Atheism: A belief?

[Copernicus]

I've already answered it. I even answered it in my last few replies. The only question to determine atheism is "Do you believe in God?". If you say no, you're an atheist. what that implies is that atheism says nothing about what your beliefs are. You don't have to believe God doesn't exist to be an atheist. In simple terms, no, atheism doesn't necessarily involve a belief, as has been explained ad nauseam in this thread and others.

To claim that "atheism doesn't necessarily involve a belief" is not an explanation. It is an assertion. It happens to be the assertion under debate. Calling it an "explanation" begs the question.

Take a look at the last paragraph in my post #403. It is a universally-accepted axiom of speech act theory that assertions presuppose belief. That is, when you make an assertion, you are attributing a belief to yourself. If you assert that gods do not exist, then you are attributing to yourself the belief that gods do not exist. So, answering "No" to your question is, in fact, attributing a belief. Therefore, atheism involves a belief by your own criteria.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Do you mean to say that "I don't believe the mail has arrived" does not mean "I believe the mail has not arrived", except colloquially?

Yes. When taken strictly literally, "I don't believe the mail has arrived" allows for, but does not necessarily imply, "I believe the mail has not arrived."

Look at it this way: would you agree that the phrase "I don't believe the mail has arrived" is equivalent in meaning to the phrase "I don't have a belief that the mail has arrived"?

The logical part was discussed:

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/2388955-post394.html

...

That post does use the word "logic", but I fail to see how it's relevant.

Do you mean WEAK LACK OF BELIEF?

Only inanimate objects or a highest sage in Turya stage can be without belief, as per my training.

Red herring. We're talking about the qualities of atheism, not the qualities of atheists.

I bet that if you did a survey of atheists, you'd find that every one of them has a nose. This does not mean that "having a nose" is a prerequisite for atheism.

 

[Magic Man]

To claim that "atheism doesn't necessarily involve a belief" is not an explanation. It is an assertion. It happens to be the assertion under debate. Calling it an "explanation" begs the question.

I didn't say that one claim was the explanation. The explanation is that answering the question "Do you believe in God?" with "no" indicates atheism. Also, the fact that the term literally means "without belief in God" is an explanation of why my claim about atheism is true.

Take a look at the last paragraph in my post #403. It is a universally-accepted axiom of speech act theory that assertions presuppose belief. That is, when you make an assertion, you are attributing a belief to yourself. If you assert that gods do not exist, then you are attributing to yourself the belief that gods do not exist. So, answering "No" to your question is, in fact, attributing a belief. Therefore, atheism involves a belief by your own criteria.

I think you're thinking of the wrong question. The question is not "Does God exist?". the question is "Do you believe God exists?". By answering no to that question, you are not necessarily asserting that gods do not exist. So, that claim has nothing to do with my question.

 

[Orias]

:sarcastic

So... which is it? Do you believe that I had eggs this morning? Or do you believe that I had something other than eggs? It's an either-or matter, because there are no other options... right?

Or are there?

Well, either way, my assumption may be irrelevant to what the answer actually is.

I don't think this is a practical application, since humans are ignorant in this field

Unless of course you had a specific example you want to get across, please do so.

 

[Copernicus]

You'll notice in the part about stones was, it was said that they're technically atheists by the definition, but that it's not really worth even bringing up. As far as babies are concerned, again technically they're atheists. I can go with what Alceste said about them, though, that like a stone they haven't had a chance to form any ideas at all, so it's pointless to talk about them as atheists.

Mball, you are contradicting yourself! :slap:

The only people going to extreme lengths here are those trying to argue that atheism can't just be a lack of belief in God.

So, you are claiming that the people you disagree with are just being unreasonable. It is either that, or they have a point.

No, it technically fits them. Again, as was said, it's not very productive to use the term in reference to stones, and probably not in reference to babies either, but you're focusing on a part of the conversation that isn't and wasn't meant to be integral to the main one.

No, I'm focusing on a part of the discussion that embarrasses you, because even you realize the absurd corner that you've painted yourself into. Reductio ad absurdum: Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.

 

[Magic Man]

Mball, you are contradicting yourself! :slap:

You're more than welcome to try to point out how rather than just making a statement like that.

So, you are claiming that the people you disagree with are just being unreasonable. It is either that, or they have a point.

You're the one who claimed the people who disagree with you are just being unreasonable. I merely turned it around on you. So, yes, the people who disagree with you have a point and aren't being unreasonable. I'm not sure why you'd rather dismiss them as such rather than either argue against their claims or admit they're right.

No, I'm focusing on a part of the discussion that embarrasses you, because even you realize the absurd corner that you've painted yourself into. Reductio ad absurdum: Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.

No, you're focusing on a part of the discussion that's not important. We've shown you how stones and babies can be considered babies. I've also acknowledged that, while it's true in a technical sense, it's not a very useful application of the label.

