Freedom From Atheism

My mistake. I've never heard of the Ethical Humanist Society.

The idea of an atheist church is repulsive to me. On top of being illogical, it sounds creepy.

 

They do not have a church.

Many religions do not have churches.

Church is not a pre requisite of religion.

The burden is not on me or any atheist to provide evidence of no God it is strictly and exclusively on believers to provide evidence that there is one.

Atheists simply.start at the mill position meaning such claims as a deity require evidence otherwise they are as credible as the tooth fairy.

 

The Atheist church created by comedians. now thats worth a ponder or 2!

 

You are making the claim God exists so the ball is in your court to prove his existence. I don't have a snark living in my back garden. Care to prove me right?

 

I do not undestand your sentence.

Won't get what? If you understand how the idea is built up, you might understand which arguments apply.

Nope. I rarely read other posts than the first few in a thread or ones where I have been quoted. I don't have the time to go through 24 pages of uninteresting stuff. Most arguments I have seen focus on the lack of evidence, which builds towards the version I mentioned.

It doesn't seem to me the problem is a lack of minimal background. The question of whether there is a difference has been addressed, you are free to take that discussion further. Frankly, it does take only one to work around semantics, if you chose other words for your argument, others have little choice but to address those.

One of the elements, yes, but not sufficient for definitions. When people talk about religion, they tend to mean things like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and so on. That doesn't mean that beliefs in communism, nationalism, justice, belief in one's mother's love, or belief that there is an apple in the fridge aren't beliefs.

No, the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It should pass laws regardless of religion, not attempting to find some kind of middle point between all religions from which it would have no leanings (respecting religious ground in order to find that middle ground). If laws that are made respecting no religious establishments happen to be consistent with a religion or otherwise (regardless of whether atheism is a religion), such a leaning is good. There would be a problem if atheism inspired these laws (again, regardless of whether you want to call it a religion), but as long as they just happen to coincide (or coincide by construction of most modern atheists' views) that's not a problem.

I explicitly stated my views. Whether it is legal wherever you are strikes me as beside the point. That being said, it seems to me my views are quite consistent with the letter, intent and application of the law you refer to, as explained above.

Again, I fear you're using a non-standard definition of omnipotent. Would you care to rephrase the sentences that contain it?

What exactly is that definition? I don't require anything rigorous, just enough to know what you're talking about. Certainly the definition you're alluding to only pertaining to belief is not what I've found when I've dabbled in philosophy.

Certainly, the purpose of the law is to make the best possible attempts to defend people and their rights, but to my mind, it is designed with the inevitable limits to its reach in mind. I see no particular reason you couldn't call that a failure, but it's not what I would use myself, seeing how it's more or less inevitable (at least while upholding other aspects of justice and benevolence).

Wouldn't it be just as void of theism to not care?

This ties back to the ambiguous definitions. You can use atheistic either to refer to anything that has no theistic point, which would include the idea that gays should be able to marry, or eating an apple or liking a certain shirt. Or you can be referring to things pertaining to the atheist movements, which would be things like forcing people to accept atheism or arguing that 90% of congressmen should be atheist. If you use the former, then it is not a religion in the sense it is referred to in the first amendment (and a lot of the philosophy that pertains to it), but if you use the latter, then it could be.

For starters, all of the definitions are not needed. The definition for "apple" includes an imperfectly bowled bowling ball, that doesn't mean you can use that without indicating which definition you use (although it is easily indicated by context).

The first one is good though. As you can see, it says it "often" includes a moral fundament, which means it's a not necessary condition. Also, the lack of belief does not include a morality, the morality I guess you associate with atheism is called humanism, and is often combined to form "secular humanism". It is no less atheistic to have a non-humanist atheist, like some hard core 1910s communist.

Not sure what you mean.

Well, the fact that many of the atheists in question disagree with your conclusion of what lack of belief means indicates that that is not the case. How the rights work is a part of the discussion here, so the fact that it is consistent with your view doesn't mean an opposing one can't be consistent too.

 

The only way it is possible for a person to 'legitimately' disbelieve anything is to first review both sides of the argument then come to a conclusion. The conclusion they come up with regardless of which side of the argument they wind up on is what they believe. That belief may agree or disagree with the premise. If they express disbelief their belief is that the premise is not correct or does not suit their expectations, reasons irrelevant to this conversation.

