Are people born inherently atheist?

[Willamena]

So you think of elephants as being divisible into atheistic herds and theistic herds?

That would require a concept of "god."

I too don't automatically disclude animals from the faculty of believing. The concept of "god" is all ours (humans).

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So when a squirrel demonstrates fear, this is evidence that it believes it's in danger?

This seems to be a reasonable presumption.

By extension, squirrels are also atheists, then.

By YOUR definition of the term "atheist". I've suggested "a person who is not a theist", which wouldn't include squirrels.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

That would require a concept of "god."

I too don't automatically disclude animals from the faculty of believing. The concept of "god" is all ours (humans).

How do you know that?

 

[Willamena]

How do you know that?

Our Word World is ...special.

Animals can have their own.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Our Word World is ...special.

Animals can have their own.

I suspect that the God of the elephants is a thunderous God in whose path our God would tremble and flee!

 

[Curious George]

You know that formal logic involves symbols and particular rules for representing variables, operators, etc. But it seems like you don't know that this is what I was referring to, so not only is your suggestion unnecessarily complicated here, but it doesn't relate to the issue of having a derivation that was at least translatable into an unambiguous formal system. What you propose above is, of course, so trivially obvious I can't help but feel more than a little offended that you feel this necessary to say. However, I attribute it to lack of context, so that should help us understand one another better:



The first response?


So I added that "weak" despite the utter irrelevancy. Below is my proof in addition to the comments a member gave, but I have included only the statements where I was said to be incorrect:



The responses, one I included above, said nothing about the logic. This was the objection:



Of course this wasn't true. However, one person did get that the inference rules were the key and expressed this perfectly:


The negation you seem to think so trivial involves the distinction Kilgore pointed out and the reason I didn't use formal logic. As negation it is trivial in the general sense but not if, as I expressed I the first post you responded to, a formal derivation. I'm not sure you understand what my point was as your first solution negated the entirety of any use of any proof as the requirement was that atheists be defined by not theists, not be equivalent. I'm not sure how much you've been keeping up with the disaster of a thread, so there seems to be a basic understanding between us about what the other intends/means.

The primary goal was to show that defining an atheist as "not a theist" entailed particularly things. Ideally, I wanted a structure that showed the way I phrased belief I the pseudo-proofs. Classical logic can't do this as one can't negate a predicate argument but only the predicate.

However, people are insisting over and over that "doesn't believe x" should be taken in this case as distinct from to "believe not x". So I would have liked to show how this difference can be represented. I can't do that in classical logic because negations negate the entire predicate and "doesn't believe x" requires negating the *Bx~y, where the second constant is negated. But this isn't a WFF.




???


I think that it may not be clear (for good reason, a lot of the points I made regard posts I linked to here that were made some time ago and even they didn't exist in isolation.




It's restricted because of people.

I'm not trying to argue for the definition I gave in the proofs but against it. I've explained that over and over again that it's undoubtedly a maze for anybody stepping in having missed even a few key posts.



By negation, I don't mean of the type that you began the post with. I'm talking about symbolic negation in predicate calculi.

I first apologize if I am still missing your point.
Alright, after a little sleep:
We should be able to write the predicate
is a person that believes in God, by B(x,y) the negation is going to be -B(x,y) so what is the problem? No one is asking you to write B(x,-y) thus we are left with the not a person who believes in God. We can express the two statements of which you are talking but we do not need to in order to express what they are saying.

 

[ArtieE]

Strong atheism is the same as gnostic atheism. I don't think it is too confusing, the position simply answers a different question.

If we asked does God(s) exist?
Weak/Agnostic Atheist would say "I don't know but I don't believe so".
Strong/Gnostic atheist would say "no God(s) don't exist".

If we asked do you believe in god(s), they would both answer no.

An Agnostic Weak Atheist would say "I don't know if He exists and I neither believe He exists nor do I believe He doesn't exist, I have no beliefs on the subject".

