Favourite Atheist arguments

[Valjean]

The "a" stands for "not".

Knot?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
The only justification I need for my atheism, is that I'm not convinced of the claims of theism due to their not being sufficient evidence to warrant accepting them.

So my justification for atheism, is the lack of justification for theism.
...

Mine is that I don't need the psychological effect of being as theist.

And since I don't believe in evidence or justification as a skeptic, those are not relevant to me.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

No. A default position is a 'factory setting', in this case, the belief we're born with.
1. We're born with no belief. 2. No belief is atheism. 3. Therefore, atheism, not belief, is the default.

Always astonishes me that there a lot of people who just don't get that. We know perfectly well that a child born to Christian parents, and then adopted during infancy by Muslims, will grow up believing what his adoptive parents, not his birth parents, believe.

Take a look at the boy Edgardo Mortara, taken from his Jewish parents at the age of 6 by Pope Pius IX in June 1858, because a Christian maid, afraid that he might die of an illness at the time, performed an "emergency christening." Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of the Pope, who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return, and eventually became a priest.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Always astonishes me that there a lot of people who just don't get that. We know perfectly well that a child born to Christian parents, and then adopted during infancy by Muslims, will grow up believing what his adoptive parents, not his birth parents, believe.

Take a look at the boy Edgardo Mortara, taken from his Jewish parents at the age of 6 by Pope Pius IX in June 1858, because a Christian maid, afraid that he might die of an illness at the time, performed an "emergency christening." Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of the Pope, who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return, and eventually became a priest.

We are not born with any beliefs or lack of beliefs as a cognitive state of the brain.
It is not a dual position. It is 3 different positions.

1. Incapable of holding the 2 positions below.
2. I believe in some form of deities.
3. I don't believe in any form of deities.

Some people conflate 1. and 3. as the same. They are not.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Magenta ^.
That is another dogmatic question of the Atheism people they have been indoctrinated into, I understand.

Regards

A question cannot be dogmatic.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes they are but they carry fleas, almost 700 years ago those fleas became infected with a disease the marmots were carrying. The resulting pandemic of black death killed between 75 and 200 million people.

They also like to scuttle under your legs to if you are sitting on the side of a mountain. Sneaky burgers!

 

[paarsurrey]

The "a" stands for "not".

And this "a" becomes meaningless if it is spoken/written in isolation, and exposes "Atheism", I figure.
Right?

Regards

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And this "a" becomes meaningless if it is spoken/written in isolation, and exposes "Atheism", I figure.
Right?

Regards

No.

 

[PureX]

Revelations are a central part of abrahamic religions, a major pillar actually.

No they aren't. The vast majority of Jews and Christians (I won't speak for Muslims) have no idea what or how many prophesies there even are in their holy books.

It is one of the few things that most religious people can agree: God spoke to humanity.

Well, not so much. "God spoke" how, to whom, and said what? Suddenly that agreement dissipates into a cloud of varying interpretations. And it doesn't matter, anyway, because there is no logical reason to expect agreement.

If even that is wrong, people simply know nothing about God because most of the things they think they know came from those revelations.

Again, you are wrong. What people think about God is mostly derived from their own personalities and experiences. Their ideas of God are determined by what they need, want, and reason God to be (or not to be in the case of atheists).

Honestly, I think most people would simply become atheists if they believed as you do.

Viva la differance!

 

[lukethethird]

And this "a" becomes meaningless if it is spoken/written in isolation, and exposes "Atheism", I figure.
Right?

Regards

Comprehension is not your forté.

 

[PureX]

It is a position on the claim of theism. It's not a claim by itself.

To claim that "X is untrue" is exactly as much a truth claim as to claim "X is true". And both claimants are equally responsible for justifying those claims. All that gibberish about "unbelief" is just a disingenuous attempt at avoiding this responsibility by absurd wordplay and misdirection. It's a coward's move, in my opinion.

The only justification I need for my atheism, is that I'm not convinced of the claims of theism due to their not being sufficient evidence to warrant accepting them.

No one cares what you are or are not convinced of, because you are setting the criteria for that according to your own biases and limitations. As we all do. These are no one else's concern. And they have nothing to do with the validity of your truth/untruth claims. That's why your stated justifications are what matter, and not your 'belief".

So my justification for atheism, is the lack of justification for theism.

