dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
Thank you for saying this.
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Question For Atheists
- Thread starter dybmh
- Start date
Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
The question is present tense. I did not ask "Can a bachelor HAVE BEEN married?" but rather "Can a bachelor BE married? The answer is no. And similarly, the answer to the question, "can an atheist be a believer in God?" is also no.
Yes and No.
Yes and No.
It is all a matter of perspective. The faith of no man can be conditioned by any one except himself.
siti
Well-Known Member
You have a point there - even fictional deities like Aphrodite had to have real-world Adonises to jump up and down on.
siti
Well-Known Member
It wasn't a serious comment and in the context that @dybmh was posing the question, the comparison is inappropriate...the question should really have been can somebody who talks about God "as if" there really were one be an atheist... and the answer to that is very obviously yes because - much to the apparent chagrin of the majority of posters in this thread - a person's beliefs, much less the concept of deity, much less still the reality of such a deity if one really does exist, is not defined merely by the words they (reportedly in the case of Buddha) may have used to express themselves. If I say to someone "go to hell" because I am annoyed with them, that doesn't mean I believe hell really exists. Likewise, if someone says "to deny the existence of gods is the wrong path and leads to hell" (or whatever it was) that does not necessarily imply that the speaker really believes either that gods exist or that hell does - it might be that it was just meant to poetically emphasize that the road to enlightenment does not consist in denying the beliefs of others.
Personally, I go even further than that and suggest that whilst I do not believe the deities that humans have invented actually exist as imagined, they do actually exist as the imaginations of humans...and there are plenty of other things that exist as the imaginations of humans - nations and governments for example. You can't - to use @Evangelicalhumanist 's test - jump up and down on a nation or a government can you? You can't jump up and down on a piece of music or poetry. You can't jump up and down on idea or a concept. But nobody denies that these are genuine aspects of human reality. So why not gods?
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siti
Well-Known Member
...and yet it was so incredibly useful it guided people to an even more satisfactory construct which itself did not fully encapsulate the true reality...I think you probably just answered your own question in your mind...perhaps? Anyway, I'll press on just in case you haven't yet...
Whether or not a real, transcendent and wholly supernatural deity actually exists (which I don't believe - therefore I am an 'atheist' in that sense), what people actually profess to believe in are really, as you put it, "mental pictures" of deity...aren't they? My argument is that these "mental pictures" really exist just as much as the "mini solar system" model of atoms really existed and more recently quantum theory, the standard model of particle physics and atomic orbital models really exist. Nobody could seriously argue that these models (of deity or atoms) don't influence human society in very real and tangible ways - they are very much part of our world - in the case of deities, people stake their lives on them and live and die for them - just as they do for other concepts and constructs like "national sovereignty" or "peace and security". Gods (fictitious though they almost certainly are) really exist in the lives of humans and their societies - I don't think it does any good to flatly insist that they don't exist at all even if they really don't exist at all. And I think that's what Buddha - and other enlightened teachers mean when they (seem to) deny the existence of deities and still (seem to) talk about them as if they believe they exist.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
By definition an atheist lacks a belief in any god or gods. That said, it can be argued that a believer in the Christian god is an atheist when it comes to all other gods.
If the latter is so, then the former is not. That "if you believe that god(s) exist, you cannot be an Atheist" precludes "someone can believe in the existence of one or more gods and still be considered an Atheist."
Unless there is some twisty logic trick in there, I don't believe an atheist could make such a remark and be consistent with what it means to be an atheist.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Depends on what you mean by "god", I suppose.
Many strict-definition atheists would say no-- as any god is synonymous with 'theist', therefore the antithesis of 'a-theist'.
But. The word "god" is so all over the map? Seriously, I would bet a new $20, that no two humans on the planet, have the exact same mental concept of what that word even means!
So, I suppose Spinoza's 'god'? Or what professor Einstein meant when he used the word 'god' in some of his many poetic descriptions of what he thought the Universe was?
I think you could consider yourself under the more open umbrella of 'atheist'.
I have encountered several folk, who like either of the two 'god' ideas I mentioned above, but do not consider themselves 'theists' and strictly go by 'agnostic'.
Of course..... by a strict definition of 'agnostic' they'd be using it wrong I expect.
What do you mean by 'god'? I think this question should be asked more than it is-- for I expect that most folk are not thinking of the same ideas, when arguing about 'god'.
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
Hi Bob, This thread was not about me and my beliefs. I am not an Atheist.Depends on what you mean by "god", I suppose.
Many strict-definition atheists would say no-- as any god is synonymous with 'theist', therefore the antithesis of 'a-theist'.
