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A Serious Question To Self-Proclaimed Atheists ...

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mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Yes, but most people will admit to their being illogical, biased, ignorant, and so on (as we all are). Whereas with self-proclaimed atheists, in particular, this seems not to be the case. Which is why I posted this question.

No, and that is not limited to atheists as far as I can tell.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
I remain agnostic about astrology. I neither "believe" not "disbelieve" in it. Why would I?
Maybe you just don't understand the magic of astrology. How much time have you invested in astrology before you rejected it?

What caused you to reject astrology in the first place?
 

Watchmen

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I remain agnostic about astrology. I neither "believe" not "disbelieve" in it. Why would I?
Ok then. Then we fundamentally disagree on your premise. Atheists don’t start agnostic. Apparently, you’re agnostic about everything. Astrology, green fairies. Loch Ness. Big foot. The boogie man. And so on.

And why wouldn’t you believe in astrology? Because there isn’t a shred of evidence it’s real. Just as there isn’t a shred of evidence for god.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
In my experience, when people have to resort to analogies, it's because they can't deal with the issue the way they want to, first hand. And to me, that's a sign of intellectual weakness. I don't mean to be offensive. I'm just saying that what I'm asking for, here, is a simple enough request if you are a clear, logical, honest thinker (as so many atheists are so often telling us all that they are). I see no need for analogies, and too often they only serve to hide obfuscation, anyway. If you don't wish to respond I understand. Not every thread is for everyone.

It's easier to tell me this not discredit my point.

An atheist grown up without God concept can't claim to be agnostic. He has no basis of comparison. His whole life is without "personal" knowledge of God just others' definitions of it.

An agnostic has some sort of understanding of what God is. They can't prove either way and say they don't know and won't say they do.

Some atheists claim to be such because they have no concept of God.

As a Christian puts it: they (the christian) was blind and now they see

You told me awhile back that for people to speak about mystery they need to use metaphors. People use metaphors and analogies (think of trinity and egg example) because God concepts are vague by nature.

An atheist and agnostic are just going off of concepts (ideas like analogies) when talking of God because Some atheist just don't have a real experience with it.

They are blind (as Christians say) John 9:25

Not everyone thinks in analogies. That's fine. Tell me directly.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
I will be very surprised if, by way of response to your question, you get anything other than repeated counter-assertions. Well rehearsed ones at that.

This is because the decision either to believe or not to believe in God cannot be - and I think you've illustrated this in your OP - a choice entirely driven by reason. It can be justified by reason, up to a point; but to go the last yard in either direction, intuition or emotion must come in to play. And a person who prizes reason above all other human qualities, is unlikely to admit to being driven either by emotion or intuition.
And the other side of this - that many drawn to religious beliefs will tend to be driven by emotion or intuition, even when reason might be against such?
 

Altfish

Veteran Member
Good grief, you are exhausting ... I can't be bothered quoting each comment separately so I will take the liberty of numbering them

1, Imagine believer to atheist is a scale with 100% believer at one end and 100% non-believer at the other end. Your argument seems to be that unless you are 100% non-believer you cannot be an atheist. If you have 1% of doubt you must call yourself an agnostic. At what percentage do you stop being a believer and become an agnostic? Should someone who has a slight amount of doubt about god's existence but is still very religious not also call themselves agnostic? So, if you are defining atheism as only 100% non-believer, but 99,99% is agnostic - ok you win, I'm an agnostic. But I don't accept that very limited basis of defining atheism. It is similar to saying you are not a believer if you have any doubt.
2. What a non-answer. In other words you are sure you have the correct god. Good luck with that, if history is anything to go by all current gods will be in the dustbin in 1000-years time.
3. So, reading books that have no meaning to you, praying to something that isn't there; going to church/mosque/synagog/temple does not take time, effort and energy?
4. Question 1 already answers this. I define myself as an atheist because the chance of there being a god (in my mind) is so miniscule I don't worry about it.
5. No, by definition a theist can't be a Humanist, that's like saying most Christians are non-believers. Non-believers including atheists can choose to be Humanist, believers can't label themselves that way.
6. Q1 and Q4 already address this.
7. I have clearly answered the question. If you don't agree, I suspect that we have differing definitions of atheism. Perhaps you could give your definition, I've given mine.
@ChristineM - I fear your optimistic rating is correct - the goal posts will move again.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
No, it can also be unknown. That is the difference between non-skeptics and skeptics.
There is no difference between "unknown" and a rejected claim that the claim is true.

If Jim claims he has some cookies that are magically delicious, and they are good because some very skilled elves made them in a hollow tree, it's unknown if Jim's claim is true. But given the fantastic nature of his claim we will reject it given the lack of evidence.

Now Jim might claim that he ate a ham sandwich for lunch. Now he already ate it and it is unknown whether he actually did, no one saw it. But we know ham sandwiches exist. We know people eat them for lunch. So since the details of Jim's claims are factual and thus plausible, and not controversial, we can accept his claim as being true even though it's unknown.

