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

That doesn't seem true to me. A falsehood is false, a misleading statement is in itself true (or at least can be), but leads someone else to make false assumptions. The falsehoods do not originate from the misleading statement (since in another context, the statement might not be misleading) but from someone else making an assumption (albeit an arguable justifiable one). For you to say "I am not a Republican" is true, because if it was not, the negation would be true "I am a republican" and we know that to be false.

Well, in this case, it was explicitly stated what was meant by the word atheist, in that the definition was provided.

Lack of belief in the existence of God is in itself not a stance on the "the issue", just like the lack of a Lexus is not a car. And in the same way, lacking a Lexus does not necessarily mean that you have another car, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have another car. By saying "Koko lacks belief in the existence of God", I am not saying that he has taken a particular stance, I'm just pointing out one stance that he has not taken.

There seems to be a forum bug here, I can't stop the forum from splitting this into two quotes:

I imagine they've merely shortened the statement.

How is that the context? Many atheists point out that they wouldn't care at all about religion if it wasn't for its influence in political and social matters. It seems to me you have imposed a context which they did not exist in.

I use "Jonah lived in a fish" as a placeholder for stuff like "God hates *****" or religious claims about abortion or stuff like that. I just didn't want the issue to be muddled by secular aspects of those issues.

Most of the arguments I have seen don't really care about whether there actually was an ark, they care more about what the story says about the credibility of the Bible as a whole. In my experience, "because the story of Noah's ark we are justified in challenging the veracity of the Bible" is a much more common argument than "I dismiss Noah's ark because there is no god".

There is nothing wrong with constructing such a model, it's just that it now opens up for arguments that favour non-existence, whereas the gumball example considers two statements with no natural null hypothesis. I do not agree with the arguments which turn non-existence of gumballs/aliens/gods into a naturally favoured null hypothesis, so I constructed the gumball example (well, I constructed an example about the number of leaves in a tree, but someone else recast it into gumballs) so as not to be accused of using such arguments.

Yeah, certainty of a belief is something I could arguably consider as a percentage. The question then becomes how "certainty of belief" relates to "belief". I'm not 100% sure on how you would define a percentage of certainty in belief (and it shouldn't matter for this argument) but I do know that "belief" is defined in terms of accepting something as true. Whether you will accept something as true when you are 80% or 99% or 100% certain is up to you (maybe there is some logical argument to be made, but I don't have one that I am attached to). Whether or not the word belief applies has to do with whether you accept it as true, not what percentage of "certainty of belief" you assign to it.

I'm not convinced that's the same percentage as you mentioned above. You could be certain that 50% of children believe in Santa, or you could be completely without knowledge. It seems to me in this example, "50% belief" applies to the former, whereas in the other example, "50% belief" (or "50% certainty of belief) applies to the latter.

I don't think I have seen anything written explicitly on the subject. This harkens back to philosophical arguments (on some other topic) which Kokomojojo presented, which mentioned both definitions and then chose Kokomojojo's definition. Kokomojojo then argued that that means that those philosophers support his choice, whereas I maintain that those philosophers acknowledge that either can be used, and just picked one out of practicality (for their particular arguments)

The gumball example is not meant to capture every aspect of the debate between god and no god. It is designed to answer one specific subquestion, which is whether an agnostic can be said to lack belief in a specific statement. Therefore, the example is set up so that the reader automatically identifies with the agnostic position (the argument would be lost on any reader who really believed there is an even number of gumballs in my hypothetical jar).

There is nothing about the thought experiment which keeps you from considering a theist someone who has asked the person who put the gumballs in. However, that's not really the part of the example that we care about.

I consider God to be poorly defined, and I withhold judgement until I have been presented with a good definition of God (in practice, this is a stab at poorly defined gods, and atheists'/agnostics' unwillingness to call theists out on it). For instance, consider sun worshippers, who say the sun is a god. I would not be an atheist in that case, I'm pretty sure the sun exists. But is it a god? Frankly, I consider it not up to me to say whether it is a god.