What's sad is that I really don't think you understand how foolish that statement is. The theist's justifications are all personal. You have no say over whether they are "valid" or not because you aren't them. It doesn't matter how they say it, they cannot claim to know the truth of God beyond their own experiences. And you should understand this. So, TO YOU, all they can offer is a proposition: "this is how it 'works' for me, and for others, and maybe could work for you, too". That's it. That's all they can offer. And then you shout "false!" See how silly that is?

It's theism here that has the burden proof.

Why do you keep repeating this when you already know that there can be no proof? Do you have Turrets Syndrome? Are the words flying off your keyboard of their own accord?

Atheism is the logical result of pointing out that theism hasn't met its burden of proof.

Then atheists are clearly idiots. Because they're demanding what they already know is not possible to obtain, OR they're so stupid that they don't know it's not possible to obtain. Either way leads to the same conclusion.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

And this "a" becomes meaningless if it is spoken/written in isolation, and exposes "Atheism", I figure.
Right?

Regards

I have no clue what you are on about.

The point is that atheism is a label used for when specific beliefs of theism aren't present.
That's it. It doesn't include any positive beliefs in anything.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

To claim that "X is untrue" is exactly as much a truth claim as to claim "X is true". And both claimants are equally responsible for justifying those claims. All that gibberish about "unbelief" is just a disingenuous attempt at avoiding this responsibility by absurd wordplay and misdirection. It's a coward's move, in my opinion.

This may well be the case for any claim for which it is possible to find evidence. For example, "it is true that Pi is an irrational number, a never-ending, never-repeating decimal." Now, one may easily claim that this is NOT true, but if one has sufficient mathematical sophistication, it is not very hard to develop a proof for the former, and thus disproving the latter.

However, to claim, for instance, that there is a herd of powder blue musk-ox the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting the planet Rigel in the constellation Orion, is a very different matter. The planet is some 860 light years from earth, and although it is possible that in some distant century humans may go and find out for themselves, for now, it is an impossibility. Therefore, the best one can do is ask, "is there any reason to suppse that there is a herd of powder blue musk-lx the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting Rigel?" And if there is no reason to make such assumption, it's pretty reasonable to assume that there is not.

On the other hand, to claim that "there is life elsewhere in the universe" is not unreasonable, for a large number of reasons. Therefore, the claim that there is no life elsewhere in the universe really does cry out for some justification.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

This may well be the case for any claim for which it is possible to find evidence. For example, "it is true that Pi is an irrational number, a never-ending, never-repeating decimal." Now, one may easily claim that this is NOT true, but if one has sufficient mathematical sophistication, it is not very hard to develop a proof for the former, and thus disproving the latter.

However, to claim, for instance, that there is a herd of powder blue musk-ox the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting the planet Rigel in the constellation Orion, is a very different matter. The planet is some 860 light years from earth, and although it is possible that in some distant century humans may go and find out for themselves, for now, it is an impossibility. Therefore, the best one can do is ask, "is there any reason to suppse that there is a herd of powder blue musk-lx the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting Rigel?" And if there is no reason to make such assumption, it's pretty reasonable to assume that there is not.

On the other hand, to claim that "there is life elsewhere in the universe" is not unreasonable, for a large number of reasons. Therefore, the claim that there is no life elsewhere in the universe really does cry out for some justification.

Stop assuming that you know what objective reality is as per epistemological realism. Your evidence is a belief system that rests on the unprovable assumption that the universe is natural. There is no evidence that the universe is natural and it is possible to believe differently.
If you think you have solved Agrippa's Trilemma and the problem of solipsism publish that, because you would be the first person in record history to have solved that.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

To claim that "X is untrue" is exactly as much a truth claim as to claim "X is true".

Except that that is a strawman....

Try "I see no reason to accept X is correct".

"I don't believe X is true" is not synonymous with "I believe X is false".

Why is it that so many theists have such a hard time comprehending this?


The rest of your post is completely rooted in that strawman as a premise, and is therefor not worth responding to.

You should learn the above and stop arguing strawmen.

 

[PureX]

This may well be the case for any claim for which it is possible to find evidence. For example, "it is true that Pi is an irrational number, a never-ending, never-repeating decimal." Now, one may easily claim that this is NOT true, but if one has sufficient mathematical sophistication, it is not very hard to develop a proof for the former, and thus disproving the latter.

