Thanks but. Although, I have no belief that you will accept it. I have no belief that you will not accept it. Ha ha.
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Atheism is not a default position
- Thread starter Willamena
- Start date
Thanks but. Although, I have no belief that you will accept it. I have no belief that you will not accept it. Ha ha.
McBell
Unbound
Rather difficult to take you seriously when you can't even get the definition correct:
Shad
Veteran Member
This definition of atheism is far to generalized. If atheism is an absence of theism then rocks, planets, stars, gas, etc are all atheists as all lack the belief. This become nonsensical.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
For anyone interested, here's a research paper done on how the brain acts differently depending on belief, non-believe, and uncertainty.
http://www.brainmapping.org/MarkCohen/Papers/Harris_Sheth_Cohen.pdf
http://www.brainmapping.org/MarkCohen/Papers/Harris_Sheth_Cohen.pdf
I did too. Had I not decided to work on a particular project for my Ancient Greek and Latin major as an undergrad, I would still think so. It took over a semester of reading PIE research until I happen to come across a footnote that made me look explicitly for what I thought must be true (they shared the same root) and was wrong. I still find it ironic that, despite this major being due to a neurotic problem with reading texts in translation and my main major being in psychology & sociology, it was studying IE linguistics for a project on a secondary major that led to my work in neuroscience (and therefore most of my work in mathematics and all of my work in physics). In fact, I can trace it to a single paper I happen to find and read.
Your definition supports what I said.
The more I learn, the less I know. That hasn't stopped me from appreciating and being grateful for the alternative possibilities others propose, nor has it curbed my desire to know (at least not yet). Still chasing that horizon.
"I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile," I said,
“You can never—"
“You lie," he cried,
And ran on."
-Stephen Crane
You said and I quote: "However, for the sake of argument, let's assume (contrary to definition) that polytheists are theists." The definition says: "belief in the existence of a god or gods...". I have no idea how you manage to conclude that polytheists aren't theists.
Hence "supports what I said" not "is what I said.
The definition given states that theism is opposed to deism, like I said. It's says "belief in the existence of a god or gods (as opposed to atheism)", which means that it DOES NOT say polytheism is equivalent to or a "subset" of theism, and does qualify belief in god or gods by this position's opposition to atheism. The same dictionary states that that atheism means
"1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings."
However, the original poster who quoted this apparently decided to refute my argument by ignoring inconvenient listings in the very source used. If this source is supposed to present any kind of problem for my view, then it CLEARLY presents a larger problem for anybody who asserts that atheism refers to a lack of belief, as according to this source it refers to a "disbelief" in god or "belief there is no god", and even a "doctrine".
I don't need some hack online dictionary even were I of the sort who believed that dictionaries give the definitions of words rather than a limited set of definitions that for most dictionaries are attempts to reflect current usage (the OED, which I am grateful to have access too, gives sets of limited definitions that reflect usage since before the 1500s). Also, as I have said before, words don't have meanings independently of the constructions in which they appear. So when I wish to understand what a "word" means to the extent this is possible, I use the BYU corpora by Davies, FrameNet, & WordNet (at least for English; naturally for Greek I use the TLG, LSJ, and BDAG; for Latin the TLL and OLD; for many languages, such as Navajo or Hittite, there simply aren't sufficient resources for me to gain even this level of clarity, and for even more, I am not capable of reading them sufficiently well to begin to say what a "word" might mean).
Curious George
Veteran Member
I was under the impression that linear b was scant and used for accounting purposes, though I am aware it is not completely pictographic like linear a, I did not think it told us much of the myacenean language. And I was also under the impression that Greeks pretty much disappear from our view for about 400 years and when they emerge that is when we get the Greek alphabet.
As I said, I am no linguist and my understanding of linguistic techniques is extremely limited. Hence, I asked. I wanted to know why theos could not be related to the indo European dyeus. I understand that we get Zeus from this, but my question is why not theos. There must be a reason, especially if the people you cited use this as a specific example of how a mistake can be made.
However, if the reason is just adherence to the method in order to avoid similarities that could occur by chance, then all this says is that we cannot rely on the fact they had the same root, not that they did not have the same root.
Of course theism is the belief in the existence of god or gods as the definition says. Polytheists are also theists.
Do you know what the word disbelief means? It's defined as
"inability or refusal to accept that something is true or real.
"Laura shook her head in disbelief"
synonyms: incredulity, incredulousness, lack of belief,"
In case you overlooked it "lack of belief" is a synonym for "disbelief".
