Argument against "lacktheism"

[1137]

If we can't trace it, we can't trace it, no matter how much we try to rationalize it or speculate on it. It doesn't mean that it's not there.

Hmm that's a really good point. So maybe asking for an alternative reason is unfair in this case.

 

[crossfire]

Hmm that's a really good point. So maybe asking for an alternative reason is unfair in this case.

Yeah, some things we have to just set aside.

 

[ChristineM]

Yes, there are no uncaused events so all beliefs must have a cause.

I assume you know nothing about quantum mechanics and radioactive decay?

 

[Audie]

If you mean exposure to it, I agree. If you mean the ability to avoid indoctrination, I disagree. Critical thinking confers immunity to indoctrination.

Agreed. Atheism can also be described as the absence of a need for a god belief or a religion.

Holy books are evidence of nothing except that they were written. They're not evidence of gods, nor even evidence that the writers believed what they wrote. Nothing in such a book can believed except by faith or following empirical confirmation. We know David existed and was a Hebrew king three millennia ago thanks to empirical confirmation from archeologists. But Adam, Noah, and Abraham remain only characters in stories for lack of empirical confirmation.

Why? I believe that that is often the case, too, and feel no need to justify that belief to you. I can, but I have no reason to. For there to be a burden of proof for me, [1] I must be making a claim of fact, [2] I want to convince another, and [3] that other has the ability to recognize a sound evidenced argument and the willingness to be convinced by one.

I said often the case because not all theists were indoctrinated into theism even if they were subsequently indoctrinated with some denomination's dogma. Some, it seems, are just drawn to a god belief psychologically, and as soon as they hear about gods, are drawn to theism.

Incidentally, your definition of lacktheism would have been helpful (see below).

I was born an atheist and remained one until I was about 18. In between, I learned what people meant by a god, but wasn't asked to believe in such a thing and didn't. You would probably say that that is when I became an atheist.

The ones who become theists.

Au contraire. Atheism past the time of being told that others believe in gods is a result of learning critical thinking, which is why education and atheism correlate as do lack of education and theism. I experience my atheism and my ability to live comfortably outside of religion and without a god belief as an achievement to be proud of.

Where? Most atheists are agnostic atheists, that is, they make no claim about gods existing or not existing. And they don't get emotional discussing religion beyond being snarky or condescending, and that's not their usual mood. Believers do. Believers frequently complain angrily about their beliefs and themselves not merely being disbelieved and their claims dismissed, but say that they are being attacked. My demeanor is typical for my demographic. Most atheists don't care what believers believe - just what they do that affects unbelievers.

I don't know just what you are excluding here, but yes, religion was obviously invented and then spread. Otherwise, there's be no religions. But I'm not going to make the case here, because this is also something that I don't care if I'm believed or not. Also, when somebody asks me to prove something obvious, I already know that that won't happen. If someone asks me to prove to him that Trump committed crimes or that vaccines are safe, if he's above school age, I assume that he wears a faith-based confirmation bias, and there's no penetrating one of those (see condition [3] above regarding when there is no burden of proof).

You said that you didn't believe that, and neither do I.

I wasn't taught spiritual beliefs, yet have a spiritual relationship with nature, one having nothing to do with spirits or belief in them. Education helps there as well. One can have a spiritual experience gazing at the night sky but probably not until they understand something about what they are seeing - the distance that droplet of sunlight travelled over years or eons to reach my retina, and the relationship of life and the existence of the periodic table to those stars living their lives fusing nuclei, exploding, and delivering their stardust so that we could live. That's exhilarating. That generates a warm sense of connection and belonging with the cosmos, one which also produces a sense of awe, mystery, and gratitude. Nobody taught me how to feel that way.

Your perceptions and conclusions about atheists and atheism continually amaze me. I feel safe in saying that no skeptic has ever told you not to judge their ideas. If I'm wrong, you should be able to falsify my suspicion with examples from RF. If I'm right, you can't.

And you have it backwards. You are continually judging atheists as you just did, and always uncharitably. How many times have you used the words materialist and scientism scoffingly and disapprovingly in these threads? Would you like me to do a digital search for you?

