How do you define "Athesim"?

[Falvlun]

And if atheism is simply not accepting any god-beliefs, it's not "written" on a person's "slate" at all.

That's the distinction, then, between people who think atheism is something, and those who think it is nothing.

That's a good point, and I think points to the equivocation I was talking about early.

In the case of the infants, it could very well be considered "nothing".

But in the case of most people who have thought about it, it is very much a "something".

To say that both the nothing and the something are the exact same thing is misleading, and points to a problem with the definition de jure of atheism.

 

[Willamena]

No amount of lack of evidence has failed to convince the baby of anything. So the baby must be a smoker.

 

[idav]

No amount of lack of evidence has failed to convince the baby of anything. So the baby must be a smoker.

I was atheist until I got indoctrinated at the age of two. Before that I thought I was the only person that existed (I was a hardcore solipsist at the age of one).

 

[Falvlun]

I'm gonna chop up that giant post from earlier, and respond to things that relate together.

I agree. This is why I acknowledge, for the sake of consistency, that the normal usage of the word "atheist" implies that babies are atheists. Again, this doesn't do anything for me in and of itself, but it does mean that when a person uses the term "atheist" like I do when referring to adults but claims that babies aren't atheists, then I know they're committing some sort of inconsistency somewhere.

"Normal usage"? Not really, unless your sampling size basically consists of atheists who spend their time debating in online forums. I've actually asked people in real life this question, even polling my entire class once a couple years back when I first got into this debate. The "lack of belief" definition is very much in the minority.

I also think that if any definition for atheism includes infants, then that is a good indication that there is something wrong with the definition. It needs to be modified in order to avoid equivocating between the "lack of belief" a baby displays and the sort of opinions displayed by people like yourself.

 

[idav]

The "lack of belief" definition is very much in the minority.

No doubt as atheism is in the minority. Ask a bunch of theists if they think atheists reject truth/god and what do you think they will say?

 

[Falvlun]

There's no difference between not rejecting anything and rejecting nothing. If "the things you have encountered" is nothing more than "nothing", then there's no difference between rejecting the things you have encountered and not rejecting anything.

Just like I said: if "the puppies you have had" is equivalent to "no puppies", and Bob has petted no puppies, then Bob has petted the puppies he has had (i.e. none).

I thought you just agreed that language should not be misleading. Your entire argument depends upon being misleading. Bot did not pet any puppies, and your statement clearly implies that he has.

I stand by my statement: If you have rejected nothing, you cannot be said to have rejected anything. Nothing is not something, therefore, it cannot be anything.

Furthermore, you cannot pet nothing, you cannot reject nothing.

Feel free to use this argument, but I doubt it will be any better received in any other circle. Unless, of course, there is no other circles in which you will present it, then it will be very well received in all of them.

Here's the problem: these aren't real-world scenarios to begin with, so it's unreasonable to demand "real world" conclusions.

Okay. Tell your boss that I have correctly identified and fixed every single traffic engineering problem I have ever come across, and I will tell mine that you have perfectly identified every single cellular component in every single blood smear you have ever seen. We could switch jobs and based upon the information we gave our bosses, they would think they got the better employee.

How's that for coming to the wrong "real world conclusion"?

And of course, the whole point is that you are attempting to argue this in order to create the real world conclusion that under my definition of atheism, infants would still be considered atheists.

Yup, only if you claim a dishonest meaning from a misleading statement. I don't think that's gonna make me lose any sleep.

BTW: what do you mean by "real world" conclusions anyhow? I'm having trouble seeing how this can mean anything other than "conclusions that adhere to my preconceptions". If that's the case, then you're really just arguing in circles: "conclusions I expect aren't valid because I don't expect them", effectively.

1. Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
2. A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
3. Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

This, of course, suffers from a fallacy, but it's actually pretty similar to what you are arguing.

And, no, I wasn't talking about my preconceptions about particular premises or conclusions. In general, I don't think that logic always brings us to real world, common sense, solutions. Indeed, many logical fallacies actually can be useful ways to filter information. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so popular or persistent.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

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.

Why are you bound and determined to misinterpret my argument? It gets very frustrating.

I'm perfectly fine with defining terms in terms of attributes: "a thing is a ____ if it has qualities A, B and C, or D and E." That's a perfectly valid approach.

The issue here, though, is that to take that approach, we need to come up with the qualities that qualify something as the type of thing we're concerned with.

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.

That doesn't get rid of a problem. Tell me what mental "prototype" one might have for "god" that puts a baby further from "atheist" than a Christian or Muslim who believes in Satan or angels is from "polytheist".

