Atheism is not a default position

[Willamena]

Is anyone forcing everyone must accept the opinion of "athesim is the default position" ?

Of course not (not that one COULD accept something so blatantly false). We're just having a discussion.

If people feels like to debate about their opinion, it's okay to do so.
If agreement can't be achieve, then the debate may not be continue any further, every sides have to agree to disagree. Unless any sides wish to force everyone must accept their opinion, is there any side have done it here or any other place? And please don't make a sweeping generalization that all the atheist or theist is the same in this regard.

Well, it is a debate forum.

*Double checks.* Yup, it is.

 

[McBell]

I deny also your crutch and cliché....

'for or against'.....?
does that make a you a strong atheist?.....or just 'wishy-washy' nonbeliever?

It simply means I do not have an active belief either way.

Any labels, accusations, baiting you want to go with reflects your character, not mine.

Nice try though.

 

[Willamena]

Terms like "atheist" and "theist" are based on the individual's understanding of godhood.

I believe in the god of the Rastafarians (Haile Selassie) and the god of the cult of Sol Invictus (the Sun), but I'm still an atheist because I don't have an understanding of godhood that would imply that either of these are gods.

Perhaps, then, it's not their gods that you believe in, but simply Haile Selassie and the Sun.

At the same time, when we're deciding whether the Rastafarians or Sol Invictus-followers are theists, *my* rejection of the godhood of their gods is irrelevant; they consider them to be gods, therefore they're theists.

Right. As noted earlier, what one believes has nothing whatsoever to do with what another believes.

A person who's unaware of gods can't possibly be a theist and therefore *must* be an atheist.

"This 'god' thing" hasn't been defined at all... or rather, it's been defined so many times that there's no single generally accepted definition, and the mainstream definitions contradict each other. This is what allows us to call Muslims who believe in angels "monotheists" and Pagans who believe in gods very similar to angels to be "polytheists". When talking about what sort of believer or non-believer a person is, their own understanding is what matters... and someone with no understanding can have no belief at all.

Fair enough, but that you haven't defined it doesn't mean that it hasn't been defined.

 

[Thief]

It simply means I do not have an active belief either way.

Any labels, accusations, baiting you want to go with reflects your character, not mine.

Nice try though.

nay...I'm using a technique described by someone else.....
you say you have no belief EITHER way.....
now I label you.....closet believer!

 

[McBell]

nay...I'm using a technique described by someone else.....
you say you have no belief EITHER way.....
now I label you.....closet believer!

Again, feel free to put whatever label on me you wish.
You only reveal your character, not mine.

So please continue to show your dogma to the world.
I personally find it quite comical.
Especially given your denial of the dogma you desperately cling to.

 

[Thief]

I think I found a nerve.

 

[McBell]

I think I found a nerve.

Wow.
After all these years, you still have not figured out that when someone hits one of my nerves, i walk away.

no, you have not found a nerve.
You are merely my relief for this particular bout of boredom.

that you reveal so much of yourself in the process is just an added bonus.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Perhaps, then, it's not their gods that you believe in, but simply Haile Selassie and the Sun.

A thing is or is not a god depending on humanity's relationship with it. Rastafarians relate to Haile Selassie as a god; therefore they're theists. No relationship, no possibility of theism. No concept of god, no possibility of theism.

Fair enough, but that you haven't defined it doesn't mean that it hasn't been defined.

It's been defined more times than I can count - that's the problem. Everyone operates with their own definition and criteria for godhood, so until a person has a concept of godhood, they can't hold a belief in a god.

If you think there is some accepted definition, please give it. Also, please tell me whether it includes or excludes things like divine winged messengers (e.g. the "angel" Gabriel and the "god" Mercury). I'm interested to know whether we've been wrongly calling the ancient Romans theists or wrongly calling Muslims monotheists.

 

[Willamena]

A thing is or is not a god depending on humanity's relationship with it. Rastafarians relate to Haile Selassie as a god; therefore they're theists. No relationship, no possibility of theism.

Right. Perhaps you have a different relationship with Haile Selassie and the Sun than the theist does.

It's been defined more times than I can count - that's the problem. Everyone operates with their own definition and criteria for godhood, so until a person has a concept of godhood, they can't hold a belief in a god.

If you think there is some accepted definition, please give it. Also, please tell me whether it includes or excludes things like divine winged messengers (e.g. the "angel" Gabriel and the "god" Mercury). I'm interested to know whether we've been wrongly calling the ancient Romans theists or wrongly calling Muslims monotheists.

From what you've said, it's obvious that my giving a definition would serve no purpose.

 

[jonathan180iq]

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.

Normally I would too. I'm just trying to make a point here about the logic behind the absurd comment that "babies are atheists".

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.

You can't have internet debates without a little pedantism.