Lacktheism? What's that? Another theistic apologetics meme like macroevolution and "kinds"? (same question for @1137)

I Googled it, but the only reputable hit (Free Inquiry Magazine) was behind a paywall, and one podcast from a philosopher, but he wasn't clear what he meant when using the term. He did seem to be arguing that there is no atheist that doesn't have some belief about gods, which I consider irrelevant.

I have opinions about gods, but continue to define atheism as a lack of belief in gods, and for those concerned that this includes infants, dog, or rocks, I say that an atheist is anybody who answers no to the question of whether he holds a god belief.

It doesn't preclude having opinions about gods. For example, I claim that the Abrahamic god has been ruled out by science. I also am apathetic about noninterventionist gods like the deist god. One may exist, but I wouldn't care either way what the answer was to that was if I knew it.

I did find one believer on Tik-Tok explain his position, but it was just a specious, semantic argument.

And yet again, what goes on in your head is not my reality at all. Fight hard to maintain that we have no god belief? Fight whom? People who say that's not possible? Why would I or any other atheist do that? For starters, if one doesn't accept that possibility, I don't mind.

Maybe that describes you. I have zero interest in the fact that you think that if you do. What does interest me is why anyone would think it impossible or care either way enough to argue what the atheist actually believes. I promise you that I don't care at all what you or anybody else actually believes about gods. Theologies are uninteresting and irrelevant to me.

My only interest is in why people have those beliefs, and the psychological mechanisms they employ to defend those beliefs from conflicting evidence, such as why you can't accept that atheism is nothing more or less than the absence of a god belief. I have no idea why that idea bothers you enough to argue against its possibility so passionately.

Incidentally, we already have a word for lacking a god belief - atheism. You've just changed the privative prefix "a-" to what it means, "lack." Atheism means lacking theism like asymmetric means lacking symmetry.

I wonder why unbelief in gods is impossible for you to accept?

Not to a critical thinker. Remember, lightning and the sun moving through the sky were also once considered evidence for Thor and Apollo. The god of the gaps is now relegated to the as yet unresolved origins problems (the origin of the expanding universe and the origin of life), and we have naturalistic hypotheses for both of those as well.

I dont see what the theos call
atheism to be a "lack" at all except
in the sense that those with dengue
or schistosomiasis might think I lack those.

 

[Little Dragon]

Perfect, can you show this is the case?

Yes. For example. The Aztecs used to sacrifice humans to their Gods. Especially their Gods of Agriculture and War. Since they did not understand climate patterns and oceanography and geology, they attributed poor weather and therefore bad harvests, to the displeasure of the agents behind those things, their Gods. The supernatural controlling entities that people believe in.

 

[Little Dragon]

I assume you know nothing about quantum mechanics and radioactive decay?

I was going to mention zero point energy fluctuations and certain theories of cyclic universes..

 

[ChristineM]

I was going to mention zero point energy fluctuations and certain theories of cyclic universes..

That would be hypothesis of cyclic universes.

 

[Audie]

Perfect, can you show this is the case?

When people assign supernatural agency to
the events in their lives they do so out of ignorance
of the real cause and effect relationships whether is
a good crop, an earthquake, a narrow escape or
serious illness.

It's far from hard to see how religions start.

 

[Kfox]

S believes X because R: in other words any belief someone has, there must be a reason for them to have it.

Agreed.

A theist believes in god(s) because of a reason (R). A theistic R may be personal experience, and an atheistic R may be indoctrination. Either way there is R.

Yes! Multiple “R’s”: personal experience and indoctrination (per your example), are just a few of them

If R != gods really exist,

Now let me see if I’ve got this straight; “R” is the reason a person believes in God, but “R!” is the claim that God does exist! Agree?

there must be *some other R*.

Didn't we already establish there are countless reason’s people believe in God AKA “R”?

So, when rejecting R = gods really exist, one must propose an alternative R.

You’ve lost me here; R! is the claim Gods really exist, R is the reason people believe in God which nobody rejects. Did I miss something here?

 

[Little Dragon]

That would be hypothesis of cyclic universes.

Well yeah, if you want to be accurate about it.

 

[Alien826]

If you mean exposure to it, I agree. If you mean the ability to avoid indoctrination, I disagree. Critical thinking confers immunity to indoctrination.

Yes, but. Young children usually lack that "immunity" and do get "infected" on a regular basis.

"Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man". Aristotle, later repeated by Ignatius Loyola.

I did say "usually" though. There is always the annoying child (like me) that says "why?" to everything he is told.

I have opinions about gods, but continue to define atheism as a lack of belief in gods, and for those concerned that this includes infants, dog, or rocks, I say that an atheist is anybody who answers no to the question of whether he holds a god belief.

I put this to my dog, and she showed a lot of interest. On reflection, she might have misheard the words "god belief" as "dog treat", words that she knows well.

​

 

[ChristineM]

Well yeah, if you want to be accurate about it.

Yeah, sorry.

In cosmology (and science in general) I'm a stickler for accuracy. 'Theory' is is so often misused and/or misrepresented by anti science types ("it's only a theory") i prefer not to give them something the pick at.

 

[1137]

Yes. For example. The Aztecs used to sacrifice humans to their Gods. Especially their Gods of Agriculture and War. Since they did not understand climate patterns and oceanography and geology, they attributed poor weather and therefore bad harvests, to the displeasure of the agents behind those things, their Gods. The supernatural controlling entities that people believe in.

This is a possibility yes, but what reasons do we have to consider it?

 

[1137]

When people assign supernatural agency to
the events in their lives they do so out of ignorance
of the real cause and effect relationships whether is
a good crop, an earthquake, a narrow escape or
serious illness.

It's far from hard to see how religions start.

I am aware this is your position. I am asking for evidence supporting it.

 

[Alien826]

That's certainly a popular narrative. It plays into various myths that are popular in modern, Western culture - ethnocentric myths that place modern Western culture as a pinnacle of human achievement that is inherently better than other ways of living and being, the larger myth of progress that considers things of the past "primitive" and everything new more "developed" by default, that sort of thing. While academia has moved away from those mythic narratives - judgmental notions of "primitive" and "developed" religions or cultures - mainstream culture seems to have not done so.

Well, I wouldn't call it a "myth" that people in the past knew less about how things work than we do now. That doesn't make them less intelligent or inferior, they were just working with what they had. Are you saying that the belief that lightning bolts are thrown by gods is somehow on a par with knowing how they actually form and how to avoid being hit by them? Surely not.

Not to discount the role of fear and lack of control in the narrative, though. It's definitely there. But it is also equally there for "developed" or "modern" practices. I mean, why do we even build houses, anyway? It's a response to fear, and a desire to control. Why do we even care about climate change, anyway? Fear and control. Why do we even care about food shortages? Whether our partners are cheating on us? About mass shootings? Yeah, it pretty much all boils down to fear and control. That isn't a "primitive" thing relegated to the past, it is a constant thing that is with us now. And back then, as now, it also is not the only thing that explains why we do what we do.

True. But the examples you give of what we fear and what we do to try to control things do tend to be more "real" than notions of gods. Building a house actually does keep out the rain, sacrificing to gods doesn't. And of course fear is not the only motivator.

 

[LuisDantas]

What do you mean?

It is all a matter of preference and comfort.

Granted, there is an inherent assymetry in that theism requires justification in order to sustain itself, while atheism does not.

 

[blü 2]

Well, since you seem to be obsessed with demanding what you cannot have, I guess you'll be waiting a very long time.

I'm not obsessed. I can be persuaded to just about any view ─ let's say the existence in reality of ghosts, souls, goblins, wishing wells, ESP, gods, better still goddesses, the whole toyshop ─ by a satisfactory demonstration.

Bring it on! I say ─ Show me!

But nobody does.

 

[Little Dragon]

Yeah, sorry.

In cosmology (and science in general) I'm a stickler for accuracy. 'Theory' is is so often misused and/or misrepresented by anti science types ("it's only a theory") i prefer not to give them something the pick at.

A theory is a testable hypothesis that has been tested with empirical evidence. If some could just wrap their head around that, confusion might decrease.

 

[McBell]

I don't "believe in" any gods. And all the gods you mentioned are the same God, as experienced and understood differently by different cultures. But you aren't here to understand theism. You're just here to condemn it ... by whatever silly arguments you can devise.

So basically you are saying they are the polar opposite of you?

 

[Audie]

I am aware this is your position. I am asking for evidence supporting it.

Anything to avoid the obvious.
The more the theos carry on so
the more they lose.