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

Atheism means lack of belief in a god or gods. An atheist is someone who lacks a belief in a god or gods.

114 pages and this has not changed.

 

If that's what atheism was used to mean, no further explanation would be necessary. However, further explanation is necessary, because the modern day "lack" atheists are not using the term in its historical meaning. They are trying to redefine the term at the same time that they are using it.

It's more like the difference between "I am a Democrat" and "I lack Republicanism". Not being a Republican is not what being a Democrat means, it means you subscribe to a whole series of political issues on which the Democratic party has made a stand. While not being a Republican is true of Democrats, there are a whole host of people who are also not Republicans (me included) who do not subscribe to the Democratic party platform. But if people found being identified as Democrat problematic, and started going around trying to redefine the term in the sense of "lacking Republicanism," you would rightfully dismiss their efforts as pointless revisionism. (Or at least most people would.)

Again, you are trying to create a third alternative where only two exist. I urge you to inquire of everyone you know who says, "I don't believe in God," whether God exists. You will quickly find that the two statements, "I don't believe in God," and, "I believe God does not exist," are interchangeable. This isn't an accident or a happenstance of the limitations of language or logic but a necessary consequence of the way the mind processes information. If I say, "I have a rock," you have a concrete (so to speak) concept of what it is I possess. If I say, "I have something that is not a rock," you have practically zero concept of what it is I possess. Your mind is unable to process the phrase "not a rock" into a concrete concept because it conveys almost no information. Knowledge itself has been defined as "justified true belief" because there's no difference in the mind between belief and knowledge except certainty. Without belief, there can be no knowledge. We have added the concept of "not" or "lack" to the area of belief simply because we can do so with the language, but in the mind, there's no such thing as a "not belief" or a "lack of belief". There's only beliefs. You believe A to be true and B to be false. You believe A to be true and not A to be false. You can express the statement, "I don't believe B," but the reality in the mind is that you in fact believe B to be false. There can be no other alternative.

Actually I am being unambiguous. It is the "lack belief" atheists who are guilty of equivocation, because they do in fact have a belief, that God does not exist. Ask them and see whether or not I am right.

Not assumptions but conclusions. An assumption is made on no data, a conclusion is made on some data, whether or not it is sufficient depends on whether or not the conclusion is accurate. In the case of the story, the conclusions all turned out to be accurate based on very limited data, but it was sufficient. If someone says, "I am an atheist," you can draw a number of conclusions about that person. If someone says, "I am an atheist, I lack belief," you can draw a great many more conclusions about that person, such as that they never studied psychology.

Yes, I have met many of them. They don't say, "I am an atheist," they say, "I'm not religious." Those are two very different claims.

Odds are not more persuasive than evens, but not is more persuasive than is. "Not" conveys greater knowledge than a claim to knowledge in and of itself does. Consider the expressions, "God exists," and, "God does not exist." In the first instance, you will dismiss the person's statement as an expression of personal belief. In the second instance, you will ask, "Oh? How do you know?", as if not conveys greater knowledge in some way. It doesn't, but that's the way we interpret the expression.

No, because in your original expression, you used, "There is an odd number." I specifically wanted to show how the negation would seem to make a greater claim to knowledge.

"Reasonable" is sufficient. This is why we get pissed off when people mislead us, because we make reasonable conclusions based on their statements. We don't say, "Okay, you got me, that was perfectly logical." No, we say, "You bastard, you deceived me."

Think of it as "fuzzy logic" instead of "Boolean logic". The mind doesn't have an on/off switch when it comes to logic, whereby it can accept statements at their face value and not draw conclusions based on those statements. In the automobile example koko gave earlier, in which the broken down car seller said, "runs great!", you would presume that means it can go under its own power, not that the engine will start up and run. Boolean logic would say that his statement is true, but fuzzy logic (human logic) would say that his statement is false, because it was misleading, and intentionally so. Likewise, if I say I am not a Republican, I am making a (fuzzy logic) false statement, because by and large I subscribe to Republican policies and vote for Republican candidates. It's true I am not a Republican, I am registered as a different party member, but if I don't specify that the party I am registered with is more conservative than the Republican party, then I am being misleading in just saying I am not a Republican.

Actually, their "other definition" is a copout meant to get out of having to construct any arguments, and in case you haven't noticed, they don't. They offer absolutely zero support for their contentions and instead insist that all the burden of proof is on the other side. All they can do is repeat ad nauseum, "I lack belief, squawk, I lack belief, squawk!" It's intellectually lazy as well as false.

