Isn’t Atheism a world view without reasons and arguments?

[Thermos aquaticus]

"I never stated that," would be a negative statement.

That would be a positive belief that you never stated that, according to your logic.

I am saying the statements "I believe in X" and "I don't believe in X" are affirmations of a belief.

"I don't believe" would not be an affirmation of belief. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

"He literally does NOT believe that God is real," or, "He literally believes God is not real". Do you see a big difference between these two? I don't.

There is a big difference between the two. If you do not believe God is real you are keeping the possibility open that God does exist. If you believe that God is not real then you have determined that God does not exist. Big difference.

 

[Kenny]

False. It is a lack of belief in gods. As your definition states, faith is a belief IN something. Atheists don't believe in gods. Atheism is defined solely by a lack of belief.

I'm not sure that is quite accurate. I find that to be an evolving position.

A lack of belief in gods simply translates into a belief in something or someone as god, if but in yourself, IMO. Additionally, Lack of belief in gods is still a faith position as I view it because one holds the assumption that there is no God... a faith statement.

 

[Willamena]

False. Those are two different things. When a jury finds a defendant not guilty they are not saying that the defendant is innocent, only that guilt was not proven. That's the same approach that most atheists take towards claims made about deities.

When a jury finds a defendant not guilty, they are literally rejecting his guilt.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

When a jury finds a defendant not guilty, they are literally rejecting his guilt.

They are saying that the prosecutor did not prove guilt, and that it is still possible that the defendant did do the crime.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

A lack of belief in gods simply translates into a belief in something or someone as god, if but in yourself, IMO.

That's just your opinion. In standard English, a lack of a belief is not a belief.

Additionally, Lack of belief in gods is still a faith position as I view it because one holds the assumption that there is no God... a faith statement.

False. I don't believe in God but I also don't assume that God does not exist. People are actually open minded and are able to accept that they could be wrong.

 

[Augustus]

Christians have defined what atheism is for quite a while. I don't think it is surprising that they got a few things wrong.

Do you think that pretty much all self-described atheists prior to the mid-1970s also 'got it wrong'? People like Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Russell, etc. all got it wrong?

 

[Trailblazer]

Isn't that what you are doing?

No, I would never say that atheist have beliefs.

I said: "You atheists and agnostics sound like a bunch of beleivers arguing about what they believe."
You atheists are not arguing about what you believe, you are arguing about what you think, but you sound like beleivers who argue about what they believe. That is what I meant.

 

[Kenny]

That's just your opinion. In standard English, a lack of a belief is not a belief.

Based on logic

False. I don't believe in God but I also don't assume that God does not exist. People are actually open minded and are able to accept that they could be wrong.

You are correct in that it would be false for you. But you hardly represent atheism at large and certainly, as noted by others in multiple instances, your position of "I also don't assume that God does not exist' is not a prevalent definition of atheism.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Based on logic


You are correct in that it would be false for you. But you hardly represent atheism at large and certainly, as noted by others in multiple instances, your position of "I also don't assume that God does not exist' is not a prevalent definition of atheism.

I have to disagree with your last claim. From my observations the majority of atheists do not assume there is no god. I have seen some Christians get confused with this because their personal version of "God" may at times be refuted. There take a demonstration of their version of God not existing as no God existing. That is not the same thing.

 

[blü 2]

Then what is it that you are not believing?

That the concept 'real god' has any coherent definition hence meaning.

The theist proposition is that God/gods exist.

And I've responded by asking you (a) do you mean a real 'god', a 'god' with objective existence? and (b) if not, who cares? and (c) if so, what's a meaningful definition of this 'real god' such that if we find a candidate we can tell whether it's 'a god' / 'God' or not. And you haven't offered such a definition.

I understand these to be "divine characteristics" because they transcend the mechanisms of physical existence. They are metaphysical, i.e., "divine" phenomena. And through them existence becomes more then physically extant, it becomes valuable.

What does 'transcend the mechanisms of physical existence' mean? The only way to be real is to have objective existence, and if something's not real in that sense, the only other way for it to exist is by being imaginary, no?

"You" and "I" are also imaginary (metaphysical) "beings" that exist only as a cognitive experience within a human mind.

