Atheism is not a default position

[Thief]

This is utterly illogical too. If I "lack" or am "without" a specific disease, am I worse off than one who is "with" that disease?

well I suppose.....if you have a disease....
Someone having mercy might help you.

as the Carpenter came to help those....'lacking'....

 

[leibowde84]

But that's the problem. Atheism is not defined as "ignorant of the concept of God" but as the "disbelief in God." An atheist isn't ignorant of the concept of God, but very aware and informed. The atheist has a concept of what God is, and disbelieve the actual existence of that concept. A baby doesn't have concepts to disbelieve in. A baby even disbelieve that pi and the radius of a circle have any correlation, simply because they don't have the faculties to believe or disbelieve anything. They're like divide-by-zero at that point. It takes learning, training, information gathering, and so on to form a state of mind. Before that, it's like measuring the speed of the non-existent car. The baby has no car to be measured yet. There's no speed, and there's no zero-speed either where there's no car to test.

Both "disbelief in the existence of God or gods" and "atheism" merely require the absence of any belief in God or gods. The term "disbelief", specifically, actually INCLUDES those who merely lack faith or lack a belief in a concept (look it up). Thus, anyone that doesn't hold "the belief in the existence of God" ("theism") is "without the belief in the existence of God" ("atheism"). The prefix "a" means "to be without". Nothing more. By definition, one "lacks" or is "without" belief in every concept, entity, word, number, theory, etc. that one isn't aware of BECAUSE they are unable to consider the option. Even though they haven't had a chance to consider the proposition, they, nevertheless, still "lack" said belief.

 

[leibowde84]

well I suppose.....if you have a disease....
Someone having mercy might help you.

as the Carpenter came to help those....'lacking'....

Please do yourself a favor and look up the VERB "lack" and the ADJECTIVE "lacking"!! The adj. version of the word means, as you are implying, "insufficient". But the verb "to lack" means "to be without". I will grant you, English is confusing, but you are blatantly using the incorrect meaning of the term in this context. IT DOESN'T MEAN "INSUFFICIENT", IT MEANS "ABSENCE OF"!!! This is basic grammar.

You are assuming the negative implications that the word "lacking" has when used as an adjective, even though it clearly means "to be without".

For example, according to your logic, "atheists" believe in God, just not enough. See how ludicrous that is?!

 

[leibowde84]

Please do yourself a favor and look up the VERB "lack" and the ADJECTIVE "lacking"!! The adj. version of the word means, as you are implying, "insufficient". But the verb "to lack" means "to be without". I will grant you, English is confusing, but you are blatantly using the incorrect meaning of the term in this context. IT DOESN'T MEAN "INSUFFICIENT", IT MEANS "ABSENCE OF"!!! This is basic grammar.

You are assuming the negative implications that the word "lacking" has when used as an adjective, even though it clearly means "to be without".

For example, according to your logic, "atheists" believe in God, just not enough. See how ludicrous that is?!

Or adverb ... nevertheless, though. You are intentionally ignoring the meaning of the verb "to lack" in this context.

 

[leibowde84]

But that's the problem. Atheism is not defined as "ignorant of the concept of God" but as the "disbelief in God." An atheist isn't ignorant of the concept of God, but very aware and informed. The atheist has a concept of what God is, and disbelieve the actual existence of that concept. A baby doesn't have concepts to disbelieve in. A baby even disbelieve that pi and the radius of a circle have any correlation, simply because they don't have the faculties to believe or disbelieve anything. They're like divide-by-zero at that point. It takes learning, training, information gathering, and so on to form a state of mind. Before that, it's like measuring the speed of the non-existent car. The baby has no car to be measured yet. There's no speed, and there's no zero-speed either where there's no car to test.

a·the·ism
ˈāTHēˌizəm/
noun

1. disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
   synonyms: nonbelief, disbelief, unbelief, irreligion,skepticism, doubt, agnosticism;
   nihilism
   "atheism was not freely discussed in his community"

 

[leibowde84]

I thought that the blue highlighted part was Willa's point in the OP.

Some people however go further and call that non bias as atheism. I suppose that is their bias.

No bias. We all start with absolutely no understanding of the world around us. That is the default position for the reasons I stated previously. And, in that state we don't hold any beliefs because we are unable to. Thus we lack (are without) all beliefs, including the belief in the existence of God or gods. And, finally, by definition, that makes us atheist at that point ... according to the definition of the term.

 

[leibowde84]

Dear L. That is your position, your belief that a baby lacks a particular belief.

Our position is that in case of a baby, the question of a particular belief is meaningless. The baby has not entertained the particular belief, this way or that way.



And you keep on insulting people.