For everyone reading, please note that babies are also apedantic...

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.

Understand the wording however you like - the change that would occur in the child's life through the rejection is the same that would occur through ignorance of a topic; none.

Fair enough.

PROGRESS!!!!

"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).

But surely our imaginary ball must be doing something, even if it's just floating or sitting or in some other state of rest, right?

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.

No, of course not. I admitted as much when saying they weren't really options to the child - even though they are factually one of the many flavors of life that exist.

None.

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

Exactly - They only have a truth value to us through our special knowledge. This whole conversation can only make sense through that lens. I mean, you and I obviously aren't debating the nature of things we are unaware of...

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.

I agree with everything here, I just interpret it a little differently.
That little dude, to this point in his development, has only been exposed to a handful of things, obviously including human touch and comfort among a few others. He's most likely not aware of computers, or the internet, or much more language than baby-speak, intellectual conversation, or the value of substantiating information, or anything else that has been part of this very long thread. I think we are obviously using the word default a little differently, but I'd argue that his default position in regards to wanting that comfort was to not want it... I mean, how could he? Until he knew what he was missing, would he have cried for it? In the same way that I don't miss the flavor of the drinks I've never tasted - could this little guy have missed being held if he never knew what that felt like? (I'm not being entirely literal here - so skip over the obvious flaw of a human's biological need for social contact.)

I equate the first moments of cognition to pressing the start button on a computer for the first time. Before the brain has developed to that point, all it's doing is running running life-support systems and following some preselected data-sets that were randomly acquired during the mating process of his parents. From the instant that all of life's information starts pouring in, things change. We are totally on the same page here. But before that start button is pressed, there is simply nothing else going on.

I agree that saying that babies are atheists is as ridiculous as asking which god do babies that haven't been born yet not believe in? .... It's a ridiculous question - but the answer is "all of them"
They don't believe in you and me. They don't believe in salad. They don't believe in butterflies. They don't believe in Astrology. They don't believe in Science. They don't believe in honesty, lies, money, or scissors.... They don't believe in atheism and they don't believe in god. ( see what I did there with that last one?)

I understand your argument about there being no default at all - I just think there is a default state for everything, and it's nothing.

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).

I believe in the destiny in so much as it dictates that human babies will become human adults - but that's about it.
Take a baby from the culture it was conceived it and raise it in a differing culture and it will, more often than not, share thoughts and beliefs with the culture it was raised in. Even choosing not to accept the rearing culture will have some sort of reasonable explanation - but the lie could be so good that the child would never know of their conceptual culture. It would be an interesting study, albeit quite unethical, I imagine.

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.

Of course not.

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.

Does it? I mean, yes you're right about that. But it only has that value if we choose to interpret it that way.

I don't believe in JASDHFd, because I don't know what the hell JASDHFd is... I just smashed some letters really quickly. If JASDHFd means something to someone somewhere, it has no affect on my life whatsoever. I have no problem with claiming that JASDHF isn't something that I believe in, and it doesn't matter what it is. From the perspective of anyone who placed a value to the concept of JASDHFd, I'm making a negative statement. But you know from my creation of JASDHFd that I have done no such thing...

 

[leibowde84]

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

This is yet another claim. Can you support this with anything verifiable. Because, all you've shown me thus far is that YOU agree with YOUR OWN definition.

 

[Emi]

atheism, by definition, is the lack of belief in a god or gods.
This and agnosticism, by definition, is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in god, I believe are default positions depending on the individual.
Without any cultural or religious influence, you either believe in scientific reasoning and disbelieve in a deity or you are simply not sure. So they are, in fact, religious default positions.
That isn't to say people don't go from conforming to a religion to atheism or agnosticism.

 

[Shad]

This is yet another claim. Can you support this with anything verifiable. Because, all you've shown me thus far is that YOU agree with YOUR OWN definition.

Do you agree that atheism has the definitions of disbelief in God, belief in no God and/or rejection of the claims of theism. People have repeatedly included this as a valid definition even people I have argued against. I believe you agreed to these definitions as well. Take a few minutes to skim the thread as these definitions are put forward by all sides, for and against the OP.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

atheism, by definition, is the lack of belief in a god or gods.
This and agnosticism, by definition, is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in god, I believe are default positions depending on the individual.
Without any cultural or religious influence, you either believe in scientific reasoning and disbelieve in a deity or you are simply not sure. So they are, in fact, religious default positions.
That isn't to say people don't go from conforming to a religion to atheism or agnosticism.

How exactly do you think agnosticism can be a default position? You phrased it (correctly, IMO) as a positive belief.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

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

Defining atheism in terms of rejection just doesn't work:

- if you only need to reject SOME gods to be an atheist, then most theists are atheists.
- if you need to reject ALL gods to be an atheist, then atheists have to be omniscient.

