Atheism is not a default position

[leibowde84]

I won't drag you along.....
stay with us.

Can you answer my question?

 

[Curious George]

That theism is the mindset of bekief, and atheism is that mindset negated. In other words, one must actively believe that God does not exist.

Incorrect.

 

[leibowde84]

Incorrect.

Maybe I'm wrong about her argunent. But I agree that it is incorrect.

 

[leibowde84]

I won't drag you along.....
stay with us.

So your requirement is some I'll defined mysterious event?

 

[leibowde84]

Pay attention to your own argument.
then consider...
the stain of choice cannot be removed.
Atheism is a declaration.

Are you the Riddler or something. Can you just speak a bit more directly to your argument?

 

[Curious George]

Maybe I'm wrong about her argunent. But I agree that it is incorrect.

Her argument is that not believing that something has a characteristic or lacks a characteristic, requires belief (or more specifically an understanding of a concept)

Without this knowledge you cannot believe or not believe this specific something has or does not have a characteristic.

In other words, you cannot have a position. Since not believing something has a characteristic or believing something has a characteristic describes as a position, the person who lacks a position cannot truthfully be described as such.

Contrastingly, you are describing the lack of position as a position that fits under the umbrella term that includes lack of position and position.

I think that is a fair summation, I am sure she will correct if I have misstated.

 

[Willamena]

You keep on saying "negation", but a "lack of belief" is not a negation of the belief itself. It is merely the absence of that belief.

Every single thing that is exists as a proposition open to the human mind*, and so each one comes with its own negation--the "not" of it. Every single propositional thought in the world can be negated. Even the "lack of belief in god" is not exempt from having a negation (not lacking belief in god).

*This excludes thoughts that are false or not sharable.

And it is an eliminative negation where it is "non-existent belief" in god equated with "no belief in god."

 

[Willamena]

That theism is the mindset of bekief, and atheism is that mindset negated. In other words, one must actively believe that God does not exist.

My argument in that regard is that you either gotta negate a belief (a proposition about a bit of the world) or the act or state of believing (what some have termed "active belief"), but either way they are not the same thing. They are unique negations resulting in two distinct kinds of atheism, and not exchangeable or suitably grouped under an umbrella of either.

In the past I've proposed that those who want to include ignorance of god as atheism find a new term for themselves, but that didn't go over well.

 

[Desert Snake]

an agnostic is no more an atheist, then they are an theist.

 

[Willamena]

Her argument is that not believing that something has a characteristic or lacks a characteristic, requires belief (or more specifically an understanding of a concept)

Without this knowledge you cannot believe or not believe this specific something has or does not have a characteristic.

In other words, you cannot have a position. Since not believing something has a characteristic or believing something has a characteristic describes as a position, the person who lacks a position cannot truthfully be described as such.

Contrastingly, you are describing the lack of position as a position that fits under the umbrella term that includes lack of position and position.

I think that is a fair summation, I am sure she will correct if I have misstated.

Fair.

The world is information. Some information is characteristic, some of it is apparently true (believed), and some false (dismissed, or not true). And the world is positive.

Ostensibly, existence is not characteristic of things--rather, things are what exist. There are no non-existent things. In the same line, things do not lack characteristics--rather, characteristics are the sum of what it is/has. Following along: we hold beliefs (in propositions) that things exist or do not exist, and those are positive, and of those things we believe do not exist we say, "I don't believe that." That's common vernacular.

I am adamant that there be no non-existent things--either non-existent positions or states of belief, or non-existent things believed in--but I allow that not everyone thinks as I do, and for some it fits into what they call logic. C'est la vie.

 

[Levite]

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.

The thing is, there is no such thing as a default belief. We all enter the world as a tabula rasa, and our beliefs are the result of what we are taught as children, what we see and experience in the world around us as we grow up, and what we learn and choose to believe for ourselves as we get older.

Nobody is born an atheist, or a theist. They are taught what they believe, or they come to their beliefs themselves-- ideally, they do both, and the latter enriches and solidifies the former.

And whatever they decide, it will be to hold a belief: theism holds no certainty or proof, nor does atheism. Whatever we decide to believe in regard to religion and spirituality, we do so not because it has objective surety, but because it presents a case we find compelling, either rationally or emotionally or both.

 

[Revoltingest]

The thing is, there is no such thing as a default belief. We all enter the world as a tabula rasa, and our beliefs are the result of what we are taught as children, what we see and experience in the world around us as we grow up, and what we learn and choose to believe for ourselves as we get older.

Nobody is born an atheist, or a theist. They are taught what they believe, or they come to their beliefs themselves-- ideally, they do both, and the latter enriches and solidifies the former.

And whatever they decide, it will be to hold a belief: theism holds no certainty or proof, nor does atheism. Whatever we decide to believe in regard to religion and spirituality, we do so not because it has objective surety, but because it presents a case we find compelling, either rationally or emotionally or both.

Do we really know this to be true?
Just as some people have empathy, there are people born without it.
Could there be a percentage of people who aren't blank slates regarding belief in gods, ie, either predisposed to disbelief or belief?

