Atheism doesn't exist?:)

Samantha Rinne said:

Depends on the definition, really.

I kinda believe there are two things:
1. True atheism - They don't happen to believe in god/Gods but make no claims that such don't exist (this is wrongly called "soft atheism"). They are simply religiously indifferent.
2. Anti-theism - Actively opposed to the notion of deities.

The reason, I don't call "hard" atheism hard, is because it's actually more difficult to actually convince anyone of your position.

Suppose you go to an old house with some friends. One of them is actually indifferent to ghosts. The other one loudly repeats "there's no such thing as ghosts." One of these seems to convincingly not be afraid of ghosts. The other is fooling nobody.

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It is my opinion you have conflated two different things, atheism and anti-theism.

MY understanding of the difference between hard and soft atheism is that one is an active belief, the other is lack of belief.

Hard atheism actively believes there is no god(s).
Soft atheism simply does not believe any god(s) exist.

I have had discussions with anti-theists from both the soft atheist and hard atheist, tribes (for lack of a better word).
I have also seen anti-theists from several different religions, and within Christianity itself.

QuestioningMind said:

Atheism is not a belief... it's a LACK of belief. It's true that there are some atheists who lack a belief in god who take it one step further and declare a belief that there is no god, but that declaration of belief has nothing to do with atheism... which is simple a LACK of belief.

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So. "Strong atheists are not REAL atheists?"

gotcha.

EtuMalku said:

IS GOD AN ATHEIST?
If we use atheistic definitions, specifically, that faith is a state of belief without evidence and atheism is a lack of belief in God then we are left with a very interesting situation where God could be classified as an atheist.

It would be accurate to say he lacks a belief that he exists since his knowledge is absolute and he knows he exists. So by atheistic standards, God is an atheist. Therefore Atheism exists because God is one.

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Sorry, that makes no sense. My absolute knowledge that 2 + 2 = 4 does NOT mean that I lack a belief that 2 + 2 = 4. In fact, it's IMPOSSIBLE for me to lack a belief that 2 + 2 = 4 IF I have absolute knowledge that 2 + 2 DOES = 4.

EtuMalku said:

IS GOD AN ATHEIST?
If we use atheistic definitions, specifically, that faith is a state of belief without evidence and atheism is a lack of belief in God then we are left with a very interesting situation where God could be classified as an atheist.

It would be accurate to say he lacks a belief that he exists since his knowledge is absolute and he knows he exists. So by atheistic standards, God is an atheist. Therefore Atheism exists because God is one.

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The Real Question™ is ... does God believe in Other Gods? The bible seems to say so-- that good old #1 commandment (in the infamous 10) "no other gods before me" shtick.

Why bother a prohibition of giving thanks to other gods, if there weren't any in the first place? A simple "do not make idols and non-gods into fake gods" would have made much more sense, if that was the Real Message© ...

dianaiad said:

So. "Strong atheists are not REAL atheists?"

gotcha.

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You really should have read the next sentence of his post, which answers your question, before replying.

Nowhere Man said:

Nobody is going to care a million years from now. ;0)

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Just been they’re. Your write.

If there is no atheism, it follows that there are no atheists. I guess I've been talking to imaginary friends all this time. Time to check myself into a home I guess.

dianaiad said:

So. "Strong atheists are not REAL atheists?"

gotcha.

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No. All of whom you are calling 'strong atheists' ARE atheists, in that they LACK a belief in any gods. But their BELIEF that there are no gods has nothing to do with atheism, since it's a declaration of a BELIEF and atheism is strictly about LACK of belief.

Mestemia said:

It is my opinion you have conflated two different things, atheism and anti-theism.

MY understanding of the difference between hard and soft atheism is that one is an active belief, the other is lack of belief.

Hard atheism actively believes there is no god(s).
Soft atheism simply does not believe any god(s) exist.

I have had discussions with anti-theists from both the soft atheist and hard atheist, tribes (for lack of a better word).
I have also seen anti-theists from several different religions, and within Christianity itself.

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With all due respect, anti-theism requires action; doing things against the target one is "anti-" You know, like anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-just about anything. Anti-theists are vocal and active. They DO stuff. They sue. They demonstrate. They insult people in debates. they prove themselves to be anti-theist by doing things to theists.

Indeed, anti-theists are generally all 'strong' atheists, but not all 'strong' atheists are anti-theist. There are many strong atheists who aren't out to destroy theism: they simply do not want to participate and divorce themselves from the whole notion.Anti-theists aren't satisfied with their own conviction that there is no god; THEY are out to destroy the whole notion, and get rid of theism.

