Just Addressing Yet Another Absurd, Dishonest Atheistic Argument

[lewisnotmiller]

That was me. I bust that one out every now and then, usually to point out calling ones self an atheist is actually a sort of apologetic for theism rather than in opposition to it.(surprise!)

Why, you ask?

If god-belief is just one point in a nearly infinite spectrum of possible bald assertions that can be made about the universe (as I believe it to be), then why should THAT one get such a level of special consideration that I define myself by not believing it? Why not a-fairiyist or a-leprechaunist?

I increasingly think this way too.
However, it's useful shorthand when I get asked the religion question. I seem to less commonly be asked about which fairy I hail as Queen.

 

[KBC1963]

There is no strong or weak version of atheism. Atheism is a positive belief system and has been so defined by the supreme court. If a person wishes to align themselves with the position that there simply is not enough evidence for god then they would be agnostic like me.

Atheism and religion
Contrary to the opinions of evangelical atheists, atheism is a religion which has repeatedly attempted to take away the religious liberties of Christians in order to support their false religion.
Although atheists claim that atheism is not a religion the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that atheism is a religion as it fits in with its definition, distinguishing between “religions based on a belief in the existence of God [and] religions founded on different beliefs."
History of Atheism - Conservapedia

Effect of atheism on societies
Atheism has a negative effect on societies culture (see: Atheism and culture).
Various social science studies, historical data and other data, demonstrate that atheism often has a harmful effect on individuals and societies (See: Atheism statistics and Christianity vs. atheism statistics).
History of Atheism - Conservapedia

According to conducted studies it really won't matter what Atheists believe or assert to take a stand on;

Atheists as a percentage of the world's population have declined since 1970 and atheism is expected to face long term decline.
On July 24, 2013, CNS News reported:
“Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass."

If it wasn't for the Christians that founded this country and who made the initial rules for this society to be founded on then we would not likely see anyone with the freedom to even try to claim an atheist stance. It is my firm position that if you don't want to deal with theistic people then you should not be afforded the rights that the country was founded on whose basis was on their belief that;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

If you feel there is no possibility for a creator to exist then you should live by the governing rule of evolution where "the strong survive" and the weak are eliminated. Assemble an army of atheists and take the US out then form your own rules to live by and you won't be arguing against their belief system while enjoying a freedom based on that belief system.

 

[Falvlun]

Can I be a hybrid?
I'm a strong atheist because I have an overwhelming sense that no gods exist.
(The whole idea of gods seems absurd.)
But I'm also a weak atheist because the above is not verifiable, ie, they could exist.

Beliefs generally don't have 100% certainty.

 

[Falvlun]

Why fight? We've told you how we use the words and what they mean to us. It's a reasonable and internally consistent approach, and captures our thoughts better than your usage.

Obviously I disagree. But I understand and acknowledge your terms, which is all I was suggesting to 1137.

There's no way to describe my point of view using your schema. You want to force me to choose between options that both apply to me. Why?

There is no logical way that two of the three terms, as I described them, could apply to you. All are mutually exclusive.

All you need to do is understand, not agree or conform. If I told you that I am a person that neither accepts any god claims nor claims to have any knowledge of gods, then unless I'm lying, that's what I am. If I tell you that I call that an agnostic atheist, I'm not asking you to agree or disagree. It's just a phrase. I could have called it being a "zork," and as long as I have been clear what a word means, when I use it, you know what I mean.

We feel this constant undertow of people telling us what we believe or how we should use language. Sorry, but we make those choices to suit ourselves and are not compelled to submit to any such pressures.

Do you know the difference between prescriptive and descriptive lexicography? You cannot confine how people choose to use language. If they are understanding one another, they are doing it well.

"Zork" might have actually been a better choice, since it doesn't have any previous connotations to confuse communication.

You are free to use any words you like. But then, you shouldn't expect us to feel bad for your frustrations when you are misunderstood. Language isn't a dictatorship. It's a democracy, a relationship between the speaker and the listener.

And lastly, I am an atheist too. Why should I not have a voice at the table as well?