That's of course an extreme example, but consider for instance the cosmological arguments. I think they are valid arguments for god, but I think the god which is argued by Aquinas and others is a very different god to that argued by the Bible. As such, I find I have to be ever-vigilant when it comes to what people mean by god, and I can't really label myself theist or atheist, since it would assume a god concept.

I also find it useful not to get emotionally attached to the trappings of for instance atheism. On places like this forum, I find that people often defend/attack each other along party lines (if by party I mean theological persuasion), whereas I find some of the most interesting arguments are the ones where I disagree with people who I agree with on other topics.

 

Perhaps William Rea and RiaRaeb can comment.

I understand you two are supporters of the lack definition of atheism. xwsmithx and I have a disagreement on what you mean by your statements, so maybe you can help clear it up.

When you say you lack belief, do you mean that you lack any and all related beliefs, such as "the religious arguments have been unpersuasive" or "there is no god" or even the statement "I lack belief in the existence of god", or does it just mean that you lack belief specifically in the statement "there is a god"?

xwsmithx argues that you have claimed to lack all beliefs, which would indeed be illogical. I argue that you have only claimed to lack belief in the statement "there is no god", and that when you say things like "I lack belief, I am an atheist.", you are merely saying "I lack belief" as a shorthand for "I lack the belief in the existence of god".

 

Why do theist make this so damn complicated.

We do not believe in your God!

Seriously, it's just that simple.

 

They cant lack belief, the human brain does not work that way, that has been explained many times.

We engage in a functional inherent valuation process that involves focusing attention on the incoming information in a dynamic bottom-up-top-down fashion, the result of which forms our probabilistic accounts and beliefs about what is observed in the outside world ( Dehaene & Changeux, 2011; Wiese et al., 2014).

Thus, beliefs of individuals are created by mental processes that involve perception, attention, valuation, and storage as well as up-dating of information as described in detail in the previous part of this communication.
[lackers dont update, they just continue to lack. ]

In this scientific examination of believing and belief systems, several distinctions in the meanings of key terms must be kept in mind, for example, in addition to “belief” too often assumed to connote something religious or spiritual, it has also too often been assumed that issues of belief do not concern people who are nonreligious or generically secular ( Stich, 1996). Sometimes it is assumed that they don’t have any beliefs ( Bullivant & Ruse, 2013). But social science [<--the atheist god] research documents that believing abounds in such persons even though the content differs from that in typical religious beliefs ( Schnell & Keenan, 2011).

Your god 'science' has shown that the little 'internet atheist' lacker fad is scientifically incorrect, much the same as the internet flat earthers.

Its well understood, you believe in 'your' god(s).....some, even many believe in the god Koalemus

 

I am very careful to put this into context, first I think the question of the definition of gods is very important.
So basically I lack belief in the existence of gods,of course I have other beliefs.If you have read my posts I have repeatedly asked Koko to define god/gods. Without an agreed definition the word god is meaningless, for instance Prince Philip is regarded as a god by some, clearly he exists but without a clear definition of gods we cannot decide if he exists as a god or not.I realise this is a extreme example but I think it illustrates my point well.

 

which fails on all levels to have linguistic value, iow that is completely meaningless. Koko believes it cannot be known, which is a believe, therefore koko possess beliefs.

 

So then you dont lack belief, you have negating beliefs!

Think what ever red herring you want, the definition of god is irrelevant to the subject matter 'lack'. Swensson used an agreed upon definition with the marble example, it equally failed the lack, or do we need to define marbles in a jar for you too?

 

I have both of them on iggy for unnecessary repetition (the argumentum ad nauseum). If they were in my chatroom, I would have kicked both of them long ago for scrolling. But I did not claim that they claim to lack ALL beliefs, just that they claim they lack belief in God, which I, Koko, and numerous others have all pointed out doesn't really hold water, that if you lack a belief in one thing, then you believe the opposite thing, that if you lack belief in the tooth fairy, then you believe the tooth fairy does not exist. I honestly fail to understand how you can accept that principle (that there are no "lack believers" in the tooth fairy) and yet reject it for God.

