Reviewing Atheist 'Lack Belief' in Deities theory. <<MOD WARNING ISSUED>>

Yes, as predicted and as Swennson has pointed out you simply fall back on your narrow definition of atheist!
It is a circular argument. Even down to the LOL when you think you have proved your point. And as predicted you have avoided answering my questions.

Your atheist hero thinks atheist's have to have more faith because of hellfire, explain that?

How can an atheist choose which god to consider?

 

This is what I am saying. I am an atheist and I lack belief.

 

Does the belief in any deity have anything to do with having children or being a child of some parents?

Because if after I die, there is nothing more for me, does that mean that my lineage has stopped? How is it possible that I would leave any of me behind after I die? Part of my DNA make up would be in any of my offspring(s). So how could 'I' be reduced to nothing?

I don't know how readily you are or willing, to think about this, but if for every negative thought you had a negative person was 'created' and for every positive thought you had a positive person was 'created', would you say you had more negative or positive thoughts?

 

Mehehehehe... does that mean that when 10,000 atheists say there is no god and one prophet says there is, the onus is on the 10,000 atheists? The prophet is the expert, after all, the "teacher" in this case. Jesus was himself called "teacher" multiple times during his ministry.

 

What makes you think that? Definition is a part of language and language falls under linguistics more than epistemology. "Linguistics is the scientific[1] study of language,[2] and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context" (wiki). "Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge" (wiki). The authors and editors of dictionaries have thought long and hard about this and say things like

"our dictionary programmes constantly monitor the use of language so that our experts can identify and record the changes taking place" (Oxford)
"To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them." (Merriam-Webster)
"We can bring a few hundred examples of a word up and work out what the basic meaning is, and try to arrange an order of meanings that reflects usage" (Oxford University Press)

Actually it does. If it didn't, how could language ever have appeared? The only difference between "rad" and the change english went through when "thou" disappeared in favour of "you" is that the latter was effectively universal (basically everyone says you instead of thou) and "rad" went away like a fad.

Sure thing:
rad[rad]
noun 1.Informal. radical.
adjective 2.Slang. fine; wonderful.
(dictionary.com)

rad
adjective
extremely exciting or good:
a rad new computer game
(Cambridge dictionary)

I don't see a problem. I mean, sure, dictionaries are not always a perfect reflection of usage, but that doesn't mean usage isn't at the core of language. If people talk about gay people and use the word gay and everyone understands the meaning, then what's the problem?

Now, you're using an ambiguous wording here. Your positioning of the negation matters (or more precisely, the word which your negation acts upon). The way you have split "I believe not A" into "I believe not" makes me think you're using the old usage without do-support
They do not sow. (modern) vs. They sow not. (KJB) (wiki)
Those are indeed the same, however, many of the arguments that you have expressed a disagreement with also use statements where the not acts upon the object of the phrase. "I painted my not-house" rather than "I did not paint my house". If you're not using the "I sow not" usage of not, then never mind.

Well, those who claim lack of belief and claim atheist are also most likely those who say that atheism is defined as a lack of belief. Thus, using the another definition of atheist to make further conclusions is equivocation, just like thinking that "Oranges are tasty" refers to paint.

 

Flipping some of this around again so I can respond in the order that I think makes sense.

Yes.

The atheists (or at least the ones saying they lack belief) are the kid saying to his father, "She didn't say 'no'," not the mother.

No, that's still only a half-truth. In order to give the full truth, you'd have to point out that the statment, "you can have candy," was also not uttered. And a half-truth is no better than a lie, according to the old aphorism.

The logic would dictate that the answer would be yes, but because of the weasel words, "lack belief", it becomes vague, which is why a follow-up question is necessary, to clarify the meaning. Which is why when one of these professed atheists say, "I lack belief," I immediately respond with, "Does God exist?" It helps to clarify the issue tremendously. When faced with the question, "does God exist?", there are only three possible answers, and they line up very nicely with the traditional definitions of belief:
Answer: Yes (theist)
Answer: No (atheist)
Answer: I don't know or We can't know for sure (agnostic)

"I have no fruit" would be a step up for these atheists. It's more like the case of you have a fridge full of apples you don't want to share and your guest asks, "Do you have any fruit?" and you answer, "I have no bananas." Yes, that's true, you have no bananas, and your neighbor who has no fruit also has no bananas, but you are only telling a half-truth in saying you have no bananas because you haven't answered the initial question, "Do you have any fruit?" The correct answer is, "Yes, I have some apples, but I don't want you to have any."