 

[Levite]

Do we really know this to be true?
Just as some people have empathy, there are people born without it.
Could there be a percentage of people who aren't blank slates regarding belief in gods, ie, either predisposed to disbelief or belief?

Seems like an extremely difficult proposition to prove, since it would essentially require raising someone in isolation from virtually all human society, since the influences of religion, spirituality, and discourse about it (either positive or negative) pretty much permeates all our literature, cinema, TV, theater, history, etc....

 

[ArtieE]

The atheist is not the person ignorant of god. The atheist is the person who doesn't believe in god.

A person ignorant of god can't believe god does exist or that god doesn't exist. He has neither belief. He has an absence of both these beliefs. Hence he is an atheist.

We distinguish between weak and strong atheists. A weak atheist has both an absence of the belief that god exists and an absence of the belief that god doesn't exist. He hasn't heard of god or if he has he simply hasn't chosen sides. A strong atheist has an absence of belief that god exists plus believes that god doesn't exist. He has chosen a side.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Sheesh. Its simple grammar.

Which? Cognitive grammar? Radical Construction Grammar? Construction Grammar? Word Grammar? Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar? Functional Grammar?
Grammar isn't simple. Neither are theories of lexical semantics.

The strict definition of atheist is (a) lack of (theist) belief in deit(ies).

Lexemes are polysemous.

Anything more is personal beliefs.

Interesting how many dictionaries, even those intended for linguistics or other scientist, promote such personal beliefs.

Its a default position.

The default position seems to be the predilection towards belief. In reality, though, "default position" is an oxymoron (at least in this context). Position requires taking a "place" on e.g., an epistemic continuum (hence the spatial metaphor underlying the term "position" in this context).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Do we really know this to be true?
Just as some people have empathy, there are people born without it.

Everybody is born without it. Not everybody is capable of developing it, it seems, or at least there are those we often call sociopaths who are thought to be generally incapable of at least anything like the normal capacities for empathy humans are.

Could there be a percentage of people who aren't blank slates regarding belief in gods, ie, either predisposed to disbelief or belief?

The research and consensus position (by no means unchallenged) is that humans are predisposed towards religious beliefs, and moreover that nobody is born with a blank slate (well, the consensus position in certain fields other than the cognitive sciences, from evolutionary psychology to cognitive neuroscience, anyway; fields outside of the sciences or that are similarly minimally able to address this question empirically but are predisposed towards a position anyway do exist and for many the "blank slate" position is an ideological preference masquerading as something else).

But I'm not sure how much "blank slate", accurate or not, matters here. If we assume that people are predisposed to belief, disbelief, or that they lack a predisposition, they are still lack beliefs at birth and in ways that atheists can't be said to.

 

[Curious George]

Fair.

The world is information. Some information is characteristic, some of it is apparently true (believed), and some false (dismissed, or not true). And the world is positive.

Ostensibly, existence is not characteristic of things--rather, things are what exist. There are no non-existent things. In the same line, things do not lack characteristics--rather, characteristics are the sum of what it is/has. Following along: we hold beliefs (in propositions) that things exist or do not exist, and those are positive, and of those things we believe do not exist we say, "I don't believe that." That's common vernacular.

I am adamant that there be no non-existent things--either non-existent positions or states of belief, or non-existent things believed in--but I allow that not everyone thinks as I do, and for some it fits into what they call logic. C'est la vie.

But certainly an idea can exist, if nothing else, in someone's mind. Our concept of "existence" when we say does God exist is questioning not any form of existence, but a specific existence. That is does a construct of God that exists subjectively have an objective form on which this construct is based?

So we are not dealing with non-existent things per se.

I will deal with that things lacking characteristics in a different post.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The world is information.

Is it then completely defined by information theory (or some form thereof)? If not, what do you mean by the above?

 

[Curious George]

The thing is, there is no such thing as a default belief. We all enter the world as a tabula rasa, and our beliefs are the result of what we are taught as children, what we see and experience in the world around us as we grow up, and what we learn and choose to believe for ourselves as we get older.

Nobody is born an atheist, or a theist. They are taught what they believe, or they come to their beliefs themselves-- ideally, they do both, and the latter enriches and solidifies the former.

And whatever they decide, it will be to hold a belief: theism holds no certainty or proof, nor does atheism. Whatever we decide to believe in regard to religion and spirituality, we do so not because it has objective surety, but because it presents a case we find compelling, either rationally or emotionally or both.

There is no tabula rasa. We certainly have both genetic disposition and temperament at birth.

And the default position is a position in an argument not before an argument.

 

[Curious George]

.


The default position seems to be the predilection towards belief. In reality, though, "default position" is an oxymoron (at least in this context). Position requires taking a "place" on e.g., an epistemic continuum (hence the spatial metaphor underlying the term "position" in this context).

That is because it is being used wrong. Default position is not "the position in which one is while in the womb(fetal position?).

Default position is a stance of either accepting a proposition and its negation, or rejecting both a proposition and its negation.