Mestemia said:

You really should have read the next sentence of his post, which answers your question, before replying.

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I read his entire post. It stated rather clearly that 'strong' atheists weren't atheists, because only the 'weak' atheists qualify. It was a classic 'true scott' fallacy.

Mind you, I usually only see Christians use it...so much so that I think the fallacy should be renamed 'no true Christian' fallacy. They have a list of things one MUST believe in order to be a 'true Christian' (and those lists are never the same as anybody else's list) and everybody else, no matter how minor the disagreement may be, is 'no true Christian."

I thought it ironic as all get out to see an atheist decide that the only true atheists were the ones who lacked a belief in god, and that those who went that step further, who believe that there is no god, is 'no true atheist.'

I guess people are people, no matter what their beliefs regarding religion might be.

Rabbi Daniel said:

Catchy title. A-theism means something like No theism. And it's rare maybe almost impossible that somebody would not believe in God 100%. Not even a 0.01% that maybe God created this world.
And if he/she thinks that there is a very small percentage so, than it's not atheism; and still he/she will call himself an atheist.
BTW, a famous said or wrote something like that.

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Is it rare maybe almost impossible that somebody would not believe in unicorns 100%?

.

dianaiad said:

With all due respect, anti-theism requires action;

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With all do respect, bull ****.

I am anti-willful ignorance.
Meaning I am against willful ignorance.
Nothing more, nothing less,
I do not have to take any actions to be against willful ignorance.

dianaiad said:

doing things against the target one is "anti-" You know, like anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-just about anything. Anti-theists are vocal and active. They DO stuff. They sue. They demonstrate. They insult people in debates. they prove themselves to be anti-theist by doing things to theists.

Indeed, anti-theists are generally all 'strong' atheists, but not all 'strong' atheists are anti-theist. There are many strong atheists who aren't out to destroy theism: they simply do not want to participate and divorce themselves from the whole notion.Anti-theists aren't satisfied with their own conviction that there is no god; THEY are out to destroy the whole notion, and get rid of theism.

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No comment on the anti-theist Christians?

Windwalker said:

Yes, it is a philosophical question. Specifically, it is a metaphysical question, dealing with the question what is the ultimate truth of reality. It is the view that ultimate reality lacks a God. And inherent in that question, is a theological view of what God is, in order to evaluate it.

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And therein lies my problemo numero uno!

At absolute minimum, God, to be creator and sustainer of all reality, must have cognition, along with both creative impulse and creative power.

Windwalker said:

But as you can see right here you already expressed a theological view by calling God "supernatural". You had an image of God as "outside nature", and that is a theological view, regardless if you believe God exists or not.

You started with a theological image of God as "supernatural", and chose to discard it based on philosophically reasoning that natural systems don't need a supernatural God. The entire question had theology present within it at its heart.

What if your theology about God did not define God outside of nature? Then the evidence you presented as disproving God, affirms God. You see, you cannot escape it being theological in nature. Questions of ultimate reality are theological, or at the least include it, whether we like it or not.

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I think you are mistaken in all of that, because of your strong urge to ascribe "theological" thinking to everybody. but the core is those letters I highlighted: "natural systems don't need a supernatural God." For me, there is nothing to suggest that natural systems need support for their existence at all, and therefore I do not assume one.

Rabbi Daniel said:

And it's rare maybe almost impossible that somebody would not believe in God 100%.

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The whole structure of this proposition is embedded with a nonsense.
The nonsense is that there is a clear black and white division between belief in God, and absence of belief in God.

But God is not defined. Unless you only mean Jehovah.

There are many beliefs and claimed experiences which may use the word God in a way that Christians and Muslims, for example, may find so heretical as to be blasphemous.

In Advaita Hindu philosophy, there is no essential difference between the living entity and Brahman. The word often translated as Lord in early texts referred to ‘turiya’, the fourth state. ( @Aupmanyav may correct or confirm this.) So someone may be saying God to refer to an irrefutable and ongoing experience, not at all at odds with science. And not at all like the God of the Bible.


BTW.....note to posters....Atheism is not ‘belief that there is no God’, it is the absence of a belief.

dianaiad said:

When I read/listen to atheists who go into diatribes against the god of the OT, or demand to know why God permits evil (like volcanoes, tidal waves, tornadoes and mass murderers) I notice that they aren't mad at the believers, but at the deity they believe in. If they were angry at PEOPLE only, they would acknowledge that since religions are man made, that without religion men would find another reason to be nasty to one another.