That is skepticism at work.
 
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Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I understand why theists choose to do so. And so do most of us, here. The reason is that they gain some personal value benefit from their choosing to trust in their particular idealization of 'God'. But I do not understand why people choose to presume that no gods exist, because that choice offers them no personal value or benefit. There is no idealization to inculcate or act on in adopting atheism, and therefor no benefit to be derived from such non-idealization and non-action.

...

CAN ANYONE ELSE, HERE, EXPLAIN TO ME THE LOGIC OF CHOOSING ATHEISM? (Given agnosticism as a baseline human premise)
I sense the real question you are asking is not about the logic behind the atheist stance, but the motivation behind a decision to take a positive stance either for or against belief in God, as opposed to just being neutral or uncommitted either way, which is the agnostic stance.

Speaking for myself during the 10 plus years of my adult life I was a self-proclaimed atheist, I took such a positive position as saying "I do not believe in God", as opposed to a neutral position of agnosticism, because I had been polluted by fundamentalistic Christian teachings about the nature of the Divine, or Absolute Reality, and needed to be freed from its fear-based influence. What they called God, was prerational, superstitious, and illogical. It required me to ignore or deny my rational mind, and to reject credible science and reason outside of their religious authority, claiming the Bible as the only reliable way to understand reality.

Since God was defined by the church in such as way that it could not be compatible with science and reason and higher education, it had to be rejected. That is what atheism is afterall, a rejection of belief in God, not a mere indifference to it. In reality, after I had left fundamentalist Christianity, I had entered into much more of a no-man's-land of agnosticism, where for about 20 years I didn't really believe nor disbelieve in the existence of God. I just didn't really tackle the question and left it open ended.

But then came a moment where I took a stance and said, "I do not believe that," and took a hard stance. That happened at a specific moment for me, watching the PBS special, The Shape of Life, where I first really learned about how evolution worked. It was liberating. I no longer needed to hang onto the idea of God to explain the magic of nature. That was the birth of my atheism.

Now the motivation behind that, which I personally believe is what is behind most positive stances on the question of God which atheism proclaims, is to be able to grow beyond superstitions and ignorance in the pursuit of the truth and knowledge, and to move beyond this 'not knowing' position which left me stuck or not addressing the deeper question of existence, or the nature of Ultimate Reality, as Paul Tillich termed it well.

It specifically and deliberately cleared the table of distractions to dig in and address the question. It gets rid of the debris that clutters the landscape, deeming it as unfit to be considered seriously on the playing field of modern knowledge. "God did it" answers do no suffice when being honest, nor did just putting the question on the backburner of agnosticism suffice. Atheism empowered me to look at the question of Reality without fear.

I have now managed to move beyond that atheism now in much the same way I grew beyond theism, as well as agnosticism which itself centers around the same image of a mythic-literal deity question, where I now find no incompatibility between a spiritual faith and reason, doing no violence to either. I see theism, atheism, and agnosticism as all centered around the same thing, and doing the same 'this and not that' violence to each other in some fashion or another. They all view the question of God through the same lens.

I found this quote from reading Sri Aurobindo years ago that really struck me, and largely speaks my thoughts on this today:

"It is necessary, therefore, that advancing Knowledge should base herself on a clear, pure and disciplined intellect. It is necessary, too, that she should correct her errors sometimes by a return to the restraint of sensible fact, the concrete realities of the physical world. The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullness – to its heights we can always search– when we keep our feet firmly on the physical. “Earth is His footing,” says the Upanishad whenever it imagines the Self that manifests in the universe. And it is certainly the fact the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya.

In emerging, therefore, out of the materialistic period of human Knowledge we must be careful that we do not rashly condemn what we are leaving or throw away even one tittle of its gains, before we can summon perceptions and powers that are well grasped and secure, to occupy their place. Rather we shall observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism had done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge. In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration."

~Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 12,13​
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Certainly, apatheism is a reasonable position. To simply ignore the question seems like a very good position to be in. There is also the position of ignosticism, where the whole idea of God is noted as simply being incoherent (essentially by noting, as you did, that there can be no proof or even evidence either way).

Bu I think you misunderstand the typical atheist position. I do not believe in God for exactly the same reasons I do not believe in Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. The claims for their existence seem very weak and there seems to be no good reason to think they actually exist.
You were doing well until this last sentence. :)

The lack of expected evidence for bigfoot can be considered evidence for the lack of bigfoot because it's a very narrow and closed set of evidence to look for. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this is clearly not so for the question of God's existence. And in fact the evidence that it's not so is in your opening two sentences. It's why those variations of response exist.
Could I be wrong? Of course. But, I think, the lack of evidence has become sufficient to constitute evidence of non-existence (at least, until someone gives strong evidence otherwise) in ALL of these cases. I am NOT assuming them to be impossible. I am simply working under the base position that they do not actually exist.
I'm not interested in "right" or "wrong", here. I am simply interested in the logical justification of going beyond agnosticism to presume atheism. The reason you just gave me is not logical.
It seems that you have a default position that things exist until proven otherwise.
If you read my opining post, you saw that the basic premise is agnosticism. That means that insufficient information/evidence results in a non-determination. UNLESS we find some logical reason to make a determination based on something other than our lack of sufficient information.

