Atheism is not a default position

[Willamena]

An implicit atheist has made no "declaration", implied or otherwise, about their atheism.


No. When *I* declare "that guy is an atheist", the only person making a declaration is *me*.

Explicitly. Yes.

I think that you believe something that's factually incorrect, but this has nothing to do with your beliefs?

Yes. Just so.

Edit: That whatever you believe has nothing to do with what I believe is evidenced in that we disagree.

 

[jonathan180iq]

It states that the term is applicable.

YES! Exactly!

So why is it applicable when we are talking about politics but not applicable when we are talking about deities?

Aren't they both human constructs which we have to be taught to value?

As I said earlier, "default" doesn't mean "what came before."

Suppose you are travelling down a road. You might turn at Junction 39 or at Junction 42 ahead, but if you don't turn you will continue on the same road. Continuing on the straight road, then, is the default. The term isn't applicable to the state of having no knowledge, and then, down the road, so to speak, acquiring one little, tiny piece of knowledge about god. Junction 39, 42, and the straight road are fixed, necessary options. Belief in something arbitrary and particular is not a necessary option.

In your example the default would be a moving car. To continue to travel, or to veer off in one direction or another is a choice that requires input from external sources. Once there are variables involved, we're no longer talking about the default state.

You can't attain belief without first having been in a state of non-belief, right? If that's true, then we all start out as unbelievers by necessity.

Default doesn't mean "the one with no other option." If there's no other option, there's also no default. The road, in the above example, is one of a few options.

And, frankly, twirling a dervish isn't an option for me, either. It's a piece of information I'm aware of, so a potential belief, but I'm under no obligation to consider it an option for belief.

I should clarify then because that's not really what I mean. (I see how you got that.)

We are born with a bazillion options for a bazillion different things. (We know this through the special knowledge of hindsight.) And we are probably born with certain chemical tendencies, though I think that's still up for debate. What we are not born with are certainties of conclusion.

Being a twirling dervish is an option that you are aware of now, and it's an option for any child born from this point forward... But why aren't you a twirling dervish? Were you aware of that option from birth, or did you have to be taught about it from an external source?

I'm fairly sure you're an Atheist, if I remember some of your posts correctly. You know I am too. We are explicit Atheists who have made a conscious decision to reject the claim of theism - babies aren't like us at all. But they can be factually referred to as atheists because they very obviously cannot be theists, just like they cannot be Democrats, Twirling Dervishes, or Mobsters.

The null state describes no ball.

The steady state is not the default of the change to the ball in motion, any more than the ball in motion is the default of the change to steady state. They're just two states that are potential for the ball. To use the example of the road, it's the failure to decide to turn that creates a default. Otherwise, it's just three roads.

No person is a potential theist or atheist. Both states require a "god" spec of information, which, for a person ignorant of it, may or may not exist (it isn't a necessary bit of information).

That's not how it works.
If we are talking about a ball, we have to refer to a state of the ball. The null state of the ball is a ball without motion; the default state. Anything else which would give the ball motion comes from an external source and thus cannot be part of the default state of the ball.

If you want to default to ignorance, that suggests you've remained on that path of ignorance despite the options available to you. Politicalness, like religion, is arbitrary not fixed, dependent upon the environment, and so there is no guarantee of it being any sort of option. No options, no default option.

Everything defaults to ignorance... that's what ignorance is.

I made the example what seems like 1,000 pages ago about Abe-Mango. Did anyone of this entire forum know about Abe-Mango? I sure didn't as I had to look up an obscure god just to make my point.
The default state of every single member of this forum was non-faith in Abe-Mango. We were all, every single one of us, implicit atheists in regards to Abe-Mango.

You're right that all of those things you mentioned are arbitrary and not-fixed - just like you and I had never heard of Abe-Mango before, it was never really an option to us, despite the fact that we now know it was factually an option all along. Our expose to one religion or political affiliation is entirely dependent on where we are born and which parents we are born to. But even before those factors affect our development, we are completely oblivious of almost everything else in the world - meaning that we necessarily cannot be political or religious.

I don't believe that beliefs require a "default" of any sort, since the information we are each exposed to is arbitrary and constantly in flux.

With or without any political influence, you just are what you are.