Although, really I'd just define "atheist" as "a person who lacks the belief in God", which would exclude stones and other non-human objects.

So, no, I haven't painted myself into a corner. You're usually better than this. At this point, you're not even arguing the issue anymore.

 

[Copernicus]

I didn't say that one claim was the explanation. The explanation is that answering the question "Do you believe in God?" with "no" indicates atheism...

What you said was: "In simple terms, no, atheism doesn't necessarily involve a belief, as has been explained ad nauseam in this thread and others."

...Also, the fact that the term literally means "without belief in God" is an explanation of why my claim about atheism is true.

You are calling the debate topic a fact. That is classic question-begging.

I think you're thinking of the wrong question. The question is not "Does God exist?". the question is "Do you believe God exists?". By answering no to that question, you are not necessarily asserting that gods do not exist. So, that claim has nothing to do with my question.

The question "Does God exist?" entails the question "Do you believe that God exists?"

 

[Revoltingest]

Do you mean WEAK LACK OF BELIEF?
Only inanimate objects or a highest sage in Turya stage can be without belief, as per my training.
...

Certainly, I can't prove there aren't any gods. But neither is there any evidence for them.
So I do not believe them. I'm a little more than agnostic, because I speculate there are no gods.
But this is not a belief in the sense that I think it's true or factual.
You might call this belief. Some might not. Personally, I don't know or care if it's a "belief".

From About.com....
"Weak atheism, also sometimes referred to as implicit atheism, is simply another name for the broadest and most general conception of atheism: the absence of belief in any gods. A weak atheist is someone who lacks theism and who does not happen to believe in the existence of any gods — no more, no less. This is also sometimes called agnostic atheism because most people who self-consciously lack belief in gods tend to do so for agnostic reasons."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Of course I do. I know that I do not know what you had for breakfast.

But I didn't ask you what you know; I ask you what you believe.

And I told you, but now I'm going to modify that reply. If I were to try to guess what you ate for breakfast, eggs would be a reasonable guess. Shoe leather, not so much. I could be wrong, though. :foot:

Okay... let's look at it another way. Consider the following list of customary breakfast foods:

- eggs
- cereal
- pancakes
- leftover pizza

Which of these do you believe I had for breakfast?

Well, it could be the empty set, but I do have beliefs about whether people usually eat breakfast and the kinds of food that they eat. I just do not have enough information to be able to answer the question with confidence. My mental model of the world is primed, but not fully instantiated for this particular information.

Well, is there a particular level of confidence in an idea where you consider yourself to believe in it? Has that been met for the idea that I had eggs for breakfast?

Definitely not the empty set. My set of beliefs could be nicely modeled in a Bayesian network of probabilities. So I'm definitely including eggs in the set of possibilities. You could supply me with better information, you know. I'm beginning to get curious.

And I'm beginning to get hungry.

But my whole point is to ask you what you believe when you have no information: do you have the belief or not?

And while I see how your "Bayesian network" could help you apply a level of certainty to your beliefs, and potentially be the criterion you use to believe an idea, at the end of the day, you either have a belief or you don't.

But to use your analogy of a statistical model, look at it this way: lack of certainty on one idea does not imply certainty for its opposite. Even if you don't accept that I had eggs this morning, this doesn't mean that you necessarily accept that I didn't have them.

Oh, but I did. I just gave you more detail than a simple "yes" or "no". Being a typical human, my beliefs can shift around quite a bit in the course of a discussion. Originally, I said that I had no idea. Now I realize that that answer was not quite correct. Beliefs come in degrees of confidence, and my confidence about what you ate (and whether you even ate any breakfast) rises or falls as I consider different types of foods and non-foods.

Yes, you can be more or less confident in a belief, but at the end of the day, you can still distinguish between an uncertain belief and an uncertain disbelief, can't you?

You asked a question about my beliefs. I chose not to say more about the nature of speech acts, but conversations entail a lot of beliefs, which linguists tend to call "presuppositions". The philosopher, Paul Grice, famously named four conversational maxims that govern speech acts--quality, quantity, relation, and manner. The maxim of quality states that, other things being equal, speakers believe what they say. Hence, "You shoelace is untied" is functionally equivalent to the assertion "I believe that your shoelace is untied". Do they mean the same thing? Yes, but the second statement contains a redundancy (hence, it "flaunts" the maxim of quantity--saying only what is needed). My point is that making an assertion is stating a belief (unless one is lying or intentionally flaunting the maxim of quality). When someone says "God does not exist", that person is very definitely stating a belief. The concept of "atheism" is as classification of belief.

But all that is irrelevant if saying "God does not exist" isn't a prerequisite for atheism. And I'm saying it's not.

