How do you define "Athesim"?

[Willamena]

Theism - and its negation - are dependent on the concept of god. Since a theist is someone who believes in at least one god, the quantity of gods matters I this discussion.

I would say, rather, that theism is dependent on belief in god(s). It's only a concept for the atheist. The quantity, then, shouldn't matter to the atheist, because the concept of god(s) doesn't.

Quantity just muddies the water.

First off, I noticed the monotheistic baggage on how you formulated that statement. Personally, I'm trying to be a bit more inclusive.

Second, as I touched on earlier with falv, there's a difference between being an atheist and recognizing onesself as an atheist.

Well, I used a monothestic image of god in that test, but that could easily be otherwise.

Where theism is, "I believe in the gods," athiesm is, "I don't."

I will just stick with "being a theist," rather than the "recognizing oneself as a theist."

 

[Willamena]

I'm in favor of allowing people to define their terms as they see fit. I see no reason to impose on them my idea of what I think they ought to mean by a term. So, if an atheist wants to define his or her atheism as "a lack of belief in deity", then so be it.

Philistine!

...or Philstine, as the case may be.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It doesn't matter whether people have definitions you haven't heard of. We are working with the definition that the language community defines by its usage, not people's private definitions.

Who defines the community?

If you like, you can think of it as a set whose members are generated by a function rather than merely exhaustively enumerated.

What function?

What possible function could say that Mercury is a god but Gabriel isn't? That Angra Mainyu us a god but Satan isn't?

It is rejecting all gods as they are conventionally defined by English usage. You don't want to accept the view that the meaning of "god" is a normative concept, so you won't include that stipulation in your list.

No, I recognize that I don't reject certain things that are commonly called gods.

In fact, in some cases, e.g. Deism, I think it's impossible to reject them validly. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been manufactured in order to be this way, but still, as I touched on earlier, this is an objection I have to the "map" - i.e. deistic belief - not the "territory" - i.e. whether the god they describe actually exists. "Your position is unsound" does not necessarily imply "your conclusion cannot be coincidentally correct."

It depends on what you actually believe about gods as they are conventionally understood. As far as I can tell, you are no more nor less an atheist than I am. You just don't accept my account of what counts as a valid definition.

You're right that I don't, but that's not the only issue here. As I said, I not only don't reject all gods, I think anyone who did would be unreasonable.

So again: am I an atheist? I believe in no gods but don't reject all of them... not even all the ones I'm familiar with.

Are you an atheist? Do you reject the deistic god-concept? If so, how?

It does if "rejection" is a key part of the definition, because rejection implies the existence of something to be rejected. Under that definition, babies do not qualify as either theists or atheists, which is, I think, the most accurate perception of where babies fit on the theist-atheist scale. That is, they don't fit on it at all.

So no atheists actually exist, then.

Can you give me so much as one example of someone who rejects all gods? For argument's sake, we can go with any definition of "god" that you consider reasonable.

 

[Willamena]

Are you an atheist? Do you reject the deistic god-concept? If so, how?

I do. I don't believe that observation of the natural world is sufficient to establish the existence of deity.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I do. I don't believe that observation of the natural world is sufficient to establish the existence of deity.

As I touched on in my post, this is only enough to call deistic beliefs poorly founded. It's not enough to call their conclusions false with certainty. The possibility still exists that they coincidentally stumbled on the right answer by the wrong method.

As they say, even a stopped clock is still right twice a day.

 

[Falvlun]

As I touched on in my post, this is only enough to call deistic beliefs poorly founded. It's not enough to call their conclusions false with certainty. The possibility still exists that they coincidentally stumbled on the right answer by the wrong method.

As they say, even a stopped clock is still right twice a day.

Certainty isn't necessary for belief. Your problem only exists if you are claiming that you must be a gnostic atheist (I know gods don't exist). It's not a problem for agnostic atheism in the least (I believe that gods don't exist).

EDIT:
And do you really think this is only a "problem" with the deist god concept? You think there are other god concepts out there that you can rule out with certainty? That makes you a stronger atheist than me.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Grice's "rules" are really just assumptions that we all make when we engage in conversation.

