already used it. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "authoritative."
"a. gen. Belief in a deity, or deities, as opposed to atheism.
b. Belief in one god, as opposed to polytheism or pantheism; = monotheism n.
c. Belief in the existence of God, with denial of revelation: = deism n.
d. esp. Belief in one God as creator and supreme ruler of the universe, without denial of revelation: in this use distinguished from deism. "
As the act of disbelieving, and I gave you the OED definition of disbelieve in my last post.
It doesn't.
Except it does:
Maybe you missed the part where it says "not to believe", IOW to lack belief.
AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Here's where I stand on atheism:
If a guy claims to be an atheist and seems sincere about it, I'll generally think of him as an atheist, though not always. If he talks on and on about God, for example, in a way which seems to accept God's existence, I might start thinking of him as only 66% atheist and 33% theist.
After this thread has petered out, if ever, I would like to discuss, "Who is a real Jew and who is a not-a-Jew."
After that, we can talk about how to define greedyguys and non-greedyguys. Then poets vs. non-poets.
The fun can go on forever.
I'll withhold belief until somebody counts them.
It is not a straw man. I am trying to illustrate that your consistent definition falls apart. The best way to do that is usually through extreme examples. The only way it would be a straw man is if the logic differed. What your definition logically entails is not consistent with what atheists (or anybody) believes, whether or not some may use similar definitions. And the reason that I am so insistent on ensuring the logic holds entirely is because you rejected the notion that we can define atheism as a belief in all gods via a purely pedantic, impractical demand of logical precision. I'm simply trying to illustrate that your own definition fails here too. If you are willing to relax the requirement of formal precision for a commonly used word, fine. If not, then you should make your own just as precise.
That isn't my alternative. I have repeatedly said that this isn't necessary and defined atheism so that it isn't:
Atheism is the belief that whatever any theist calls (or conceives of as) god either doesn't exist or isn't a god". So, for example, if a theist calls a human a god, the atheist can say "humans exists, they just aren't gods."
I don't even think it necessary to get that specific and I don't like that definition, it was just to show you that one can consistently define atheism in terms of disbelief in a manner similar to your own.
It is you who claim that a denial of all gods means that one must necessarily deny anything anybody might think of as gods. This is ridiculous. When I say I don't believe in ghosts I shouldn't have to worry whether or not I disbelieve in some conception of a spirit from 11th century japan. Atheists have a concept of what "god" is in order to be able to use the word at all, and it is this concept they have that they don't believe in.
They say they don't. So do non-English speakers. Sooner or later, if you wish to be logically consistent, you will have to come to terms with the fact that you are using "god" as a word when it is only useful as a concept to define theism and atheism. And as a concept, an atheist rejecting all gods just means rejecting anything to which their concept applies.
Think of proofs for formulae by mathematical induction. Prove that a formula is true when k=1 and for n+1. You do not have to prove it is true for each n because the numbers under consideration all have the same properties. When an atheists rejects all gods, they need not reject specific gods at all- just those that fall under the concept they necessarily have just to use the word.
They don't. Because most people do not think that denying all gods means that one has to be cognizant of any and all conceptions of god. When I say I don't believe in ghosts I don't need to deny each and every ghost. I am denying the concept. If someone's concept of ghost is something I do believe in, it wasn't the concept I held to begin with.
I have. Same with people who ascribe godhood to people. What I haven't found is someone who claims both that
1) anybody who uses the term god is necessarily a theist (i.e., there are those who deny that just because someone uses the word god to describe e.g., a person doesn't mean they're correct)
&
2) that an atheist is someone who isn't a theist.
The issue with combining both is what I said: an atheist can believe in anything providing they don't use two words. I haven't met an atheist who thinks that we can call a person an atheist even though that person believes in an omnipotent entity who created the world 6,000 years ago but does not believe that entity to be a god.
If you lack any beliefs about god, then why do you never use the word as a verb?
I know you do what I do not understand is why you don't seem to get my point about it. It's about your definition vs. the one in which an atheist rejects all gods. A rejection of all gods is a rejection of all entities to which the concept god applies, and it is silly, impractical, and unnecessary to worry about whether one's concept of god doesn't include every named or conceived of god by every individual. It's perfectly reasonable to define atheism as rejection of all gods because we should not have to worry what every individual might call god. However, you insisted we do. If so, then the only way for your definition, "not a theist", to be consistent is to say an atheist can believe whatever a theist does as long as they don't label themselves as such or use the label "god" for any entity they believe in.
This definition entails that one can believe in everything theists do as long as they use different words. It's consistent, but useless and no atheist I've encountered would say that someone who believes everything a fundamentalist Christian does yet doesn't call the entity they believe in "god" or label themselves as a "theist" is actually an atheist.
It doesn't bother me. It seems that the only thing you demand to be logically precise and completely consistent is atheism when defined as a rejection of all gods. Other than that, different understandings among different people are ok.
Last edited:
I didn't miss it, I just didn't select one part and claim for no reason that "disbelief" in something doesn't mean one thinks that something doesn't exist, especially when the OED also defines "disbelief" as an act of disbelieving and as rejection "The action or an act of disbelieving; mental rejection of a statement or assertion"
as definition 1. The subentries of 1 define what one is disbelieving in or rejecting: statements or alleged fact (1a) or a person in making a statement (1b). In this case (that atheism/theism) disbelief is statement or (alleged fact) and the OED defines this as "To reject the truth or reality of"
So even your cherry-picking part of a definition doesn't work as you wish to define "disbelief in x" in some absurd sense that is not equivalent to "belief that X does not exist/is not true".
That said, I have always maintained that dictionaries do not define so much as show whether someone's definition is consistent with usage. It is enough to look logically and practically at what "belief" & "disbelieve" mean and in particular whether one can simultaneously not believe in x yet not believe that x is not the case.
If you ask a creationist if they believe evolution shows humans had non-human ancestors and they reply "I don't believe evolution shows this", do you honestly believe that means they could mean either of these:
1) I lack any belief about whether evolution shows this
or
2) I believe it doesn't show this
If you asked me if I believe in creationism, and I said "I don't believe in creationism", you really would believe that what I have implied is either of these options:
1) I lack any belief in creationism
&
2) I don't believe in creationism
For someone so concerned with usage, why is your "lack a belief" or "lack any belief" phrase so rare compared to other expressions of epistemic non-committal?
EDIT:
As long as we're dealing with mental state predicates and epistemic modality, agnostic positions seem rather important here. Generally speaking, an agnostic doesn't know if there is a god. An agnostic knows of no gods out of any gods that any of them exists. An agnostic believes no gods exist only insofar as the agnostic also believes that a god might exist. If the agnostic believes no gods exist and none might exist, then this isn't an agnostic but an atheist. That's why "lack a belief" is not a commonly used phrase (and, for arguments that make so much of common usage about atheism it seems strange to define it by a phrase practically custom made for one particular use). The epistemic scale already has a place for this kind of epistemic commitment. It's "I don't know". Atheists who wish to defend the definition of atheism as a "lack of belief" use this uncommon and awkward phrase because, it seems, they don't wish to say "God(s) might exist, but I don't know".
If it is true that an atheist believes god(s) might exist, but is unsure, then why use the phrase "lack a belief?" If an atheist does not believe that god exists, and doesn't believe god might exist, then the atheist believes god does not exist.
Last edited:
I highly doubt it. But they do appear to be inherently born to selfishness and laziness --- which might lead some to atheism without any alternative instruction early on.
No, this world would not be a happier place without a belief in a creator who cared about us. For some reason 'Lord of the Flies' comes to my mind.