Like I said, you've nailed it on the arbitrary flux of states. But it sounds like you're assuming that default somehow means unchanging.

From the moment we are born, we are surrounded by an influx of information and data, both direct and indirect. What we do with that information is not what we are talking about. We are talking about a hypothetical scenario where no outside information ever pushes it's way into our brains - that scenario, while admittedly impossible to attain, is the only one where there will be static progression. The question of implicit atheism is this: How many babies, who never in their entire lives hear the name of Jesus Christ, are going to grow up to be professing, born-again, evangelical Christians? (Obviously you can change the deity or faith system to absolutely anything you prefer) The only answer that anyone can realistically guess at is zero, don't you think?

You finished that one by saying that you are what you are if you do or don't get any political influence in your life and that's simply not true.
How many political parties can you name off the top of your head? Probably a few... How many can you name that you've never heard of?
How many gods can you believe in if you've never once heard the suggestion that such an entity exists?
The reverse of these questions are just as true.

I meant negation in the philosophical sense of "not."

Not believing. Not having knowledge. Not knowing. Those are the negations of believing, having knowledge, and knowing. The positives exist--they are part of the world, constituent of the world. The negatives don't exist, they are just the positives "notted," so to speak. To claim "not belief" for a person, on behalf of a positive state that they can exist in, is a reification of negation. That's what atheism is for a lot of people. Not so much for others.

It makes no sense that a reified negation is any more "default" of positive than a positive is "default" of a negation.

The positive and negative claims only exist in relation to one another - nothing more and nothing less.
We can refer to babies as being apolitical only in relation to our knowledge that there exist people who are political, correct?
The same applies to theism. We can only refer to people as being atheists because we know that there are people who are theists. In no other context does the relation work, but in direct reference to something known.

So, really, the only question that anyone needs to ask is whether or not babies are born believing in god... The answer to that question lays to rest the rest of these 2,800 posts.

 

[Willamena]

YES! Exactly!

So why is it applicable when we are talking about politics but not applicable when we are talking about deities?

Aren't they both human constructs which we have to be taught to value?

Politics and religion are disciplines. Theism, though, is belief in God or gods. Theism is a consequence of information, religion is a practice. That babies don't get out and practice a religion or politics is supportable*. What they know/think/believe is debatable--the only sure thing we can declare is that they don't know/think/believe with all the added baggage that encumbers us.

*Short of getting washed up on a shoreline.

In your example the default would be a moving car.

Not precisely. In my example it's the road not diverted from.

To continue to travel, or to veer off in one direction or another is a choice that requires input from external sources. Once there are variables involved, we're no longer talking about the default state.

Yes, that's precisely what I mean by, "That's not what default means, though." Default doesn't mean "what there was before there were options." The man proceeding along the road is exercising one of his options. The default is one of his options.

Unlike ignorance for the knowledgeable.

You can't attain belief without first having been in a state of non-belief, right? If that's true, then we all start out as unbelievers by necessity.

That's the backwards ontological picture. Forwards, you can neither be said nor not be said to either be in or not be in a state that doesn't exist. It is possible to have a time before theism and atheism.

I should clarify then because that's not really what I mean. (I see how you got that.)

We are born with a bazillion options for a bazillion different things. (We know this through the special knowledge of hindsight.) And we are probably born with certain chemical tendencies, though I think that's still up for debate. What we are not born with are certainties of conclusion.

Being a twirling dervish is an option that you are aware of now, and it's an option for any child born from this point forward... But why aren't you a twirling dervish? Were you aware of that option from birth, or did you have to be taught about it from an external source?

I'm fairly sure you're an Atheist, if I remember some of your posts correctly. You know I am too. We are explicit Atheists who have made a conscious decision to reject the claim of theism - babies aren't like us at all. But they can be factually referred to as atheists because they very obviously cannot be theists, just like they cannot be Democrats, Twirling Dervishes, or Mobsters.

I am an explicit atheist, yes.

That's not how it works.
If we are talking about a ball, we have to refer to a state of the ball. The null state of the ball is a ball without motion; the default state. Anything else which would give the ball motion comes from an external source and thus cannot be part of the default state of the ball.

The ball without motion has a state, though. It is sitting. It never lacks for state, as long as it has positive context.