Of course. They seem glaringly obvious, especially for those who are trying to speak to one another as computers might. But that's why I don't like them. Speaking to computers doesn't interest me, at least not now. They'll have to learn to joyfully and regularly break Grice's rules in order to entice me into dialogue.

They describe behavior, not prescribe it. When you violate them, you undermine the basis of linguistic conversation.

No, you're mistaken about that. When you violate them, you make conversation interesting, often even increasing the meaning content. Here, I'll show you:

Once I was walking with a newly-married couple when a pretty young woman rode past us on a horse. The husband stared a bit too closely. As we continued along, the wife commented to her husband, "Boy, you really did like that horse, didn't you, Rob."

According to Grice (and you, I guess?), that was a violation of the rules and should have undermined the basis of their linguistic communication. The wife's words were intentionally obscure, even misleading. She used the word 'horse' when she meant the word 'hotchick'. Her words said one thing while her meaning was something entirely different. And the meaning was crystal clear.

If she had said, "Stop staring at chicks, Rob," I'd argue that would have been a weaker communicative event. Rob would not have learned his lesson nearly so well. By violating the rules, she made the lesson memorable.

So if Grice's rules are really descriptive rather than prescriptive, he seems not to have gotten out much.

Poetry is not itself a speech act any more than prose is.

I find that an extraordinary assertion. So you believe no communication is occurring when we read books? Or are you limiting speech act to oral communication only?

Those are just styles of language that are comprised of speech acts.

I'm sorry but I must not know what you mean by 'speech act.' Could you define it for me as you're using it?

It is important to look at how and why people violate Gricean maxims intentionally. You can't actually understand how wordplay works without taking them into account.

Obviously. How else can you play with words except by knowing what is normal and expected?

What do you think those expressions mean?

I'm not referring to their meaning. I'm simply asking for your opinion. Do you deny or accept that a person can be an atheistic Christian? You seem to deny that a person can be a theistic atheist, no matter what those words mean to me. So I'm asking about atheistic Christians.

I've sure met a lot of atheistic Jews, so they claimed. I felt no need to inform them of their necessary nonexistence.

Are you talking about Mitt Romney? It is certainly reasonable for a person to take both liberal and conservative positions on different issues at the same time.

I'm sorry to complain, but I’d really like you to attempt an answer to my question. Here it is again: Is it possible for me to be both a liberal and a conservative at the same time?

What is your opinion on that?

Exactly so. That is why usage determines word meanings. If you use meanings that nobody else subscribes to, then they cannot be on the "same page" as you, and communication breaks down. Here, at least, you seem to agree with my point. You just don't see that it is inconsistent with your apparent earlier position that you alone can determine what words mean.

Huh? I claimed that I alone can determine what words mean? Yikes. Please forgive me. Would you mind reposting my claim here so that I can go back and delete it from my message? I have absolutely no memory of it.

As for the idea of making up a unique language and being immediately understood by our neighbors, who would believe such a crazy thing to be possible? No one I can imagine. Have you met someone with such a bizarre belief about language?

Most of us still find dictionaries useful tools in understanding what words mean, however boring and tedious that may appear to you.

OK, OK, I admit it. Every couple of months I will look up a word at dictionary.com. (But I always do in in porn mode so as not to leave some slime-lined trail back to myself.)

If you want to be "on the same page" with other people and be sure that "all is fine with the communicative event," then you must put up with conventional usage. Otherwise, it is others who may find you tedious and boring.

Thanks for the advice, but no problems so far. Just the opposite. Most conventional thinkers seem to react to me more with outrage and upset than with boredom. I seem to unsettle people, often despite my best efforts otherwise.

How is it that you can say "words have limits" in one breath and then deny the fact that conventional usage determines those limits in another?

I've gone back and searched on the strings 'words have' and 'have limits' in our thread and I just can't find them. Can you tell me where I argued that 'words have limits'? Could you be confusing me with another poster?

I am not claiming that word meanings are static, only that wordplay and language change would be impossible if nobody acknowledged those limits.

Nobody acknowledges word limits? Or you are afraid that nobody will acknowledge word limits? I'm sorry but I'm just lost. We have substantial climbing to do before we happily arrive on SamePage Summit together.

