If Atheism is a psychological position we don't need to seriously consider it

[Jim]

I, of course am a Baha'i, and not an atheist ...

If you think that those are mutually exclusive, I disagree.

... but I believe that by far most athesits do not do what you claim above.

I imagine it’s very few.

Those that claim this is a, 'lack of belief,' should be accepted for their description of their belief and not a projection of our view of what is wrong with the claim of being atheist.

I think that’s important to consider, and that it really is true for some atheists, but there are others who hide behind that definition who accidentally let it out sometimes that they themselves equate atheism with anti-theism.

 

[Willamena]

True, but ordinary atheists make no such assertion. Only a small subset believe there definitely is no God. Unless you clarify 'atheism' with a modifier, like 'strong' atheism, the term means only a lack of belief. A lack of belief is not a belief.

Well, still, we extraordinary atheists make claims of belief, not knowledge.

 

[Willamena]

"It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing. This is why it makes sense to say that theism is true or false and to argue for or against theism"

Then "theism" is childish nonsense if the above is true, absolutely not related to anything but intellectual fantasizing. The sun rises and the sun sets independent of the observer, regardless of what it believes or does not believe..

The problem is here that it is irrelevant to the bible and most certainly irrelevant to the new testament yet often times its these texts that "theism" or aspergers slinks into to justify intellectualizing fantasy. Its total absolute garbage like atheism.

On the contrary, the "propositional content of belief" is the real world. It could not be taken any more seriously.

The author in the quotation in the OP is making the case against "babies and rocks" being atheists. It's something I've argued, at least since I came on these forums, and I understand the argument well. Atheism is "not believing" in the same sense that theism is "believing;" but there are still those who will move the goalposts and tie atheism to a "state of believing" rather than to belief in gods.

 

[David T]

On the contrary, the "propositional content of belief" is the real world. It could not be taken any more seriously.

Thats what delusional people tell me all the time! My brain is determining the world Around me. This is the delusional. Proposition made by niels bohr in 1927 with his copenhagen interpretation. Its actually horrid science now lost in horid philosophy. Your statement is rooted in western intellectual development up through my degree theology.

I believe... I believe if i google mcdonalds a bathroom is available. I don't believe thats a fact till i actually see the evidence. I am agnostic to whether it will be clean or not. Based on past evidence that is purely random. Now is this "IMPORTANT? " my bowels say yes but i do not think that what my bowels finds to be important to be fundemental except to my bowels.

So yes everyone at some level believes even Bowels. Important? Thats relative to the context.

 

[Willamena]

Thats what delusional people tell me all the time! My brain is determining the world Around me. This is the delusional. Proposition made by niels bohr in 1927 with his copenhagen interpretation. Its actually horrid science now lost in horid philosophy. Your statement is rooted in western intellectual development up through my degree theology.

I believe... I believe if i google mcdonalds a bathroom is available. I don't believe thats a fact till i actually see the evidence. I am agnostic to whether it will be clean or not. Based on past evidence that is purely random. Now is this "IMPORTANT? " my bowels say yes but i do not think that what my bowels finds to be important to be fundemental except to my bowels.

So yes everyone at some level believes even Bowels. Important? Thats relative to the context.

Expectation is not belief.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

If Atheism is a psychological position we don't need to seriously consider it

In the end, if you're going to posit any sort of "god" or supernatural entity or anything of the like that cannot be inter-subjectively verified with a high amount of confidence, then I am going to tell you that you are full of crap. If you then simply decide to "not seriously consider" my objections, I (and many others) am likely to take that as a sign of cowardice.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Atheism is a belief, rather than knowledge. When I say, "there are no gods," it's a statement of belief.

You could also say with certainty , "There are no gods", and you subsequently wait and wait and wait, for all intents and purposes which confirms the fact there are no gods to counteract your statement, it stands firmly as being a statement of fact.

You don't need a belief for that because it's clearly true to date .

 

[lukethethird]

If Atheism is a psychological position we don't need to seriously consider it

If theism is a psychological position we don't need to seriously consider it either.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Secondly, history plainly refutes your argument on the basis that nearly all cultures embraced some sort of spiritual understanding of the world. They did this in isolation in most cases which means even if they didn't have these beliefs they came up with them.

But all that says about humans is that we are much the same, will often come up with the same explanations, and very often at the same stage of development. Arguing by force of numbers is, as I am sure you are aware, not a viable option logically. The one thing that can be said about virtually all human societies is that they search for meaning and very often explain away what they don't really understand by convenient assumptions - like there being a deity for example.

 

[Twilight Hue]

That is fine, as well.

Assuming that you know everything, or are correct about what you think you know, isn't knowing, anything. You're just making assumptions, and thinking it's different from belief.

Is that an assumption or a belief? ;0)

 

[Mock Turtle]

The diverse cultures believing in some higher power or spiritual concept lends more 'evidence' than a few post modern pseudo-intellectuals.