It doesn't break down until you start splitting the statements apart and arguing for an equivalency between atheism and agnosticism in regard to "lack of belief". Just as it's a half-truth to say the mother didn't say "no", it's a half truth to say that atheists or agnostics "lack belief" in God. In agnostics' case, they also "lack belief" that God does not exist, so you're only providing a half truth. In atheists' case, they also believe that God does not exist, so you're only providing a half truth. In neither case are you telling the whole story, and in this particular case, it's the crux of the matter that you're leaving out, not an irrelevant detail.

Without digging it up and paraphrasing from memory, you suggested the approach, "We should do X, and because we cannot know whether or not God exists, whatever God might have said about X should not be taken into account." Despite the initial agnostic view of God, the latter part of the statement is clearly an atheistic view of the matter, one which theists would strenuously disagree with. You had initially said agnostics would also agree to the latter part of the statement but then backed off of that.

I don't think you can convince me that those two statements are not the same. Anyone who uses the expression, "I don't believe A" without meaning "I believe Not A" is trying to weasel out of something, like Bill Clinton's, "I did not have sex with that woman," was a weaselly way out of his difficulty because he was using the term "sex" to specifically exclude oral sex in the definition. Are you willing to grant Bill Clinton's definition of "sex" just because that's the definition he wants to use? Or rather would you insist on using the commonly understood definition of sex to include fellatio?

 

I'm with fifthofnovember here, the only belief I have said anything about is "the arguments have not been persuasive". Atheists will be happy to prove that to you all day, their very existence is undeniable proof of it.

However, when it comes to whether someone is an atheist, only whether they fulfil the definition matters, and given the suggested definition is a lack of the belief in the existence of god, that's the only belief which matters (in order to determine what atheism is). Certainly, atheism is not a lack of all beliefs, atheists believe things like "I like strudels" or "2+2=4", but it is a lack of one specific belief. To not have a Lexus is a lack, but that doesn't mean that you are completely without possessions, just that none of your possessions are a Lexus.

Could you link to exactly what it is you count as me agreeing? I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, I just want to double check that's actually what I meant and you're not taking things out of context.

Another relevant way of showing that belief in A and A are different is to look at the relevant proofs. Consider the statement "the Eiffel tower exists", in contrast to "I believe the Eiffel tower exists". A = "the Eiffel tower exists", b(A) = I believe the Eiffel tower exists. In order to prove that the Eiffel tower exists, a reasonable proof might be to go to Paris and have a look at it. If it didn't exist, then I wouldn't find it. However, to prove that I believe that the Eiffel tower exists, all I need to do is think about it. If I didn't believe it, it is impossible for me to find it in my brain.

 

This rabbit hole goes pretty deeply (I've been at it with Kokomojojo for quite a while). You and I have the same understanding of what a statement is, I assume. Basically, any sentence that has a truth value. That statement will be true or false. A person might believe it, and whether he believes it will be also be true or false. Those two are unrelated (well, at least not necessarily related) facts.

The problem is that when Kokomojojo thinks of a statement A, he doesn't think of a logic statement, he thinks of a person thinking the logic statement. To him, A is not whether there is a god. To him, A is the thought that a person has that there is a god. It is true that you can't think the thought "there is a god" and not believe there is a god. It is then also more or less true that you can't believe a statement and not believe that you believe it (not super true, but close enough).

Basically, the problem I have run into is that he cannot seem to fathom a statement without a stater, whose inaccuracies we are limited by. That's not super weird, it is not strange that someone who's unfamiliar or shaky with logic vocabulary assumes a statement needs to be stated in order to be a statement. However, it does make it very tricky to talk about the actual matter of things.

Thus he has taken a couple of logical statements which are true in a very limited scope, and applied them all over the place. There are some other issues too, but I think the above is the bulk of your disagreement right here.

Edit: Don't take that as the conversation being a lost cause, take it as a way to get further into the conversation without having to find all of this out piece by piece.