Grice defined some fundamental limitations on conversational interactions, and then he went on to describe the interesting things that happened when people violated those limitations. At first blush, what he says appears obvious, but you cannot understand what isn't obvious until you know what is.

Again I'm not sure what you mean. Grice's 'limitations' appear very much obvious. I may have known them long before Grice even compiled and published them. (Don't know when he published. Don't care. Nothing personal against Grice.)

You completely misunderstand lexicography. It is not about prescribing word usage. It is about describing it.

Yikes.

Um... I am well-aware of how lexicography works, Copernicus. I might have been a dictionary maker myself if I hadn't been so bored with that side of linguistics.

Did you see that? Do you see how we are both using ‘conventional’ word-meanings in our dialogue, yet you still got the absolute backwards understanding from me? Damned words. No matter how vanilla-flavored, we still can't trust them.

Lexicographers come up with poor definitions all the time, and they get into heated arguments with each other over how to define words. When you disagree with lexicographers, you may have a case, but you can only make that case on the basis of conventional usage.

Really, I don't know what you are saying or why you are saying it. I can only argue with lexicographers 'on the basis of conventional usage'? Are you saying that I couldn't have written them a letter 15 years ago suggesting that 'F-bomb' should be added to the dictionary, since it was not yet 'conventional usage'? Am I somewhere close to your meaning here?

Lexicographers don't encourage people to misuse dictionaries. People do that all on their own. They misuse dictionaries when they think of them as prescribing or dictating usage. That isn't their purpose. It is to inform readers about conventional usage. They help people improve their ability to communicate with language.

How does one misuse a dictionary? Can you say more about that?

Well, that is exactly the problem with your approach. You can speak for yourself, but you cannot speak for the listener. In the end, we come back to your point about being "on the same page" in order to make sure that "all is fine with the communicative event." I'm not just making this stuff up. Those were your words. Language is a social phenomenon, not just an individual one, but you want to treat words as if they meant just what the speaker wanted them to mean, not the language community that the speaker is part of.

From what I can tell, you have no good idea what I am saying. My meaning is sure not recognizable to me anywhere within your paragraph above.

What is this, a Turing Test for atheism? I don't define atheists in terms of their physical appearance or performance under interrogation.

Then how do you define them? If you can tell them apart without hearing their opinions, without hearing them speak, on what basis do you decide whether they are atheist or theist?

 

[Willamena]

As I touched on in my post, this is only enough to call deistic beliefs poorly founded. It's not enough to call their conclusions false with certainty. The possibility still exists that they coincidentally stumbled on the right answer by the wrong method.

As they say, even a stopped clock is still right twice a day.

It doesn't matter if I can say with any certainty that their beliefs are false--the same is true of theism. Significantly, it is enough to fail to convince me of a deistic deity.

As in, "I don't believe."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Certainty isn't necessary for belief. Your problem only exists if you are claiming that you must be a gnostic atheist (I know gods don't exist). It's not a problem for agnostic atheism in the least (I believe that gods don't exist).

I think this may get back to how we define "rejection", then. To me, to reject the truth of a god concept means something like "I consider there to be no possibility that this concept is true", not "on the balance of probabilities, I consider this concept to be pretty unlikely to be true." IMO, the second one isn't actually a rejection.

EDIT:
And do you really think this is only a "problem" with the deist god concept?

Oh, definitely not. I was just using it as an example.

You think there are other god concepts out there that you can rule out with certainty? That makes you a stronger atheist than me.

I do rule out certain god concepts. For instance, I reject the omnimax creator god because I believe that its attributes are impossible: I think they conflict with each other, and I believe that the existence of such a god is contradicted by the state of things in the universe. I also reject certain claims like "Emperor ____ is a god" because I believe that mortal human beings don't qualify as gods.

That being said, there are a whole lot of god-claims where, when it comes right down to it, my opinion is something like "your arguments sound really sketchy, but I can't completely exclude the possibility that you just lucked out and picked the right answer by accident."

I consider this a rejection of the argument, but not necessarily a rejection of the god-concept being argued.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It doesn't matter if I can say with any certainty that their beliefs are false--the same is true of theism. Significantly, it is enough to fail to convince me of a deistic deity.

As in, "I don't believe."

Has a baby ever been convinced of a deistic deity?

