Extremes of Atheism vs Theism

[bobhikes]

You too.
"Any thing non-atheist"? Which things are "non-atheist"?

Indeed, which things are non-atheist? Good question maybe that could be another debate. I know I have some idea's.:yes:

 

[LuisDantas]

It is surprising how many and how meaningful consequences some people see in such a simple things as atheism, non-theism or anti-theism.

Sometimes that makes me feel like I have invited myself into a guerilla group or something, but for whatever reason the cool guys are ignoring me and therefore I never get to participate of the parties.

Atheism is simply atheism, folks. It does not even have an agenda. It is simply absence of belief in God. About as harmless an idea as they come, really.

 

[idav]

Atheism is simply atheism, folks. It does not even have an agenda. It is simply absence of belief in God. About as harmless an idea as they come, really.

An absense of a belief cannot answer what it is not. The belief becomes, belief anything but not god.

 

[Alceste]

An absense of a belief cannot answer what it is not. The belief becomes, belief anything but not god.

Would you mind having another go? I can't figure out what you are trying to say.

 

[idav]

There has been a hell of a long thread that I got tired of being in because it simply made no progress which was about this exact thing. I think it was "are babies atheist".

But the term "atheist" is a non-descriptor. Which makes it impossible by most means to be out of the theist/atheist ranges. Why? Because atheist litterally means "not a theist". How can one be a theist and not one at the same time? They are contradictory.

What I think you are getting at is that you are spiritual in some way without the need for god's or religion. That there is some kind of driving force to the universe. Am I right?

I think the driving force of the universe had to be an original uncaused event which had natural creative potential which I would label as god. The something from nothing argument has to be answered by a creative force of some kind.

 

[idav]

Would you mind having another go? I can't figure out what you are trying to say.

To answer the question where did everything come from, not a baseball, not an eternal turtle, certainly not some sort of creative force labelled god.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

To answer the question where did everything come from, not a baseball, not an eternal turtle, certainly not some sort of creative force labelled god.

In my experience, a major difference between theists and atheists is that atheists are comfortable with "I don't know."

But (some) theists can't even imagine living without the answer.

 

[Willamena]

What is in between the extremes of no being vs super being?

I don't believe in no being, and super-being is just us projected.

I see atheism and theism being extremes as to an explantion of origins. People even will jump one over to the other when faced with questions of evolution. When someone jumps from theism to atheism its called "throwing the baby out with the bath water". I consider myself in between but what is that supposed to mean. I was thinking of the word 'being' which i often use in the verb tense and as I thought about what is between "no being"and "super being" it should be a noun and verb at the same time, something that became something hat existed and started being at the same time.

"Being" is literally a concretization of existence. Existence has no form, no definition, so being suffices.

Being is noun and verb at the same time to represent existence, which is neither. (Which is to say that using being instead of existence in sentences will make them make more sense.)

 

[ArtieE]

I think the driving force of the universe had to be an original uncaused event which had natural creative potential which I would label as god. The something from nothing argument has to be answered by a creative force of some kind.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch, or so the saying goes, but that may not be true on the grandest, cosmic scale. Many physicists now believe that the universe arose out of nothingness during the Big Bang which means that nothing must have somehow turned into something. How could that be possible? Due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, nothing transforms into something all the time. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that a system can never have precisely zero energy and since energy and mass are equivalent, pairs of particles can form spontaneously as long as they annihilate one another very quickly.
The less energy such a system has, the longer it can stick around. Thanks to gravity – the only force that always attracts – the net energy balance of the universe may be as close to zero as you can get. This makes its lifespan of almost 14 billion years plausible."

New Scientist TV: How the universe appeared from nothing

 

[Willamena]

For someone to not have the answers then the answer cannot be "no god".

Just so.
(Ran out of frubaliness.)

 

[Alceste]

To answer the question where did everything come from, not a baseball, not an eternal turtle, certainly not some sort of creative force labelled god.

Why would I need to just make up explanations for things we don't yet fully understand? And how will we ever figure these mysteries out if we think we already have a satisfactory explanation?

 

[Windwalker]

It is surprising how many and how meaningful consequences some people see in such a simple things as atheism, non-theism or anti-theism.

The exact same thing can, and should be said about theism, how many meaningful consequences some people see in such a simple thing as theism. Yet, it's pretty clear how people do the same thing there. Correct?

Atheism is simply atheism, folks. It does not even have an agenda. It is simply absence of belief in God. About as harmless an idea as they come, really.