States of affairs are not options. They describe the world-in-itself, and we can't not choose them.


I have to get back to work. Will respond to the rest later.

 

[jonathan180iq]

I'll wait for the rest.

 

[Willamena]

We are born with a bazillion options for a bazillion different things. (We know this through the special knowledge of hindsight.) And we are probably born with certain chemical tendencies, though I think that's still up for debate. What we are not born with are certainties of conclusion.

Being a twirling dervish is an option that you are aware of now, and it's an option for any child born from this point forward... But why aren't you a twirling dervish? Were you aware of that option from birth, or did you have to be taught about it from an external source?

I'm fairly sure you're an Atheist, if I remember some of your posts correctly. You know I am too. We are explicit Atheists who have made a conscious decision to reject the claim of theism - babies aren't like us at all. But they can be factually referred to as atheists because they very obviously cannot be theists, just like they cannot be Democrats, Twirling Dervishes, or Mobsters.

You allow too much. I don't think it's reasonable that that all possible vocations are future options for the baby. The only reasonable options are the ones we actually face in any given circumstance. But putting such optimism aside, even the baby destined to twirl isn't defaulted by that destiny.

Everything defaults to ignorance... that's what ignorance is.

I made the example what seems like 1,000 pages ago about Abe-Mango. Did anyone of this entire forum know about Abe-Mango? I sure didn't as I had to look up an obscure god just to make my point.
The default state of every single member of this forum was non-faith in Abe-Mango. We were all, every single one of us, implicit atheists in regards to Abe-Mango.

As above, I've already disagreed with this view, and have been given no reason to accept it. You keep reverting to the default being something like the state that came before, and that doesn't jive with any source that I can find.

Atheism is not ignorance, unless you discount explicit atheists. To use the road analogy, it's as if the default of Junction 42 is the road you just turned off from.

You're right that all of those things you mentioned are arbitrary and not-fixed - just like you and I had never heard of Abe-Mango before, it was never really an option to us, despite the fact that we now know it was factually an option all along. Our expose to one religion or political affiliation is entirely dependent on where we are born and which parents we are born to. But even before those factors affect our development, we are completely oblivious of almost everything else in the world - meaning that we necessarily cannot be political or religious.



Like I said, you've nailed it on the arbitrary flux of states. But it sounds like you're assuming that default somehow means unchanging.

From the moment we are born, we are surrounded by an influx of information and data, both direct and indirect. What we do with that information is not what we are talking about. We are talking about a hypothetical scenario where no outside information ever pushes it's way into our brains - that scenario, while admittedly impossible to attain, is the only one where there will be static progression.

That's why a default of knowing/believing is silly.

The question of implicit atheism is this: How many babies, who never in their entire lives hear the name of Jesus Christ, are going to grow up to be professing, born-again, evangelical Christians? (Obviously you can change the deity or faith system to absolutely anything you prefer) The only answer that anyone can realistically guess at is zero, don't you think?

How do you figure it's zero? Seems rather definitive, your precognitive 'guess.'

You finished that one by saying that you are what you are if you do or don't get any political influence in your life and that's simply not true.
How many political parties can you name off the top of your head? Probably a few... How many can you name that you've never heard of?
How many gods can you believe in if you've never once heard the suggestion that such an entity exists?
The reverse of these questions are just as true.

The ones that I've never heard of are also the ones I'm under no obligation to have any opinion about, either belief or not.

The positive and negative claims only exist in relation to one another - nothing more and nothing less.
We can refer to babies as being apolitical only in relation to our knowledge that there exist people who are political, correct?
The same applies to theism. We can only refer to people as being atheists because we know that there are people who are theists. In no other context does the relation work, but in direct reference to something known.

Yes, that's my understanding. Implicit atheism is the explicit claim assumed on behalf of circumstances.

So, really, the only question that anyone needs to ask is whether or not babies are born believing in god... The answer to that question lays to rest the rest of these 2,800 posts.

No. The question is, though I kinda understand what belief in God is, why the heck would I think to apply it or its negation to people who can't even conceive of it?

 

[Thief]

It works just fine.


I don't think you have the first clue about the implications of what I'm saying.

spell it out for me.....
how do you label someone else?.....with, or without their consent.

and do you really believe your say so....overrides their own?