"atheism - a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods"
Disbelief - definition of disbelief by The Free Dictionary
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Bunyip
pro scapegoat
You think a little more buddy - if your argument were true, who created the creator?
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
What are you smoking? How did you imagine I think bacteria came from nothing? And where did your creator come from?
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Well sure buddy, I believe in the the God my deist friend believes in - the universe. And am atheist. What my friend labels 'God' I label 'the universe'.
And not only for deism, but naturally, all theists are also atheists - Hindu's tend to be atheist in relation to Yahweh, and Christians atheist in relation to Thor for example.
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Done and done.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
They just believe in one more God than I do, the countless others they are atheist in relation to.
"The original language of Minoan Crete remains unknown, but the mainly syllabic script used to write it is called ‘ Linear A ’ , since this was the earlier of two linear writing systems discovered to have been in use at the palace of Knossos in Crete by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. In the period when the Mycenaean civilization of the mainland was still developing under Minoan influence, this script was modified to create a new version known as ‘ Linear B ’." (emphasis added)
Horrocks, G. (2009). Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. Wiley.
This is Linear B:
It tells us a lot about Greek:
"Mycenaean has been well described as a milestone between Indo-European and Greek. While certain sound-changes characteristic o fGreek have already occurred (for example *s- > h-), others have not (notably the development of labiovelars to labials and dentals); and in a third category the writing system does not allow us to be certain (loss of final obstruents and Grassmann’s Law, §23.5). It is worth noticing that a number of characteristic Greek sound-changes have not yet happened in Mycenaean, and cannot therefore be ascribed to a stage of ‘common’ (i.e. undifferentiated) Greek. This implies that it was not only dialect differentiation that occurred on Greek soil (§1.3), but also processes of integration or coalescence by which the Greek language was formed." (emphasis added)
Colvin, S. (2007). A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koiné. Oxford University Press.
Not really. In fact, Homeric Greek of the 8th century or so contains elements older than in Mycenaean Greek.
The Greek alphabet is just the Phoenician alphabet with a few changes. But what is important is what an enormous amount of data we got not merely because Mycenaean Greek is older than Ionic, Doric, Attic, etc., but because it is written in an entirely different type of script, and perhaps the most important component needed to reconstruct proto-languages is phonology and knowledge of phonological changes, which something like a change in script/alphabet or transliterations provide invaluable information regarding simply because of their nature. Also, PIE reconstruction uses languages that didn't exist until after the end of classical Greek, so 400 years is nothing.
Phonological rules that are the basis for historical and comparative linguistics and were e.g., what allowed us to recognize that IE languages existed and the PIE did too. In fact, this is so venerable a science that many of the "rules" used, like Grimm's law, are called laws because they were developed during a period when scientists used this terminology regularly and, ironically, unlike the "law of gravity" or plenty of "laws" from physics they remain while those from the physical sciences do not (at least in the sense that they are known to be wrong).
The aspirated theta.
It's not similarities or chance. We know that Zeus is related to deus and the other cognates in IE languages like Sanskrit and we know basically what the PIE word was because phonological changes follow certain "laws". "Zeus", for example, is spelt with an initial delta in Greek which is the very sound we find for its cognates like deus and in the PIE etymon. Theta isn't just an entirely different "sound", but requires more than just a mechanical change such as moving the tongue back to the palate or forward and lower on the teeth. It introduces breath, which is totally distinct from the ways in which Greek developed from PIE such that "Zeus" is related to a known PIE word and theos isn't.
You're forgetting your "set" nonsense: polytheists believe in more than one gods that you don't and according to you are theists (which means, according to you, that they are atheists).
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
How is such a simple thing so confusing you? Yes even polytheists are atheist in relation to most gods. So yes monotheists believe in one god, and polytheists many gods - but both are atheist in relation to the gods they don't believe in.
Yes Legion, monotheists believe in one theistic God, and polytheists several theistic gods. Both are atheists in relations to the Gods they don't believe in.
It isn't confusing, and in fact it is actually pretty comical. But you state that
which means either polytheists aren't theists or that you believe in some gods, because you have defined polytheists as theists and theists as atheists who "believe in one more God" than you do, but polytheists believe in many gods. So unless you believe in many gods, then theists who are (according to you) polytheists don't believe in just one more god than you but many.
This is hilarious. So polytheists are both atheists and theists, because polytheists are theists and all atheists are theists.
So when you referred to "usage" earlier as what is important, you clearly meant your usage because you obviously ignore actual usage. Asserting that atheism is merely a "lack of belief" I thought was bad enough, but this is incredible: for you, polytheists are theists who must be atheists and you assert "usage" is important. Amazing.