 

[Falvlun]

Once again, that's not the way I would describe that area. Being certain doesn't make anything true.

You got what I was saying backwards. Certainty doesn't make something true. But if you say something is true (knowledge), then you must be certain.

 

[Falvlun]

This is a difficult area for many.

Have you ever heard of the Monty Hall problem? It's based on a long running American game show called Let's Make A Deal. At the end of the show, somebody gets a chance to pick any of three doors, each concealing a prize behind, one a great prize, and the other two much less. The show's host, Monty Hall for years, knows which door has the grand prize, and which two have the joke prizes.

After you choose, the host will open of the two doors that you didn't choose with the joke prize and ask you if you want to trade your original choice for the only other unopened door that you haven't chosen. Should you? What are the odds of doing better by swapping?

Most people would say 50/50 - it's a toss-up or crap shoot, but they'd be wrong. Your chances of choosing the big prize double if you trade.

Why? Because there was 1 chance in 3 that you chose correctly originally, and 2 chances in 3 that you didn't. That can never change whatever the host shows you as long as he knows where the big prize is. He is always in a position to open at least one door and show you a joke prize. Doing that doesn't change your odds of having guessed correctly originally. It's still 2:1 against you having guessed correctly, so trade.

An awful lot of people cannot grasp that, and you needn't feel embarrassed if you are one of them. The key to the problem is that whatever else happens after your original door selection, the odds are that you chose wrong, and you can double your chances by trading. It is NOT a 50/50 proposition.

I'm new to this site and don't know how a YouTube link will render. If you can and want to, spend just under 6 minutes seeing this explained more graphically

Your link worked beautifully.

Thank you for the explanation of the Monty Hall problem. I am familiar with it, but it is always a little mind blowing.

I am not quite sure how it applies to my question, however.

Monty hall involves 3 choices, a pick, then information that one choice is not correct.

That is not very analogous to 2 choices, with no effects messing with the probability.

 

[Blackdog22]

what created the universe, life, everything you see around you?

Why are you using the word "created"? It seems the bias you claim atheists have is far more abundant in your own posts. We have no idea how we came about. The end. We are attempting to discover this over the course of time. Anyone who claims to have absolute certainty is lying on this matter. Science has in no way said they know for certain, we have guesses and ideas that are possibilities. The only group of people who seem to be claiming absolute certainty are believers and they can only be lying to us and themselves seeing as a faith based position can never be a position of certainty.

 

[Blackdog22]

I really tire of “scientific frivolity.” Ok, so polar bears did not come from rocks. Good. Then do me a favor and go to Ancestry.com and trace back their lineage. After all, evolution says we all came from some primordial soup. They also claim some way some how DNA formed. Without any intelligent designer, too, mind you. Something about proteins and amino acids, too, I guess?

So somewhere “back there” a polar bear was not a polar bear was it? If we follow the family tree back hundreds of millions of years or further was did his great, great grand pappy look like? Was he a clam or a mouse? Was he a water beetle or a fire fly? And before that was he carbon or rocks or primordial soup? That is your contention whether you will admit to it or not.

IOW, your entertaining us by pointing out my naiveté is really just another way to skirt the salient point.

Yes, Polar Bears evolved from Brown Bears likely during the Ice Age. If you have any problem with evolution you have a problem with Pugs. Believe it or not Pugs didn't always exist. They are dogs which came from wolves that we changed by breeding over time.

The most interesting part of your post is how you are completely blown away by the concept of DNA forming on its own, but so easily gloss over the idea that a being infinitely more impossible could of just formed on its own or always been there. You cant hold such a position, and pretend to be confused by our Universe, without seeming completely ridiculous. If God can just happen, then from there it should be MUCH easier to think anything in our Universe could just happen. I still have no idea how creationists mentally block this out.

 

[Revoltingest]

Beliefs generally don't have 100% certainty.

Are you certain of that?