That appears to be an amplified take on the qualia argument. Human mentation has been the subject of an ever-growing amount of research as better and better tools have become available since the 1990s. My sense of self, complete with memory, speech, interior dialog, perception, understanding, &c &c, is the product of the biochemistry of my brain. No modern research gives the slightest encouragement to dualism.

'Love' is also a phenomena that exists only as a cognitive experience within a human mind, and you would not deny that love doesn't "exists", would you?

Love is also much studied. We experience it subjectively, but that experience is created particular biochemicals (especially hormones) interacting with the brain. The body has evolved to produce and release them in response to particular stimuli, They influence our conduct; in this example they primarily get us to mate and breed and, by bonding, to nurture and protect offspring. The net is full of details, both of the research and the conclusions, and I commend them to you.

'Truth' also only exists as a cognitive experience within a human mind, and yet you live by this ideal every day of your life. So why is 'God' less extant to you then these?

'Truth', to me, means conformity with / correspondence to / accurate reflection of, reality. Reality means the world external to the self. It's the same thing as the realm of the physical sciences.

So 'truth' is not a necessary notion in the absence of brain, but it refers to objective qualities, not imaginings.

 

[Kenny]

I have to disagree with your last claim. From my observations the majority of atheists do not assume there is no god. I have seen some Christians get confused with this because their personal version of "God" may at times be refuted. There take a demonstration of their version of God not existing as no God existing. That is not the same thing.

Then maybe it is their approach that gives them that hue?

"What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God. Which there isn't. I'm an atheist." Steven Hawkins

Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments
Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments

But maybe it is just my Spanish is getting mixed up in the interpretation of English.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Then maybe it is their approach that gives them that hue?

"What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God. Which there isn't. I'm an atheist." Steven Hawkins

Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments
Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments

But maybe it is just my Spanish is getting mixed up in the interpretation of English.

You conflating a few cherry picked well known atheists with all atheists. You also quote mined, a method of quoting often used for deceptive purposes.

 

[Kenny]

You conflating a few cherry picked well known atheists with all atheists. You also quote mined, a method of quoting often used for deceptive purposes.

Hmmm... i don't think that addressed ma\y point.

i never said ALL atheists believe the same. I even mentioned:

. I find that to be an evolving position.

which translates that different atheists believe differently.

So, I find that your answer seems more of a dodge than addressing what was obvious by atheists posts. To wit:

 

[Cacotopia]

just one book?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hmmm... i don't think that addressed ma\y point.

i never said ALL atheists believe the same. I even mentioned:



which translates that different atheists believe differently.

So, I find that your answer seems more of a dodge than addressing what was obvious by atheists posts. To wit:

View attachment 22371 View attachment 22371

This is what you claimed and what I addressed:

"But you hardly represent atheism at large and certainly, as noted by others in multiple instances, your position of "I also don't assume that God does not exist' is not a prevalent definition of atheism."

Try again.

 

[Willamena]

Then what in the world would a negative statement about one's own beliefs look like? According to you:

"I believe in Bigfoot" = positive statement
"I don't believe in Bigfoot" = positive statement

Methinks you have something backwards.



False. He literally does NOT believe that God is real. There's a big difference between the two.

False statements fail to posit how the world is. A 'positive' statement (root word 'posit') is anything that states a way the world is. If the statement is that the world is without gods, that is positive.

'Not', 'never', 'non-,' etc. are negative terms. But they can be used to make positive statements.

 

[Augustus]

From my observations the majority of atheists do not assume there is no god.

While there isn't any research on this afaik so it's all a bit of an educated guess, I would disagree with this

Most atheists, I guess, would assume, at least on the strong balance of probabilities, that no gods exist. This is definitely true from my experience, but I would guess also true in general. I probably learnt the term atheist in the 1990s and nobody in my environment used it in the sense of 'lack of belief'.

While asserting they 'lack' belief seems important for a lot of 'active' atheists (the kind who talk online about atheism/religion/etc.), most atheists don't really care about such things. Given the most common perception of the term atheism relates to believing no gods exist, I would also assume this holds true with the average atheist, given they come from the same society.