A Gnostic Strong Atheist would say "Not only do I believe God(s) don't exist I know for certain they don't."

If we asked do you believe in god(s), the Agnostic Weak Atheist would say he had no beliefs on the subject, the Gnostic Strong Atheist would say "No I believe God(s) don't exist."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And, as I requested from idav, if you have links to any studies which provide conclusive evidence that newborn infants are cognitively developed and conscious enough to form and hold beliefs, I'd be happy to read them.

You're shifting the burden of proof. You were the one the made the claim; it's up to you to defend it.

And again, the OP is asking whether we are born atheists. When we are born, we are newborn infants. At whatever point the ability to hold beliefs forms, it isn't at birth, as far as I know - particularly the ability to hold complex conceptual beliefs.

You're moving the goalposts. IIRC, your argument before was that it was ridiculous to call a baby an atheist and that infants aren't capable of belief. Is your position now that calling a baby isn't ridiculous and that infants (except for very young atheists) are capable of belief?

Yes, it would be meaningless to define a newborn as apolitical, since they are not capable of holding a belief or opinion about politics.

If I heard someone say "that baby is not apolitical", I would take this to mean that the person was claiming that the baby had strong views on politics, not that the person believed that babies can't be either political or apolitical.

Also, I think you're confusing terms. When something is true but unimportant, we call it "trivial", not "meaningless".

We apply the categorization of belief/non-belief to humans not because they are human, but because they are capable of holding beliefs.

What makes you so sure of this?

Yes, and the question is whether we are born atheists.

That's the larger question, but right now we're dealing with something more specific: your claim that we can't be born atheists because infants are incapable of belief.

 

[Willamena]

An Agnostic Weak Atheist would say "I don't know if He exists and I neither believe He exists nor do I believe He doesn't exist, I have no beliefs on the subject"...

Me'thinks he doth protest too much.

 

[ArtieE]

That's the larger question, but right now we're dealing with something more specific: your claim that we can't be born atheists because infants are incapable of belief.

We are born weak atheists precisely because infants are incapable of belief. If a person came up to me and said "I have been an atheist all my life since the day I was born" I would understand perfectly well what she meant. Who am I to call her a liar and start lecturing her on how "meaningless" what she said was?

 

[ArtieE]

Me'thinks he doth protest too much.

Just making the point. Did you have any relevant remarks or comments on the validity of my corrections?

 

[Willamena]

Just making the point. Did you have any relevant remarks or comments on the validity of my corrections?

No, Artie. Stick to your guns.

 

[outhouse]

We are born weak atheists precisely because infants are incapable of belief. If a person came up to me and said "I have been an atheist all my life since the day I was born" I would understand perfectly well what she meant. Who am I to call her a liar and start lecturing her on how "meaningless" what she said was?

You have parroted this over and over, and it is not the proper definition.

That is implicit atheism, not weak

 

[outhouse]

You're shifting the burden of proof.

You're moving the goalposts.


Also, I think you're confusing terms.

What makes you so sure of this?


That's the larger question, .

These are all creationist type tactics with less red herrings and no straw man.

:yes:


There comes a point when some people are not debatable, this thread holds a few who vehemently deny implicit atheism.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Neuroscience is not linguistics.

Rather than spend a lot of time on the relevance of cognitive neuroscience to linguistics out of some kind of professional pride, I decided to just use linguistic scholarship. After all, I not only came to neuroscience through linguistics, of necessity I keep up.