But. The word "god" is so all over the map? Seriously, I would bet a new $20, that no two humans on the planet, have the exact same mental concept of what that word even means!
So, I suppose Spinoza's 'god'? Or what professor Einstein meant when he used the word 'god' in some of his many poetic descriptions of what he thought the Universe was?
I think you could consider yourself under the more open umbrella of 'atheist'.
I have encountered several folk, who like either of the two 'god' ideas I mentioned above, but do not consider themselves 'theists' and strictly go by 'agnostic'.
Of course..... by a strict definition of 'agnostic' they'd be using it wrong I expect.
What do you mean by 'god'? I think this question should be asked more than it is-- for I expect that most folk are not thinking of the same ideas, when arguing about 'god'.
I started this thread because in a different thread, another RF'er was claiming that a person could both discourage Atheism and still be an Atheist. And it really is as I am stating it.
I don't need to go into more detail unless you want to.
But basically what i am gathering from this thread is:
Discouraging Atheism literally contradicts Atheism. That is the mainstream majority opinion.
A does not equal B. Simple logic.
However, there is some "twisty logic" as IceHorse described it, depending on the definition of what is a deity. And that is a valid opinion, but it is, so far, the minority opinion.
What I take away from this is: It is not at all silly or ill-informed or ignorant for someone like me, a Theist, or a Muslim to use the majority opinion, the strict definition of an Atheist.
If scripture of a religious leader says: "Non-belief in deities is the wrong path. The wrong path leads to hell." Then it makes logical sense to conclude that the speaker is not an Atheist.
Claiming it's illogical, or reflects a lack of understanding of non-theism is false.
siti
Well-Known Member
I'm sorry to butt in again (actually, no I'm not sorry at all) but...equating atheism with non-theism IS false. And that IS one of the problems you will face if you go with the "majority opinion" - especially on RF - and even more especially if its a "majority opinion" about the definition - or rather label - of someone else's beliefs.
For the record, etymologically, atheism is not opposed to theism - the word is better understood as athe-ism rather than a-theism...it is "without gods" not "without theism" - in other words it is opposed (etymologically) to belief in any deity - not just theistic deities. There are non-theistic ways of believing in deities - deism is an example, as is naturalistic or scientific pantheism. These are not theistic beliefs, but they are not atheism either.
Anyway, coming back to the idea of basing your understanding on the "majority opinion", I would ask you, do you suppose that Jesus, or Buddha did that? What do you suppose Jesus meant when he talked about the "narrow road" that "only a few" would find? (Matthew 7:14). Do you suppose that God intended us to base our understanding on public opinion? Or do you rather think that he intended us to use our intellectual capacities to figure things out for ourselves?
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~ Galileo Galilei
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
Are you saying, all the other Atheists who maintain the majority opinion lack understanding of their own non-belief?
That's the point. If an outsider uses the majority opinion, it is not a lack of understanding. If you are an Atheist and you want to tell the majority of other Atheists, "You're wrong, I'm right". Then you are in a position to do that.
But an outsider simply cannot and should not preach to insiders about what it means to be an Atheist.
Regarding the etymology... I'm sorry, that's like telling me Judaism is isolated to the Israelite tribe of Judah because of its name. Try telling that to Jewish people, and see what happens.
Not a silly question, and there is no unambiguous answer.
The world, as perceived, is created in your head. Your perception isn't objectively Real, it's a subjective abstraction, sufficient to navigate the world.
There are levels of reality. Personally, I'm typing from third-state, and, as such, have not created any Gods. Tomorrow I might create some, but right now I'm an atheist.
And tonight, in second-state, I might dream of a God. Would that make me a theist?
The question must be considered from all perspectives.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Why are you asking a question about semantics of atheists rather than linguists? That’d be ask for a medical diagnosis from patients rather than doctors.
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
It's a good point. Thank you.
the fictional character buddha is neither an atheist nor a theist. he simply doesn't care. there is a sutra about that somewhere. it tells the parable of buddha answering in 4 different ways to 4 men asking him his stance about gods and daemons.
i think this general attitude about god is right: it is an overrated issue.
there are lots of people who don't believe in god, and yet believe in many other dumb things, as well as sometimes we see people both believing in god and being capable in all the other aspects of their life of a critical sense (and even a pessimism) which many atheists couldn't even dream of.
i think this general attitude about god is right: it is an overrated issue.
there are lots of people who don't believe in god, and yet believe in many other dumb things, as well as sometimes we see people both believing in god and being capable in all the other aspects of their life of a critical sense (and even a pessimism) which many atheists couldn't even dream of.
yes it is. it is perfectly correct.