In response to your assertion and assumption that I would resort to arguing God. God is not my argument. So you wont get an argument from me that falls upon arguing about God, since no God is required to have religious convictions.

Understandably, which is why I have decided the need to exercise ROE mode.

The problem with evidence from my experience is that its so easy to dismiss by those who could care less about valid evidence and deceitfully simply dismiss out of hand because their priorities are winning the argument to further their political agenda. Then escalating the argument further and asking why they dismiss the evidence will invariably yield no response as they have nothing what so ever to base it on. In another thread there is a poster who consistently violates ROE and despite the fact atheists have created and now have their own 'church' the only known purpose is for religious gatherings despite the facts, denies the facts.

The problem is to be correct other words are not always an option. You cant interchange the word 'arms' by substituting 'guns' and 'legitimately' claim a constitutional violation as on is the subset of the other. I do not fall for that bear trap. Same thing applies here, so unfortunately there is no way to deal with it but to apply the principles of ROE or have the supreme court sitting at my side.

If I am required to argue religion according to some reduced academic level to meet popular demand than I took the argument to the wrong board.

I assume you mean is not sufficient for the complete definition of religion which is true and correct, however it is an essential element to the definition that hence religion could not exist without it. The short version omitting other required elements is that when actions are added to the beliefs the key opens the religion lock.

As you correctly reasoned, hence the use of word 'exercise' in the constitution, since without the ability to exersize ones beliefs et al, the definition does not meet all the elements of a religion. good observation.

yes/no
the gubmint is in violation of the constitution if it passes any laws that in any way infringe on the free exercise of a persons religon. Keep in mind that atheists also are religious but dodge any question that proves the point as if that protects them from the obvious conclusions.

You are incorrect on the other hand in the respect that gubmint has a constitutional obligation to respect EVERY religion, not just religious groups registered as 501.3(c)'s.

Religion, like arms, speech and press are outside the purview of gubmint as reserved rights, see the winnan treaties for futher explanation and this is recognized by the court of YESTERDAY, prior to the coup and corporate takeover of america.

see also:

same with religion, speech etc

No the statement is exactly what I meant, a near godlike state. Religion was the first law and still is the law. Take note of the ten commandments, that is judeaoChristian the 'law' that predates any law we have today by thousands of years and much of it stands as law today.

Virtually ALL 'self governance' is done by and through religious principles.

To reject personal religion and reserved rights held long before the creation of this country would completely destroy all rights of the individual despite they were reserved and not derived from gubmint.

The state who are today the corporate elite now become the likeness of a god, the satan version anyway as they are the epidemy of corruption.

the definition is derived from the philisophical work of several highly accredited philosophers. Philosophy requires critical reasoning and does not simply make a list.

However the main elements of what constitutes 'religion' are not limited to; Matters of conscience with respect to personal governance and well being, which result in the formation of a belief, possessing conviction in the belief (faith) from which a course of action is determined and acted upon. That is the general scope which is put forward in the definitions of the dictionary but of course ignored in discussion as atheists thus far demand the only possible version of religion must contain a spaghetti man in the sky, which of course is juvenile. I digress.

Yes and as you can see in the cockrum ruling that the rights we are talking about reserved rights that do NOT derive from or through gubmint and cannot be re-assigned, (unalienable). Noone should know that better than brits who still have the original bocland allodial titles held outside the crown, the only exception being rights explicitly relenquished to the state (king). Of course we have that too but its been violated for so long the violation is simply accepted as SOP.

Remember “Equity will not suffer a wrong without a remedy” is the maxim from which all of equity jurisprudence springs. (except in america) I digress again.

Yes but if theism is used it is easily identifiable as a religion, atheism operating under the veil of corporatism or human secularism sneaks under the radar of most people.

which is why I posted the definitions out of the dictionary so to present and point out reiligion is not only flying sky men.

Not true what so ever. In this case its theistic versus atheistic, which makes it clear and easily understood. It is atheist in the matter of the cake suite because the decision is NOT NEUTRAL but the polar opposite and violating both the religion and the theist religion participants.

