I agree with most of your post, but not this part. Someone who is brought up without religion doesn’t have to consider and reflect upon God or gods to lack this believe. I agree that it’s nonsense to apply it to babies or dogs who lack the capability to believe in God or gods, but I disagree it requires consideration and reflection.
I was brought up without any religion and just simply lack belief in higher powers. I just never had the belief.
I’m not sure there’s daylight between our positions if you wouldn’t consider dogs or babies to be atheist. I’m not talking about like agonizing and deep spiritual searching. “Gods?..nah” is sufficient. But an entity who’s never thought “Gods?” isn’t an entity I’d described as atheist.
“Considered and reflective” may be putting it too strongly. “Considered” might be enough.
OK, we agree.
Nice try. But not only is our final conclusion wrong in substance, you are wrong about whether you are being pedantic. You are being anti-pedantic. You are supporting inaccurate thinking (as you essentially admit).
Apply the Santa Claus test to your own reasoning - a person who has no belief in the existence of Santa Claus is (we shall say) an aclausist.
Bald doesn’t mean “lacking hair.” It means “lacking hair in the places that hair is typically found.”
Aclausism means essentially the same thing: it’s applied to an entity capable of considering the existence of Santa Claus who has not formed a belief in Santa Claus. Aclausism is the considered and reflective absence of a belief in Santa Claus.
People will call babies “bald,” because sometimes babies do have hair. Nobody outside of a pedantic argument ever calls a baby “aclausist.”
True enough. Babies minds have not yet formed any such belief. But then they grow imagination and in some cultures they are told certain lies and come to have a belief in Santa Claus. Then they grow up further and stop believing. They don’t need to use the term “aclausist” about themselves because they are surrounded by adults who don’t have any belief in childhood fairytales.
The only reason they might need to use the term “aclausist” about themselves is if they were surrounded by adults who believed in Santa Claus because they grew up so steeped in the idea that Santa Claus’s existence is the default that they can’t get their head around the idea that it isn’t.
This doesn’t make “aclausism” a belief, and those who say otherwise are entirely missing the mark. Those who say otherwise are saying a lot about their own a priori assumptions, but not much about aclausists.
The mere fact that these people have entertained the idea that Santa Claus might exist but then decided he doesn’t does mean they have a belief that he doesn’t exist.
True, we have no real need for the word “aclausism,” but that’s not because it’s not a belief. It’s because we coin words for concepts that commonly need to be expressed. In the cases we do talk about it, “doesn’t believe in Santa” is sufficient.
I have no problem with those who say that atheism isn’t a religion. It doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of one. But it is a belief–a negative belief, though it may be a weak one. You have to have encountered the idea of a God to be an atheist, and thus you have to have rejected that idea.
And, yes, this does mean that, if someone comes up with something absurd–like that there is an invisible, intangible living version of Gritty in my kitchen as I type–and I dismiss it, then I have formed a belief. I do believe there is no Gritty in my kitchen.
That said, I’m not sure how much of this argument is philosophical, and how much of it is semantic. It may just be that we define "belief’ differently.
Compare these things and ask yourself why you needed to depart from what I said in order to arrive at your conclusion.
…okay. You described a subset of the situation I described. You described those who at one time believed in Santa, and then later grew to believe he does not exist. My statement still applies. The fact they at one point entertain the idea of Santa but then reject it means they’ve formed a negative belief.
I do not get this style of argument. You seem to assume your claim is so obvious you don’t have to state it. But you’re just repeating what you said before. So it clearly is not obvious—at least, to the person you are replying to.
To me, it seems like it just complicates things to not just say what you mean directly. Make a claim, and show the reasoning/evidence. It doesn’t make sense to me to try and get the other person to figure out your claim.
Well, unless the point is that you think your argument is weak, so you’re hoping the other person will figure out a better one. But why would I do that? I’m not going to “ask myself” what someone else means. I’ll get it wrong.
Nazi Germany was an openly Christian state.
Yeah, I read more on the subject. What they practiced was called “Positive Christianity” Besides obvious things like ‘The Jews sucked and Jesus Christ was an Aryan’ Positive Christianity rejected the divinity of Jesus.
Thanks–better than yours!
The quote below is just incredibly stupid:
The Holocaust was a modern, mainstream response to the generally-accepted scientific thinking of that time and place. It was perfectly politically correct to the people who did it.
The Holocaust was the result of many things, one strand of which was the religious antisemitism prominent in Germany from Martin Luther…
On the Jews and Their Lies (German: Von den Jüden und iren Lügen ; in modern spelling Von den Juden und ihren Lügen ) is a 65,000-word anti-Judaic and antisemitic treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483–1546).
(link)
…to Martin Niemoller:
Hitler espoused the importance of Christianity to German nationality and Christianity’s role in a renewal of national morality and ethics, leading Niemöller to enthusiastically welcome the Third Reich. Niemöller later confessed that even Hitler’s antisemitism reflected a more extreme version of his own prejudice at that time.
Niemöller’s conflicts with National Socialism emerged out of his opposition to the German Christians, a pro-Nazi faction within the German Protestant Church that sought to apply Nazi racial dogma to church membership in such a way as to bar so-called non-Aryans (people considered Jewish under Nazi racial laws) from the ministry and from religious teaching positions.
(link)
Trying to pretend that there’s some distinction between devilish science and saintly religion in the threads of history that created the Holocaust is not the product of someone with an honest view of the situation.