 

[Willamena]

Has a baby ever been convinced of a deistic deity?

The pertinent question would be, has anything ever failed to convince the baby of ... ... anything?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The pertinent question would be, has anything ever failed to convince the baby of ... ... anything?

Let's try an experiment. A message:

Part 1:

Attention, adults of the world, present and future!

Deliver the part below to your babies! Hold it in front of them so they can read it. In case they can't read yet, read the message to them!

Pass this on to all your friends! Make sure that everyone you know gets this message. Make sure that they read the part below to their babies and pass on this message to all their friends, too!

Part 2:

Attention, all babies of the world, present and future!

Take note: the deistic deity god-concept is true and you should accept it!



There. I have now attempted to convince all babies everywhere to accept a deistic god-concept. It's a half-***ed attempt, sure, but it's an attempt nonetheless.

Has it succeeded at all? I'm guessing it hasn't. I doubt that so much as one baby was convinced by it. It failed in every case. IOW, every single baby that exists now or will exist in the future has failed to be convinced of a deistic god-concept.

Are they atheists now?

 

[Willamena]

Let's try an experiment. A message:

Part 1:

Attention, adults of the world, present and future!

Deliver the part below to your babies! Hold it in front of them so they can read it. In case they can't read yet, read the message to them!

Pass this on to all your friends! Make sure that everyone you know gets this message. Make sure that they read the part below to their babies and pass on this message to all their friends, too!

Part 2:

Attention, all babies of the world, present and future!

Take note: the deistic deity god-concept is true and you should accept it!



There. I have now attempted to convince all babies everywhere to accept a deistic god-concept. It's a half-***ed attempt, sure, but it's an attempt nonetheless.

Has it succeeded at all? I'm guessing it hasn't. I doubt that so much as one baby was convinced by it. It failed in every case. IOW, every single baby that exists now or will exist in the future has failed to be convinced of a deistic god-concept.

Are they atheists now?

People past a certain age, upon being exposed to evidence, process it, assess its credibility and viabilty, and then, based on experience and an ability to make judgements, either accept it or reject it.

The baby hasn't done any of that.

 

[NIX]

Babies don't believe in Santa Clause either. You can't fool those babies. :no:

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

People past a certain age, upon being exposed to evidence, process it, assess its credibility and viabilty, and then, based on experience and an ability to make judgements, either accept it or reject it.

The baby hasn't done any of that.

Gee, I hope that goalpost has wheels on it. Otherwise, you're liable to hurt yourself moving it so much.

 

[Willamena]

Gee, I hope that goalpost has wheels on it. Otherwise, you're liable to hurt yourself moving it so much.

It hasn't actually moved one bit.


I can only assume that you haven't drawn any connections, in your structuring of the world, between being convinced of a thing, acceptance of the idea of it and belief, and between failing to be convinced, rejection and disbelief. It's not a stretch to connect the dots.

 

[Copernicus]

Who defines the community?

Speech communities are self-organizing, just like any type of community. Sociolinguists have a body of literature on methodologies for defining it for the purposes of study.

What function?

What possible function could say that Mercury is a god but Gabriel isn't? That Angra Mainyu us a god but Satan isn't?

That is one of the basic questions in theories of lexical semantics, and it doesn't have a simple answer. You seemed to take the "denotational" approach to word meanings. That is, you can never know precisely what any nominal expression means until you find every instance of what it denotes. So you can't really know what "god" means, because someone might have a concept of "god" that you have yet to encounter. Word meanings don't work that way. From a psychological perspective, Eleanor Rosch did some seminal work on prototype theory in the 1970s that seems to work best. We develop "prototypes" of word meanings based on interactions with the world. In her approach, Mercury, Gabriel, Angra Mainyu, and Satan would all qualify more or less as gods, depending on their similarity to the prototype. From a computational perspective, word meanings are assigned on the basis of some kind of distance metric. In much the same way, a person is more or less an atheist, depending on similarity with a mental "prototype" that each of us has for the concept atheist.

No, I recognize that I don't reject certain things that are commonly called gods.

In fact, in some cases, e.g. Deism, I think it's impossible to reject them validly. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been manufactured in order to be this way, but still, as I touched on earlier, this is an objection I have to the "map" - i.e. deistic belief - not the "territory" - i.e. whether the god they describe actually exists. "Your position is unsound" does not necessarily imply "your conclusion cannot be coincidentally correct."