 

No problem

You're depending on a bunch of context which isn't necessarily true (or properly corresponding to the atheism case). I think it is more clearly shown in the fruit example below, but I will try here too. In this case, you've made "what did your mother say?" into the important question. By defining atheism to be the lack of belief, that shifts the important question to be "did your mother say no?", to which "she didn't say no" is the full information needed.

Now, you could argue that that's clearly not the important question, that whether your mother thinks you should have candy is the important question, which maps to "is there a god". There, I would say I agree, so why are we discussing atheism which by the definition provided corresponds to "did she say no?" instead?

I mean, as previously established, it depends fully on which definition you're using. I hope it's clear that if you use the definition I have suggested, then what's in brackets in your list is not accurate.

What makes "Do you have any fruit?" the initial question? In this case, it is an atheist who introduced the concept of atheism, and defined it as a lack of belief in a god, which is equivalent to not having bananas. I would say that makes "do you have any bananas" the initial question, and "I have no bananas" answers that in full. Whether you have apples is not important to answer that question. If another person then make a specific argument, it is perfectly reasonable to ask "you don't have any bananas, but do you have any apples?", just like it is reasonable to ask "you don't believe in god, but do you believe that there is no god?", but the answer is not automatic given that one is an atheist or given that one does not have bananas.

Now, if you want to talk about the belief that there is no god, you're welcome to ask about that belief. However, I think you'll find that many atheists (by the definition I have suggested) don't hold it, and many who do don't care that much about it. You don't have to go the roundabout route via an ambiguously defined word to talk about that.

I would agree with all of this except for one part, which is that given the definition I have suggested, you have labelled something "atheist's case" which corresponds to your understanding of atheism, but not the understanding I have suggested.

You're right, "I lack belief" is not an answer to the question "Is there a god?", it is an answer to the question "do you have the belief that there is a god?". Atheists who are less concerned with whether there actually is a god and more concerned with the problems that belief in a god can bring would be more interested in the latter.

I mean, the discussion here is not about what agnostics think. Sure, I think there are agnostics who fall on either side of that argument.

So the problem that keeps appearing here is that you talk about statements as expressed and therefore (arguably) believed by people. You say "anyone who uses the expression", but I'm not talking about a statement as it is uttered by a person with their own beliefs and angles, I'm talking about whether it is actually true.

Plato believed that the earth was the centre of the solar system (I paraphrase, I just picked the first name on the geocentricism wiki page). He would say "the earth is the centre of the solar system. He would also say "I believe the earth is the centre of the solar system". Everything he uttered would be based on or at least consistent with the earth being the centre of the solar system.

However, that does not mean that the earth *is* the centre of the solar system. The earth is not the centre of the solar system, and Plato was just wrong. Plato *saying* "the earth is the centre of the solar system" is not the same as the earth actually being at the centre of the solar system. Do you agree?

As for sex, yes, I am willing to grant him that definition, but I am not willing to grant him the permission to be vague about which definition he uses. By comparison, atheists have repeated the definition of atheism which they are using.

 

Absolutely not, because a prophet claims authority from something atheists lack belief in. I would be interested to know where you get the information Jesus was called a teacher, certainly not from first hand knowledge. In fact the very existence of Jesus is questionable, and he did not have anything new to say.

 

No, it was you that decided the onus was based on the percentage of those in question, not me. I just showed you where you wrong with that theory. How is a prophet an expert. Mohammed was a prophet. So according to your logic all Christians are wrong because they have yet to show evidence that Mohammed was wrong. Whenever producing a positive the onus is on them. Mathematical equations are are neither a negative or a positive. The onus of evidence is by all. Remember, show your work.

 

Also there were many prophets so according to his logic anyone who did not agree with any of these prophets has to show evidence they are wrong. Which really means the entire population has to show evidence that every other god and other religion is wrong. I guess we all have our work cut out for us or we have to accept every deity ever mentioned existed and every religion ever practiced are right.

 

The problem here that anyone who does not agree with you with the lackers version is that you include everyone and everything in your definition that is not a professed theist to be an atheist. simply look at willie rays logic, the 20ton gorilla thats on the table in front of you.