After all, I would say that even fewer people go around calling Muslims polytheists than call babies atheists.

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.

So again: by this "distance metric", a baby is further from "atheist" than a Muslim is from "polytheist"?

False.

So all atheists are unreasonable, then?

The deistic god-concept is like Russell's Teapot or Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage: impossible to refute. It certainly has the earmarks (to me, anyhow) of being manufactured to be impossible to refute, but that doesn't change the fact that it is impossible to refute by any valid logical argument.

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".

Unpacking this a bit, I take this to mean that you reject them based on your understanding of that "conventional understanding".

How good does a person's understanding of that "conventional understanding" have to be before we can say their belief that no gods exists actually reflects it?

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.

But Dawkins doesn't reject all gods. He rates himself only a 6.9 out of 7: while he lives as if gods do not exist for all practical purposes, he is careful to note that he realizes that he can't reject all of them with certainty.

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.

It seems that your definition is rooted in monotheism and denies a number of "alternative" god-concepts.

I've had theists tell me things like "God isn't conscious himself; he is consciousness." I remember reading stories of the Greek gods constantly tricking and undermining each other, and undoing each other's actions. They certainly didn't have "absolute control" over anything.

But regardless, I said that for argument's sake, we could go with whatever definition of "god" you thought was reasonable for that question, so I'll let all that go. My main point is that even Richard Dawkins says he doesn't reject all gods, so if you do, then you're more of an atheist than he is.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As noted before, I am using "rejection" as synonymous with "disbelief" or "believe not" or "not believe".

"Disbelieve" is not synonymous with "not believe". "Believe not" could mean either "disbelieve" or "not believe" depending on context.

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.

I think it was someone else (Draka, maybe?) who used it first, and I may have merged your arguments together in my mind, since you two were arguing from the same general side of the issue.

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?

What? No. How did you get that from what I said?

All I was saying there is that the mere fact that someone came to a conclusion for bad reasons doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusion itself is false.

It's like that old joke about old British cars: they're powered by smoke, so when the smoke escapes, they stop working. Just because that's completely made-up doesn't mean that your car won't stop working if it starts billowing smoke.

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.

I think we might've been talking past each other here. I was speaking to the idea of "rejecting" gods, not "disbelief".

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.

Actually, I'd say that if a person thinks that the existence and non-existence of a god are equally likely, then that most definitely is a belief on the matter.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I thought you just agreed that language should not be misleading. Your entire argument depends upon being misleading. Bot did not pet any puppies, and your statement clearly implies that he has.

No, it doesn't. There's a logical divide-by-zero in there. You're committing an error by trying to take something definite from something that is inherently indefinite.

I stand by my statement: If you have rejected nothing, you cannot be said to have rejected anything. Nothing is not something, therefore, it cannot be anything.

Furthermore, you cannot pet nothing, you cannot reject nothing.

Consider the statement "I ate all the ice cream in the house." What makes this statement true?

It's true if the amount of ice cream I ate is equal to the amount of ice cream in the house. If there are X litres of ice cream in the house, I won't have eaten all the ice cream in the house until I've eaten X litres. Once I have eaten X litres (and assuming I didn't get any ice cream from anywhere else), I have eaten all the ice cream in the house.

What happens when X = 0? By your argument, a statement that's true in general is false in one specific case within that generality. This is special pleading.

Okay. Tell your boss that I have correctly identified and fixed every single traffic engineering problem I have ever come across, and I will tell mine that you have perfectly identified every single cellular component in every single blood smear you have ever seen. We could switch jobs and based upon the information we gave our bosses, they would think they got the better employee.

How's that for coming to the wrong "real world conclusion"?

You see, this is why most jobs demand that a person maintain their good track record while practicing the skill in question over several years.

And of course, the whole point is that you are attempting to argue this in order to create the real world conclusion that under my definition of atheism, infants would still be considered atheists.

No, I don't think I'm arguing that. I'm saying that by your usage, I can see that you use one definition of atheist when talking about adults (since you do agree that atheists exist, right?) and a different definition for babies (since you argue that they're not atheists).

1. Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
2. A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
3. Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

This, of course, suffers from a fallacy, but it's actually pretty similar to what you are arguing.

Yes, except for the fallacy. :sarcastic:

You're equivocating between definitions of "nothing". I didn't use any false equivocations.

And, no, I wasn't talking about my preconceptions about particular premises or conclusions. In general, I don't think that logic always brings us to real world, common sense, solutions. Indeed, many logical fallacies actually can be useful ways to filter information. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so popular or persistent.