I can see why theists do this. And I'm asking why atheists do this.
Let's also add that we are in a society surrounded by theists and theism. The position of being skeptical of the existence of a God is often seen as being immoral, ignorant, and worthy of reducing rights or even death. Pointing out that the theist position is unproven is seen as an affront. And theists consistently try to institute *their* rules as laws, from denigrating gays, to excusing slavery, to disrespecting the hard gained knowledge of the sciences. All this while claiming the moral high ground.
These would be logical reasons for NOT choosing atheism over just remaining agnostic, though, wouldn't they.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Maybe you just don't understand the magic of astrology. How much time have you invested in astrology before you rejected it?

What caused you to reject astrology in the first place?
I'll reply when you get back to the subject of the thread.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
And the other side of this - that many drawn to religious beliefs will tend to be driven by emotion or intuition, even when reason might be against such?

Yeah, absolutely. I can't make a really convincing logical case for belief in God, other than to say it works for me. Faith satisfies a need - which may or may not be emotional.

So what need might atheism be fulfilling in the active as opposed to passive non-believer (if you'll allow the distinction)? That, presumably, is the purpose of this thread.
 
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PureX

Veteran Member
Ok then. Then we fundamentally disagree on your premise. Atheists don’t start agnostic. Apparently, you’re agnostic about everything. Astrology, green fairies. Loch Ness. Big foot. The boogie man. And so on.

And why wouldn’t you believe in astrology? Because there isn’t a shred of evidence it’s real. Just as there isn’t a shred of evidence for god.
A lot of atheists claim they are agnostic, especially when they are asked to logically defend their atheism (suddenly they are no longer atheists, but agnostics).
 

Watchmen

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I am simply interested in the logical justification of going beyond agnosticism to presume atheism. The reason you just gave me is not logical.
If you read my opining post, you saw that the basic premise is agnosticism.
You will never receive a satisfactory answer (assuming you are looking for one) because your premise is flawed from the atheist’s point of view. From the atheist’s point of view, the starting point is not agnosticism.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
You were doing well until this last sentence. :)

The lack of expected evidence for bigfoot can be considered evidence for the lack of bigfoot because it's a very narrow and closed set of evidence to look for. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this is clearly not so for the question of God's existence. And in fact the evidence that it's not so is in your opening two sentences. It's why those variations of response exist.
I'm not interested in "right" or "wrong", here. I am simply interested in the logical justification of going beyond agnosticism to presume atheism. The reason you just gave me is not logical.

And I gave it to you. At some point, the existence seems less and less likely simply because there is no evidence *when there should be if the thing existed*.

I am NOT claiming the existence to be *impossible*. I am claiming it to be *unlikely* given the complete lack of evidence.

And it is likely to the point that simply no t believing seems reasonable.

If you read my opining post, you saw that the basic premise is agnosticism. That means that insufficient information/evidence results in a non-determination. UNLESS we find some logical reason to make a determination based on something other than our lack of sufficient information.

I can see why theists do this. And I'm asking why atheists do this.
These would be logical reasons for NOT choosing atheism over just remaining agnostic, though, wouldn't they.

And I cannot see why theists do this. Why not default to simply ignoring the issue and dealing with things that we know exist? Why is it such a big deal to people to believe in something for which there is no evidence? Why not default to simply not believing what you have no evidence for? if evidence shows up, you can update your beliefs.
 

Watchmen

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
A lot of atheists claim they are agnostic, especially when they are asked to logically defend their atheism (suddenly they are no longer atheists, but agnostics).
Sounds like an anecdote.

Can you quantify it? Do you have studies about the relationship between agnosticism and atheism you can point to?
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
A lot of atheists claim they are agnostic, especially when they are asked to logically defend their atheism (suddenly they are no longer atheists, but agnostics).

Agnostic atheists. We do not believe and also believe that knowledge is impossible.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
An atheist grown up without God concept can't claim to be agnostic. He has no basis of comparison. His whole life is without "personal" knowledge of God just others' definitions of it.
I would say he's profoundly agnostic. Clearly he has heard of the idea of "God", and never felt compelled to investigate it. That's an example of that indifferent/disinterested agnosticism: "don't know, don't care". I can accept that. But that's not atheism. Atheism goes beyond this into the presumption that gods don't exist.
You told me awhile back that for people to speak about mystery they need to use metaphors. People use metaphors and analogies (think of trinity and egg example) because God concepts are vague by nature.
Yes, but this is not a discussion about the nature of God. It's a simply discussion about the logic of choosing atheism rather than simply being agnostic, which I must presume has no 'god-nature' involved to discuss.
An atheist and agnostic are just going off of concepts (ideas like analogies) when talking of God because Some atheist just don't have a real experience with it.
All the more reason to remain agnostic.
 
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