Atheism is not a default position

[9-10ths_Penguin]

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

No, they're not. No more than "American" and "New Yorker" are equivalent. You can be an American without being a New Yorker, but you can't be a New Yorker without also being an American.

In the same way, if you're completely ignorant of gods, you're an atheist (since it's impossible to believe in something you've never conceived), but being an atheist doesn'tmean you must be ignorant of gods.

 

[McBell]

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

You are free to make whatever assumptions you like.
In fact, you make assumptions all the time.
then run tail tucked when called on them.

 

[McBell]

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

Someone applying an arbitrary label to some one else is not the someone else making a declaration.
Thus atheism cannot be reduced to nothing more than a declaration.

 

[McBell]

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

Is this sad attempt at baiting all you got?

 

[Shad]

Then the way you define "atheism" is merely different than the way that they do. You cannot claim that your definition is better or more common without providing verifiable support. That would be unreasonable.

I already shows the definition used the other definition is flawed. Rejection of definition has no defeaters and is accepted by everyone including those that also support "lack of". Already my definition is accepted as better by all. Being common is irrelevant this leads right back to people defining words as they wish rather or based on popular notions

 

[Shad]

This is getting too drawn out so I'm going to condense this.


As I've said at least 10 times already - yes.
But I'm not talking about the negative stance, am I?

Never said you were. I think you are confused over positive and negative. Positive is no God, still a rejection, with a possible alternative such as metaphysical naturalism. Negative is rejection but no stating no god, it is still a rejection.

Agnostics, by the nature of their "indecision", are also not theists...

But they are not called atheists since atheists are rejection of stance not undecided

So what do you call someone who is not a theist?

Depends on the view that is put forward and how one is defining theism. Often people are defining theism as "all of the above". So how are you using the word?

Out of time to continue my response, I have a class in 20 mins so I will pick up the rest later today, if I have time, or at a later date. My work and course load picked up over the last 2 weeks so sorry for the late replies.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Out of time to continue my response, I have a class in 20 mins so I will pick up the rest later today, if I have time, or at a later date. My work and course load picked up over the last 2 weeks so sorry for the late replies.

You're fine, man. Life is more important and I'm patient.

 

[Willamena]

...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?

We are not aware of things we are not aware of, yes. But we've no call saying we, or another, are unaware of god if, because we are unaware of it, we haven't even defined what this "god" thing is that is so important to theists. In the case of arguing from ignorance, I tend to fall on the side of caution.

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?

Those are two of the options. Accepting corresponds with the sense of "yes" in regards to the information, and rejecting with "no," both are which are impressions, but there could be no acknowledgement of the information in the sense that it makes no impression. Most of the information our brains absorb from moment to moment goes unnoticed. Only a small part gets our attention.

Sorry, I'm being pedantic.

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?

I would only reiterate that rejecting is akin to a "no." Rejecting is doing something, not a failure to do something. Our language tends to reflect the positive world we live in.

Information, in actuality, is a constant bombardment, figuratively speaking, and only a very small percentage of what our brains absorb about the world gets to have our attention from moment to moment. It's not a case where we've rejected all that doesn't have our attention. It's a case where some of what has our attention has been rejected.

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...

Fair enough.

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?

"There is a ball" can have no default state, as it has no state. State is found in the positive context. This has no context (except meta-context).

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.

Sorry to be pedantic again... Is it reasonable, though, to call everything an option? An option is selectable, not every possibility will be selectable. I'd say a person's options at any given moment are vastly reduced from your estimate.

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

None.

They don't even have a truth value. At this point, they are comparable to fantasy (they are tea pots orbiting Mars).

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?

Obviously not.

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

No default position. Must there be a default position? The default is the path we continue on having passed over other options. That doesn't describe a human being, which is throughout a life-time, from birth to death, a constantly growing, shrinking, fluctuating, flaming mass of information. Thoughts arise, and in the next moment are forgotten. Things get learned, and promptly put aside for more important matters. What is significant (out of all the variable things that have our attention at any given moment) is but a fraction of a per cent of all that we are. I met an infant today for whom the most critical thing in his life at that moment was that no one was paying him attention. He wanted to be picked up, and no one had picked him up, and the utter catastrophe of it was overwhelming him emotionally. What is that the default of? To that point he had learned how important and good being picked up felt. He's going to grow, forget it, and move on to more important catastrophes, maybe next week, maybe as soon as tonight. No one point in such a magnificently diverse field of information such as a human life-time is default of any other point, not in any way that the word "default" can make sense. Not in the way of a car on a road.