Instead, and almost universally, the claim is that without religion the world would be a matter of people dancing around campfires singing "Imagine." That's not being mad at the people. That's being mad at the deity.

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Much to the contrary -- those atheists (and I am included here) that look at the theodicies you describe, are not "mad at God," nor at believers. What they are doing, rather, is pointing out that the God those believers describe is a tangle of contradictions, and therefore cannot be what he is generally asserted to be. Thus, we are demonstrating that continuing to believe in such a deity, in spite of those contradictions, requires some quite dissociative reasoning -- reasoning that involves deliberately keeping important terms out of the equation.

Howard Is said:

BTW.....note to posters....Atheism is not ‘belief that there is no God’, it is the absence of a belief.

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This has been said to believers so many times it's ludicrous. They cannot understand the concept. It is beyond their capacity, or beyond their willingness, to understand.

dianaiad said:

I read his entire post. It stated rather clearly that 'strong' atheists weren't atheists, because only the 'weak' atheists qualify. It was a classic 'true scott' fallacy.

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I have no idea how can come to that conclusion since it stated nothing of the kind.
In fact, it states that atheism is merely lack of a belief that god(s) exists and that some people who lack a belief that god(s) exist have another belief, that has \nothing to do with atheism, in that god does not exist.

Your inability to understand the difference is a you problem.

dianaiad said:

Mind you, I usually only see Christians use it...so much so that I think the fallacy should be renamed 'no true Christian' fallacy. They have a list of things one MUST believe in order to be a 'true Christian' (and those lists are never the same as anybody else's list) and everybody else, no matter how minor the disagreement may be, is 'no true Christian."

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Until such time as Christians can come to a consensus...
Of course, with all the God "approved/backed/sanctioned/commanded/etc" opinions being touted as the one and only way... I shant be holding my breath.

dianaiad said:

I thought it ironic as all get out to see an atheist decide that the only true atheists were the ones who lacked a belief in god, and that those who went that step further, who believe that there is no god, is 'no true atheist.'

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Except that that was all in you mind that you added to what was actually posted.

dianaiad said:

I guess people are people, no matter what their beliefs regarding religion might be.

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Theists are the ones I see making the claims that those who believe differently are not people.
Some even go so far as to claim there are not even humans.

dianaiad said:

Oh, that's wiggling. Define 'objective fact' for me.

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Here's some things that took two seconds on Google:

Subjective vs Objective - Difference and Comparison | Diffen

Definition of OBJECTIVE

Did you really need that? You don't know what it means to be objective?

It wasn't all THAT long ago that it was an 'objective fact' that all disease was caused by ill humours of the body, and that washing one's hands between delivering babies had no effect whatsoever on the appearance of 'childbed fever' in women delivering in hospitals.

"objective fact' it was, way back when, that the earth had four corners...and someone who claimed differently ended up in a lot of trouble.

More recently, it was considered an 'objective fact' that there was no such thing as 'continental drift,' and until 1967, those who claimed such a thing generally had ruined careers.

So the 'objective fact' of today may turn out to be utterly WRONG tomorrow...or a century from now.

In fact, what is considered to be 'objective fact' is really a consensus of opinion regarding the factual nature of some thing. That consensus is, a great deal of the time, correct---but not always, and when it's not, it's not 'real,' is it?

I have one: would you say that it is an 'objective fact' that the sun is shining outside your window right now? ONE Of these days, many years from now, some critter is going to think...'objective fact' when it sees the sun shine---but it will have exploded four minutes previously. Oops.

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Empirically-based reasoning is always probabilistic. Absolutism and dogma is the stuff of religion. Yes, things we currently believe based on the evidence we have could be wrong. You're not seriously suggesting that therefore, any belief is reasonable and rational, no matter how baseless it is, simply because well-evidenced beliefs might be wrong? That would be a truly absurdist worldview, so I hope that's not what you're advocating.

OK, I'm going to get picky...but it's picky with a purpose.

Do you understand that the claim 'I believe..." and "God IS and you MUST agree" are two entirely different 'claims?'

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Yes, I do.

So are "I don't think that a belief in a deity comports with reality' and "Your belief does not comport with reality."

In both cases, the first 'claims' are proven when the speaker simply says 'I believe," or "I think." He can, if he wishes, go on to give the REASONS why s/he believes/thinks this way, but there is no requirement for proof that his beliefs/thoughts are TRUE, by golly. However, in the second statements, there absolutely is a requirement that the claimant provide proof, logically.