 

[Thief]

No. If there are no other options, there's only the default.

which in this case it would be ignorance.....
I have no idea the numbers of posts in this thread....I've had to point that out.

 

[McBell]

well....following THAT kind of logic....
your silence allows me to paste ANY label I care to.....on YOU!

Any any label you paste on him would not be him making a declaration.
Which is the point you are avoiding.

 

[Thief]

Any any label you paste on him would not be him making a declaration.
Which is the point you are avoiding.

hmmmm.....thought that was the point I was pushing....

He would assume the label on someone else .....who did not declare....
That he admits a possible error....takes away the label.
If he happens to be correct....that would be coincidence
and does not fix the technique as a sure thing.

I might assume a label for you.....
but I should not affix that label

 

[Willamena]

Any any label you paste on him would not be him making a declaration.
Which is the point you are avoiding.

Not an explicit declaration, but one implied by what atheism means in regards to god.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Politics and religion are disciplines. Theism, though, is belief in God or gods. Theism is a consequence of information, religion is a practice. That babies don't get out and practice a religion or politics is supportable*. What they know/think/believe is debatable--the only sure thing we can declare is that they don't know/think/believe with all the added baggage that encumbers us.

*Short of getting washed up on a shoreline.

I could talk all day about faith and belief being a discipline just like any other, but I think we'll get too far off topic.

I agree that the thoughts of those without a voice is entirely up for debate, hence why we are still talking about all this stuff, right?
But I don't see why it's unreasonable to argue that, at least for the most part, their thoughts and beliefs and limited to their experiences, just like you and me. As infants we've experienced very little of the human condition and as such it's a pretty rational conclusion to assume that they don't know about those things that they're unaware of.

I don't think this is about baggage - it's about whether or not we can know about things that we've never been exposed to. It certainly seems to me, as a human, that I am entirely unaware of the things I have no knowledge of. I imagine babies are the same, don't you?

Yes, that's precisely what I mean by, "That's not what default means, though." Default doesn't mean "what there was before there were options." The man proceeding along the road is exercising one of his options. The default is one of his options.

Unlike ignorance for the knowledgeable.

I think this one can be combined with the one about me being too optimistic and using too many option or variables...

Let's imagine there was only 1 variable that an infant child was ever exposed to.
The child actually has two options in regards to that variable. The child could either accept or reject the information, right? Doing nothing with the information is a form of rejection, thought not explicit. The inability to process the information would still be a form of rejection in that it would take no effect. Now consider the difference in the child's life based on what they do with that information. Acceptance and change in lieu of new information would be a totally different path, I think we would agree, than rejection. Rejection of the information would mean the child stayed precisely on the path they were on before, wouldn't it?

If there is a huge glaring mistake in that reasoning, I don't see it.

If that works out in the way I presented it, then doesn't it mean that the default position is very similar to the negated position?

That's the backwards ontological picture. Forwards, you can neither be said nor not be said to either be in or not be in a state that doesn't exist. It is possible to have a time before theism and atheism.

I didn't mean that literally, obviously. But it's true.

We aren't born with faith - we attain faith.
We aren't born with knowledge - we attain knowledge.
We aren't born with friends - we make friends.
We aren't born with affiliations - we choose affiliations.
We aren't born with wealth - we achieve wealth.

Pick any example you want - it's all the same.

I agree that there is a time before theism and atheism - I'm simply arguing that the time before quite obviously does not include theism...

The ball without motion has a state, though. It is sitting. It never lacks for state, as long as it has positive context.

States of affairs are not options. They describe the world-in-itself, and we can't not choose them.

Alright, I'll go with that.

If I made the statement - "there is a ball" - how would describe the default state of the that ball.
**Note that I did not mention anything about the ball other than there is infact ball. What is the default state of that ball?

You allow too much. I don't think it's reasonable that that all possible vocations are future options for the baby. The only reasonable options are the ones we actually face in any given circumstance. But putting such optimism aside, even the baby destined to twirl isn't defaulted by that destiny.

See my above response for hopefully a more concise explanation of what I'm arguing.

Realistic options are only those things which we are actually exposed to, certainly.

You allow too much. I don't think it's reasonable that all possible vocations are future options for the baby. The only reasonable options are the ones we actually face in any given circumstance. But putting such optimism aside, even the baby destined to twirl isn't defaulted by that destiny.