The ONLY way the gubmint can honor its obligation to stay out of personal affiars with regard to reserved rights is to conclude something neutral to both parties. They did not. The supremes in their gay marriage ruling carefully couched in their several pages that gay marriage is constitutional as a result of their beliefs. IOW 'religion'

I disagree, it demonstrates that dictionaries often rely on popular opinion and or popular usage rather than sticking to any academic standard, and people run off with their mouths as if popular usage which is often nothing more than puppy chow for the masses as any value in a discussion about religion with resepect to law and governance.

Which is why I posted the whole thing, to give people the opportunity to match the context to see the context I am using is not the popular first rendition as I highlighted in read all variant uses that may or would apply all of which do not include a super human man in the sky to drive that point home.

Agreed, however I use morals as a prerequiste generally to avoid a plethora of juvenile attacks if I enter that caveat into argument in an unregulated debate.

Not sure what you are saying but neither belief or lack of belief has a bearing on a premise being classified as a religion.

The morality associated with atheism is the diametrical opposition to long held theist morals and/or religious principles.

Its counterintuitive if not extending to cognitively dissonant to classify something as a religion to a theist and the same thing only not a religion to an atheist at the same time. Absurd as this seems a cursory review will show opponents hold that position.

My conclusion of lack is void a corresponding belief which I maintain is delusional as I have previously explained in rebuttal above.

A person cannot disbelieve anything without first establishing a negating belief to the contrary to even form the question in the first place so to claim they lack belief is patently ridiculous.

The fact is they have a contrary belief at some level even if only suspicion.

 

This is getting very long, I will try to contract some things. I might end up dropping some lines of thought that I don't think will lead anywhere.

As should maybe not surprise us, we have different uses of the word disbelieve.

Let's say you and a friend are looking at a tree that you've never seen before. Your friend says "there is an odd number of leaves on that tree" but you know he has no way of knowing this and most probably made it up. It seems to me you would use the word disbelieve as "I disbelieve you, I think there is an even number of leaves on the tree", am I right? The use of the word used and detailed by atheists is more like "I disbelieve you, I will not add that piece of knowledge to my understanding of the tree and its number of leaves".

Did you have to carefully weigh the arguments for odd and even leaves in order to use the latter? No. You only need to know that you didn't trust that particular addition of information. However, it still rejects the idea, without embracing the opposite.

I don't know what you mean, I have not assumed that you would resort to arguing God. My explanation wasn't just a third person regurgitation of the same argument. I wanted to show how atheists commonly build their arguments about the kind of disbelief I explained above, where rejecting argument doesn't mean adopting the opposite. If you understand that narrative you will understand the difference between lack of belief and belief in not.

What do you mean by ROE?

I don't see why evidence would be any easier to dismiss than any other form of argument. I've seen people run away from a plethora of arguments.

I do not mean to use words that mean something else.

I mean, this is literally what the supreme court is for (when it comes to legal matters in the US). As such, it has decided that atheism is to be considered equivalent to a religion for the purposes of the first amendment. That is, the supreme court has done exactly what I suggested (I mean, they didn't do it on my suggestion to them ) they found an ambiguous wording and said "as long as we're in this context, we will consider 'religion' to include atheism".

Well, I'm not particularly interested in letting this discussion swerve into works vs faith and the like, so sure.

You seem not to have understood my post. I have not linked the definition to the US IRS. In fact, I've specifically stated that the ideas are uncoupled to US law (even though there is some overlap).

Lets say we have a religion which has only one idea associated with it, which is something like thou shall not murder innocent people needlessly. Should a government be chastised for leaning perfectly towards that religion? (Assume the law and the religion described the same thing)

I'm still not clear on how my statement makes the state godlike.

I will try to restate my statement. The word religion is a label which we put on certain concepts (as an example Hinduism). These religions have certain rights and certain limitations (like we should let them be practiced, we shouldn't let them outlaw other religions). There are good reasons for these rights and limitations, and why they are in our laws. If we hypothetically decided that Hinduism wasn't legally a religion any more, the good reasons for letting Hinduism be practiced or not allowing it to have laws made around it would still apply. Therefore, whether find ourselves using the word "religion" shouldn't be important. Of course this isn't easy to legislate, and sometimes, we have to base our laws on the words because we have to have a consistent hard limit, but ideally, we shouldn't have to.