 

They provided further explanation, they pointed out how they were using the word. Orange was used to mean the fruit before it meant the colour, that doesn't mean that orange never could become a valid word for the colour orange.

So in this example, being a Republican corresponds to believing that there is a god, being a Democrat corresponds to believing that there is no god. I believe my arguments can be perfectly represented in this example, and will try to do so below.

Not being a Republican is the same as lacking Republicanism
Similarly, not believing in god is the same as lacking the belief in god.

Not being a Republican is not what being a Democrat means (i.e. being a Democrat is more than just not being a Republican)
Similarly, not believing in god is not what "believing that there is no god" means. (i.e. believing there is no god is more than just not believing there is a god)

While not being a Republican is true of Democrats, there are a whole host of people who are also not Republicans (you included) who do not subscribe to the Democratic party platform.
Similarly, while "not believing there is a god" is true of those who "believe there is no god", there are a whole host of people who also "do not believe god exists" (agnostics included) who do not subscribe to the idea that "no god exists".

At this point, I haven't used the word atheism yet, since that's a sore point, so we might as well try to get the rest of the ground work done first.

At this point, the question becomes which is the information that one needs to convey. If someone asks you what your political stance is, saying "I'm not a Republican" is probably a misleading statement. However, if someone's trying not to take in your entire political stance, but is interested in whether you are a Republican, then "I'm not a Republican" is not necessarily a misleading statement.

Claims like "God hates homosexuality" don't correspond to "I'm a rightie", they correspond to "I am in the Republican party" (in that constitutional conservatives and agnostics would disagree, even if they're not Democrats or believe there is no god). When presented with the claim "I am in the Republican party"/"God hates homosexuality", the relevant information is "I am not a Republican"/"I do not believe in god".

"In practice always true at the same time" is not the same as "truly the same statement". If you go to every person who says "I have lost my entire arm" and ask "have you lost your hand", they will all say yes. That does not mean that losing a hand and losing an arm is interchangeable. For instance, people like Kokomojojo won't tell you they lack belief, but according to this understanding, he does.

When I'm talking about not believing, I'm not talking about some weird not-believing action that ones brain might perform. The notion of not believing is not in itself a thing that your brain physically does (so it is not hindered by the fact that it's not something that the brain cannot perform). Just like lacking a Lexus is only abstractly something you have. You don't have to go to the store and buy an absence of Lexuses.

A lack is something that you don't have. If you believe A, then you believe A. Otherwise you lack that belief. That is what the word lack means. If you on top of that believe not A, or if you are undecided, is not relevant. You might believe not A or be undecided (maybe there are more options, I don't know) but which one it is, is in itself not conveyed by the fact that you lack the belief in A.

What happens if you make the argument you made here in the politics analogy? You wrote: 'It is the "lack belief" atheists who are guilty of equivocation, because they do in fact have a belief, that God does not exist. Ask them and see whether or not I am right.' It becomes 'It is the non-Republicans who are guilty of equivocation, because they are in fact in a main party, the Democratic party. Ask them and see whether or not I am right.'. As you can see, I've replaced each term with its equivalent term in the party politics analogy, and while your statement is true for Democrats, it fails to take constitutional conservatives into account.

It's very possible that they do, but that is not included in the claim "I do not believe in the existence of god". Just like many non-Republicans are Democrats, but that doesn't mean that being a non-Republican means you have to be a Democrat.

I'm not trying to argue that everyone who believes there is no god gets some kind of free pass just because it can be phrased as a lack, just that by saying "I lack belief", only the information that they lack belief has been presented. There may be more information, but it is not necessarily included in the statement "I lack belief". You may extract it out of them if you want to, but that's separate issue.

Fair enough, I can use the word conclusion like that. A conclusion which you make on insufficient data is not the same as the statement from which you drew the conclusions. If you said "I like oranges" and I concluded from that, inaccurately (or for that matter accurately) that you like pickled herring, I would still not be justified in saying that liking oranges is the same as liking pickled herring.

Sure you can, and you might even be correct, but you would not be justified in saying that your conclusion is the same as the statement from which you drew the conclusion.

I found several of them calling themselves atheists, I would imagine including many of those who have occasionally posted in this thread.

I don't understand this. If I had no additional knowledge, I would find "there is not an even number of gumballs" to be exactly the same as "there is an odd number of gumballs" to be exactly equivalent, and neither to be more persuasive than the other. I mean persuasive here in the sense that actually holds a justification for belief, not deception.