 

To whom are you addressing your remark? Because it's been many pages since any theists weighed in on this topic.

 

Certainly I have other beliefs,I believe you may have a serious physiological problem but I can not prove it!
As you stated we all agree on what a marble is, their is no such consensus on what gods are.

 

For this atheist, MATH is God, physics is just below God, and social science is one of the minor saints... still important but far below the physical sciences, logic, and philosophy.

 

It is perfectly possible to be an atheist and believe social science is a load of ****, this is your issue, you cannot understand that being an atheist tells you virtually nothing about a persons world view. Saying social science is the atheist god is simply untrue.

You appear to need a label to pin all your ills upon, atheism is not it.

 

If it makes you feel better to say I have a "God" in science....Okay.

I very much like science even if I do not worship it and simply do not care what you call it.

 

With your posting history and claims of knowing everything that anyone has ever thought is providing all the proof needed to not believe anything you claim.

I revert to my previous position: I don't care! Your claims of beliefs mean nothing to me.

 

If I say that I am an atheist and I lack belief, how does that extend beyond the question of theistic concepts?

I do say that my atheism is a natural extension of my basic skeptic position to lack belief in assertions made without evidence.

 

Yes, it is also my contention that this is all a political argument wrapped in a philosophical veneer. That is perhaps why the arguments feel like like they are pseudo-theistic.

 

It appears gobbledegook abounds.

Atheists don't accept there's a god. Agnostics don't know - and probably don't care. Theists believe in a supernatural being. Simples!

 

Perhaps I can help because, this whole thread is about fundamentalist agnostics and fundamentalist theists with an agenda trying to force a philosophically weak position upon atheists in order to attack them. Among other fallacies, it is attempting to 'shift the burden' and 'strawman' the atheist position and frankly, it is pretty juvenile.

I am an atheist, I lack belief.

 

This was too long to answer on the phone, so I waited till I was back on the computer.

My case is that if a statement is misleading, it is false, because it conveys incorrect information. If you change the context so that the misleading statement is no longer misleading, then it's also no longer false. But then that's true of any false statement. If you change the context of a false statement, you can make it true. Take the example of parallel lines. If you say, "Parallel lines cross," that is a false statement, at least in the Cartesian coordinate system. But if you change the context to non-Cartesian space, parallel lines do cross and the statement becomes true. I take it you do not believe the statement, "A half truth is no better than a lie."

My guess is that it's going to be an uphill battle trying to change the definition of the word in the popular (i.e., theist) imagination.

There are three problems with this, one is the one you're already familiar with, that I believe that "lack belief" = "belief in lack", two is that atheism IS a stance on the "the issue", and that stance is that God does not exist. If you want to choose a different stance (or no stance), you really need to choose a different word rather than trying to redefine one that dates back to ancient Greece. Then the third problem is that the statement that Koko lacks belief in the existence of God is either incorrect, in that he does not lack belief in the existence of God, because he hasn't taken a stand on the issue, or misleading, in that it does not state the full truth of his position, that he lacks belief and disbelief in the existence of God. Either way, it's wrong to say that he "lacks belief in the existence of God".

I have run into the same problem. I can sometimes fix it by removing the formatting of the other person's quote (italics, font, size, color, etc.).

No, they only use half the statement as if that's the full meaning. But as I have shown, that's false and misleading.

But since they are in the decided minority on the issue, they have to be able to claim the moral high ground in order to impose their views on the theistic majority, and changing the definition of atheist is a way to do that. If they don't have to prove their point, then they get to be the "default" position. But it's just another example of begging the question.

Another example of begging the question, in that case. Floods are actually a regular occurrence in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, and the idea that one family had prepared for such a flood by building a boat big enough to hold the whole family and all their farm animals while the remainder of the community had not is an easy one to believe. That it became exaggerated to being the whole world and all the animals on the planet with the passage of time is also easy to believe.