I don't see how this makes the government omnipotent.

I don't see how the type of atheism formed as I've explained fills these criteria. Of course, as you say, the definition is not limited to this, and I have no particular opposition to the idea of calling atheism a religion. However, this example makes it clear that it's not obvious from common usage whether atheism falls in that category, and as such, we should make it clear what we mean in order to not be misunderstood.

What do you mean by a right being derived "through" a government? I wouldn't suggest rights or reasons derive from the government, but governments still need to be in on it, or the rights might be violated.

This is the reason I don't care whether atheism is a religion. Atheism should not be allowed to skew politics regardless of whether they are considered a religion. And in the US the supreme court has clarified this.

You didn't until I asked you to.

I don't see why violating the religion is a problem. Government shouldn't make law respecting the religion, and thus ended up making law that conformed with ideas of non-discrimination instead. The fact that atheists reject religion and often embrace things like non-discrimination and thus are consistent with such a ruling isn't really the fault of those who made the ruling.

The decision wasn't made respecting atheism as much as it was respecting things like non-discrimination, which the government is allowed to lean towards.

Well, yes. Language is determined by usage. If a definition is not used by the people, it is not the correct meaning of the word (unless specified in a context).

This sounds more like secularism and secularisation to me. But even with that, there are some differences. As I've mentioned earlier, it's not about being the opposite of religion, but of being the absence. Consider murder. If secularists were diametrically opposed to religion, they would be for murder (since religion is against it). If secularists were instead considering the issue without religion, they could still be against murder (since murder is wrong also for non-religious reasons). Most atheists/secularists are against murder. In conclusion, secularists are not diametrically opposed, but try to consider things without religious input (regardless of religion).

 

The example wrongfully assumes that I make the assumption that the person does not or can not know, a presumption I would not make because it would be a false presumption, since for all I know he counted every leave before goading with the proposition.

I understand what you are saying and driving but I do not anyone can know what is in anothers head except through disclosure or action.

Thats the whole problem here. While you can form a believe based on inconclusive data or information as soon as you put that belief into action by rejecting the single premise it is binary, accept or reject 'the' premise. Now to be agnostic one would need to reject both taking no position. The act of acceptance or rejection puts into action one or the other of the binary conditions.

I have just shown that rejecting the argument is by default accepting the contrary argument.

This is an ancient and very well understood maxim in law we use in court!

"Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius"

Rules of Engagement, the people here (with exception to you and a few others) spend 90% of the posts violating them.

The more evidence departs from dropping a rock on someones foot the more easily it is for someone to summarily deny it is evidence. You see a lot of that here. Hell go to the 911 threads if you want to see quantum abuse of precisely that.

Its one of few things they got right in my years on this planet. Well they did it based on the same 'philosophy' used to create the constitution which still stands to this day and Since its pretty solid I expect will stand for a very long time to come.

I do, I brought it up because its another prong of the argument.

Ah.... and theres the rub! Murder while it may be religious is "universally" against every religion. Now since every religion that murder is taboo then the state is neither favoring an religion nor going against anyones religion and I agree they should have the green light to establish fundamental laws with that regard.

However I would estimate 80+% of the law we have on the books is in disregard to peoples religion.

yah-no

The word religion only comes into existence as a procedural recipe. a AND b AND c AND d = r sort of arrangement So if a,b,c,d, are all true then r format, its a religion or religious action.

The boundaries and limitations end just short of injuring/damaging you.

Words do not protect anyone with a gvmnt involved because they slip and slide the meaning to whatever they want.

People of the same religion can make whatever laws they want for themselves to live and or die by, as long as they are not forced upon those outside the their religion.

The gvmnt becomes god when their religion over rules ours, at which point they control every aspect of your lives. slavery

Well I did way back long ago in the thread at least a couple times but people do not seem to recognize it for some strange reason.

People refer to privileges as rights being derived through gvmnt because they do not know or understand the difference and all the gvmnt can ever do is grant a privilege.

No not at all.

