atheism is a (religious position)

[DNB]

It has been very clear what you have been talking about.

considering human nature and belief all the believers in the many different conflicting beliefs are firm and devoted in their beliefs, and fully confident including atheists and agnostics. Yes, there are non-believers and believers that are not firm in their beliefs, but that is the nature of being human. None of the above demonstrates anything significant in who would be considered wase or not. The believers of of many different consider them selves wise and true to their beliefs.

It remains that your in your egocentric view others who believe differently are fools

Objectively you cannot tell whether there is a God or not, or which God is the true God, You believe God exists and your God is the One true God, and those who do not believe as you do are fools.

All religions and cultures have moral standards of what is right or wrong whether they e in your God or not. Some, like Buddhists have higher standards of compassion and understanding toward those who believe differently. See K. Siddhartha post #886..

Whoever makes the most sense, is the one whose views are the most accurate - Siddhartha is not one of them

 

[DNB]

It sounds like you just conceded that wisdom and logic alone isn't enough to lead a person to God. Is that what you meant to do?

Faith is wisdom, anything else is credulity

 

[DNB]

Objectively they both can be wrong as far as their subjective view of the"opinion" of the movie.


Actually as far as an understanding of the science of the physical nature of the world the atheist is more likely more correct. As far as the many diverse conflicting religious beliefs no one has an independent objective standard which is true only the belief..

Actually considering there is no independent objective standard all are fools.

Life and man's sprit are the independent and objective keys to extrapolating the truth - the evidence is before us all.
If by now, at your mature age, you can't tell what causes the world to run, or what compels man to act in a certain way, then blindness appears to be a disease that has affected the majority of the populace

 

[Mock Turtle]

I can say for sure atheism is a position with a belief. Those beliefs are not hinged solidly, same as many other religions.

I don't see cookie cutter atheists. I see individuals who adopted the view for several potential reasons.

A. I don't want a religious nutter on my back so I come at them with this to get rid of them.

B. They are logically convinced their position is as solid and valid as any other or more solid than others.

C. Deep down they really believe in something or that there is a possibility there is something, but are not convinced enough of it to even admit it. These would be closet agnostics.

D. They had some kind of a bad experience with religious people or a religious organization, so they harbor a lot of hate and resentment towards the entire group. Atheism is a great way to vent and have plenty of support for it.

E. They are not the least bit interested in anything religious at all except for this life and have no real interest in pursuing an interest lol. " I really don't care" would be an apt description here.They care about nothing and they believe in nothing. That probably doesn't fit anyone here because you wouldn't care enough to be here.

F. Much like some households are of a certain belief system, there are families of atheists. This is the way they were raised. This is what mom believes. This is what I believe.

I believe we can confirm atheism is a belief system which requires what some would call faith, but could also be described as a group of beliefs which can be seen as a systematic way of logic, and like some religions who don't identify a god, such as zen buddhism and new age, they don't have a deity, but really they do because to rely on their conclusions they make themselves a deity. They evolved according to them and have no need of morals, even though they have them to some extent and can't exactly identify where they came from unless the answer is evolution. The answer for everything is evolution.

Logic stops at anything metaphysical, therefore invalidating it in their minds. Isn't that a belief that can't be established, if only for them?

You seem to have missed out my reasons, and these not being a response to anything in particular, given I have never had any real bias towards or against having such beliefs. I seem to have become a (mostly) atheist simply because the weight of evidence in my view leads to this conclusion whether I like it or not - although as an agnostic atheist I am open to evidence that might make me conclude otherwise.

Some might expect me to delve into every religious belief so as to become intimately acquainted with their beliefs and so as to do justice to them, but time and effort I'm afraid is against this, particularly when one has so much more to learn elsewhere. But the sheer existence of so many different beliefs hardly helps the position of any one of these beliefs, particularly when a single God concept is not universal. And we mostly get God evidence (as to what any God is and does) from religious beliefs.

Given that many of these beliefs often try to refute science - some in the silliest ways (YECs) - and also that they tend to cause conflict between and amongst the beliefs as well as adherents not behaving that much better than those without such beliefs, I don't see that much merit in most if one can be a reasonable and effective human being without having such beliefs. A belief in God however shouldn't necessarily mean having to have a religious belief though.