I don't think the switch from "even" to "not odd" makes any difference in the claim whatsoever. Maybe you're referring to persuasiveness in the sense that you might deceive people, but I think that's highly subjective. There are many cases when clear messages without several steps using negations would be more persuasive.

Deception doesn't necessarily mean untruth. It is quite possible to say perfectly true things and still be deceptive.

What you're describing here is not usually what is meant by fuzzy logic, fuzzy logic won't say it is false, it will assign a number between 0 and 1 to describe the truth value. It seems to me what you're describing is not logic at all. In logic, conclusions follow necessarily from its premises, however, in your line of thought, "I am a Democrat" seems to follow from "I am not a Republican" even though it is possible to be for instance a constitutional conservative, who is not a Republic, yet is not a Democrat.

Yes, and the result is that they will not have presented a justification for their actual beliefs. That's in itself not a problem, just like me not justifying that I like oranges is not a problem if we're discussing whether god exists.

 

See, I am discussing reality and you are discussing theory. You have constructed this imaginary set of people who "lack belief in God" and dumped atheists and agnostics into it, but they are two separate groups of people who do not share common beliefs. Using your arm analogy, you have constructed an imaginary set of people who "have lost an arm" but have not "lost a hand". There is no such set of people. It's an empty set. (There are thalidomide people who were born with hands but no arms, but they have not "lost an arm" since they never had one.) Likewise, the set of all people who do not believe in God but do not "believe there is no God" is an empty set. There are no such people. Agnostics like koko do not fit the first category however much you might like to dump them in it because they don't take a stand on the question.

By the way, constitutional conservatives also tend to belong to the "God hates homosexuality" group. The "God hates homos" group is pretty much limited to that one church, since Christianity calls on its believers to hate the sin, not the sinner.

 

So then, according to your logic its possible to 'lack belief' in A but 'have' A, despite the lacking, since 'lacking belief in A' says nothing about the actual possessing/not possessing A regardless of your lack of belief.

 

I don't know what you mean by "have" A. A is a statement, you can believe it or you can "not believe" it. I don't know any other way in which you can "have" A. If you believe it, then you believe it. Otherwise, you don't.

Lacking A is by definition not having it. Lacking a belief in A says something about you having a belief in A, but it does not say anything about you believing "not A".

I know you don't accept what I say here, I'm just making the point that I have made my arguments in terms of believing A and believing not A, not about "having A". If you want to make an argument based on "having A", you're welcome to do so, but you're going to have to tell me what you mean by it.

 

Its clear the lackers whole premise is based upon illegally splitting the meaning of a single premise with one and only one intended meaning into 2 distinct unintended meanings. (out of context)

I believe in God answers YES to the question does God exist
I do not believe in God answers NO to the question does God exist
and agnostic is no clue either way.

Splitting 'believe' from 'god exists' and handling it separately (as a dual premise) is an error and removes proper context and no longer responds to the question does God exist which is the 'intended' premise, then they illegally substitute belief as one premise and exists as a second premise.

 

and thats explained in my response to WSmith in the prior post

for the statement "I lack belief in wheaties so I only eat 1 serving per day instead of 2".

this is a logically/syllogistically correct statement, since lack does not mean complete absence.

Lack--Talk about a word with maximum equivocation!

(it means he has wheaties and eats wheaties anyway, even though he lacks belief in wheaties.)

How about this popular one; "I lack belief in God, but pray anyway just in case",--equivocation, compared to I dont believe God exists so whats the sense in praying?--no equivocation

 

Lacking belief in wheaties is different from lacking wheaties. I lack wheaties, for I have none, yet I don't lack belief in them, I have had them in the past.

To believe something is to accept it as true. For it to make sense to pray, you would only have to conclude that god's existence is possible, not necessarily conclude that his existence is true (if you find Pascal's wager persuasive). I don't necessarily see any equivocation problem here (although I might not agree with all of the logic needed to reach that conclusion).

 

I have 2 boxes yet I lack enough wheaties to eat 2 servings per day.

Thats why I only have 2 boxes, if I believed in wheaties I would have 4 boxes and eat 2 servings per day, but I lack belief in wheaties.

On the other hand if I did not believe in wheaties I'd have none and never eat them.

But you can still lack belief in God because its not 100% proven God exists, thereby you choose to pray to God anyway, despite your lack of belief.

That is logically sound and shows the lacker equivocation.