Gvmnts are the greatest most notorious violators of rights, and they get away with it. The written law sets our 'reserved' rights in stone. The gvmnt was created in trust to protect our rights, but they do not, instead they protect their own interests and pretend the slaves agree with them despite the slaves have no say so what so ever in a parliamentary demobcracy.

I agree, no religion should.

Ah yes and there is the rub. You and I make a constitution that have the right to let your dog pee on my flowerbed. Hence you walk your dog across the driveway religiously every day and it pees on the flowerbed.

Now I pass a law that says no dogs on the driveway.

I have now by a proxy law infringed upon your reserved right to let your dog pee on the flowerbed.

Rejecting a deity can be done there is no problem there, however rejecting religion there is a big problem there since atheist actions like anyone else falls equally under religion.

The rub again is that the standing non-discrimination laws discriminate against peoples religion.

Nope in fact the courts both in your back yard and ours make the definitions for words for the plain and simple reason people like to play games with them by purposely morphing them to mean somehting unintended, much like the lack and disbelief theories are doing despite it violates proper grammar.

Secularism to be secularism in its intended sense must conform to being neutral. To choose something in favor of one religion or the other in th ecase of the case sides with atheist since it is purely anti to the theistic religion being violated.

 

You've spent the past 1500 years killing us off.

You should be down on your knees thanking us (with money and quality cheeses and red wines) for not treating you the way you treat us. Quick sticks!

- - - Updated - - -

We needed them to stop your 1500 years of tyranny. Did you want to keep tyrannising us?

 

Yeh atheists need money!

Just updated my atheist murder resources.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]And sixth, for those who accept abortion as intentional killing (it clearly is, but the debate is over what is actually being killed), an additional 30 million or more cases in the United States alone could be added to the number of irreligious killings (the estimate for the total number of abortions worldwide over the last century is approximately one billion). 7

[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]So to everyone familiar with the Bible's instructions for human conduct, it is obvious which actions throughout history have been truly representative of God and the Bible, and which have not. Any murder in the name of Christ is wrong. But as we have seen, the greatest acts of crime and killing have not been instigated by people professing to follow Jesus. The numbers:

[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Judaism and Christianity throughout history: [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]17,000,000
  
  [/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Anti- or irreligious forces over the last 100 years:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]6,000,000 + 9,000,000 + 40,000,000 + 24,000,000 + 25,000,000 + 22,000,000 + 2,000,000 + 1,000,000,000 = 1,128,000,000[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Thus it is erroneous to state that organized religion, or the name of Christ, is the cause of all or even most of history's killings. Quite to the contrary, modern history shows that the killings associated with the denial of divine authority outnumber the killings of professing Jews and Christians on an order exceeding 66 to 1. [/FONT]

http://www.provethebible.net/T2-Objec/G-0101.htm

 

The father of Christ was Reality.

We know this because Jesus said "I am the Truth," in John 14:6-12.
Truth is the image of Reality.
It is born out of the ever reforming Reality which leaves Truth in its wake.

Science has been "proving" Reality exists for 300 years now.

 

It was postulated in the example that you knew it was probably made up. We're trying to pin down the definition of [not believing], so I don't think it matters. Fine, imagine you're standing yourself by a tree and write down the words "I believe there is an odd number of leaves on the tree" on a piece of paper, knowing that you had no reason to believe it. You do not take the message seriously, so you do not decide to let it inform your understanding of the tree. No belief in the message, disbelief.

My guess is most people you would come across in the capacity of atheist are agnostic atheists. Dawkins also accepted that title. They are not mutually exclusive.

And I have shown you examples of people rejecting things without accepting the contrary argument.

How so?

Non-religious people can still reject murder, so I don't see why opposition to murder gets hogged by religion. But fine, chose some other example. Let's say breaking into someone else's computer. While I'm sure one could find some angle in which this is dealt with in religious terms, imagine it is not. Let's then say a religion was started whose sole or primary tenet was that that was bad. Would government then be disallowed to lean towards that religion by making it unlawful to break into other people's computers? Or should government, independently of that religion, come to the same conclusion (assuming that you agree breaking into other people's computers is bad) and make that law regardless of what the religion thinks?

I don't see that this addresses the point I made.

Hm, omnipotent in my book includes things like being able to create universes. Governments can't do that. That being said, I don't see how my acknowledgement of a fluid definition of religion makes government omnipotent.