As I said to atanu in my last post, this is about the qualities of atheism, not atheists. What atheists do isn't relevant unless it touches on the actual criteria of atheism: even if every atheist in existence actively denied the existence of God, this would not necessarily imply that actively denying the existence of God is a criterion of atheism.

No: the correct answer is, "What is 'God'?" What is it that we are being asked whether we believe. If you don't know, you can't answer, at all.

Edit: Let me rephrase: If you don't know what it is you're asking about, then we can't possibly answer.

This ignores the fact that words do have meanings.

Hypothetical scenario (based on a foggy recollection of a bank commercial): a child overhears an adult couple talking about how much equity they have in their house. The child doesn't know what "equity" means.

The child comes home and says "Mom, do you have any equity in your house?"

Should the Mom's response be "I can't answer you until you understand what 'equity' means?"

If the child has decided that "equity" means "unicorn droppings that adults keep in the basement to burn in the furnace" and meanwhile, the mother has $50,000 in actual equity, would she be correct or incorrect by answering her child with "no, I don't"?

 

[Magic Man]

What you said was: "In simple terms, no, atheism doesn't necessarily involve a belief, as has been explained ad nauseam in this thread and others."

Exactly. I said what it was, and that it had been explained many times in this and other threads. I didn't say my assertion that it is true was an explanation for it.

You are calling the debate topic a fact. That is classic question-begging.

No, it's a fact that the term "theism" means "belief in God", and the prefix "a-" means "without" or "not". I'm using that fact to support my position.

The question "Does God exist?" entails the question "Do you believe that God exists?"

Yes, it does, but not vice versa, which is the only relevant part. "Do you believe that God exists?" does not necessarily entail the question "Does God exist?".

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The question "Does God exist?" entails the question "Do you believe that God exists?"

But that's irrelevant.

Nobody's arguing that believing that God doesn't exist implies atheism. What's at issue is whether atheism implies believing that God doesn't exist. The one statement doesn't logically follow from the other.

"You have to be European to be German" does not imply "you have to be German to be European".

 

[Copernicus]

You're more than welcome to try to point out how rather than just making a statement like that.

Obviously, the fact that you brought up and discussed the baby/stone conundrum implies that you thought it worth discussing. Yet you claim that it is not worth bringing up! That is the nature of your contradiction.

No, you're focusing on a part of the discussion that's not important. We've shown you how stones and babies can be considered babies. I've also acknowledged that, while it's true in a technical sense, it's not a very useful application of the label.

I've offered arguments on why babies and stones are not technically atheists. Rather than to rebut my arguments, you merely repeat your claim. That is argumentum ad nauseam.

Although, really I'd just define "atheist" as "a person who lacks the belief in God", which would exclude stones and other non-human objects.

If you accept that definition, then you must agree that stones are not technically atheists. If you can hold on to that, then you are not in as bad a predicament as your earlier claim about stones.

So, no, I haven't painted myself into a corner. You're usually better than this. At this point, you're not even arguing the issue anymore.

I don't think that this is about who is "usually better". It is about the question of whether atheism is a type of belief. We have taken opposing positions on that subject. That doesn't mean that I think any less of you. If we are counting noses (and I think that we've let it go unchallenged that all atheists have noses), then there are more atheist noses on your side of the debate than mine. I suspect, though, that I could bring most lexicologist and lexicographer noses over to my side.

 

[Copernicus]

But that's irrelevant.

Nobody's arguing that believing that God doesn't exist implies atheism. What's at issue is whether atheism implies believing that God doesn't exist. The one statement doesn't logically follow from the other.

"You have to be European to be German" does not imply "you have to be German to be European".

Being German entails being European. The only point I was making was that a simple question is a request for a statement of belief. It was relevant to the discussion, since an irrelevant distinction was being made.

 

[Copernicus]

No, it's a fact that the term "theism" means "belief in God", and the prefix "a-" means "without" or "not". I'm using that fact to support my position.

OK, if you want to go that route, then your are committing what is known as an etymological fallacy:

The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds, erroneously, that the historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning. This is a linguistic misconception, mistakenly identifying a word's current semantic field with its etymology.[1] An argument only constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology, thus distinguishing an alleged "true" (etymological) meaning from the workaday use.

In any case, your linguistic analysis is technically wrong. The English negative prefix "a-" only attaches to adjectives, not nouns. Something can be "amoral", but we do not normally talk about "amorality" except as a back formation off of the adjective. The word "atheist" is not normally thought of as having a prefix in the same sense that "amoral" is.

Yes, it does, but not vice versa, which is the only relevant part. "Do you believe that God exists?" does not necessarily entail the question "Does God exist?".

You got my claim backwards. Entailment is a one-way relationship. What I said was that the question "Does God exist?" logically entails "Do you believe that God exists?" A question is always a request for a statement of belief.