Hardly, unless you do believe weight of numbers is an inherent indicator of truth - which I doubt you do. As I mentioned in another post, there might be good reasons for why there is so much religious belief apart from it being natural or true. If the latter, why so many different faiths, and often them being contradictory? To me, it seems more normal that they are evolved beliefs, like many others that are untrue, rather than one or more being correct.

 

[Twilight Hue]

No, it is not a fact unless you can prove it.
fact
something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information:
fact Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

Of course it's fact. Indisputable fact even.

I can easily prove it by peoples inability to establish the existence of a god by producing one to back up the claim.

It's what they call the cold hard facts of how it is, and it's clear enough by now that's not going to change anytime soon.

Now there is also the fact there are people around who believe in God. That's not disputed, but the established fact, that there is in fact no God still firmly stands.

 

[Jumi]

Oh i have considered it, i was a devout believer in god until i began to understand and research the reason christians (those i knew at least) were such evil minded and petty individuals. The answers to that question are in the bible of course. Since then i have done enough research to convince me not to take heed of mythology.

I've never been a "devout believer", nor does it bother me if others have different beliefs or lack of them. I never could become a Christian or a follower of a religion, having been an atheist of the "lack of belief" variety for decades previously. I even started out as one on here.

 

[ChristineM]

That is the problem with holy books. They are a mixture of good and bad. It can make decent people nicer. But it also makes hate filled people far worse. They use the Bible, Koran, whatever as a reason to hate.

They also use it to model their personality and hide behind it to massage their ego.

 

[ChristineM]

I've never been a "devout believer", nor does it bother me if others have different beliefs or lack of them. I never could become a Christian or a follower of a religion, having been an atheist of the "lack of belief" variety for decades previously. I even started out as one on here.

Won't work for me, religion and belief in god has nothing to offer

 

[Jumi]

Won't work for me, religion and belief in god has nothing to offer

Not that I said that there was something to offer, but ok.

 

[ChristineM]

Not that I said that there was something to offer, but ok.

Your introduction to this read

If you don't want to consider it, that's your right. I didn't even need to consider theism, before I became a monotheist.

Its Its not that i wont consider it but i have considered it and rejected the concept on experience and research. Which is also my right. How you chose your path i am not even going to consider

 

[Valjean]

Hello. Interesting. We had different experiences. As a scientist, over decades, when a colleague (or anyone really) told me they were an atheist it almost always meant that they outright rejected the notion of God. That is the atheism I am saying is not rational. If you want to call that strong atheism, OK. Where do we draw the line then between weak atheism and strong agnosticism? Splitting hairs.

I'd say there is a significant difference. One is a belief, the other, a lack of belief.

In online debates about religion, the people who are debating on the side of atheism are mostly people with feelings of animosity towards Abrahamic religions and their followers, and their position in the debates is opposition to those religions and their beliefs, including their belief in Abrahamic Gods.

You seem a bit touchy about this, Jim. I debate principles, whether some religion has attached to it or not. I think there's far more active opposition from religion towards atheism than vice versa. Atheist arguments are usually defensive.

I realized as I was writing that, that even defined as lack of belief, identifying as an atheist can be position that carries a burden of proof as much as any other. Sometimes means that a person has decided that anyone who has any belief in any god or gods is wrong, and that is in fact the position that atheists are arguing from most of the time in online debates. Again, if I wanted to challenge what atheists say in online debates, I would not be challenging their lack of belief. I would be challenging the belief of some of them that any belief in any god is always wrong.

No, that's the position of a strong atheist, with a definite belief that no God exists. Ordinary atheism has no such belief. All it can say on the rightness or wrongness of a believer's opinion is that it sees no rational support for it.

“Why do we have to accept your unsupported claim that it is more likely no gods exist??”
“If you believe the universe is godless or is with gods, either way you need reasons to believe so”

Lack of belief is the default position. It's the setting we're born with. A burden of proof requires some actual position to prove.
How can you prove or disprove a proposition on a blank slate (ie: no position at all)?

 

[Valjean]

It does provide evidence for what I stated, which was simply that differing cultures all came to a similar line of thought for absolutely no reason. That doesn't mean they were devoid of reason or the prospect of atheism. Likewise, because we understand the material world more doesn't address spiritual experiences at all. That's just a right out invalid comparison. The fact that we know X or Y doesn't invalidate Z, though it may invalidate features we attributed to Z. Z can still exist independently of our ability to understand it.

Various types of magical thinking, precautionary presumptuousness, &c are hard-wired into our species, not because they reflect a transcendental truth, but because "panic first!" and sedative fables were biologically selective 'neuroses' in a dangerous world.

 

[Sunstone]

But why has the issue arisen at all?

That's the obvious question and it precisely highlights a weakness in 1137's argument.