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Repeating myself, if you believe something and you acknowledge the truth of it can't be demonstrated and you're not advocating that anyone else believe it, then I don't care and I don't know why we would even talk about it. That's not generally the case with theists, though. Most varieties of theists in the world consider their belief so important that they actually consider it a punishable offense in the afterlife to not believe as they do.

You do not get to declare how much, or what sort, of evidence is required for someone ELSE to believe anything. All you have the right to do is figure out how much, and what sort, of evidence is required for YOU to believe.

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I get to declare how much, or what sort, of evidence is required if you want me to accept that your belief is rational or objective, because those things aren't just up your or my private opinions or feelings.

If you believe you have the ability to teleport, then if you want me to believe that, you're going to have to show me in some way that's empirically verifiable. If you can't, I have no rational, objective reason to think you do, and frankly, neither do you. Now, if you want to go on believing you have the ability to teleport despite having zero objective evidence of such a thing, I can't stop you. I can inform you that your beliefs don't comport with verifiable reality. If you're not insisting to me that's the case, then frankly, I don't care.

I cannot demand that you agree with me....and I don't. What's more pertinent to this discussion is; you have no right, logically or philosophically, to demand that I prove my position to you in order for ME to believe, and when my claim is simply "I believe" this or that. Nor do you have the right to define reality to me or anybody else. I might agree with your definition; I might not, but if I do it's not because you declared it.

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You may believe privately for whatever reasons you like (and as I've already argued today, you can't help what you believe anyway, so my objections would be irrelevant). If you want me to agree that your beliefs actually comport with verifiable reality, then it's on you to demonstrate that.

no problem, and you should. But I have done no such thing.

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And I didn't say you had. You injected yourself into my comment directed to someone else.

Yet you have told me that I have to prove that my beliefs 'comport with reality,' and have accused me of reversing the burden of proof.

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If you want to insist to me that your beliefs comport with reality, then yes, very obviously it's on you to demonstrate that. This is how burden of proof works.

Because we do. Why is it impossible for there to be one?

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I haven't claimed it's impossible.

If I claim to you that there are invisible fairies floating around my head, it's not up to you to disprove that notion. If I want you to buy it, or if I want to declare that these fairies are objectively real, then it's up to me to demonstrate that with empirical evidence. It's not up to you to prove it's impossible.

If you're not interested in discussing or debating your reasons for believing your god exists, that's fine. You don't have to. You can stop responding at any time. But as long as theists keep creating these distraction threads arguing about semantic nonsense (or lately, this cute post-modern "but what is reality, anyway?" stuff) instead of substantiating what their religions actually claim, I'm going to keep pointing that out.

dianaiad said:

that would be fine....IF the atheist in question would acknowledge that without the deity, the men believing it it are still men who would be who they are without that belief.

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That's a patently ridiculous position. You are arguing that a foundationnal belief with ramification on morality, ethics and philosophy which is central to a specific culture has no impact on how people behave. This is absurd. Of couse religious belief influence people. It influences people and society a lot. Religious people and especially zealots would be very different people with very different values if they had never been raised under a certain creed.

Somehow those folks seem to think that if this deity they claim not only does not, but never has, existed, were to be proven wrong to everybody so that nobody would believe in one, that mankind would suddenly be free of all nasty passions, evil and any excuses for it. These are the folks who claim that teaching religious beliefs to children is child abuse, who insist that it's not 'freedom of,' but 'freedom from,' who go on and on about the problem of evil AS IF evil would not exist if deity did not exist.

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You are right on one point. Stop following religious dogma would not make the world without evil, but it would certainly put an end to some evil. No atheist has ever argued that without religion the world would be without evil. At best you can argue that some atheists have made the argument that without religion and superstition good men would be making good deeds and bad men bad ones; that it takes a religion to make good men do bad deeds.

Rabbi Daniel said:

Catchy title. A-theism means something like No theism. And it's rare maybe almost impossible that somebody would not believe in God 100%. Not even a 0.01% that maybe God created this world.
And if he/she thinks that there is a very small percentage so, than it's not atheism; and still he/she will call himself an atheist.
BTW, a famous said or wrote something like that.

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Atheism means "no god"-ism, and we're not that rare. God is a fantasy. If you don't know how something began, the first reaction isn't usually to latch onto a fantasy. It's more normal to admit that you don't know.