No matter what, the implications are absurd.

 

[leibowde84]

Defining atheism in terms of rejection just doesn't work:

- if you only need to reject SOME gods to be an atheist, then most theists are atheists.
- if you need to reject ALL gods to be an atheist, then atheists have to be omniscient.

No matter what, the implications are absurd.

Great point.

 

[Emi]

How exactly do you think agnosticism can be a default position? You phrased it (correctly, IMO) as a positive belief.

agnosticism can be a default position as it doesn't correspond to a religion of any sort, just a belief. Depending on the individual, by default, natural occurrences may be interpreted as divine just as likely as they are not to be. I think it would be exclusion of those that become agnostic by default if I were not to include them as such.

 

[Willamena]

Normally I would too. I'm just trying to make a point here about the logic behind the absurd comment that "babies are atheists".

Fair enough. I'm not going to contest what some people see as implicit atheism, as long as it's used usefully to label something.

But surely our imaginary ball must be doing something, even if it's just floating or sitting or in some other state of rest, right?

The context for it, being hypothetical and all, is the context that you provide. You've provided no hypothetical context, yet.

If you provide it with one of those contexts, then it has one. Pick one.

Exactly - They only have a truth value to us through our special knowledge. This whole conversation can only make sense through that lens. I mean, you and I obviously aren't debating the nature of things we are unaware of...

Just so. We don't indulge impossibilities.

I agree with everything here, I just interpret it a little differently.
That little dude, to this point in his development, has only been exposed to a handful of things, obviously including human touch and comfort among a few others. He's most likely not aware of computers, or the internet, or much more language than baby-speak, intellectual conversation, or the value of substantiating information, or anything else that has been part of this very long thread. I think we are obviously using the word default a little differently, but I'd argue that his default position in regards to wanting that comfort was to not want it... I mean, how could he? Until he knew what he was missing, would he have cried for it? In the same way that I don't miss the flavor of the drinks I've never tasted - could this little guy have missed being held if he never knew what that felt like? (I'm not being entirely literal here - so skip over the obvious flaw of a human's biological need for social contact.)

I equate the first moments of cognition to pressing the start button on a computer for the first time. Before the brain has developed to that point, all it's doing is running running life-support systems and following some preselected data-sets that were randomly acquired during the mating process of his parents. From the instant that all of life's information starts pouring in, things change. We are totally on the same page here. But before that start button is pressed, there is simply nothing else going on.

I agree that saying that babies are atheists is as ridiculous as asking which god do babies that haven't been born yet not believe in? .... It's a ridiculous question - but the answer is "all of them"
They don't believe in you and me. They don't believe in salad. They don't believe in butterflies. They don't believe in Astrology. They don't believe in Science. They don't believe in honesty, lies, money, or scissors.... They don't believe in atheism and they don't believe in god. ( see what I did there with that last one?)

I understand your argument about there being no default at all - I just think there is a default state for everything, and it's nothing.

For reasons already iterated, I don't agree (with a lot of this). Failing to believe isn't the same as the negation of believing--the null (the elimination) is not the negation. Atheism is, properly and sensibly, the negation. You admit the absurdity, but still allow it.

Does it? I mean, yes you're right about that. But it only has that value if we choose to interpret it that way.

I don't believe in JASDHFd, because I don't know what the hell JASDHFd is... I just smashed some letters really quickly. If JASDHFd means something to someone somewhere, it has no affect on my life whatsoever. I have no problem with claiming that JASDHF isn't something that I believe in, and it doesn't matter what it is. From the perspective of anyone who placed a value to the concept of JASDHFd, I'm making a negative statement. But you know from my creation of JASDHFd that I have done no such thing...

Again, I have to take issue. It's not a matter of choosing to interpret grammar. Grammar, informed by logic, is built into the language. In English, a verb has a subject, and a noun is an object--these things don't change because we can interpret (using language, no less).

I'm not arguing against the version of implicit atheism that holds the man on the desert island or the infant to be an atheist by virtue of the observer's concept of god. I'm just waiting to hear if or how it ties in with the discussion about defaults.

 

[leibowde84]

agnosticism can be a default position as it doesn't correspond to a religion of any sort, just a belief. Depending on the individual, by default, natural occurrences may be interpreted as divine just as likely as they are not to be. I think it would be exclusion of those that become agnostic by default if I were not to include them as such.

The phrase "become agnostic by default" is counter-intuitive. The default position is where you are before becoming anything.

 

[Emi]

The phrase "become agnostic by default" is counter-intuitive. The default position is where you are before becoming anything.

You can be agnostic before you become anything. Without any outside influence. It doesn't take divine teachings to believe in a divinity, it just takes thought. You can believe everything has an explanation or believe somethings don't. I was agnostic as a default position as a child.