You have maintained that "not an atheist" is the only consistent definition. I have argued that it isn't. I have also argued that just by using the word "god", atheists not only have a concept about it but beliefs about it. The sources I used (not just the neuroscience but the philosophical texts as well) are apparently of no value, but you imply above that linguistic scholarship is relevant here. First, then, we can address what is entailed by the linguistic expression of a word like "god":


“All conventionalized linguistic expressions (morphemes, words, idioms, phrases etc.) are connected with “meaning potentials”, cf. Rommetveit (1974). A meaning potential is basically a person’s memory of the previous uses of a particular expression and can be seen as the union of all the information the person can associate with the expression. The semantic part of this information will include both what is sometimes called “encyclopedic” and “lexical” information concerning the phenomenon the expression refers to or is otherwise associated with…When used, a linguistic expression activates its meaning potential. The context-free meaning of a linguistic expression is seen as an activation potential, i.e. as a potential to activate (parts of) the meaning potential associated with a particular expression…The actual meaning of the expression is determined through cognitive operations, the function of which is to achieve compatibility between the meaning potential of a particular expression, the meaning potential of other expressions, and the extralinguistic context.”

Allwood, J. (1999). Semantics as meaning determination with semantic-epistemic operations. Cognitive Semantics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1-18.


This is only part of the story. It’s not just that using a word requires a concept to which it refers. Models of grammar that are concerned with the relation between language and cognition incorporate priming effects like spreading activation. The reason for this is because concepts do not exist in isolation:

“Priming experiments, in which a preceding word ‘primes’ a later word by making it more accessible so that an experimental subject can retrieve it more quickly. Not surprisingly, it turns out that words prime their network neighbours. For example, experimental subjects take slightly less time to decide that doctor is an English word if it follows nurse than if it follows an unrelated word such as lorry...Every experiment which shows that one word primes another is evidence that these words are near to one another in the network.”

Hudson, R. (2006). Language Networks: The New Word Grammar. Oxford University Press.

These word networks are organized through usage, beliefs (i.e., what properties the concept and shares with other concepts, how much other concepts share its semantic content, etc.). Like all words, "god" is defined in part for the speaker by what other words it is believed to share properties with, be similar too, be different than, etc. Words that are “neighbors” and most affected by spreading activation depend upon implicit beliefs a person has about the word in question.

The important beliefs, however, are epistemic. What does "absence of epistemic beliefs" about "god" entail?



“If a subject did not know anything, all scenarios would be epistemically possible for the subject. When a subject knows something, some scenarios are excluded. Every piece of substantive knowledge
corresponds to a division in epistemic space: some scenarios are excluded out as epistemically impossible for the subject, while others are left open. More specifically, it is natural to hold that for a given p, there may be scenarios in which p is the case, and scenarios in which p is not the case. Then when a subject knows that p, scenarios in which p is not the case are excluded, while others are left open. The scenarios that are epistemically possible for a subject are those that are not excluded by any knowledge of the subject.

One can naturally suppose that the space of scenarios is equally divided by belief, and perhaps that the division by belief underlies the division by knowledge. Every substantive belief, whether or not it qualifies as knowledge, corresponds to a division in the space of scenarios. When a subject believes that p, we might say that some scenarios (in particular, scenarios in which ¬p) are ruled out as doxastically impossible, while others are left open. A scenario is doxastically possible for a subject if and only if it is not doxastically ruled out by any of the subject’s beliefs. When a belief qualifies as knowledge, the scenarios ruled out as doxastically impossible are also ruled out as epistemically impossible.”

Chalmers, D. (2011). The nature of epistemic space. In A. Egan & B. Weatherson (Eds.) Epistemic Modality. Oxford University Press

There are several important things to note. First, having no knowledge (such as an infant has) is a “lack of belief” only in that any scenario, or “possible world”, can be believed (“epistemically possible”). Nothing is ruled out. This is certainly not the position of atheists, who cannot be said, for example, to believe that any and every god may exist.

Also, note the “~p”, underlined in the second paragraph. Every belief p necessarily entails that one’s epistemic space is divided to distinguish what is believed to be possible from what isn’t. But one’s epistemic space is defined as the space of beliefs. In other words, the belief ~p is a belief, as is belief that “not god”.

