[Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?

so then the neoatheists use of weak and strong belief is BS iyo?

 

Nice witches brew, but agnostics lack belief in the nonexistence of God.

 

Agnostics just don't want to commit to the fact they believe as atheists do. Atheists just say they don't believe in anything. That keeps them in vulverable fro question. Actually they hold strong beliefs as I mentioned earlier.

 

not true as I just said:

which of course throws a wrench into the works for the agnostic is atheist gig.

you people are trying to make a cake with 1/2 the ingredients which is not a cake at all.

 

you might enjoy this as it sums up a lot of what neoatheism is 'really' all about.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds​

New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason




Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted.

In this case, the failure was “particularly impressive,” since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from.

The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding.

As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?

In a new book, “The Enigma of Reason” (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context.

Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain.

For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.

“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write.

Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.

Consider what’s become known as “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; it’s the subject of entire textbooks’ worth of experiments.

One of the most famous of these was conducted, again, at Stanford. For this experiment, researchers rounded up a group of students who had opposing opinions about capital punishment. Half the students were in favor of it and thought that it deterred crime; the other half were against it and thought that it had no effect on crime.

The students were asked to respond to two studies. One provided data in support of the deterrence argument, and the other provided data that called it into question. Both studies—you guessed it—were made up, and had been designed to present what were, objectively speaking, equally compelling statistics.

The students who had originally supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and the anti-deterrence data unconvincing; the students who’d originally opposed capital punishment did the reverse.

At the end of the experiment, the students were asked once again about their views. Those who’d started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those who’d opposed it were even more hostile.

If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it’s hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds


This is why you can make perfectly reasoned arguments and they dismiss it out of hand, and its back to rewind-play endlessly, all the while giving reason and logic and lip service while bragging about their intellectual superiority.

Most people arrive at the greater majority of their beliefs without conducting ANY bonafide research what so ever, to fit in with their tribe. Then as time rolls along it becomes part of their identity (religion) creating a confirmation bias that when confronted with facts contrary to their bias flips on the defense switch, does not matter how solid the evidence is an how rock solid the facts are they are they are protecting their home turf at all costs.

 

I'm very persuasive aren't I. Agnostics lack believe in the nonexistence of God. But so do many atheists such as myself. So as you can see, it is safe for you to come to the atheist fold. So as you see, the beliefs of agnostics are identical to many atheists. We are the same, you and I.

 

You have a good point. Atheists and agnostics like to argue over sematics, but ultimately both don't believe in God, and are both atheist. Agnostics live like they are atheists and are atheist in action. Since they don't have any religious beliefs, they don't go to church just like atheists, and live their lives like there is no supernatural and no God. The lifestyle is exactly the same. As I aways say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

 

"Weak" and "strong" describe quality, not quantity.

 

I'm no Christian, I'm an Atheist pointing out the total hypocrisy of so called Christians.
You might want to follow your own advice as you judge all you hate!

 

Already answered many times in many ways, you just pretend not to understand.
As I pointed out to you, you are 99.99% Atheist and apparently that is not enough LoB for YOU to qualify as an Atheist in your own mind, so what % does that leave you?

 

That is a purely brainwashed PONTIFICATION!
If Hitler was made in the image of God then his choices would be perfect by God's design. If Hitler's choices were not perfect then he was not made in God's image.
Try again, only this time think for yourself rather than parrot your brainwashed mumbo jumbo.

 

Actually it sums up exactly what YOU are about!

 

But I thought you were a liberal, you just got done telling me you guys follow the teachings of Christ? LOL
I dont spew venom, like you.

 

Guess you don't understand the concept of choice. Robots do not have a choice. They do as dictated by their Creator. You are not a robot. You were created in the image of God....though you seem to reject Him. That is nothing less terrible than anything Hitler ever did.
"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".

 

false, 'either' is legitimate usage, the usage I used applied to my point not what you want to change my point into.

Hardly, neoatheists still have not come up with how much lack of belief is required to be properly labeled an atheist.

He is correct according the believers understanding of Gods design, might want to do a little homework before running with the keyboard.

True but that had a typo,it was supposed to read: Agnostics ALSO lack believe in the nonexistence of God.

Really? So you believe in God, atheists that believe in God, interesting.

A day you will never see.

No we are not, not remotely on the same page.

False, aithiests dont believe in God, agnostics neither believe nor disbelief, they take no position.

FALSE, I told you many times I have countless religious beliefs, the difference I know the substance of what a religious belief is, neoatheists have no clue, hence they dont understand the scrotums decision in context either, because they lack the required functional knowledge.

False, I have religion ou do not.

You have aleady shown that everything looks like a duck to you.

That obvious from your posts that demonstrate lack of understanding of the Christian position.

Not me I judge everything.

No you nor anyone else has answered it, unless you are trying to claim one must lack a minimum of 99.99% belief to qualify as an atheist.
No I have religion, a crucifix does not burn a hole through my hands like does neoatheists.

 

So what is a person that has 10% lack of belief?

That should make them a believer not a neoatheist.

 

I'm a CYNIC, I never said I was a Liberal, that comes only from YOU!

 

HOGWASH!

 

So you just carry their water and defend liberal positions. Got it.

 

Thank you for proving my point!
And a cross has never burned anyone's hand except vampire movies which are as real as your God!

 

No, I just expose the hypocrisy of the Right.

 

You have 99.999% LoB and you call yourself a believer!

 

True, but many atheists also lack believe in the non-existence of God.

Thats not what I meant. But on that topic, about 5% of atheists believe in God.
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-family/atheist/

The day happened when you became an agnostic.

I don't believe in God. I don't disbelieve in God. We are the same, we are atheist.

To neither believe nor disbelieve in God means that you don't believe in God and you don't disbelieve in God. So one of the statements is that you don't believe in God. You are an atheist.

How can you have religious beliefs when you don't have a position that God exists? Its about as religious as me putting up a Christmas tree. Do you worship the printed out picture of a giant question mark? I've heard of a couple atheist churches, and those make sense, but agnostic religions make no sense.

That is actually pretty funny. All I can say is that you look like a duck. Don't go to Beijing. Duck is their specialty.

 

Sure, do you fancy yourself a "centrist" or a "moderate"?

 

That's not what I said. You can have different kinds of beliefs, they can be strong, they can be weak, you can be fully convinced or just kind of on the edge. There are a whole bunch of qualifiers that you can put on a belief, but I'd that doesn't make them partial beliefs, or percentages of beliefs. That would be for instance 1 strong belief, or 1 weak belief. The strength or convincedness doesn't make it more of a belief, just a different kind of belief or beliefs with different details.

I believe that I'm looking at a screen right now. I'm pretty darn sure of it. I have 1 strong belief that I'm looking at a screen.
I also believe that there is a carrot in my fridge. I'm not certain, maybe I ate all my carrots already, but I believe I do have one left. I hold it as true, but I am aware that I may be wrong. I have 1 not very strong belief that I have a carrot.

There are lots of ways to talk about the two beliefs, and others, but to call one a belief and one 50% of a belief or whatnot is not the way I would put it, it seems they are both 100% beliefs.