Do you have a lack of belief in Santa Claus(i.e. he may or may not exist), or do you disbelieve in Santa Claus(thus, using your argument, creating a belief system involving the existance of said Mr. Claus)?
Your argument might have some basis if he brought up “materialism” in his posts. I can’t see that he does this, though.
Atheism does not require materialistic premises, so no hypocracy is required. The absence of supernatural premises helps though.
As for your question, it depends what you mean by “argue in favor of”. I know plenty of people, who are not Christian but who like certain teachings of Christianity and/or like to hear sermons for example.
*What??!? *How in the world did you get that out of anything I wrote here?
However, most atheists are atheists because they are materialists, and not simply because of a lack of belief in God. That’s where the element of hypocrisy comes in.
Cite? Relevance?
Nonsense. Most atheists have put no more thought about deep philosophy than most Christians have put into reading or understanding the Bible. We just know made-up, self-serving bullshit when we smell it.
I have a lack of belief in god. Period. I do not disbelieve in god, as you put it, I have merely a lack of belief in god. I do not have an active belief regarding god, one way or the other. Do I need to go on? Atheism is a lack of belief. It’s the definition of the word.
This is a sweeping generalization. I’d like to see evidence for it.
While I might describe myself as a materialist, it is not the end all be all of my belief system. It is a starting point, not a conclusion. It’s the starting point science uses. Materialism does not replace theism, in my case anyway, it merely led to a lack of it.
Regardless of the fact that they are both mammals, it is useful to make the distinction because they are so different. Belief without evidence and belief with sufficient evidence are different enough to warrant distinction and are only lumped together because of the English language’s habit of overloading words. To me, the word belief has religious connotations, and I don’t like hearing things like ‘You believe in evolution.’
I don’t understand the point of your statement, because we do have evidence that hamsters and elephants are mammals, in that they both conform in observable ways to anatomical features common to the class of animal we have defined as “mammal” and do not conform in other ways that would indicate they were “birds” or “reptiles.”
A better analogy would be looking at the claim that hamsters are mammals and then positing an animal that have never been reliably seen and leaves no reliable evidence of its existence (call it a “freeble”) and making claims about its nature, then trying to equate the two. If a hamster can be believed to be a mammal, this belief is just as valid as the belief that a freeble is a tolgar. What is observable about freebles or tolgars that allows any kind of careful objective analysis?
Is the belief that freebles don’t exist reasonable or arbitrary, or at least closer to one side than the other? If anyone can present evidence of freebles that can’t be explained by other means, as well as explain why freeble-evidence has been lacking for so long, I’m prepared to modify my stance. Until such time, I feel confident in believing freebles don’t exist and will live my life accordingly; not wasting time in freeble-based activities and such.
The point was this:
Elephants:Hamsters:Mammals::Religious Convictions:Science Facts:Beliefs
(I’d expand if I had more time but hopefully you can parse that.)
-FrL-
I can vaguely parse the statement, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. Elephants and hamsters are related in objective ways that Religious Convictions and Science Facts are not.
Somewhere on Earth that has to be a language that has distinct words for belief in things that have no evidence (in fact, persistent belief in them despite lack of evidence or even the existence of counter-evidence) and belief in things that have lots of evidence, and no desire to tangle the two. That “belief” does double duty is a failure of English, not science or religion, though it is a failure of the individual that tries to equate the two.
But how does “without any belief” differ from “no belief”, which is the negation of belief?
MY estimation of the value of any particular evidence is beside the point. Or maybe it IS the point.
“Evidence” (oh boy, shall we now get into a debate regarding the definition, both official and working, of yet another term?:eek:) is highly subjective, both with regards to its value to a particular individual and with regards to it’s tendency to change due to new information.
Ask any die-hard fundamentalist Christian for “evidence” supporting creationism or the literal validity of the Bible and they can offer reams of what they consider irrefutable “evidence”. And they would even be able to point to some reputable scientists who agree with them.
