What is the best argument for an atheist?

[Gloone]

nothing is wrong with his answer. in fact, i agree with the 2nd senario. if your child is sick and you do everything you can other then just relying on god to heal them that would be the reasonable thing to do. however, if they choose not to do the reasonable thing by not giving them the meds and rely only on their faith that god will heal them, is that not faith without through deeds is dead...? if you believe james 2:20....

and if it were a situation where there was no cure, hope is all you have, not faith. do you follow?

how many times do christians say, i don't know what to do so i'll pray about it...meaning i'll think about it, or lets see where the cards fall. in which case is more like saying, 'i hope i'll know what to do when the time comes' to commit or 'whatever happens happens' without giving it a cause.



no it can't
not according to james 2:20

if i were to ask james, why did my children die if i had faith in god to heal them and i believed as though they would be healed?

he would say 'your faith is alive because you proved your faith by doing and believing as though god would heal them'

what is the reasoning behind faith...hope. imo

I can't really answer your question. I am single and when the time comes for kids to get brought into the equation I will probably throw them around the house like little runts.

 

[waitasec]

I can't really answer your question. I am single and when the time comes for kids to get brought into the equation I will probably throw them around the house like little runts.

fair enough...

 

[Orias]

So Gloone,

What do you think the best argument for an atheist would be?

 

[strikeviperMKII]

There is a big difference between informed reasoning and rationalization through ignorance.

Do you think anyone is free of ignorance?

I am dumbfounded to think that someone says there is a difference between these two things. We are all ignorant of something, so we all rationalize through ignorance.

If you think your reasoning is informed, then all you have is faith that it is, not concrete proof. If you want to make the claim that you have no ignorance, you have to know everything. You don't. I don't. No one does.

So there you go, Meow MIx. There's your example. Believing that something is true, even with evidence against it. Quite solid evidence, actually.

 

[Gloone]

So Gloone,

What do you think the best argument for an atheist would be?

Well they have all been exceptionally praiseworthy so it is really hard to sort out the ones i like the best.

 

[Gloone]

So Orias,

Someone is fixing to fall on their face and reaches out for you as they do.


For faith to be evident:


Do you A: help and prevent them from falling on their face

Or

Do you B: watch them fall then laugh

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Exactly! That is what faith is about.

That makes no sense at all. Faith is about a person's beliefs. Without the person to do the believing, you don't have faith.

Agreed, but it doesn't tell you about condition 1 at all. P will be true(or false) no matter what you think about it.

The relationship between condition 1 and condition 2 comes through condition 3.

Condition 2 says that if you don't believe P is true, then you can't know P is true.

There are many true things in the world, but none of them are part of my knowledge if I've never thought about them at all.

You are missing the point of this. Your head works like this, not like the world outside your head. So would it not be prudent to understand how your head works, because it is only through your head that you understand the world outside your head.

I wasn't trying to make a distinction between subjective perception and objective reality; I'm saying that your argument is illogical and seems to be based on an incorrect understanding.

 

[strikeviperMKII]

That makes no sense at all. Faith is about a person's beliefs. Without the person to do the believing, you don't have faith.

Why do you put so many limits on faith? Faith is not about believing something is there, or something will happen eventually or that God created the world in six days. You've proven that this definition of faith is irrational, stupid and harmful to humanity, yet when we discuss faith, you continue to fall back on this definition, even when it is a faulty one.

I don't get that.

The relationship between condition 1 and condition 2 comes through condition 3.

Condition 2 says that if you don't believe P is true, then you can't know P is true.

There are many true things in the world, but none of them are part of my knowledge if I've never thought about them at all.

If by 'thought' you mean logically explained, then you are incorrect.

Before you understand gravity, it was still part of your knowledge base, i.e. if you drop something, it will fall. You didn't know why, but you knew that it would happen.

Truths are. They do not need to be explained, thought about, or logically analyzed to suddenly be true. They were always true, and will always be so. Such truths are apparent in reality, whether we understand them or not.

I wasn't trying to make a distinction between subjective perception and objective reality; I'm saying that your argument is illogical and seems to be based on an incorrect understanding.

An incorrect understanding of what?

 

[Willamena]

That makes no sense at all. Faith is about a person's beliefs. Without the person to do the believing, you don't have faith.

I think he's simply saying that to make the ontological claim (P is true) requires a leap of faith. He said, "Faith is knowing that regardless of lines two and three, line one will win out." The process he outlines begins with (the possibility that) P is true.

The relationship between condition 1 and condition 2 comes through condition 3.

The relationship between condition 3 and condition 2 comes through condition 1. There can be no justification of P as true without (the possibility that) P is true.

Condition 2 says that if you don't believe P is true, then you can't know P is true.

There are many true things in the world, but none of them are part of my knowledge if I've never thought about them at all.

Then on what grounds can you justifiably declare them "true" (except, of course, on faith)? Once you know of them, you have the possibility of justifying them.

 

[Orias]

So Orias,

Someone is fixing to fall on their face and reaches out for you as they do.


For faith to be evident:


Do you A: help and prevent them from falling on their face

Or

Do you B: watch them fall then laugh

Personally...

I would chose B.

But then again, I think this topic is to deep to be able to propose faith as evident through variant occurances.

For example, it depends on if I like the person or not. Depending on if I like them or not, I would chose differently, just as why they would chose to fall on their face.

Its all about the situation. In many occurances, faith is evident through succession.

But then again, two opponents going into competition, may both hold faith, yet one may hold a victory over the other. In this case, faith was evident to one, but not the other, though they both had faith.