 

I wouldn't say that, I'm just discussing a very precisely defined part of reality (and theory for that matter). It is possible, I daresay necessary, to consider arguments one at a time.

I don't see why grouping together people who do not share common beliefs is a problem. If I am interested in only the fact that they are unconvinced by religious arguments, they have that in common. As long as the topic of the discussion is the disagreement with the religious claim, I don't see why their disagreement on another topic has to split the group (and in particular why it would be impossible to consider that group).

The interesting thing is that the idea of losing an arm is different to the idea of losing a hand (as can be shown by the fact that there are people who have lost a hand but not an arm). It is possible to discuss the idea of having lost a hand and the idea of having lost an arm separately. There will be overlap, but the essence of the two ideas are different. Indeed, there could be no people at all, we could be disembodied spirits talking about people losing arms. Or we could discuss someone who looks like Rayman (Rayman). Not because someone looking like Rayman exists, but because we are able to separate the ideas in our heads and consider them separately.

Therefore, it should be possible, and probably useful, to discuss the idea of not belonging to the group who are determined that there is a god, without getting lost in the difference between agnostics and those who believe there is no gods.

Suresure, I had no intention of making sure the different sides of the religious argument and its party political analogue line up. The path of least resistance was just lining up the most relevant negative claims, "I do not believe in god" with "I am not a Republican".

 

I think this is a lovely example of the fact that partial beliefs, something presented as a percentage of belief doesn't really make sense.

I have yet to be presented with an explanation of what it means to believe something to an extent other than 100% or 0%. Give me a hypothetical/real example or someone believing something to 50%, or some other intermediate percentage.

 

That said you must agree that these self proclaimed 'agnostic-atheists' are a few screws short of a full deck and lack is the wrong term to express the condition of God does not exist......

Whats wrong with the examples I already gave you?
I lack belief in God but I pray anyway just in case.
Clearly its less than 100 percent lack since they pray anyway.

 

I agree that lack is the wrong word to express the condition of God not existing, but then again, that's not what they've been trying to do.

I agree it's less than 100%, I would say it's 0%. They haven't accepted that it is true, so the criteria for belief has not been met, so there is no belief. By praying, they might acknowledge the possibility of there being a god, but that's not the same as believing it.

 

Are you still at it after 115 pages? The definition of atheist is pretty lax and just means "lack of Gods." Dictionaries have many definitions of atheists including "Lack of belief" and "Belief God doesn't exist." Agnosticism also has a wide range of definitions which often over-laps with atheism. Words in English often have multiple slightly different definitions because millions of people will often use the same word slightly differently and even contradictory. Its so arrogant of you to tell the whole world that they have to use a word exactly the same way you do.

 

Especially when he misuses the word itself, while demanding otherd do so too.

 

I am an atheist, I lack belief.

 

You can't have a partial belief because that partiality becomes part of the overall belief.

Every time you put a figure on your conviction (I have no idea how you do that by the way) you simply create a different belief that is not the same as the original! It is an absurd argument that demonstrates how some people will say absurd things in order to convince themselves. 'I lack belief by 50%' is the belief, it is not the same animal as 'I lack belief'. Time to cut through this nonsense.

 

Willfully misuses it by quote mining dictionaries that agree with the particular definition that he feels makes his case.

 

really? where do you think the self proclaimed agnostic-atheists come from?

They sure as hell aint pure bred atheists theyre half breeds! Mutts! LOL

 

I lack belief, I am an atheist.

 

Properly it must negate theist, not 50%.
The only way to negate theist is if atheist is disbelief, denial.

Otherwise you have theists who lack belief in the nonexistence of God and claim that newborns incapable of comprehending any of this are theist by default and at the same time atheists claiming that these same newborns are atheist by default.

Lackers appear to be lacking more than just belief.

No there is no overlap in the better philosophical circles.

theism God exists
atheism God does not exist
agnostic abstains, the truth cant be known, therefore unknowable.
Arrogant? Its what philosophers do. Sort out the lay peoples messes for them.

 

sorry willie ray, what do you expect when you say such silly ****.
half breed atheists, novel for sure!

You should thank me for answering your question. Now you are a step above the rest because not only do you have an idea you know how its done!

agnostic-atheists.

 

what are they trying to do in your opinion?

Sure its less than 100% but I would say its 95%. They havent accepted 5% and want to make sure they dont wind up on the hot seat over it so they pray.

Sure its the same as believing it, if it wasnt they would have no reason pray what so ever.

 

I am an atheist, I lack belief.