Most atheists don't have a particularly nuanced understanding of linguistic technicalities, nor do they care much about 'less well known god constructs and other things that cause some people to prefer the 'lack' option. As such they tend to not find anything pejorative about the idea they assume no god exists (even if they acknowledge a minuscule possibility that they cold be wrong).

As an example, Bertrand Russel on whether he considers himself an agnostic or an atheist:


Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

I cannot prove that either the Christian God or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration. Therefore, I suppose that that on these documents that they submit to me on these occasions I ought to say "Atheist", although it has been a very difficult problem, and sometimes I have said one and sometimes the other without any clear principle by which to go. When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

Bertrand Russell

 

[Apologes]

If it doesn't have to do with a disbelief in deities then it has nothing to do with atheism. It's a bit like finding a non-golfer who likes chocolate ice cream and the concluding that you must like chocolate ice cream if you don't play golf. Atheists breathe air, but I have yet to see anyone claim that breathing is therefore atheistic.

So, according to you, the proposition "There is no God" has nothing to do with atheism?

Christians have defined what atheism is for quite a while. I don't think it is surprising that they got a few things wrong.

You're making the same mistake as the other atheists I've talked to previously in this thread and that is you uncharitably assume that this complicated issue of what atheism is to be understood as is somehow a product of the theists being confused (or purposfuly dishonest) about when in reality atheism has been understood as the view that there is no God by atheists themselves for most of history and is still being advocated as such today.

The very people who introduced the purely negative aspect of atheism have admitted that such an understanding is unusual. I find it pretentious that there is so much insistence in this thread (and elsewhere) to try to alienate the historically predominant view and limit atheism solely to the negative sense which is fairly recent.

 

[Apologes]

Do you think that pretty much all self-described atheists prior to the mid-1970s also 'got it wrong'? People like Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Russell, etc. all got it wrong?

It's not even just that. Today as well, at least as far as academia goes, atheism is in debates quite often understood as a proposition that there is no God which is then argued for through arguments such as the problem of evil, charges of incoherence and so on. There is certainly a good amount of people who only identify with the negative part and who deem that making a positive case for atheism and against theism is unnecessary, but hardly any of them would go as far as saying that positive atheism is a misunderstanding of some "real/pure atheism".

 

[Augustus]

You're making the same mistake as the other atheists I've talked to previously in this thread and that is you uncharitably assume that this complicated issue of what atheism is to be understood as is somehow a product of the theists being confused (or purposfuly dishonest) about when in reality atheism has been understood as the view that there is no God by atheists themselves for most of history and is still being advocated as such today.

Atheism as an idea has a long and diverse history, has numerous implications for a world with a long history of theistic ideologies, philosophers have discussed and reasoned over it in great detail, people have fought and died to promote a godless view of the world (as part of a broader ideology), yet some people just want to recast it as a vacuum that is completely inert and has no potential implications of any kind and in fact has never had any implications based on a retroactive application of a definition based on a modern, normative, ideological logic regarding how they thing the world should work.

So you get arguments like how atheism is no more significant than a-unicornism, which is only possible if you ignore a real world context of a idea.

Atheism has social, philosophical, cultural and historical contexts, and I personally don't see the point in trying to act as if it didn't or doesn't and turning it into a definition in a dictionary that must only be considered in supreme isolation.

Just because the label 'atheist' doesn't necessarily say a great deal about an individual, doesn't mean discussions of atheism have to be abstracted from the broader context in which they exist.

So when, for example, Marx explicitly argues about the importance of atheism to his worldview, I think it's a bit strange to try to redefine atheism so that Marx's atheism was not in fact atheism after all and he was just confused and meant something completely different.

It's not even just that. Today as well, at least as far as academia goes, atheism is in debates quite often understood as a proposition that there is no God which is then argued for through arguments such as the problem of evil, charges of incoherence and so on. There is certainly a good amount of people who only identify with the negative part and who deem that making a positive case for atheism and against theism is unnecessary, but hardly any of them would go as far as saying that positive atheism is a misunderstanding of some "real/pure atheism".

It's not just a misunderstanding, it's a full blooded assault on atheists to suggest we have actually adopted a stance on the existence of gods

but hardly any of them would go as far as saying that positive atheism is a misunderstanding of some "real/pure atheism".

There are quite a few online from my experience because they keep on excommunicating me for crimes against atheist orthodoxy