In dream you may frolic with a lady and lose sperm, although there was no lady.

Our beliefs do shape the truth for us. Else a Jesus would not have died to provide us with a view to his wisdom.

But I think that that is beyond you, at present.

I'm not sure why you keep repeating this, but I have never claimed that asking a baby about their beliefs is meaningful. Your side introduced that hypothetical. We are in agreement that "atheism" is an incredibly general term that applies to most entities in this universe by "default" or "implicitly". This, however, has absolutely no impact on the meaning of the general term ("atheism") itself. That is the whole point. You are making the erroneous assumption that there must be consideration of options on the part of the subject, but you have failed to provide support for why this would be the case. After all we are only discussing being without a belief.

 

[leibowde84]

Dear L. That is your position, your belief that a baby lacks a particular belief.

Our position is that in case of a baby, the question of a particular belief is meaningless. The baby has not entertained the particular belief, this way or that way.



And you keep on insulting people.



In dream you may frolic with a lady and lose sperm, although there was no lady.

Our beliefs do shape the truth for us. Else a Jesus would not have died to provide us with a view to his wisdom.

But I think that that is beyond you, at present.

I'm not sure why you keep repeating this, but I have never claimed that asking a baby about their beliefs is meaningful. Your side introduced that hypothetical. We are in agreement that "atheism" is an incredibly general term that applies to most entities in this universe by "default" or "implicitly". This, however, has absolutely no impact on the meaning of the general term ("atheism") itself. That is the whole point. You are making the erroneous assumption that there must be consideration of options on the part of the subject, but you have failed to provide support for why this would be the case. After all we are only discussing being without a belief.

 

[leibowde84]

I thought that the blue highlighted part was Willa's point in the OP.

Some people however go further and call that non bias as atheism. I suppose that is their bias.

Nope. You are both claiming (erroneously) that it requires some kind of consciousness or understanding of belief and the concept of God. But, we all start off without those things. So, if nothing happened, we would remain COMPLETELY IGNORANT OF EVERYTHING ... aka "absence of all belief/assumption/recognition. That is "default" by definition.

 

[leibowde84]

I was more interested in support for your claim, "It is the state of absolute non-bias that we all start with BEFORE doing or learning ANYTHING." And, of course, before we learn anything we are in a state of ignorance about it.

Those in that state are included in the category "atheist" because they lack belief in God or gods, or, in other words, "lack" or are "without a belief in the existence of God or gods" by "default" or "implicitly". Not by choice or after consideration, but because they are unable to hold any belief of concepts they are unaware of. There is no negative connotation. The term "atheist" in this context would merely indicate that the subject is not in the state of believing that God and/or gods exist. No declaration must be made, as all that is required is absence.

 

[viole]

No. Even now you are wrong. Let me use a very approximate example.

Suppose a man enters a dark room and says "There are no chairs in the room". However, when the light comes on, he finds that there is a chair and he says "There is light and I see a chair".

In Hindu logic system, the latter statement would be termed as True. But the former statement, which is only provisionally true as long the room is dark, is termed as "Neither true nor untrue". An assertion made in dark (in ignorance) has no relation at all to the truth value of a proposition.

So, it is another category altogether: neither true nor untrue.

You may or may not agree to this system of logic but this is how it is in Nyaya system.

You seem to associate truth values about things to what conscious people see. Let's see if I understand.

Let's change the setup a bit. Suppose there are two people in that room, both in the darkness, Joe and Alice. Joe says there is a chair, while Alice says there is none.

Consider the following proposition:

P) Either Joe or Alice are right about that chair

Is P true, untrue, neither true nor untrue, according to Hindu logic?

Ciao

- viole

 

[atanu]

You seem to associate truth values about things to what conscious people see.

Not actually. It is about what or how people colour what they see, especially when there is no capability of cognition or the capability is veiled by ignorance.

Let's see if I understand.
Let's change the setup a bit. Suppose there are two people in that room, both in the darkness, Joe and Alice. Joe says there is a chair, while Alice says there is none.
Consider the following proposition:

P) Either Joe or Alice are right about that chair

Is P true, untrue, neither true nor untrue, according to Hindu logic?

Ciao
- viole

How is Alice saying in darkness that there is a chair? Is it her guess, or she hit a chair, or she is privy to some more info? Further, there may be more than one chair in the room. The point is that both Joe and Alice are in ignorance, and we can neither pronounce that they possess truth nor can we pronounce that they lack truth. They simply do not have what it takes to arrive at truth (or untruth).

 

[Willamena]

There is no negative connotation.