Even if we look past the fact that everything in your head is a belief, the notion that God either exists or does not exist since it cannot be proven is a hypothetical. The only way anyone can know this is through expression therefore it requires a statement. Removing the argument from statement to some purely abstract math style problem departs from actual human life and thought processes, the proof being from a practical sense useless, so I dont go there as its not reality.

Your black hole use of lack includes rocks as atheists.

I am agnostic and I have willie ray you and a couple others telling me I what to believe, that I am really some sort of atheist, I am not, and neither am I a theist. Internet atheists do not practice what they preach.

You are trying to say there is 2 definitions, and like the word gay, if you run around calling everyone with a smile gay you will get your asses beat to a pulp, why because your approach is the black hole approach that includes people that should not be included, just like your lacker definition the usage includes the wrong people.

You cant legitimately toss the logic/reason process in the trash to accept an absurdity, which is what the lacker version does. In your lack world agnostic and nontheist does not exist, they are all sucked in as part of atheist and I reject those fanciful imaginations.

You still have not responded to the counter, (and neither has any other lack believer)

Theist: "lack of belief in nonexistence of God" now everything in the universe is a theist.

I can do black hole definitions too! So what are rocks now? Theists or atheists?

 

So then the question becomes, why are you happy with the latter question being the definition of atheism rather than the former? "She didn't say, 'no'," is clearly a subterfuge, a bullshit answer, a half-truth and a lie. In the same way, "I lack belief," is a subterfuge, a bullshit answer, a half-truth and a lie. The question isn't, "What is the state of your mind?" the question is, "Does God exist?" We know that whatever answer that follows is going to reflect your belief, unless you're in Spain in the 15th century or Saudi Arabia today.

I have tried to show repeatedly that "lack belief" is nonsense, that the definition you use cannot hold water. I'm especially taken with the idea that if theism is a position based on a statement that can be true or false, so is atheism. Taking the position that "I lack belief in God" is not a statement that can be true or false. Theism is not a statement of a mindset, "I believe in God," it's a statement of the truth of the claim, "God exists." Are you willing to change the definition of theism to be only a mindset and not a claim to truth? So then theists, atheists, and agnostics are all correct, because they are only stating a mindset and not a claim to truth? Is theism as true as atheism because it only describes what people believe? If that's the case, then atheism ≠ not theism, since both would be true statements.

I was just going off your apples and bananas example. The traditional atheists would say, "I have no bananas," but the modern day atheists would say, "I lack belief in bananas." That doesn't answer the question. Likewise, asking the question, "Do you believe there is no god?" isn't one these atheists want to answer because that throws them into the same dilemma as theists, that a) they have a belief, and b) they have to support that belief with proof.

The "ambiguously defined word", i.e., God, is another weaselly way out of answering the question. Stand up for what you believe, ******mit. You're not in any danger of being executed in the US today for being a dyed in the wool atheist.

See above.

And yet they deny that atheism brings its own problems, such as communism.

What do you want to argue is actually true or not true? Because I think for the most part here, the underlying truth or falsity of the statements is actually irrelevant. God's existence or nonexistence doesn't really matter to the definition of atheist and theist. And the addition of the expression, "I believe" to the statement, "X", only makes the statement, "I believe X," true, it doesn't add or subtract from the truth of the statement "X". What I think you're leaving out, particularly in your Plato example, is that when someone says, "X", they are already expressing a belief, one which can be wrong, as Plato's was. But what we're discussing here isn't the underlying truth of X, but about people's beliefs about X. Socrates is actually a good example, one that others have brought up in this thread. His is an interesting case, but I didn't pick up on the nuances until I started reading Greek comedies. When Socrates went on trial for being an atheist, his actual beliefs weren't on trial, his parodied beliefs were on trial. Socrates had for years been portrayed in Greek comedy as a fool, an atheist, and a gadfly. Socrates did all he could in his trial to show that the parody of himself was not him, that he was a theist and a wise man, but to no avail. The parody version of him was firmly anchored in the minds of his judges and they found the parody version guilty. Neither side was trying to prove whether Zeus did or did not piss in a colander to make it rain, the example Socrates used, only whether Socrates did or did not believe it. Socrates said he did, they said he didn't, and ordered his banishment or execution. The lesson of Socrates isn't about the dangers of theism or atheism, but about the dangers of allowing the popular culture to define who you are. Most people when asked, "Who said, 'I can see Russia from my house'?" will answer, "Sarah Palin." But it wasn't, it was Tina Fey who said it. The same kind of thing happened to Socrates, the parody version in the plays became the "real" Socrates and the actual Socrates lost his identity, and his life.