To you, yes. And that's admirable. But to others it's pretty clear what being a "True Atheism" is. For instance from this thread:

This is sort of misleading; atheism is not a position regarding "origins". Atheism is a meta-claim: the position that theism is false; since atheism proves that theism's fundamental truth-claims are incoherent, there is no baby to be thrown out with the bathwater.

Once again, this isn't an accurate portrayal of atheism. Atheism is not an explanation, insofar as it concerns explanation, it is a rejection of theistic explanation.

I don't really care to turn this into YET ANOTHER thread arguing over ways of classifying various non-theistic views, but for the purposes of my statement, "weak" atheism is not atheism.

[Emphasis mine]

I never got back to my response to you in the other thread about fundamentalist views applied to atheism, but I think saying weak atheism isn't true atheism pretty much suggests that.

 

[Willamena]

I'd put atheism=non-theism in the "extreme" category. But that's neither here nor there.

 

[ruffen]

Extreme or not, either there is a God, or there isn't. The answer won't be that a God moderately or partially exists.

So either one believes in God and is therefore a theist, or one does not and is therefore an atheist. I don't see how one could be anywhere else than those two extremes. Of course one can be undecided and not know, but that doesn't help those who have made up their mind.

 

[Windwalker]

Extreme or not, either there is a God, or there isn't. The answer won't be that a God moderately or partially exists.

It could be that our understanding of what God is is partial. So to make claims that God doesn't exist, would suggest you know what all these views of God are and whether or not they have validity.

So either one believes in God and is therefore a theist, or one does not and is therefore an atheist.

You have to first define what God is. And since that cannot be done, how can you say that which you cannot define exists or not? Atheism therefore is equal to theism in belief. Atheism is, in a sense, a theistic belief. It is a belief about God, it's a theology of sorts.

I don't see how one could be anywhere else than those two extremes. Of course one can be undecided and not know, but that doesn't help those who have made up their mind.

I'll throw a monkey wrench into this here. A belief in God is a mental construct, either theistic or atheistic. Both are beliefs based on a thought process. But to say you know God exists, or that which can rightly qualify to be called God since it goes beyond categorization and definition, one would have to have direct, firsthand experiential knowledge. So therefore, for them, they would not say they believe God exists, but they know that that which is called God does exist. So theism and atheism are for those who believe without direct experience. Mysticism on the other hand removes the question. The only question remaining is how do you talk about what cannot be defined? In my view, it can be described as theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, etc. All of them. None of them.

 

[nilsz]

With statements such as that God can not be defined, He seems increasingly to be a feeling rather than part of objective reality.

 

[ArtieE]

Extreme or not, either there is a God, or there isn't. The answer won't be that a God moderately or partially exists.

So either one believes in God and is therefore a theist, or one does not and is therefore an atheist. I don't see how one could be anywhere else than those two extremes. Of course one can be undecided and not know, but that doesn't help those who have made up their mind.

You mean "one can be undecided and" neither believe nor disbelieve. Believing or disbelieving are the two extremes, neither believing nor disbelieving is of course the definition of atheism (weak atheism) until one either starts to believe or disbelieve and become either a theist or a strong atheist.

 

[ArtieE]

You have to first define what God is. And since that cannot be done, how can you say that which you cannot define exists or not? Atheism therefore is equal to theism in belief. Atheism is, in a sense, a theistic belief. It is a belief about God, it's a theology of sorts.

Certainly not. An atheist (weak atheist) is simply any person who has never started believing in the existence of one or more gods. No more no less.

 

[Alceste]

You mean "one can be undecided and" neither believe nor disbelieve. Believing or disbelieving are the two extremes, neither believing nor disbelieving is of course the definition of atheism (weak atheism) until one either starts to believe or disbelieve and become either a theist or a strong atheist.

No, weak atheists don't happen to believe in any gods. Strong atheists believe no god exists. IOW, strong atheists make a positive claim about god, which is problematic, because whose version of which god would you pick to base your claim on and how can you choose? There are as many god concepts to choose from as there are theists. More, because millions of people are polytheistic.

If you aren't interested in making that case but you still don't believe in anybody's god concept, you're a weak atheist. It doesn't mean you're waffling or uncertain. That's an agnostic.

 

[ArtieE]

No, weak atheists don't happen to believe in any gods. Strong atheists believe no god exists.

That's what I said.

If you aren't interested in making that case but you still don't believe in anybody's god concept, you're a weak atheist. It doesn't mean you're waffling or uncertain. That's an agnostic.

Of course not. An agnostic is a person who doesn't know whether gods exist or not. Don't mix him up with a person who neither believes there are gods nor believes there are no gods. That is why we use gnosticism/agnosticism when we talk about knowledge and theism/atheism when we talk about belief. Don't mix them up.