 

[viole]

Actually, I think that it can be better addressed by the study linguistic semantics. Belief is a mental state, and, when you negate belief, there is an inherent linguistic ambiguity--whether the mental state falls within the scope of negation. So consider the ambiguous sentences:

"Henry does not believe that God exists."

Depending on context, it could be a denial that Henry holds the belief, or it could be an affirmation that Henry believes in the non-existence of God. In that case, Henry would hold a positive belief about whether or not gods (or God) existed.

Now consider words like "atheist" and "agnostic". Both are words that are inherently negative in meaning. They both define people who reject some kind of belief, but how could one apply the label properly to any individual? One can only do that if the object of the mental state--in this case, a belief--is known and understood. In other words, gods have to mean something to those who use the labels "atheist" and "agnostic". In normal conventional usage, we usually use the words in reference to people who reject the object of belief--gods (atheists) or ability to know of the existence of gods (agnostics). This is not to say that we can't extend the word meanings to a broader category--that is, the negation of the mental state itself. However, that would depart from the norms of usage. English speakers don't normally think of atheists and agnostics as people who merely lack the concept of gods.

The problem for atheists is that lack of evidence for the existence of god(s) is a motivation for rejecting belief in them, so they often feel a need to include that motivation as part of the definition of atheism. By insisting that the term only refers to absence of belief, they emphasize their position that atheism ought to be the default for everyone, often shoring up the opinion by pointing out that people who are religious still usually reject other religious belief systems by default. ("You and I are no different in whether we are skeptical about the existence of gods, except that you aren't skeptical about one particular god.")

Nevertheless, a lexicographer--someone who constructs word definitions for a living--should not be swayed by how people would like to define words. They should base their definitions on how people actually use words in most contexts, and that is an empirical question. I have not actually done a thorough investigation of the usage of words like "atheism" and "agnosticism", but my gut feeling is that people seldom use those words to refer to a mere absence of belief. Almost invariably, it is about rejecting the object of a belief.

I think the two statements are different only when we have no concept of what we are supposed to believe or disbelieve. Ergo, when we cannot possibly develop a belief, not even in principle, since we cannot possibly assess the ontological status of something we do not conceive.

For example, the following two are different:

1) Plato did not believe that there are positrons
2) Plato believed that there are no positrons

In fact, 1) is true, since Plato could not possibly have developed a belief about antimatter particles. While 2) is false for the same reason. Therefore, they are clearly not equivalent.

However, if a time traveller had the possibility to educate Plato about positrons, then I think I can defend the claim that 1) and 2) become equivalent. In other words, the equivalence is predicated on a premise:

if I know what X is, then lacking belief of X existence is equivalent to believe that X does not exist.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

go not believe ether is a copout as such. Logically the burden of proof resides with those that argue for the existence of one or more Gods.

I am one of the few atheists I know who considers that a sort of intellectual laziness. OK, I lack belief in God, therefore I am not involved in providing any justifications at all... problem solved. I don't think it is intellectually kosher.

If we forget for a moment the funny versions of the divine we get from mainstream religions, the existence or not of an intentional prime mover, has occupied philosophers for centuries, and still does. As a matter of fact, it could be used to explain the origins of everything. Ergo, if we do not believe that the God hypothesis is viable to explain what exists, I think we should provide justifications why that does not obtain, also because, at least in my case, the loss of belief has very clear logical reasons.

There is and interesting belief in some religions that spiritual realms of some sort exist beyond the physical, but they believe not Gods or gods exist.

What's the intellectual difference? What is the logical reason to believe in those realms, but not in God? From an ontological point of view, they are equivalent beliefs with the exact same standard. It is like, mutatis mutandis, abandoning tarots, to embrace astrology.

Traditional atheists essentially believe nothing exists beyond our physical existence.

These are mainly materialists. Or naturalists. And they can very well justify why they think there is no God, despite not having, allegedly, the burden of proof. And they can explain it because it is a logical consequence of naturalism, and what they believe to be true.

