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Lack of belief (yet again)

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
They are rejected on the basis that you choose not to believe in them, what other basis is needed?
Whatever a person's reasons for rejecting one god, they only work as far as their reasons still apply.

For instance, "this god that created the world 6,000 years ago doesn't exist because the world is way older than 6,000 years" doesn't work as a reason to reject creator-gods of an old Earth.

(and you really think most people make any distinction between monotheist god concepts?)
Yes, I do. Why don't you?

If you understand the concept of 'police officer', you understand Greek police officer, Norwegian police officer etc.
"There are no police officers in Greece, therefore there are no police officers in Norway." Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If you believe all gods are mythical beings created in older cultures to fulfil social and psychological functions then this covers all gods. You understand this happened the world over, you understand they take many forms, you see them as part of the same archetype though.
That could be one approach to reject some gods. Another approach would be "I've seen the top of Mount Olympus and no gods lived there, therefore the Greek gods don't exist." Whether a person can reject the Norse gods on the same basis as the Greek gods depens on why they rejected the Greek gods.

But the reason you gave isn't a rational reason to reject polytheistic gods; it's only a reason not to accept them. Our bad assumptions are sometimes coincidentally true, so the mere fact that a belief was made up or arrived at for bad reasons doesn't mean it's necessarily false; it's just unreliable. "A stopped clock is right twice a day" and all that.

You say I misrepresent your views, but then keep making exactly the same bizarre point about some kind of imaginary checklist that needs to be gone through one by one.
You're conflating a point I'm actually making with a point I'm not making.

You would need to go through what you consider to qualify as a god god-by-god unless you can come up with categories that can be rejected all together.

This fact doesn't mean that we're talking about every single god that humanity has ever conceived, unless a person's "concept of god" includes them.

You reject the category, not each individual named member of the category.
So then define the category.

Do you believe in fire breathing dragons? No.
Well what about Smaug? No
Drogon? No
Puff the Magic Dragon? No

I don't need to tick them off individually.
If the category "gods" is as easy for you to define and evaluate as the category "fire-breathing dragons," then you may be the only person who conceived of gods this way.


Unique leaps? :D

Unique leap 1: Understand concept(s)of god(s)
Unique leap 2: Choose to believe gods don't exist.

~~~~fin~~~~
No:

- unique leap #1: assume that everyone has a ridiculously simple concept of gods.
- unique leap #2: assume that merely lacking a belief that something is true is the same as rejecting the belief as false.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
The problem is that you do not grasp that I think your use of language is flawed.

You claim over and over again that atheism is an absence of theism, not a rejection but rather a total lack. You want me to accept that atheism qua atheism is a position of total neutrality. I understand this in the abstract but the problem is that I don't see how this is at all meaningful in describing how beliefs exist in reality. An infant may be an atheist in the stated sense but the moment you have any concept of God you cannot be in a state of non-position. You will either believe it or reject it regardless of how certain or tentative that belief or disbelief may be.

My position is this. Atheism as you describe it may make sense conceptually, but cannot exist in actuality once a person has the faculties of judgement. You cannot avoid but to make a judgement. And negative belief is not an absence of a belief, it is not a non-position.
A simpler way to explain it, because you seem to be having trouble:

Do you know what "people who believe in gods" means?

Atheists are everyone else. That's it.
 

ArtieE

Well-Known Member
A simpler way to explain it, because you seem to be having trouble:

Do you know what "people who believe in gods" means?

Atheists are everyone else. That's it.
Just to drive the point home in case Musing Bassist missed it the first time:

Remove the theists from the planet. The people left are atheists. Which should be quite obvious since the prefix a- literally means "not". So the combination of the prefix a- and the word theists is "not theists".
 
Which should be quite obvious since the prefix a- literally means "not". So the combination of the prefix a- and the word theists is "not theists".

Not to get into a debate about this as it is 'eye of the beholder' type stuff, but if atheist is related to atheism, there is no intrinsic reason why it should be a-theism rather than athe-ism.

The latter is at least equally as valid (as it better relates to the origin of the term), so it doesn't work as any kind of argument in favour of one or the other position.

An -ism is a doctrine or belief, so it also 'literally' means 'the doctrine or belief of being without god'.

Meaning comes from usage alone, but even if it didn't both would be equally legitimate readings so don't do anything other than confirm one's prior beliefs.
 

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
There's no difference between saying "I believe god doesn't exist as I've not seen anything that convinces me god exists", and "I lack a belief in [the existence of] god as I've not seen anything that convinces me god exists" (other than the grammatical awkwardness of the latter).
That you do not see any difference between them is a big part of the problem.
 

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
Not really, as people often confuse a grammatical difference for a cognitive one.
Yes, really.
That you and so many other people do not see any difference is a big part of the problem.

Hells bells, I have seen people right here on RF argue up one side and down the other, making a real fool of themselves in the process, that there is no difference.
 

jonathan180iq

Well-Known Member
Yep. I was on a forum which pretty much ground to a halt because in every discussion about deity(s) and in every religious section (the equivalent of DIRs) the atheist members were derailing every thread with their incessant demands for evidence that said deities existed - even if the thread wasn't aimed at them in the first place.

It pushed quite a lot of theist members to stop posting because, frankly, there really wasn't any point in posting.
If people stopped posting because they couldn't support their claim, then doesn't that say something about the claim?

Even if we aren't talking about deity, that's how conversations go...

If I started a thread my ability to throw a 200mph fastball - wouldn't your first line of questioning be something about the proof of my ability to actually throw a baseball that fast?
 

ArtieE

Well-Known Member
If this is your negation, then there is no logical reasoning that you could offer to conclude that an atheist entails personhood.
Sometimes it's difficult to say when a person is joking so in this case you should have ended that sentence with some kind of indication that it wasn't meant seriously.
 

Curious George

Veteran Member
Sometimes it's difficult to say when a person is joking so in this case you should have ended that sentence with some kind of indication that it wasn't meant seriously.
I am always joking artie. But that does not change the consequences of your logic.
 

Curious George

Veteran Member
Do you have this sort of problem understanding what people mean by "civilian" or "non-smoker"?
Lol, we have other fish to fry. However non-smoker is not the negation of smoker. Rather it is a person who has not smoked.

This should make clear that putting non/a in front of a word is not simply a negation. We have to look at more than just 'not a smoker' to understand the definition.
 
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