Same for any die-hard athiest.
Of course, at any given time, there tends to be a consensus among a significant majority of those considered experts, but even that measure of “evidence” can change.
Of course I, personally, hold a certain standard by which I judge “evidence”, as we all do. But again, that standard varies widely and is rooted in the particular beliefs held by the individual.
Which brings us back to…oh screw it!:smack::rolleyes:
I believe I’ll leave it at that. 
The way that Religious Convictions and Science Facts are related is when they are stored in the human brain as “truths” (remember, nothing is really provable, the best anyone can do is to have a set of things they believe to be true).
Those “truths” can certainly be broken out into many different sets based on all kinds of attributes including the amount of evidence gathered to date that supports that conclusion. But the amount of evidence and logic used to arrive at that conclusion is really a continuum, not a simple dividing line.
If we eliminate all problematic baggage, we really can translate the title of this thread to something like:
X=Set of statements that person Y accepts as true
It is not true that the following 2 statements are equivalent:
- statement Z is not found in set X
- statement ~Z (the negation of Z) is found in set X
We can work through this same formula by altering whether the statements in set X include statements with no evidence or logic to support them, but this might be difficult because we would have to agree on what constitutes evidence.
But remember that atheists not only lack belief in God, but they lack belief in all gods. If I make up a god for some obscure tribe, or even for some aliens, do you reject belief in this god (and why) or do you simply say you lack belief in it and will continue to do so until you find some information about the god sufficient for you to reject it.
When I walk into a temple in Chinatown, I’m confronted by all sorts of gods I’ve never heard of before. I’m sure not going to bother to find out enough about them to reject them.
With great respect, Voyager, I believe that is an equivocation. We can compare a generalized belief in deity to a generalized lack of same, but it isn’t sensible to compare belief in the Father of Christ to the rejection of a whole superset. Some atheists, after all, do not believe in a deity, but do believe in ghosts or paranormal activity. So, why make an arbitrary cutoff with deity rather than including all metaphysical phenomena? I’m just saying it might be helpful to establish the proper correspondences.
What if there is evidence against something? Would not believing in that something still be as valid as believing in it?
For that matter, is there a word describing a person who is indifferent to the existence of God or God-like entities, yet believes all human religions are nonsense? Something beyond simple agnosticism, to the point of being downright distrustful of religious structures and their earthly motives?
Not sure about validity, that is a separate question resolved based on the quality of the evidence and logic. But to answer the question: If there is evidence against something, it would seem more logical (valid) to not believe in it than to believe in it.
But we still haven’t even begun to answer whether the 2 statements I posted a few posts ago are equivalent. We got hung up in language for about 3 pages.
I’m not sure the 2 statements are equivalent, but it’s possible they are. They certainly aren’t identical, and it seems that if you can draw conclusions from one that you can’t from the other then they aren’t the same, although maybe one encompasses all of the staments that can be inferred from the other.
I figured Liberal (who, if I remember correctly, seems to have a passion for predicate logic) would jump in and offer his/her 2 cents on the equivalency of those statements.
Not sure if there is one single word in the english language describing that. Do you think if we had one it would make it easier to debate the OP’s point?
This has more to do with personal standards of evidence than with evidence itself. Not all evidence is subjective, or science would be useless. The religious intermix evidence for their beliefs with faith. Faith that the gospels are the the word of god, for example. Since an atheist does not share this faith, the gospels are not acceptable as evidence for them. The evidence hasn’t changed, just the personal standards of what should be accepted as evidence. Since religious ‘belief’ isn’t wholly based in evidence, it’s different from a scientifically based ‘belief’. This is an important distinction, regardless of what name is used for it.
All evidence is subjective, the best science can do is hope that consistency of interpreted results across many brains reduces the effect of human subjectiveness.
I would personally agree that faith does not carry the same weight as scientific evidence, so your distinction isn’t lost on me, but there is far more subjectivity in everything we consider evidence than your statement allows.