Ciao

- viole

 

[shunyadragon]

Whoever makes the most sense, is the one whose views are the most accurate - Siddhartha is not one of them

Whoever "makes up" the most sense. What makes sense is a subjective judgement and cannot measure accuracy., and your extreme egocentric bias and judgement eliminates any possibility of accuracy.

 

[shunyadragon]

I am one of the few atheists I know who considers that a sort of intellectual laziness. OK, I lack belief in God, therefore I am not involved in providing any justifications at all... problem solved. I don't think it is intellectually kosher.

I like post #920

If we forget for a moment the funny versions of the divine we get from mainstream religions, the existence or not of an intentional prime mover, has occupied philosophers for centuries, and still does. As a matter of fact, it could be used to explain the origins of everything. Ergo, if we do not believe that the God hypothesis is viable to explain what exists, I think we should provide justifications why that does not obtain, also because, at least in my case, the loss of belief has very clear logical reasons.

What's the intellectual difference? What is the logical reason to believe in those realms, but not in God? From an ontological point of view, they are equivalent beliefs with the exact same standard. It is like, mutatis mutandis, abandoning tarots, to embrace astrology.

My comments were just an observation of the variability of human belief.

These are mainly materialists. Or naturalists. And they can very well justify why they think there is no God, despite not having, allegedly, the burden of proof. And they can explain it because it is a logical consequence of naturalism, and what they believe to be true.

Ciao

- viole

I agree

 

[shunyadragon]

Faith is wisdom, anything else is credulity

Everyone has faith.

 

[shunyadragon]

Life and man's sprit are the independent and objective keys to extrapolating the truth - the evidence is before us all.
If by now, at your mature age, you can't tell what causes the world to run, or what compels man to act in a certain way, then blindness appears to be a disease that has affected the majority of the populace

You are obviously a part of the 'blindness appears to be a disease that has affected the majority of the populace' clinging egocentrically to ancient tribal mythological belief.

 

[PureX]

It's a complicated issue. Technically all theism is, is the proposition that God or gods exist in a manner that effects we humans (otherwise the question is philosophically moot). So all atheism is, is the antithetical (rejection) of that proposition.

WHY one accepts or rejects the proposition can vary greatly from person to person, but ultimately none of us will be able to prove or disprove the proposition. I agree that just saying "I am not convinced" is both lazy and irrelevant. And annoying as well when the people saying this still want to stand in judgment over everyone else's position.

Mostly all we can honestly do in the face of the theist proposition is share our own thoughts on it, and try to learn from each other. As no one can win the I'm right/you're wrong game on this one

 

[F1fan]

Life and man's sprit are the independent and objective keys to extrapolating the truth - the evidence is before us all.

You fall back on obsolete religious assumptions. That's not good enough for critical thinkers.

If by now, at your mature age, you can't tell what causes the world to run, or what compels man to act in a certain way, then blindness appears to be a disease that has affected the majority of the populace

Oh the irony. Theists like yourself continually repeat obsolete religious belief and ignore what science has learned about nature and psychology. You call knowledge a "disease" yet your computer use tells us you rely on the modern technology that the "disease" has created. What else in the modern world do you use and rely on, but consider the knowledge that makes it all possible and real a "disease"? This is why religious extremist views are laughable and heavily criticized.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If by now, at your mature age, you can't tell what causes the world to run, or what compels man to act in a certain way, then blindness appears to be a disease that has affected the majority of the populace

Can you actually tell any of that, or have you just doubled down on the assumption that what you were taught as a child is true?

 

[viole]

I like post #920

Good for you. I personally do not simply lack belief in God. In fact, I claim knowledge that God does not exist, and that is because I do not simply hide behind the "no evidence" thing. So, I know that not because of lack of evidence, but because of the obvious presence of counter-evidence. At least when we restrict ourselves to the Gods we get from mainstream religions.

Ciao

- viole

 

[PureX]

Good for you. I personally do not simply lack belief in God. In fact, I claim knowledge that God does not exist, and that is because I do not simply hide behind the "no evidence" thing. So, I know that not because of lack of evidence, but because of the obvious presence of counter-evidence. At least when we restrict ourselves to the Gods we get from mainstream religions.