Got this from the Wikipedia article:
That said, in 1937, Hans Kerrl, the Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, explained that “Positive Christianity” was not “dependent upon the Apostle’s Creed”, nor was it dependent on “faith in Christ as the son of God”, upon which Christianity relied, rather, it was represented by the Nazi Party: “The Führer is the herald of a new revelation”, he said.[4]
Tell that to gay people in, say, Uganda (Christian). Or in any Islamist state. Or to the Copts in Egypt. Or to the transgender here in the states, who are being murdered simply for being transgender or are having laws passed against their very rights to exist in any number of Southern states. Or to albinos in any number of African countries who are murdered for being witches or of the devil or because some “doctor” wants parts of their bodies for ingredients to make “medicine”.
Science is an excuse used by people who hate, and many of those hate because of the religion they were raised in.
Far off past like my grandfather’s time? He didn’t come from Russia because New York was offering a bounty - his family was fleeing.
Churchill like science just fine for the war effort. That’s clear from his WW II memoir.
While we’re at it, something from the other thread I didn’t want to post there. There is a difference between people with a certain faith doing something and people doing something because they think their faith calls upon them to do it. A thief who is Christian is not doing it because he thinks god tells him too. The Christians who beat up gay people because they see that the Bible calls it an abomination are doing it because they say God tells them to do it.
Now, if you have a copy of the Atheist Bible where no god tells us to do anything, I’d love to see it.
I don’t know how old Miller is, but I presume he’s at least in his 30s. And I definitely think you can argue that, even 20 years ago, coming out was a fraught experience. Sure, it would have been worse earlier, but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be the potential for lots of negative consequences, even in California. And, the older he is, the worse the consequences would likely to have been.
It also doesn’t have to be something like lynching or violence. It could be more social, like losing friends, not being able to get a job, being verbally bullied, or other such consequences. That’s stuff people get concerned about even today.
I’d have to ask @Miller what he meant—without the implication that it’s something trivial like prayer.
Rejecting god belief is usually the way it works, since most people grow up with god belief. I did, and there was a specific moment I rejected it.
My kids on the other hand grew up with a default of no gods at all, though of course they were aware of gods. They no more rejected belief in gods than they rejected belief in yetis and the Loch Ness Monster.
My older daughter believed in Santa, but figured it out pretty quickly, and rejected the belief. My younger daughter never believed in Santa. See the difference?
We’re so religion drenched in our culture that I think it is difficult to see that lack of god belief is the reasonable default - not belief in the god or gods your parents believe in.
Yes, and no. Sure, there is a useful distinction between rejecting a belief you never held vs. rejecting one you did. But, in both cases, I would say you are describing (negative) beliefs.
I don’t merely not believe in the Loch Ness monster. I believe there is no Loch Ness monster. I originally had no idea of the concept. Then I was exposed to the idea. I decided, based on what the information that I was given at that exact moment, that the Loch Ness monster did not exist. I went from lacking a belief in the Loch Ness monster to having the belief that the Loch Ness monster does not exist.
There are lots of times where believing something does not exist has motivated people the same as any positive belief. People who “don’t believe in global warming” very much treat this like a belief. They make decisions based on this belief. They argue for this belief, trying to convince others. The same is true of any denialist.
If we define “atheist” so that it doesn’t apply to those who haven’t been exposed to the idea of god(s) or lack the ability to understand it, then the only distinction I can see is that we are saying atheism requires a (negative) belief. We’re saying that you must have an active belief (whether weak or strong) that God does not exist. You don’t merely lack a belief in the existence of God, but believe it is false.
Again, none of this means that atheism is a religion. It isn’t. It lacks the characteristics of one. But, for it not to be a belief, then it must apply to anyone who doesn’t believe in god(s).
Let me check I understand.
To know which is more evil we start by putting on our blinkers. We must specifically look at the period of the early->mid 20th century, making sure our blinkers also cover any suggestion that the Nazis endorsed Christianity more than atheism. We’re also going to count Shinto as atheist I guess, or just ignore the Pacific theater.
And stuff done in the name of religion before or after that is too old or too <I dunno…insert excuse> respectively to count.
Convincing!
Sure, and I think this is true in many cases.
WRT God I like to tell people I feel the same way about God as Godzilla; I don’t claim to know it doesn’t exist, but I’d be utterly astonished if it did, and it’s not like I’m trying to seek out Godzilla insurance for my home.
I don’t merely lack belief in Godzilla.
However, the distinction does remain and people can simply lack belief without having a belief.
The example Matt Dillahunty gives is showing a jar of gumballs and asking if you believe that there are an even number of gumballs. A rational person answers “no” but does that imply that they do believe that there’s an odd number of gumballs?
No. Neither claim is believed because there is no grounds to believe either (even though we know one of the two claims is necessarily true).
Sure, but that’s part of my point. It shows that you can’t assume that someone who is not an evenist is an oddist. Just like you can’t assume someone who is not a theist is an atheist.
My argument is that, if we define “atheist” to mean “lacks a belief in god(s),” then anyone who has not heard of the concept of god(s) is an atheist, as they clearly lack a belief in god(s). However, as stated in this thread, we actually say that anyone who has never heard of a god is not an atheist. Thus we can conclude that we do not define “atheist” as a mere lack of belief.
That’s ultimately pure logic: if P then Q implies if (not Q) then (not P) for all propositions P and Q.