Well, I'm not sure that's true in any case, that the non-existence of gods is the naturally favored one, but it's easy enough to flip the script and choose an example that naturally favors existence. In The Santa Clause, Neal asks Charlie if he's ever seen flying reindeer, and Charlie says yes, and Neal says, "Well, I haven't," and Charlie asks, "Have you ever seen a million dollars?" and Neal says, "No," and Charlie responds, "Just because you haven't seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist." My problem with the gumballs is that it's essentially random rather than logically necessary. So you could ask the question, "Do you believe in coelacanths?" It's easy enough not to believe in coelacanths since they were supposed to be extinct millions of years ago, and no one you or I know has ever or will ever be likely to see one. But we have evidence that they do exist, people have seen and reported on them and taken pictures of them. But you could say the same thing about Bigfoot. There's a coelacanth in the British Museum, the 1938 find. But then the Piltdown man is in the Natural History Museum, but is still fake, so maybe the coelacanth in the British Museum is fake, too. So are coelacanths a real thing or is someone pulling our collective legs? Or would you prefer to be an agnostic and say, "I'm not sure"?

I no longer recall the point of the thread of this part of the discussion.

Yeah, I didn't provide a percentage, I just said you'd end up with a partial belief, that you could only believe it to a certain extent because it's both true and not true.

https://coffeehousequestions.com/2016/08/30/do-atheists-simply-lack-a-belief-in-god/
http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2016/03/atheism-isnt-simply-a-lack-of-belief.html
https://carm.org/i-lack-belief-god (multiple pages of responses to responses, but he is responding to someone with a decided lack of philosophical talent; they are here, here, here, and here; that last one is the most interesting)
http://crossexamined.org/atheism-lack-belief-god/
And that's just from page 1 of Dogpile.

I suppose as an attempt to get the reader to identify with the agnostic position it works, but I fail to see how it helps with the "lack belief" argument. If you say, "I don't know," you don't "lack belief" in just the statement that there are an odd number of gumballs, you also "lack belief" in there being an even number of gumballs. So just saying you "lack belief" in one or the other would still be misleading and false. And no one would. No one would say as a matter of principle, "I don't believe there are an odd number of gumballs in that jar," and leave it at that.

I believe you would be called an "ignostic". From quora: "An ignostic is someone who refrains from making any judgments about God until a rational definition is provided. It is often considered to be a subset of Agnosticism." The term was coined in 1960 by a Jewish rabbi. I don't have a problem with new terms with specific definitions, I do have a problem with people trying to redefine existing terms with new definitions. For example, I refuse to use the word "gay" to mean "homosexual". Gay means happy, dammit. "Don we now our gay apparel" does not mean, "let's put on our homosexual clothes."

 

I know, I've read through. I'm agnostic, once having been a practising christian preacher. Personally, I simply ignore anyone trying to force their ideas on me. I am what I am. In the long run of things it has no meaning. Theist, agnostic, atheist have one end 'dust to dust'.

Anyway, good luck with your task.

 

I don't see why lacking belief is so hard. I have provided plenty of examples, but you haven't really addressed them. Take the statement "2+2=5". I do not hold it as true, so I lack that belief. In this case, I also happen to hold it as false. Take the gumball example. I don't hold "there is an even number of balls" as true, so I lack it, but that doesn't mean I hold "there is an odd number of balls" as true.

 

I have these concerns as well, but they are not important for this particular argument, I'm only interested in whether you think "I lack belief" is incompatible with "I believe the opposite" and/or "I have hold none of the relevant beliefs" (the relevant beliefs being "god exists" or "god doesn't exist").

 

It's not meaningless, it accurately conveys the information that you have not accepted the existence of god as reality. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

But take for instance Kokomojojo. To say "he believes in the existence of god" would be false (and not just potentially misleading, it would be literally incorrect). So the negation has to be true, "he does not believe in the existence of god". However, that does not mean that he believes that there is no god, so clearly, not believing is not the same as believing the opposite.

 

To the statement, "god exists" I do not hold this statement as true.