If you say, "I believe God exists," I believe you. If you say, "I believe God does not exist," I believe you. If you say, "I lack belief in God," I say you don't understand the nature of belief. The 2+2=4 example is a good one. I "lack belief" that 2+2=5. Why do I lack that belief? Because I have a belief that 2+2=4. If I did not know that 2+2=4, I wouldn't "lack belief" that 2+2=5, I would be innumerate. But because I know that 2+2=4, I "lack belief" that 2+2=5. In a similar vein, if I say that I lack belief that 2+2=5, you are logically entitled to believe that I believe something else. You are not prohibited from speculating what it is I actually believe just because I say I don't believe something else. In fact, I must have a belief to even express a disbelief. Otherwise, I would say, "I don't know." I wouldn't say, "I lack belief," if in fact I didn't know. I couldn't lack belief if in fact I didn't know. "Do you believe in rookles?" "I don't know, what the hell's a rookle?" How can I believe or disbelieve in something until I know what it is? I don't lack belief in rookles, because I just made up a new word without a definition.

I am not.

 

Ugh, you people don't even know when you're being mocked.

 

Care to wager they will simply hand wave this away for the umpteenth time? They cant make the appropriate logical connections, and they wiggle and squirm into every rabbit hole they can find even if it purely imaginary. This amounts to their desire and obsession to destroy all logical/philosophical accountability for the (internet) atheists. They have a problem though because theists can make the same claim and be equally vague and unaccountable. Theist: "lack of belief in nonexistence of God".

 

Using a double negative here. Now you are getting ridiculous.
Theist: "lack of belief in nonexistence of God"

 

This is the only definition that matters in my case, I am an atheist, I lack belief.

 

Well, an atheist has to be a person. I don't know that gorillas count as people.

Believing is something that goes on in our heads. Proving things is stuff that goes on in our heads. Knowing whether something is true or false is something that goes on in our heads. I'm not talking about anything that goes on in our heads (for this particular argument).

Consider again Plato. Plato believes "the earth is the centre of the solar system". We call that A. Plato believes A. Plato would say "I believe A". Plato might also say "A is true" (or simply "A"). However, everything that goes on in Plato's head and comes out of Plato's mouth is irrelevant, because in point of fact, the earth moves around the sun. It does not matter what Plato believes. It does not matter what Plato thinks he can prove, or that he knows that he can't prove it. This idea of course relies on the fact that the earth is the centre of the solar system. If it is so that I am wrong, then the opposite argument is true (just switch to "the earth is not the centre of the solar system).

The point is not that I as a human really really know that the earth is the centre of the solar system, the point is that regardless of what goes on in our heads, there is a fact to the matter.

Again, atheists are required to be persons. Rocks are not persons.

I have not told you what you believe, all my arguments are about what label we the english speaking world put on you (for certain purposes).

Yep, I would probably get my behind kicked, but not because I was wrong, but because I insinuated something else. Any behind-kicking I am due is a reaction to people using the wrong definition. When mocking someone, it's pretty likely that one says one uses one definition but in fact uses another, so again, the use of definitions is perfectly reasonable, but one's admission to that might not be.

Being a part of something else does not mean it stops existing. "Oranges" are a part of "fruit", that doesn't mean the word or concept oranges doesn't exist. Remember that the logic I've shown allows for atheist agnostics. No problem. Agnostics have not disappeared, either as a concept or a word.

The only reason why my argument works is that "lack of belief in a god" (or varieties thereof) is in the definition. What you have provided is not in any definition I've seen, so it does not follow that the same argument can be made for theists.

 

It has been the premise of much comedy, such a simple concept that I cannot understand how it is taking so many posts to explain it?

Two Nuns in a bath.
1st - Where's the soap?
2nd - Yes it does doesn't it!

Who's the president of China?

 

I get the feeling that if they don't get the mock because it goes over their heads that the rest of what I'm saying goes over their heads, too. Honestly I feel like I need a translator with me at all times to explain what I'm saying to the "normal" people. That might get me into trouble, too, though...