Next there is the issue of defining an atheist as "not a theist" (even if we define a theist as one who believes in god or gods). "Not a theist" gives us nothing to determine if whether someone is "not a theist". Simply saying "belief in god(s)" is no better. This is true in a way that probably seems trivial for those who don't work with languages. "God" is an English word, so we must be able to say for people who have no word for "god" whether they have the concept. This sounds simpler than it is:


“An important corollary of the position that lexical concepts are vehicle-specific is that lexical concepts are necessarily language-specific. Thus each language, by virtue of comprising language-specific vehicles which populate the language, necessarily provides an inventory of language-specific lexical concepts.”

We can't simply use the word, and using a dictionary to try to determine the best equivalent for "god" in every spoken language is impossible and ridiculous.

Basically, defining atheist as "not theist" to be consistent does nothing but force one to make the definition of "theist" inconsistent. And as that's what defines an atheist, atheism is defined inconsistently.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Um you should be able to negate fine. "there is a theist who is not a person that believes in God or Gods" .or there is an atheist who is a person who believes in gods"

The idea of negation, albeit not in classical logic where this doesn't work, made me think of something. A formal derivation is not the only method one can used to demonstrate what "not an atheist" entails about an atheist.

Let us assume that an adequate definition exists so that we can define theists by belief that the concept “god” corresponds to something objective. Formally, we’d express “god exists” by □G, understanding “G” to be the statement “God(s) exists” and the symbol to indicate that god “necessarily exists”. This is equivalent to many other WFFs in modal logic, such as ~◊~G (it is not possible that it is not the case that god exists). What is key here is that modal operators are not truth functional. The truth value of □G is whether or not the proposition G is true, while the modal operator (in an epistemic frame) represents a speaker’s epistemic position on whether G is true. Thus, □G means that the theist’s belief about G (“god exists”) is “it is certain god exists” or “it is necessary god exists”. Note that this must be interpreted not as the theist saying “it is necessary god exist”, but rather □G describes the belief that god exists. If something is true/exists, then necessarily it is true/does exist: □G→G

We could get fancier. We can define a theist by whether vw(□G) = 1 iff vw'(G) = 1 for all w' holds. However, this says exactly the same thing- it just defines □G. It tells us that for some model M consisting of a set of possible worlds W, and a valuation function V, something is necessarily true if and only if for any world w ∈ W in M the valuation v on the proposition G is true. Basically, it means a theist believes god(s) exist(s). Some logics add a knowledge operator K and a belief operator B, but as in such logics Bx→ Kx (if someone knows x is true they believe x is true), we would get the same results. So whether we use the simple modal WFF defined linguistically, or the same but in a possible worlds formulation of it and it's definition, we've got a formal, logical expression of what a theist is.

This means that we need not rely on ambiguities like the difference "doesn't believe", "absence of belief", "believe god doesn't...", etc. Because an atheist is simply “not a theist”, all that’s left is to express the absence of the epistemic stance □G. This is why modal operators are useful.


Simple negation, ~□G, is the absence of what defines a theist. So is ◊~G. Now we have a formal representation of "not a theist". Great. What does it mean?
It is epistemic position that it is not necessarily the case that "god exists" is true. Equivalently, it is the epistemic position that it is possible that “god exists” isn’t true. Using the fancier possible worlds version would just tell us that an atheist believes there is at least one world where the proposition “god exists” is false.

If atheist means “not a theist”, then an atheist is anyone who believes it is possible god exists, but doesn't believe that god certainly exists.

 

[ArtieE]

You have parroted this over and over, and it is not the proper definition.

That is implicit atheism, not weak

"Weak atheism, also sometimes referred to as implicit atheism,"

Strong Atheism vs. Weak Atheism: What’s the Difference?

Instead of just making a statement please back up your statement with a link to a page explaining any significant difference and I will start using the term implicit atheist instead.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

My point holds for all sorts of similar terms. "That baby is not unemployed"

That isn't a similar term. If I change my worldview, I can be accurately called a theist or a atheist (depending upon how I change them). I can't do so and suddenly have a job.