 

[Gloone]

Personally...

I would chose B.

But then again, I think this topic is to deep to be able to propose faith as evident through variant occurances.

For example, it depends on if I like the person or not. Depending on if I like them or not, I would chose differently, just as why they would chose to fall on their face.

Its all about the situation. In many occurances, faith is evident through succession.

But then again, two opponents going into competition, may both hold faith, yet one may hold a victory over the other. In this case, faith was evident to one, but not the other, though they both had faith.

So you are saying when you limit your faith to any one situation or condition you are only dulling your perceptions of going beyond what is expected of you and faith. :seesaw:

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why do you put so many limits on faith? Faith is not about believing something is there, or something will happen eventually or that God created the world in six days. You've proven that this definition of faith is irrational, stupid and harmful to humanity, yet when we discuss faith, you continue to fall back on this definition, even when it is a faulty one.

I don't get that.

And I have no idea what you're talking about now. What I'm trying to point out is that "faith" is a thing posessed (or not) by a person. Don't you agree with this basic part of its fundamental definition?

If by 'thought' you mean logically explained, then you are incorrect.

No, that's not what I mean.

Before you understand gravity, it was still part of your knowledge base, i.e. if you drop something, it will fall. You didn't know why, but you knew that it would happen.

Yes... you knew it, because it met all three conditions:

1 - P is true: if you drop something, it does indeed fall.
2 - S believes that P is true: you really do believe that things fall when dropped.
3 - S is justified in believing P is true: in many repeated tests, dropped things fall consistently.

Do you see how it works now?

Truths are. They do not need to be explained, thought about, or logically analyzed to suddenly be true. They were always true, and will always be so. Such truths are apparent in reality, whether we understand them or not.

You can't tell the difference between truths that "were always true, and will always be so" and "truths that are only temporarily true" or "things that aren't true but seem to be true" without understanding.

An incorrect understanding of what?

The nature of knowledge, apparently.

 

[Willamena]

1 - P is true: if you drop something, it does indeed fall.
2 - S believes that P is true: you really do believe that things fall when dropped.
3 - S is justified in believing P is true: in many repeated tests, dropped things fall consistently.

Do you see how it works now?

Yes: tautologically.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes: tautologically.

How is that a tautology?

 

[gnomon]

So Orias,

Someone is fixing to fall on their face and reaches out for you as they do.


For faith to be evident:


Do you A: help and prevent them from falling on their face

Or

Do you B: watch them fall then laugh

I would take a video, post it on Youtube and title it: "This has nothing to do with faith but a lot to do with reflexive self defense."

 

[Willamena]

How is that a tautology?

Generally the evidence provided to support a proposition is other than the proposition itself.

 

[strikeviperMKII]

And I have no idea what you're talking about now. What I'm trying to point out is that "faith" is a thing posessed (or not) by a person. Don't you agree with this basic part of its fundamental definition?

Yes, I do.

Yes... you knew it, because it met all three conditions:

1 - P is true: if you drop something, it does indeed fall.
2 - S believes that P is true: you really do believe that things fall when dropped.
3 - S is justified in believing P is true: in many repeated tests, dropped things fall consistently.

Do you see how it works now?

So knowledge is subjective? I thought we knew that already.

You can't tell the difference between truths that "were always true, and will always be so" and "truths that are only temporarily true" or "things that aren't true but seem to be true" without understanding.

Having faith means that you trust the world will tell you which is which. You don't have to figure it out yourself.

The nature of knowledge, apparently.

Apparently not.

 

[tothen]

seems like they have alot

 

[Copernicus]

So knowledge is subjective? I thought we knew that already.

This is a very interesting question. How do we distinguish knowledge from belief? Others in this thread have gone back to the traditional philosophical position that knowledge is justified belief, but there are lots of beliefs we have justification for that we do not "know". For example, you may think you "know" who your biological parents are, because you never had a reason to suspect otherwise. Then one day, you may come to learn as my grandmother did that those were not your biological parents. My great grandparents had suffered a tragic death, and an aunt raised my grandmother in ignorance of the facts until her grandfather died and left her some money. Then the truth came out.

Now, it would have been true for her to say that she knew who her biological parents were until she learned the real truth. Then she could not say truthfully that she had known her biological parents as a child. Did she ever suddenly cease to know who her real parents were? Well, there was a brief period of confusion, but basically, she always believed she knew who they were. It's just that her belief changed at some point and she could no longer truthfully utter the statement "I knew who my parents were as a child". Ironically, she always did know who her true biological grandparents were.

And that is the crux of the matter that most of the philosophers have missed historically. Knowledge has to do with what the person who reports the belief believes. That is, "know" reports a belief that the speaker of an utterance believes to be true, not necessarily what actually is true. In linguistic terms, we call the speaker's belief a presupposition. Presuppositions are believed true by the speaker regardless of whether the reported belief is positive or negative or unknown. Hence, the following three sentences can only be uttered felicitously by someone who believes that God exists:

"John knows that God exists."
"John does not know that God exists."
"Does John know that God exists?"

Replace "know" with "believe" in the above sentences, and the "speaker" presupposition disappears. The speaker could be either a theist or an atheist.

And now some of you should know something more about "knowledge". It tells you something about the beliefs of an independent observer (the "speaker") that reports a belief. What counts as "justified belief" is not always knowledge.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Generally the evidence provided to support a proposition is other than the proposition itself.

Repeated observation that the proposition is true is not the same thing as the proposition itself.