 

[Blackdog22]

That's what the theory says certainly, and that there must of course be vast numbers of intermediates linking every stage between. The fossil record (science) doesn't seem to want to comply with this story though. We see highly evolved species suddenly appearing as if having no evolutionary history, and less transitional examples than we had in Darwin's day

Show me the transitional fossils that show every step of a wolf to a pug. You wont find them. You will find similarities between the pug and wolf genetically, just like you would from an ape to a human. This is misunderstanding of how evolution actually functions on your part, not a problem with evolution itself. I see this so often I have to wonder if any anti evolutionist has ever remotely understood how the process actually works.

 

[Falvlun]

Are you certain of that?

Yes.

 

[ArtieE]

So you aren't trying to make "strong atheist" and "weak atheist" as a dichotomy... i.e. any atheist is either one or the other?

Of course not. An atheist is a person who is not a theist. A strong atheist is a person who is not a theist plus believes gods don't exist. What dichotomy?

 

[ArtieE]

Your definition includes 'ghosts'.

Try explaining in a little more detail.

 

[ArtieE]

If it wasn't for the Christians that founded this country and who made the initial rules for this society to be founded on then we would not likely see anyone with the freedom to even try to claim an atheist stance. It is my firm position that if you don't want to deal with theistic people then you should not be afforded the rights that the country was founded on whose basis was on their belief that;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

How hypocritical can you get? Thomas Jefferson was a racist slave owner along with many other of the founding fathers... and everybody knows that secular societies fare better than religious societies. And for the US?

"If you are curious as to which states are the most/least religious, simply check out the Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey. It’s all there. And then you can go ahead and check out how the various states are faring in terms of societal well-being. The correlation is clear and strong: the more secular tend to fare better than the more religious on a vast host of measures, including homicide and violent crime rates, poverty rates, [URL='https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/obesity']obesity and diabetes rates, child abuse rates, educational attainment levels, income levels, unemployment rates, rates of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy, etc. You name it: on nearly every sociological measure of well-being, you’re most likely to find the more secular states with the lowest levels of faith in God and the lowest rates of church attendance faring the best and the most religious states with the highest levels of faith in God and rates of church attendance faring the worst.[/URL]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...lar-societies-fare-better-religious-societies
Secular Societies Fare Better Than Religious Societies

 

[Curious George]

There is no strong or weak version of atheism. Atheism is a positive belief system and has been so defined by the supreme court. If a person wishes to align themselves with the position that there simply is not enough evidence for god then they would be agnostic like me.

Atheism and religion
Contrary to the opinions of evangelical atheists, atheism is a religion which has repeatedly attempted to take away the religious liberties of Christians in order to support their false religion.
Although atheists claim that atheism is not a religion the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that atheism is a religion as it fits in with its definition, distinguishing between “religions based on a belief in the existence of God [and] religions founded on different beliefs."
History of Atheism - Conservapedia

Effect of atheism on societies
Atheism has a negative effect on societies culture (see: Atheism and culture).
Various social science studies, historical data and other data, demonstrate that atheism often has a harmful effect on individuals and societies (See: Atheism statistics and Christianity vs. atheism statistics).
History of Atheism - Conservapedia

According to conducted studies it really won't matter what Atheists believe or assert to take a stand on;

Atheists as a percentage of the world's population have declined since 1970 and atheism is expected to face long term decline.
On July 24, 2013, CNS News reported:
“Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass."

If it wasn't for the Christians that founded this country and who made the initial rules for this society to be founded on then we would not likely see anyone with the freedom to even try to claim an atheist stance. It is my firm position that if you don't want to deal with theistic people then you should not be afforded the rights that the country was founded on whose basis was on their belief that;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

If you feel there is no possibility for a creator to exist then you should live by the governing rule of evolution where "the strong survive" and the weak are eliminated. Assemble an army of atheists and take the US out then form your own rules to live by and you won't be arguing against their belief system while enjoying a freedom based on that belief system.

Someone lied to you.

 

[serp777]

Been seeing this one a lot. We have a box but don't know what, if anything, is in it. Or we have a jar of something, but don't know if there's an odd or even amount. Supposedly, the theist position is a claim to know exactly what's in the box, or a claim to know there's an odd or even amount of things in the jar. The atheist, on the other hand, simply does not know what is in the box, or does not know if the items are even or odd.