Ciao

- viole

I don't want to start a whole thing, here, but knowing that Thor is a mythical character that people used to perceive/concieve of as a god doesn't mean you know that there is no God, or even that God was not the Thor of those people's imaginations. The purpose of religions is to give people ways of comprehending and expressing their sense of the divine. And that very often means providing them with characters that can represent their experience of the 'inexplicable divine' and give them ways of responding to it.

Debunking a myth is easy, but mostly meaningless. As it doesn't debunk the thing the myth represents.

 

[Copernicus]

I think the two statements are different only when we have no concept of what we are supposed to believe or disbelieve. Ergo, when we cannot possibly develop a belief, not even in principle, since we cannot possibly assess the ontological status of something we do not conceive.

For example, the following two are different:

1) Plato did not believe that there are positrons
2) Plato believed that there are no positrons

In fact, 1) is true, since Plato could not possibly have developed a belief about antimatter particles. While 2) is false for the same reason. Therefore, they are clearly not equivalent.

However, if a time traveller had the possibility to educate Plato about positrons, then I think I can defend the claim that 1) and 2) become equivalent. In other words, the equivalence is predicated on a premise:

if I know what X is, then lacking belief of X existence is equivalent to believe that X does not exist.

Ciao

- viole

Yes, you understand the point, but I wouldn't say that there is "equivalence" between (1) and (2). Rather, (1) is always going to be linguistically ambiguous, whereas (2) is not. The ambiguity of (1) can only be resolved contextually. (2) lacks the ambiguity, so there is no need for contextual resolution. The important thing about linguistic semantics in natural language, as opposed to semantic interpretation in formal logic, is that semantic interpretation of the signal (or string of word symbols) relies on information in a conversational context for natural language. Natural language interpretation is context-dependent, but symbolic logic interpretation is essentially context-free.

 

[Copernicus]

Good for you. I personally do not simply lack belief in God. In fact, I claim knowledge that God does not exist, and that is because I do not simply hide behind the "no evidence" thing. So, I know that not because of lack of evidence, but because of the obvious presence of counter-evidence. At least when we restrict ourselves to the Gods we get from mainstream religions.

I don't want to start a whole thing, here, but knowing that Thor is a mythical character that people used to perceive/concieve of as a god doesn't mean you know that there is no God, or even that God was not the Thor of those people's imaginations. The purpose of religions is to give people ways of comprehending and expressing their sense of the divine. And that very often means providing them with characters that can represent their experience of the 'inexplicable divine' and give them ways of responding to it.

Debunking a myth is easy, but mostly meaningless. As it doesn't debunk the thing the myth represents.

I didn't see anything in viole's comment that suggested she claimed to know there is no God. Like her, I think that there are perfectly good empirical reasons for rejecting belief in gods, which is not the same thing as claiming to know that there are no gods. Religious faith can serve many purposes, but that does not mean that religious beliefs are true. Whether gods exist does not depend on how useful and convenient people find belief in their existence to be. It depends on whether, in fact, they are real. If there are good reasons to believe that they are not real, that can be grounds for rejecting belief in their existence.

 

[PureX]

I didn't see anything in viole's comment that suggested she claimed to know there is no God. Like her, I think that there are perfectly good empirical reasons for rejecting belief in gods, which is not the same thing as claiming to know that there are no gods. Religious faith can serve many purposes, but that does not mean that religious beliefs are true. Whether gods exist does not depend on how useful and convenient people find belief in their existence to be. It depends on whether, in fact, they are real. If there are good reasons to believe that they are not real, that can be grounds for rejecting belief in their existence.

@Viola stated - "I personally do not simply lack belief in God. In fact, I claim knowledge that God does not exist, and that is because I do not simply hide behind the "no evidence" thing. So, I know that not because of lack of evidence, but because of the obvious presence of counter-evidence. At least when we restrict ourselves to the Gods we get from mainstream religions."

I don't think I misunderstood. And I will reiterate that debunking religious depictions of God/gods does nothing to negate the actual theist proposition. And there is no knowledge that you, I, or anyone else could possibly possess that could logically do that. The term "God" refers to an ideal that is beyond human ability to verify.