Could you quote the passage where you do please?

Well, that privilege can be an action to protect my rights, right?

In this case, it depends on the purpose of the law. If you have a good reason for there not being dogs on the driveway (like, you've just put fresh concrete on it and it needs to set), then you have done no wrong (although in this particular case, you might have to provide an alternate route). If you did it only to spite my constitutional right, then you have done wrong. Note that in the former case, you have not made the law respecting the religion of not having dogs pee in your garden, whereas in the latter, you have.

If there was a religion that mandated murder (or breaking into other people's computers), the government is not obliged to let them do it.

In France this was a debate a while back, there was a suggestion to ban burkas (I can't remember to what extent) and it was unclear whether it was meant to attack Islam (which would be illegal) or for reasons not inspired by religion (which included burkas being good disguises for robbery, distracting in schools and so on, which would be legal). The fact that this was even discussed means it very much depended on whether the inspiration was motivated by the religion or not. Yes, it can be hard to tell the difference, but that's life. It's not like law was always cut and dried.

Well, not under the US legal system's and my interpretation of it. The system is allowed to infringe on some aspects of a religion (like the hypothetical being obliged to murder) for non-religious reasons. However, it is not allowed to do so for religious reasons (where religious refers to the first amendment interpretation which explicitly includes atheism).

You are right, courts do that. However, they are not the arbiters of language in the real world. The courts can say that a car is equivalent to a cow for the purposes of certain selling and buying laws, but that doesn't mean we should start blurring the words together in the real world.

I agree. And laws like gay marriage isn't in a decision in favour of atheism, merely correlating with atheism.

 

Ok, since this is getting long we can get back to the rest later. For now lets work on believe.

Lets start with a generic definition:

Well before we can pin down the definition of not belief we need to know the definition of believe is what it takes to believe something.

As we can all see believe is a verb hence requires an action.

In order to believe anything one must have some conditional placed before it that requires a choice to either believe or disbelieve as I said anything.

It's impossible to not-believe as well as its impossible to believe 'anything' without making a conscious choice.

Once that choice has been made the believer or disbeliever has taken a 'position' in the matter.

In addition the position taken in the matter must correctly correspond to the substance of the hypothesis, if not the concluded belief, or disbelief is nonsequitor.

Belief by definition requires one to make a conscious decision lack of belief = lack of disbelief = lack of action = lack of thought process = ridiculous.

Not believe = I believe not
Not believe = I disbelieve
I disbelieve = Not believe

Lack of belief = never considered the proposition.

As you can see adding the prefix dis- is merely the reverse or negation of the positive action. Elementary grammar is it not?

 

I forgot this one:

I presume that should wrap it up?

 

So if someone with a religion to sell placed that lie in his mouth, where does that leave your "truth"?

 

Nah this raps it up from the same source as you have quoted in other threads to back you up.

The word, atheism, comes from the negative a which means "no," and theos which means "god." Hence, atheism in the most basic terms means "no god." Basically, atheism is the lack of belief in a god and/or the belief that there is no god. By contrast, theism is the belief that there is a God and that He is knowable and that He is involved in the world. Most atheists do not consider themselves anti-theists but simply non-theists.

https://carm.org/what-is-atheism

 

It was wrapped up a long time ago when many posters proved you wrong.

 

Cool. When we catch up with Yahweh and wipe out entire planets in a fit of rage, get back to me.

 

No one knew what Jesus said.

 

I appreciate the effort to keep the length of the posts down. I would like to reintroduce one of the things from the longer version which I think addresses this, which is the example of the number of leaves in a tree. You write on a piece of paper that there is an odd number of leaves and consider the idea. You know that the statement on the paper wasn't based on anything at all, so you reject it. Do you then believe the statement? Yes or no? Not a rhetorical question (well, it is, but I would tailor the rest of my argument based on your answer).

As you can see, there is a verb, an active denial, but it is not of there being an odd number of leaves, but of your random scribblings being good reasons to believe. That resolves your requirement for a verb without granting the rest of your conclusion.