 

[Magic Man]

Obviously, the fact that you brought up and discussed the baby/stone conundrum implies that you thought it worth discussing. Yet you claim that it is not worth bringing up! That is the nature of your contradiction.

I didn't bring it up. You used it as an excuse to dismiss all of the other arguments being made. I was explaining to you why it's wrong to use it in that way.

I've offered arguments on why babies and stones are not technically atheists. Rather than to rebut my arguments, you merely repeat your claim. That is argumentum ad nauseam.

I'm not trying to rebut your argument. Whether or not babies and stones are atheists doesn't need to be addressed to answer the question of whether or not atheism is a belief. The difference of opinion is whether "lack of belief in God" is a sufficient definition for atheism. You say it isn't, and you're claiming that stones and babies aren't atheists as fact and therefore as evidence for your opinion. The counterclaim is that, in fact, stones and babies could be considered atheists in the absolute broadest sense of the term, but it's unproductive.

If you accept that definition, then you must agree that stones are not technically atheists. If you can hold on to that, then you are not in as bad a predicament as your earlier claim about stones.

Yes, for the sake of productivity, I'd probably use "person" in my definition of "atheist". But that's also why that whole side discussion isn't even necessary to the bigger discussion.

I don't think that this is about who is "usually better".

That wasn't the point of that comment. The point of that comment was that you're using tactics here that you don't normally use because normally you debate better.

I suspect, though, that I could bring most lexicologist and lexicographer noses over to my side.

And I suspect you're wrong about that.

 

[Magic Man]

Being German entails being European. The only point I was making was that a simple question is a request for a statement of belief. It was relevant to the discussion, since an irrelevant distinction was being made.

Then your point was incorrect, and no irrelevant distinction was being made, at least not by me.

 

[Magic Man]

OK, if you want to go that route, then your are committing what is known as an etymological fallacy:

The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds, erroneously, that the historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning. This is a linguistic misconception, mistakenly identifying a word's current semantic field with its etymology.[1] An argument only constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology, thus distinguishing an alleged "true" (etymological) meaning from the workaday use.

In any case, your linguistic analysis is technically wrong. The English negative prefix "a-" only attaches to adjectives, not nouns. Something can be "amoral", but we do not normally talk about "amorality" except as a back formation off of the adjective. The word "atheist" is not normally thought of as having a prefix in the same sense that "amoral" is.

No, I'm using the parts of the word to explain that the definition in use today is based on the parts. You can use "atheist" anyway you want, but the best definition is " a person who lacks the belief in God".

The fact is a theist is a person who believes in God. That means an atheist is a person who does not believe in God. It does not mean that an atheist is a person who believes God does not exist. That is also supported by the meanings of the parts of the word, as I explained.

You got my claim backwards. Entailment is a one-way relationship. What I said was that the question "Does God exist?" logically entails "Do you believe that God exists?" A question is always a request for a statement of belief.

A question is not always a request for a statement of belief. And yes, we all agreed you were right that the first question entails the second. My point was that that is irrelevant. The real question is whether "Do you believe God exists?" entails the question "Does God exist?". The answer is that it does not.

 

[Willamena]

This ignores the fact that words do have meanings.

No... unless by "ignore" you meant "empower." Then, yes.

We are the assignors of meaning. I assign. He assigns. She assigns. Wouldn't you like to be an assignor, too?

Hypothetical scenario (based on a foggy recollection of a bank commercial): a child overhears an adult couple talking about how much equity they have in their house. The child doesn't know what "equity" means.

The child comes home and says "Mom, do you have any equity in your house?"

Should the Mom's response be "I can't answer you until you understand what 'equity' means?"

:yes: Hopefully, she will also do her best to explain what 'equity' means as she understands it.

If the child has decided that "equity" means "unicorn droppings that adults keep in the basement to burn in the furnace" and meanwhile, the mother has $50,000 in actual equity, would she be correct or incorrect by answering her child with "no, I don't"?

If the child has "decided" that equity means unicorn droppings that adults keep in the basement to burn in the furnace, it was for a reason.

 

[Copernicus]

We are the assignors of meaning. I assign. He assigns. She assigns. Wouldn't you like to be an assignor, too?

Word meanings are determined purely by usage. Individuals cannot assign meanings like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Convention determines meaning, and convention can be discovered. If a community of speakers chose to call rocks and babies "atheists", then the mean of the word would take on a secondary sense in that community. It would not be valid outside of the community.

 

[Willamena]

Word meanings are determined purely by usage. Individuals cannot assign meanings like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Convention determines meaning, and convention can be discovered. If a community of speakers chose to call rocks and babies "atheists", then the mean of the word would take on a secondary sense in that community. It would not be valid outside of the community.

Nobody gets that book.

What determines convention? Usage. A tautology. We can and do assign meaning, or there would be no "rocks and babies that are atheists" in your community example.