This analogy doesn't really match the actual philosophy. Yes, gnostic theism claims to know exactly what's in the box, but theism in general simply believes *something* is in the box. However the atheist is not convinced anything is in the box, that it's likely empty. For the atheist to simply be unsure what's in the box would first require them the accept something is in it, basically an acceptance that gods exist, but no certainty on which gods or their nature. Likewise, atheists aren't arguing about whether there are an even or odd amount of gods/things in the jar, they're arguing that the jar seems empty.

Why does the minor difference matter? Atheists try to use these examples to show atheism as simply not taking a stance, rather than a belief in emptiness. This is dishonest, a twist on the position to make it seem it is not a belief. The analogy also ignores agnosticism, in order to make it seem that atheism and agnosticism are identical in the examples. Just more dishonesty, what else can be expected!

There are many different kinds of atheists. Its not really logical to say that you can prove or disprove whether anythings in the box based on limited evidence. Saying I don't know is a valid position to have and it indicates you've hit the limits of what you can know. Anybody making the claim, whether it be a certain atheist saying its certainly empty or a theist saying is certainly full, is illogical and irrational.

 

[Augustus]

Atheism literally is "not theism" (a-theism).

By the same logic, it is also 'literally' athe-ism (which is more accurate etymologically as well), thus it 'literally' is an adopted belief.

To interpret it a-theism simply reflects a subjective personal preference, just like favouring any other potential definition, rather than something more substantial.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yeah, the one used by Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and many other religions, the one I gave in that quote.

All those religions have different concepts of god. Some even have multiple different concepts within a single religion.

You're also ignoring the huge amount of polytheism in the world, both in terms of number of religions and number of adherents.

IMO, assuming that classical monotheism is some sort of "standard" religious belief is usually an effect of cultural chauvinism. I personally see no reason to adopt this notion of "monotheism primacy" that seems so predominant in Christian-dominated parts of the world.

Theism, like atheism, is a bit complicated. In its broadest sense, it just means belief in a god or gods. But it is also commonly used to more specifically refer to the typical concept of god mentioned above. Under the broad umbrella of theism, deism is a subset, but using the secondary meaning of theism, they are separate things. Technically that would make deists atheists, but that just doesn't sound right. I chalk this up to poor language to deal with this subject (as with the subject of gods in general).

You're right: it doesn't sound right to

I use the phrase "theistic gods" to be more precise, since most "strong atheists" who do believe God doesn't exist don't usually include a deistic or pantheistic god in that claim.

It isn't precise; the exact opposite, in fact.

And strong atheists - at least the way the term has been defined in this thread - would need to reject more than just God-with-a-capital-G; they'd need to reject every god. Even if you lower the bar so they only have to reject every "theistic god" (as you've described the category), this is still an impossible task for any individual human being. It still requires strong atheists to reject concepts they've never even heard of, let alone considered.

It's usually only about Yahweh and other such gods.

You said earlier that it was also about polytheistic gods.

You also still haven't explained what you mean by "theistic gods" clearly enough that I can know what you mean by "other such gods."

For instance, I won't argue against the vague deistic god because there's not much to argue against or reason to argue it. Same with pantheism. But I will argue against Yahweh.

You don't need to make a case against the deistic god to argue against deism. The mere fact that the deistic god is unfalsifiable - and its existence or non-existence is impossible to demonstrate - is enough to establish that deism is unjustified and the deistic god ought not to be believed in.

 

[Koldo]

Try explaining in a little more detail.

You have said:

They are both working definitions.

"1. God
a. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.
b. The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being.
2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality."
god"

A strong atheist believes that the beings covered by a. b. or 2. don't exist. I don't know what you are trying to say.

Ghosts are covered by 2. Therefore, a strong atheist believes that ghosts don't exist.

 

[Augustus]

Ghosts are covered by 2. Therefore, a strong atheist believes that ghosts don't exist.

Definitions don't work like that.

A lion can be defined as a large feline found in Africa and Asia. This doesn't mean that all large felines found in Africa and Asia are lions.