I can't believe you just said that.

 

[Willamena]

No, it doesn't. There's a logical divide-by-zero in there. You're committing an error by trying to take something definite from something that is inherently indefinite.

The error is yours. The suggestion "Bob has petted puppies" clearly implies that there are puppies. Not no puppies. That's definite.

What the heck is a "logical divide-by-zero"?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The error is yours. The suggestion "Bob has petted puppies" clearly implies that there are puppies. Not no puppies. That's definite.

It's not "Bob has petted puppies"; it's "Bob has petted all the puppies". IOW, there is a defined set of puppies, and there are no members of the set that Bob has not petted.

The problem here is that the setup of the scenario uses an empty set: a set of puppies that includes no puppies. Does this make it not a set of puppies at all? If so, then the scenario defines a situation that cannot exist.

What the heck is a "logical divide-by-zero"?

I just mean that it's a situation involving empty sets that can be taken a number of ways: did Bob pet all the puppies? Yes. Did Bob pet none of the puppies? Yes.

You can think of the scenario as describing a point on a Venn diagram where several categories meet. It's a point on the dividing line.

 

[Willamena]

It's not "Bob has petted puppies"; it's "Bob has petted all the puppies". IOW, there is a defined set of puppies, and there are no members of the set that Bob has not petted.

The problem here is that the setup of the scenario uses an empty set: a set of puppies that includes no puppies. Does this make it not a set of puppies at all? If so, then the scenario defines a situation that cannot exist.

You are still failing to distinguish between something and nothing. Any set, once it is emptied of all its members, is no longer--the empty set is unique. The set that contains puppies is not the empty set, and you clearly suggested Bob pets puppies, so a non-empty set. Agreeably, it's not possible to pet nothing.

This is how language ordinarily works, anyway. It assumes on the side of something rather than nothing. (Understandably so, since nothing doesn't exist.)

I just mean that it's a situation involving empty sets that can be taken a number of ways: did Bob pet all the puppies? Yes. Did Bob pet none of the puppies? Yes.

You can think of the scenario as describing a point on a Venn diagram where several categories meet. It's a point on the dividing line.

The empty set is unique--all "empty sets" (plural) are the empty set.

There's really just one.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You are still failing to distinguish between something and nothing. Any set, once it is emptied of all its members, is no longer--the empty set is unique. The set that contains puppies is not the empty set, and you clearly suggested Bob pets puppies, so a non-empty set. Agreeably, it's not possible to pet nothing.

This is how language ordinarily works, anyway. It assumes on the side of something rather than nothing. (Understandably so, since nothing doesn't exist.)

But not in this scenario. In the initial conditions, it assumes that the two sets (or lists, if you prefer) have no members. If this creates a contradiction, then what the hypothetical is really asking for is a resolution to an oxymoron.

 

[Willamena]

But not in this scenario. In the initial conditions, it assumes that the two sets (or lists, if you prefer) have no members. If this creates a contradiction, then what the hypothetical is really asking for is a resolution to an oxymoron.

Does this thought experiment have any practical application?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Does this thought experiment have any practical application?

I already gave my opinion about that:

Here's the problem: these aren't real-world scenarios to begin with, so it's unreasonable to demand "real world" conclusions.

 

[Willamena]

I already gave my opinion about that:

Okay; what application does it have?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Okay; what application does it have?

Which "it": my opinion or falv's question?

 

[Willamena]

Which "it": my opinion or falv's question?

The one I'm talking about.


I have a sudden craving to watch Doctor Who.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The one I'm talking about.

Can you tell me where you're going with this?

A made-up scenario involving "gargles" and petting puppies doesn't have a whole lot of direct practical application, no.

Whether falv's underlying point she was trying to illustrate has a practical application... I think that's a question for her to answer, since it was her point to make.

 

[Willamena]

Can you tell me where you're going with this?

A made-up scenario involving "gargles" and petting puppies doesn't have a whole lot of direct practical application, no.

Whether falv's underlying point she was trying to illustrate has a practical application... I think that's a question for her to answer, since it was her point to make.

My question isn't about Gargles, but about sets. Specifically, you had said, "if 'the puppies you have had' is equivalent to 'no puppies', and Bob has petted no puppies, then Bob has petted the puppies he has had (i.e. none)."

The lack of distinction between the positive ("Bob petted puppies") and the negative ("Bob did not pet puppies") is what's disturbing. The empty set is unique.