I think this is where it is getting confusing. There is a state in which one believes, be it a statement, a religion, whatever. Every other state (or whatever one might call it) is not belief. That is what the word "not" means. The law of excluded middle dictates that if it isn't belief, then it is not-belief. Not having made a conscious choice or not having been convinced by, for instance, one's owns scribblings does not relieve the person from having to be in a state of either belief or not-belief. And if it isn't belief, then it is not belief.

Look at these Venn diagrams:

Look at the "Not" one. Everything that isn't A is not A. There isn't a "hasn't been convinced" that is neither. If it isn't belief, it is not belief. That includes not having been convinced and not having made a conscious choice.

 

The above rendition doesnt make any sense. So lets use the original.

Let's say you and a friend are looking at a tree that you've never seen before. Your friend says "there is an odd number of leaves on that tree" but you know he has no way of knowing this and most probably made it up. It seems to me you would use the word disbelieve as "I disbelieve you, I think there is an even number of leaves on the tree", am I right? The use of the word used and detailed by atheists is more like "I disbelieve you, I will not add that piece of knowledge to my understanding of the tree and its number of leaves".

Did you have to carefully weigh the arguments for odd and even leaves in order to use the latter? No. You only need to know that you didn't trust that particular addition of information. However, it still rejects the idea, without embracing the opposite.

No it fails logically, I do not need to think about past that point. The excluded middle merely says it cant be both true and false at the same time which means the same identical thing as the Exclusio maxim I posted earlier.


Okay I'm going to try to go through this with step by step so that you guys can better understand the logic being used along the way and how determinations are made based upon logic which seems to be the biggest problem for everyone to understand what I am talking about.

Anytime you get into logic debate you first need to understand and agree on the definitions of what you're debating.

That said:

Theism = Affirmation of a deity

Atheism = Denial of a deity

Agnostic = neither confirm nor deny the proposition, (indeterminate, with respect to both conditions)

So that keeps this in conformance with logical argument standards.


So the Logical choice of your leaves on the tree example that I would make is that I cannot know how many leaves are on that tree therefore I cannot conclude if there is an even number or an odd number.

That would be the lgically correct position to take under the conditions presented.


what atheists are trying to do is force an illogical condition that's not logically available to them.

So you stated the correct the law however you haven't properly set the framework for your argument in the correct context that's where you guys are running into the problem.

You are trying to moderate a condition by illegaly creating a middle ground that does not exist in logic.

Theism and atheism is binary.





Your venn diagram while proper in its own sense does not properly represent the whole set of conditions, this one does:

You can only be one of the three.




Affirmation of either one is denial of the other.

The only other condition available it agnostic which requires a claim of inconclusion to both.


Atheists cannot logically claim lack of knowledge or lack of belief because they reviewed the proposition and made a conclusion to draw therefore they had knowledge, from that derived a binary belief that the premise is either correct or incorrect, true or false after which they apply some word to convey the expression of their affirmation or denial. (its binary)

So if you disagree that is the starting point to argue the matter.


Now some abbreviated applicable definitions:


Dis·be·lief
:rejection of something as untrue

Be·lief
:that someone or something exists or is true or trustworthy

Lack
:the state of being without

Un·be·lief
:lack of belief



If you use the terms lack and un and absence of belief when referring to an agnostic that would be correct application of the word since an agnostic does in fact lack, does in fact have ansence of belief.

On the other hand if you try to use those same conditions in the sense of an atheist they are not true because the atheist went through a process which concluded a determination of a denial of the existence of a deity.

Hence the confusion is not on the side of theists but on the side of the atheists trying to force square pegs into round holes in attempts to moderate the ends to the middle which is impossible to do in a binary condition.

I do not see a viable counter argument here but the floor is all yours.

 

That's an intelligent question you ask here.
If it were not true,... that Jesus did this or did that,... "How would that effect my belief system"...?

I must admit that,... "Truth still seems important to me though."

 

You sit back and just watch all the bad idea show up,... one after the next.
Its good,...

You are thinking when you do that.
What solutions have you come up with?

I mean,... "What would make these religious people stop repeating ancient ideas,... as if they were true?

 

Perhaps, but whose?

 

correction to the typo in my last post:

"agnostic does in fact lack, does in fact have ansence of belief." should have said in fact have absence of an affirmation or denial since agnostics do in fact have a belief, the belief that they cannot know or make a determination.