This keeps jumping out at me when it comes up in your posts. The person who has no capacity to believe is arrived at by negation as much as the person who simply doesn't believe in god. It's just the negation of the state of belief, rather than the belief.

 

[`mud]

I have to guess that they don't have a light switch,
or a light, maybe I miss the point ?
~
'mud

 

[Willamena]

You seem to associate truth values about things to what conscious people see. Let's see if I understand.

Let's change the setup a bit. Suppose there are two people in that room, both in the darkness, Joe and Alice. Joe says there is a chair, while Alice says there is none.

Consider the following proposition:

P) Either Joe or Alice are right about that chair

Is P true, untrue, neither true nor untrue, according to Hindu logic?

Ciao

- viole

Truth is associated with observation even in the West, by virtue of epistemology (being the other side of the coin from ontology): if you don't know it's true, you can't honestly assert its truth.

 

[Willamena]

I have to guess that they don't have a light switch,
or a light, maybe I miss the point ?
~
'mud

Ontology has no light switch, right. It's just an imagining of the room as lit.

 

[ArtieE]

How is Alice saying in darkness that there is a chair? Is it her guess, or she hit a chair, or she is privy to some more info? Further, there may be more than one chair in the room. The point is that both Joe and Alice are in ignorance, and we can neither pronounce that they possess truth nor can we pronounce that they lack truth.

We can pronounce that they lack truth. The truth is that there are no chairs there or one chair there or several chairs there. They just don't know what's true.

 

[Ouroboros]

a·the·ism
ˈāTHēˌizəm/
noun

1. disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
   synonyms: nonbelief, disbelief, unbelief, irreligion,skepticism, doubt, agnosticism;
   nihilism
   "atheism was not freely discussed in his community"

You're missing the point. I've run out of ideas to explain what I'm trying to say, so I'm leaving this particular discussion. Perhaps we can take it up again one day.

Maybe, if I can point to some concepts that might help. Other than that, I'm plain out of ways of explaining.

Null value: Null (SQL) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"For people new to the subject, a good way to remember what null means is to remember that in terms of information, "lack of a value" is not the same thing as "a value of zero"; similarly, "lack of an answer" is not the same thing as "an answer of no". For example, consider the question "How many books does Juan own?" The answer may be "zero" (we know that he owns none) or "null" (we do not know how many he owns, or doesn't own). In a database table, the column reporting this answer would start out with a value of null, and it would not be updated with "zero" until we have ascertained that Juan owns no books."

Three valued logic: Three-valued logic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"In logic, a three-valued logic (also trinary logic, trivalent, ternary, or trilean,[citation needed] sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is any of several many-valued logic systems in which there are three truth values indicating true, false and some indeterminate third value. This is contrasted with the more commonly known bivalent logics (such as classical sentential or Boolean logic) which provide only for true and false. Conceptual form and basic ideas were initially created by Jan Łukasiewicz and C. I. Lewis. These were then re-formulated by Grigore Moisil in an axiomatic algebraic form, and also extended to n-valued logics in 1945."

--edit

Oh, I do remember some other terms that can be helpful.

Theological noncognitivism, the neither here nor there stance.

Nontheism, which I consider a more accurate opposite to theism than atheism.

 

[Willamena]

This is contrasted with the more commonly known bivalent logics (such as classical sentential or Boolean logic) which provide only for true and false.

I think an argument may be made (by better people than I), too, that while truth itself is bivalent, nothing that "is true" is necessarily bivalent. Perhaps people are not distinguishing between truth (a piece of information) and the thing (information) that is true.

 

[Ouroboros]

I think an argument may be made (by better people than I), too, that while truth itself is bivalent, nothing that "is true" is necessarily bivalent. Perhaps people are not distinguishing between truth (a piece of information) and the thing (information) that is true.

Also, there's an issue of implication error being made (it's not the right term, but it was something like that when I studied logic in Sweden 30 years ago, LOL!). Just because atheism can be loosely defined as "non-belief in God" (which isn't the whole definition or the whole picture), it doesn't follow that "non-belief in God" then equals atheism.

It's like saying something like this: apples are red. The house is red. Therefore a house is an apple.

Atheism is more than just "non-belief in God". The definition assumes that it's a person, and that person has taken that position of non-belief. A lot of times they don't add all the assumptions in the definition simply because it would fill pages. And on top of that, there's no definition of what "belief" is or what "God" is. It assumes a general idea of both those concepts. It's a vague definition of vague concepts, and using formal bivalence logic on these vague concepts are just plainly a wrong. It's like dividing by zero and getting crazy answers and be certain those answers are absolutely right.

In reality, the world consist of fuzzy logic rather than bivalent logic. The bivalent logic works, but only when things are well defined.