I don't want to get into the various nuances of deism (or Korzybski's misleading General Semantics metaphor about "maps" and "territories"), but I am very much in agreement with you that word concepts have fuzzy boundaries. That is why I pointed you to Rosch's prototype theory here. I think it sets one in the right direction to think about how we categorize things with words. The so-called "function" I referred to is better thought of as a distance metric relating an object to a prototype.

You're right that I don't, but that's not the only issue here. As I said, I not only don't reject all gods, I think anyone who did would be unreasonable.

So again: am I an atheist? I believe in no gods but don't reject all of them... not even all the ones I'm familiar with.

Are you an atheist? Do you reject the deistic god-concept? If so, how?

You are closer to my prototype of an atheist than most other people.

So no atheists actually exist, then.

False. But it is my belief that no gods, as they are conventionally understood, exist. I could be wrong, but my degree of certainty is high enough to merit the label "atheist".

Can you give me so much as one example of someone who rejects all gods? For argument's sake, we can go with any definition of "god" that you consider reasonable.

Well, there's me, but a more famous personality would be Richard Dawkins. I'd like to say that you qualify, as well, but that begs the question.

We've been in a lengthy discussion about what "god" means before, so I am loathe to trod that same path again, because we probably won't end up in a very different place. I define gods as personal beings that think like people (i.e. have sense, memory, volition, emotions, etc.) but have some absolute control over an aspect of reality. The monotheistic "God" controls all aspects of reality. Gods can alter reality merely by exercising volition. And I could go on here. You once added to this "prototype god" concept by pointing out that they are worshiped by humans--a very good suggestion. I see gods as an abstraction of one of our earliest "basic level categories"--a parent.

Note that I have not given you a precise definition, because I make a big distinction between definitions and meaning. Meanings are complex bundles of associations. Definitions are concise statements that allow you to discover a basic word sense. Dictionaries give you definitions for word senses. Encyclopedias tell you more about word meanings.

 

[Falvlun]

I think this may get back to how we define "rejection", then. To me, to reject the truth of a god concept means something like "I consider there to be no possibility that this concept is true", not "on the balance of probabilities, I consider this concept to be pretty unlikely to be true." IMO, the second one isn't actually a rejection.

As noted before, I am using "rejection" as synonymous with "disbelief" or "believe not" or "not believe". If the word "rejection" is causing issues, just drop it then, and realize that I am using it as above. I believe it was you who first introduced the word "reject" to describe my definition, anyway, not me.

Oh, definitely not. I was just using it as an example.


I do rule out certain god concepts. For instance, I reject the omnimax creator god because I believe that its attributes are impossible: I think they conflict with each other, and I believe that the existence of such a god is contradicted by the state of things in the universe. I also reject certain claims like "Emperor ____ is a god" because I believe that mortal human beings don't qualify as gods.

That being said, there are a whole lot of god-claims where, when it comes right down to it, my opinion is something like "your arguments sound really sketchy, but I can't completely exclude the possibility that you just lucked out and picked the right answer by accident."

I consider this a rejection of the argument, but not necessarily a rejection of the god-concept being argued.

my bolding.

So, you don't believe in "belief"? You only believe in gnostic beliefs-- "I know" statements? Are you 100% certain about the truth of every single one of your beliefs?

If you have decided that it is unlikely for something to exist, I think that puts you firmly in the square of "disbelief". That's basically what a belief is: It's the idea that what you hold to be true (belief) is more likely to match up with reality than the alternative.

It's only if you think that the probability of something existing and not existing is exactly equal, can you be said to have no belief on the matter.

 

[Falvlun]

I'm in favor of allowing people to define their terms as they see fit. I see no reason to impose on them my idea of what I think they ought to mean by a term. So, if an atheist wants to define his or her atheism as "a lack of belief in deity", then so be it.

So... how do you define atheism for yourself?

(Why do I get the feeling that it's gonna have something to do with blow-up dolls?)

 

[idav]

Babies don't believe in Santa Clause either. You can't fool those babies. :no:

Babies are new agers, thinking the world is all magical and stuff.