"That baby is not apolitical."

"Detached from, not interested in or concerned with, political issues or activities" (OED). Did you ask "that baby" whether they were interested in politics?

 

[Curious George]

The idea of negation, albeit not in classical logic where this doesn't work, made me think of something. A formal derivation is not the only method one can used to demonstrate what "not an atheist" entails about an atheist.

Let us assume that an adequate definition exists so that we can define theists by belief that the concept “god” corresponds to something objective. Formally, we’d express “god exists” by □G, understanding “G” to be the statement “God(s) exists” and the symbol to indicate that god “necessarily exists”. This is equivalent to many other WFFs in modal logic, such as ~◊~G (it is not possible that it is not the case that god exists). What is key here is that modal operators are not truth functional. The truth value of □G is whether or not the proposition G is true, while the modal operator (in an epistemic frame) represents a speaker’s epistemic position on whether G is true. Thus, □G means that the theist’s belief about G (“god exists”) is “it is certain god exists” or “it is necessary god exists”. Note that this must be interpreted not as the theist saying “it is necessary god exist”, but rather □G describes the belief that god exists. If something is true/exists, then necessarily it is true/does exist: □G→G

We could get fancier. We can define a theist by whether vw(□G) = 1 iff vw'(G) = 1 for all w' holds. However, this says exactly the same thing- it just defines □G. It tells us that for some model M consisting of a set of possible worlds W, and a valuation function V, something is necessarily true if and only if for any world w ∈ W in M the valuation v on the proposition G is true. Basically, it means a theist believes god(s) exist(s). Some logics add a knowledge operator K and a belief operator B, but as in such logics Bx→ Kx (if someone knows x is true they believe x is true), we would get the same results. So whether we use the simple modal WFF defined linguistically, or the same but in a possible worlds formulation of it and it's definition, we've got a formal, logical expression of what a theist is.

This means that we need not rely on ambiguities like the difference "doesn't believe", "absence of belief", "believe god doesn't...", etc. Because an atheist is simply “not a theist”, all that’s left is to express the absence of the epistemic stance □G. This is why modal operators are useful.


Simple negation, ~□G, is the absence of what defines a theist. So is ◊~G. Now we have a formal representation of "not a theist". Great. What does it mean?
It is epistemic position that it is not necessarily the case that "god exists" is true. Equivalently, it is the epistemic position that it is possible that “god exists” isn’t true. Using the fancier possible worlds version would just tell us that an atheist believes there is at least one world where the proposition “god exists” is false.

If atheist means “not a theist”, then an atheist is anyone who believes it is possible god exists, but doesn't believe that god certainly exists.

Does that mean you have now expanded the definition of atheist so that theists no longer exist, except in some people's assertions?

 

[ArtieE]

You have maintained that "not an atheist" is the only consistent definition. I have argued that it isn't. I have also argued that just by using the word "god", atheists not only have a concept about it but beliefs about it.

This last sentence shows that you have yet to understand the difference between a weak and a strong atheist even after all this time and effort trying to explain it to you. I will try to make yet another attempt. A strong atheist, a disbeliever, needs to know the word "god" and have a concept about it in order to disbelieve it. A weak atheist doesn't need to know the word "god" and have a concept about it in order not to have any beliefs.

Not having a belief in a god doesn't require you to know what a belief is or what a god is. Not having a car doesn't require that the person not having a car knows what a car is. Please try to understand this oh so amazingly simple concept. Let's take a hypothetical example. Imagine a person growing up alone on a deserted island. He has never seen a car and has no concept of what a car is. He is a weak atheist regarding cars. He doesn't have a car, he doesn't own a car, he has an absence of a car, he is not having a car and this without even knowing what a car is. Do you still don't get it?