Me: Well, if you're going to be an Equus africanus about it, I suppose I can't help that.
Translator: He says you're a jackass.

 

There we are then, all that time and trouble proving there is no god, and all along you were one! And by looks of it your first worshiper too!

 

It's a theistic love-in for sure.

 

I'm happy with either question/definition, I'm just not happy with people jumping back and forth between them (that's how we get "oranges are tasty" - "then drink paint"). In this case, Kokomojojo responded to an argument which was made with a specific definition. We then have to stick to that definition or be guilty of equivocation. If the question was "did she or did she not utter the word no?", then "she didn't say no" is not at all a subterfuge. It is a subterfuge only because you had already decided on a question.

Sure "I lack belief in god" is a statement. Why shouldn't it be? It is a sentence that has a truth value (you will find many who state it or an opposite of it). It is however not the statement "there is no god". "I lack belief in the existence of a god" is a claim which is much easier to prove than "there is no god", the former simply requires you to know your own mind on the matter.

It seems to me you have not understood what I am saying, so it's not super surprising that your refutations don't hit home.

"I believe there is a god" is correct for everyone who believes there is a god. "I believe there is no god" is correct for everyone who believes there is no god. However, that's not the same as saying that "there is a god" or "there is no god" is true (since people can believe things even though they're really false).

You're mixing analogies here. Bananas already corresponded to "a belief in the existence of a god" (or was it no gods). "I lack belief in bananas" would be "I lack belief in belief in god". I'm not sure what that would mean. Maybe it would make sense, but I can tell that it's not what we were talking about.

True. So why would they want to make claims that they cannot defend, and maybe not even hold? I also don't claim "there is an odd number of gumballs in the jar", does that make me unfit to criticise the guy who claims there are an even number?

No, but I am in danger of someone changing the subject and talking distracting from the real issue. The criticism against "Jonah lived in a fish" is not at all hindered by the notion that "there is no god" is not well supported. If someone says "Jonah lived in a fish" and someone else says "that doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny" and the first person says "well, you can't prove there is no god", that is not actually a good argument against the second person's criticism.

I'm not arguing either point, I just want to contrast those truths/falsehoods with statements about belief. For instance, the underlying statements have to be true or false (there either is a god or there isn't) which is the law of the excluded middle. However, the middle between beliefs in those statements is not excluded (you either believe there is a god or you believe there is no god, but you can also believe neither of those statements). It's useful to be able to talk about those sorts of truths, without Kokomojojo thinking that I refer to statements that I personally just believe really strongly.

Oh yes, my argument is structured to take into account what is true. The context for this discussion is the debate about whether God exists. With this context, we know that if someone says "there is a god", that shouldn't make us conclude that there is a god, it should make us conclude that that person believes there is a god.

Given that people can be wrong when they say "there is a god" or similar, I don't base my arguments on such utterances. They are unreliable, and it's easy to get lost in what means what. I prefer thinking that the person says "I believe there is a god" (which is much more reliable, since people tend to know what they think). As you and Kokomojojo have pointed out, we can draw the same conclusions from that utterance (but talking about "there is a god" makes it unclear whether we're talking about the actual existence of god or a person believing in the existence of god).

I don't see why you couldn't lack belief in 2+2=5 even if you didn't know 2+2=4. If you didn't know what 2+2 was, would you accept it as true that it was 5? No, if you were unsure and had no idea, you wouldn't accept it as true. You may suspect that it *might* be true, but you don't accept it. So, your state does not qualify as a belief in 2+2=5. So you lack it. I don't see why you being innumerate changes that logic.

Similarly with rookles, if you don't know what they are, why would you accept it as true (accepting something as true being a relevant part of the definition of belief)? And if you don't accept it as true, how is that not a lack of belief in that statement?

 

As you should well know, one can be both a-gnostic (not knowing) and a-theistic (not believing). In fact, that is the default state, the state which prompted you to reject both the 6 and ¬6 options because you don't know. It isn't until someone convinces themselves that they do know that theism starts to form.

Sorry, I thought we were talking about real life atheists. I guess I have no idea what "internet atheists" believe. Lucky we've got an expert here to tell us all.