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?


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

There's destiny again, rearing it's head.
Of destiny, I'm a fan, but nothing more.

A starting point was not included in my example because it has nothing to do with "default" (an option selected at the expense of alternative options).

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.

Yes, I had missed that you stipulated the condition for zero as part of the equation ("How many babies, who never in their entire lives hear the name..."). My bad.

In reality, life is not so predictable.

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

You also, though, then, can't fill the condition to not believe in.

Not believing has a grammatical object of belief as much as believing does.

 

[Thief]

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

don't pretend pasting labels on babies is a valid argument.

 

[Thief]

No, they're not. No more than "American" and "New Yorker" are equivalent. You can be an American without being a New Yorker, but you can't be a New Yorker without also being an American.

In the same way, if you're completely ignorant of gods, you're an atheist (since it's impossible to believe in something you've never conceived), but being an atheist doesn'tmean you must be ignorant of gods.

double talk.
If you know what a god is......you're declaration is pending.

If you refrain the choice....plead ...'I don't know'....
that is ignorance.

 

[Paranoid Android]

Time to lay this rhinoceros to rest. If you accept that atheism describes the person who has no interest in, no knowledge about, or no particular belief about god, then atheism cannot be described as a "default position" on a scale of beliefs.

Default: Amongst a mess of options, the default is the option that will obtain if the chooser does nothing.

Thing about this: belief isn't an act. It's not something we do, and especially not something we choose to do. It's a description of the world, nothing more, nothing less.

Take the world.

The world is the case.

If we wish to examine truth or untruth, belief or doubt, certainty or uncertainty about the world, then we must hold the world distinct from those things we wish to examine. Hence, we will refer to it, and all its parts, as "the case."

The world is the case, and of the case things may be true or false, hence they may be believed or doubted, with degrees of certainty or uncertainty.

If I say, "I believe George went to the store," that lends it uncertainty. It says that because of insufficient knowledge there may some amount of doubt about George's activities, but still I have a degree of certainty about it. Similarly, to say, "I don't believe George went to the store," is to assert its uncertainty. Belief is the case described in such a way as to hold a degree of certainty.

If I say "George went to the store," then asserting the truth of that lends it a face that says there is no doubt, no uncertainty about George's journey. Truth is the case described as apart from me, apart from the certainty a consciousness might know.

That's because a consciousness is distinct from the world it knows.

The default is the option that will obtain if the chooser does nothing. The world is the case.

Both asserting a degree of certainty to the world and describing it as apart from me, apart from any degrees of certainty, are things we do. They are dong something, not nothing. Where the default is the option that will obtain if the chooser does nothing, asserting belief and truth--and their counterparts disbelief and falsehood--about what is the case are doing something.

In discussion, we do not fail to do something about the world.

It is an awful heresy, and a false religion.

 

[Thief]

You are free to make whatever assumptions you like.
In fact, you make assumptions all the time.
then run tail tucked when called on them.

Not I....
and it looks like you made a choice.....
hope it wasn't based on ignorance.

 

[Thief]

btw...there are two levels of ignorance....

they who are not informed....are ignorant.
they who choose to ignore...are profoundly ignorant.

 

[Willamena]

It is an awful heresy, and a false religion.

What is?

 

[Willamena]

btw...there are two levels of ignorance....

they who are not informed....are ignorant.
they who choose to ignore...are profoundly ignorant.

So ignorance isn't just not knowing, it's also knowing and knot knowing.

 

[Paranoid Android]

What is?

Atheism. An evil, Satanic heresy and false religion.

 

[Willamena]

Atheism. An evil, Satanic heresy and false religion.

Or just a different understanding of the world.

 

[Paranoid Android]

Or just a different understanding of the world.

A Satanic, evil heresy and false religion.

 

[Willamena]

A Satanic, evil heresy and false religion.

Or not.

 

[Willamena]

I happen to think the terms "Satanic" and "heresy" have meaning, and that it doesn't apply to most atheists.