However, to claim, for instance, that there is a herd of powder blue musk-ox the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting the planet Rigel in the constellation Orion, is a very different matter. The planet is some 860 light years from earth, and although it is possible that in some distant century humans may go and find out for themselves, for now, it is an impossibility. Therefore, the best one can do is ask, "is there any reason to suppose that there is a herd of powder blue musk-lx the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting Rigel?" And if there is no reason to make such assumption, it's pretty reasonable to assume that there is not.

On the other hand, to claim that "there is life elsewhere in the universe" is not unreasonable, for a large number of reasons. Therefore, the claim that there is no life elsewhere in the universe really does cry out for some justification.

It's easy to confuse evidence and justification with proof. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of "God", depending on how one conceptualizes "God" and what one's criteria for 'evidence' is. I suppose there is even "proof" for a few people, within their own contextual envelope. But for the rest of us, the discussion has to rest mostly on relative experience and subjective reasoning. And we should understand this going in. It's not about who believes what. It's about who asserts what, and why. Because it's from these that the rest of us can learn new things. We don't learn anything from each other's "beliefs". We learn from their assertions, and from the reasoning they offer up as justification for their assertions. You can believe that there is a herd of powder blue musk-lx the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting Rigel all you want. And you can say so loudly and often. But in the end all that's going to matter to us is your reasoning; for or against the proposition.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It's easy to confuse evidence and justification with proof. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of "God", depending on how one conceptualizes "God" and what one's criteria for 'evidence' is.

The fact that you need to qualify this with certain "criteria of what evidence is", is a ginormous red flag.

Do you understand why?

You are LITERALLY advocating for special pleading here... you want a "special standard" for what constitutes evidence for your "special" claim.

Sorry - no. I see no reason at all to give your claims or the evidence for it a "special standard" or "privilege".
Your claims are subject to the exact same scrutiny and skepticism as all other claims.

I suppose there is even "proof" for a few people, within their own contextual envelope. But for the rest of us, the discussion has to rest mostly on relative experience and subjective reasoning. And we should understand this going in. It's not about who believes what. It's about who asserts what, and why. Because it's from these that the rest of us can learn new things. We don't learn anything from each other's "beliefs". We learn from their assertions, and from the reasoning they offer up as justification for their assertions. You can believe that there is a herd of powder blue musk-lx the size of Albertasaurous on the 5th planet orbiting Rigel all you want. And you can say so loudly and often. But in the end all that's going to matter to us is your reasoning; for or against the proposition.

And if your reasoning for the proposition is unverifiable and untestable, then there is no reason to accept it.

 

[Koldo]

No they aren't. The vast majority of Jews and Christians (I won't speak for Muslims) have no idea what or how many prophesies there even are in their holy books.

Which is of no consequence.

It is central to Christianity that Jesus, God himself, walked, and talked, among mortals.

It is central to Islam that the Quran was revealed by God.

It is central to Judaism that the laws of God were given by God.

Well, not so much. "God spoke" how, to whom, and said what? Suddenly that agreement dissipates into a cloud of varying interpretations. And it doesn't matter, anyway, because there is no logical reason to expect agreement.

There is a logical reason to expect agreement: If those revelations are real, we would expect consistency. But they disagree on a lot of things.

Again, you are wrong. What people think about God is mostly derived from their own personalities and experiences. Their ideas of God are determined by what they need, want, and reason God to be (or not to be in the case of atheists).

I don't count those ideas as knowledge though. So I stand by what I have said: Without revelations, humans know nothing about God.

 

[Valjean]

There is no objectively better definition. I can't do that and neither can you. Stop claiming an authority that is not there.

You have been using the term athiesm for quite some time man, I mean there is even dispute of which is best to use currently from my research.

Ok In my initial response I have two definitions of athiesm and explored then you accused me of using a strawman and then repeat the same definition I used....

I would say it's a popular definition especially in the non acedmic field but there is definitely a debate as to which is better especially given Flews definition has its limitations. Mate people were refering themselves as that kind of atheist for about half a century while it's recent in the grand scale of things is older than me by about 20 years.

A thing is defined by a unique distinguishing feature. The definition of unmodified "atheism," must comprise the single feature common to all flavors of atheism -- lack of belief.
What other unique defining feature would there be?

 

[Valjean]

And this "a" becomes meaningless if it is spoken/written in isolation, and exposes "Atheism", I figure.
Right?

Regards

Of course. It's a bound morpheme. A bound morpheme is one that's meaningful only in combination.
I don't get your point.

Morpheme - Examples and Definition of Morpheme