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[Starise]

You seem to have missed out my reasons, and these not being a response to anything in particular, given I have never had any real bias towards or against having such beliefs. I seem to have become a (mostly) atheist simply because the weight of evidence in my view leads to this conclusion whether I like it or not - although as an agnostic atheist I am open to evidence that might make me conclude otherwise.

Some might expect me to delve into every religious belief so as to become intimately acquainted with their beliefs and so as to do justice to them, but time and effort I'm afraid is against this, particularly when one has so much more to learn elsewhere. But the sheer existence of so many different beliefs hardly helps the position of any one of these beliefs, particularly when a single God concept is not universal. And we mostly get God evidence (as to what any God is and does) from religious beliefs.

Given that many of these beliefs often try to refute science - some in the silliest ways (YECs) - and also that they tend to cause conflict between and amongst the beliefs as well as adherents not behaving that much better than those without such beliefs, I don't see that much merit in most if one can be a reasonable and effective human being without having such beliefs. A belief in God however shouldn't necessarily mean having to have a religious belief though.

I am one to anaylyze and pick apart things, so if you think my list is incomplete or incorrect I am open to changes.

I look at the thing and then I look at what people are saying about the thing and then I ask why they are saying what they say about the thing , then I examine the thing apart from the static. While I am a believer in God, I haven't adopted a lot of the religious things. In fact I was accused of being molded by my religious surroundings a few posts up. Anyone who knows me will know I look at data and facts and have left groups over inaccuracies. Maybe I still need to work through some of it, but I see a lot of generalizations and stereotypes about believers. I don't believe this is the fault of those holding them necessariy. I think it's more about what they have been exposed to, some of which supports their allegations, but usually it's only a small segment and not a good litmus of the core.

If anything I would think a delving into all religions would serve to encourage a disbelief in God, or a disallusionment. If there is a God as I believe there is, he came before all of the religions which I see as largely man made attempts at a spiritual goal. YEC isn't really a discussion about the existence of god, it's a discussion about timing for most. Another forum I frequented was a daily back and forth among BELIEVERS over it, or so they claimed.

My 'religion' is plain as a Christian. Love God and love my neighbors as myself. That's it. Nothing to add or take away rule wise. We are not to walk around as mindless dummys and not study and then get caught at a loss when approached by unbelievers. Neither are we to focus on argumentative things because we are supposed to be bearers of peace. Most of the questions atheists ask require long in depth responses but they want a sound byte answer. I suspect some won't take the time to read researched answers if they already have a view they are convinced of.. In any case I'm not out to 'convince' or 'prove' anything. My expectation is that if god doesn't do it, it won't happen, and if you don't believe in god then He needs to show you he is God, but I don't think he will do that for anyone who doesn't want to know.

Is Atheism a religion? This is why I made up the list to analyze where different people who make this claim come from because this will shape their world view and in my mind will determine if they are riding the atheism horse as a religion . If it takes the place of religion, then it must have religious traits. Do they cling to the most common beliefs as absolute proof for their beliefs, or do they see it as a non belief? If it's a non believe it can't be considered nothing because everything is something. You can describe something as nothing, but it's still telling about something.Analyzing that something takes us to the answer.

In the end though there are eventualities which none of us has any control over like death for instance, sure we can prolong life, but death is an eventuality. We can add religious fluff around all of our eventualities to make ourselves think we have some control, but I think God has that control and the older we get the more we realize we have less and less control. So in some ways religion fights against eventualities if it's just makeup on a pig. For that I admire atheists in that they question everything which is always good, however sometimes I think the question process doesn't get over the hump and instead stays buried never to move ahead. Group think can be harmful both to Christians and to unbelievers if said group think is wrong.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't think I misunderstood. And I will reiterate that debunking religious depictions of God/gods does nothing to negate the actual theist proposition.

How bizarre to think that there's only one "theist proposition."

And there is no knowledge that you, I, or anyone else could possibly possess that could logically do that.

That depends entirely on the god in question.

...but belief in the unfalsifiable gods (i.e. like you describe) can't be justified rationally. IMO, it's reasonable to just disregard gods like that.

The term "God" refers to an ideal that is beyond human ability to verify.

This sounds like a hand-wavy way of saying "theism is irrational." Is this what you meant?