If you mean by "destined to twirl" that a given baby will undoubtedly be exposed to the dervish culture, then I agree with you.
That baby was born without a cultural influence - the cultural influence was thrust upon him by the culture that his parents accepted. It was not of his own making and he had no say in the matter. His default state, before having it selected for him, was one without dervish religious and cultural influence.

We know, through special knowledge, that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of options available in reality - what we are exposed to is very limited, obviously.

What value do those options truly have if we are never aware of them...?

You were born, quite obviously, not as a Twirling Dervish. If you had, or had not, ever gained knowledge of Twirling Dervishes, would that have changed the fact that you were not born as a Twirling Dervish - like the hypothetical boy in my above example?

I wasn't born a Christian. I was exposed to Christianity in my youth and it shaped many aspects of my formative years. But if it hadn't been exposed to me, would my formative years have been influenced by Christianity?

As above, I've already disagreed with this view, and have been given no reason to accept it. You keep reverting to the default being something like the state that came before, and that doesn't jive with any source that I can find.

Atheism is not ignorance, unless you discount explicit atheists. To use the road analogy, it's as if the default of Junction 42 is the road you just turned off from.

I don't mind disagreement - but what else is there is if not a blank slate for the default position?

In programming, you know there are going to be certain slots for certain bots.
In life, we know that there are going to be slots in each human for the faith/non-faith part of the human experience.

What is the default for that slot if not empty?

There is an ultimate stating point in your road analogy - how is that starting point not the default position?

That's why a default of knowing/believing is silly.

Sure it is. But I'll defend it all day long

How do you figure it's zero? Seems rather definitive, your precognitive 'guess.'

Take the Dalai Lama as an example - if the kid that is going to be chosen as the next Dalai Lama was never approached by a bunch of faithful monks, or plucked for a school full of tiny little monks, or born into a culture of Tibetan Buddhism, how likely do you think it would be that he would grow up to be leader of the Tibetan faithful?

I have no problem suggesting that the chances of that happening are 0%.

I'll admit all day long that it's just a guess - but I have about 7 Billion examples of people who did not become that which they were never exposed to...

The reason that you aren't a Mayan priestess is the same reason that I'm not an Ottoman Warlord.

The ones that I've never heard of are also the ones I'm under no obligation to have any opinion about, either belief or not.

Exactly. The same is true of every person who has ever born.

Yes, that's my understanding. Implicit atheism is the explicit claim assumed on behalf of circumstances.

Yes it is.

No. The question is, though I kinda understand what belief in God is, why the heck would I think to apply it or its negation to people who can't even conceive of it?

Because you can't believe in something that you can't conceive of.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

which in this case it would be ignorance.....

Atheism includes "ignorance".

Being an atheist is like being a non-smoker. Some non-smokers refuse to smoke because they've made principled stands against tobacco, but someone who has never even seen a cigarette would be a non-smoker, too.

 

[Thief]

I see another op pending....

 

[Thief]

Atheism includes "ignorance".

Being an atheist is like being a non-smoker. Some non-smokers refuse to smoke because they've made principled stands against tobacco, but someone who has never even seen a cigarette would be a non-smoker, too.

nice try....but....
campfires preceded cigars and pipes....

people believed in spirits.....in the smoke....in the fire.....

 

[jonathan180iq]

I see another op pending....

nice try....but....
campfires preceded cigars and pipes....

people believed in spirits.....in the smoke....in the fire.....

Babies are non-smokers and babies do not make campfires.

 

[Thief]

Babies are non-smokers and babies do not make campfires.

babies don't say.....no god.

 

[Thief]

does anyone really want to confess.....?
atheism and ignorance are equivalent

 

[jonathan180iq]

babies don't say.....no god.

Nor do they say... god

 

[jonathan180iq]

does anyone really want to confess.....?
atheism and ignorance are equivalent

Yes - You're totally right, as has been admitted numerous times in this thread, ignorance of a deity would necessitate implicit atheism.

You got us. Guess you win.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

nice try....but....
campfires preceded cigars and pipes....

people believed in spirits.....in the smoke....in the fire.....

Don't pretend you don't know what the word "smoker" means in this context.