I realized I should have clarified this in my post, but I don’t hold that the spectrum exists for everybody for every conceivable belief statement. Clearly you have to have some conception of the object whose existence you are asserting or denying. And since agnostics clearly do have some sort of conception on God, they necessarily have a belief or non-belief with a certain level of certainty.
With the sock example, I’m somewhat conflicted. My first impression would be to say you are correct in stating you have no belief since you have no access to any evidence one way or the other. On the other hand, you can certainly make guesses on probabilities of traits that inform you on my footwear (e.g. male -> atheist -> nerd -> probably wearing socks -> probably white) so you actually do have a belief, it is just really uncertain.
No. I also have a conception about socks, and I do not believe that you aren’t wearing white socks right now, even though I am without a belief that you are. There need not be any level of certainty about the existence of God.
I’m telling you, I have no level of belief that you are wearing white socks right now. I wouldn’t even know where to begin attempting to conclude the probability that you are. I have zero belief on the matter and probabilities don’t enter into the equation. Whether or not you are more likely to wear white socks because you’re a male atheist that is probably a nerd isn’t something I consider to be relevant, and even if I thought it was, it would merely raise the probability. I’d still be without belief while realizing the probability is probably better than you wearing red and blue polka-dot socks.
[nitpick] Probably a bit closer to three thousand years old. The original semantic value of a-theos was simply one who was godless. The meaning that Frank is seeking to impose was something of a neologism and is about two thousand five hundred years old when “godless” became “having an active opposition to religion(s)/god/gods”. Both uses are supported, however, by linguistic convention, linguistic history, semantic value, syntactical/morphological/grammatical construction, and, well, common sense.
[/nitpick]
Yes, but it’s a deliberately hair-splitting point that simply aims at being argumentative and misses the point in favor of being difficult. The meaning in English meant “denying/opposing/whatever God”, which is the same as the active opposition to “theos” that we saw around the fifth century BCE in ancient Greece. The roots are the same as well a + theism or a + theo. Likewise, the word “theism” is just an update of the Greek. Theism is having gods. “Theo” plus “-ism” or “istic” gives us theism or theistic.
It gave the French their terminology in exactly the same manner. a- works exactly in French as it does in Greek or English. “Anormal”, and so on. Likewise, the French took their word “atheisme” from the Greek using exactly the same process a-theos. It’s the same word, the same semantic value, and the same grammar for more than 2,500 years.
We’ve just got one argumentative atheist here who refuses to admit it, because he thinks that the word “agnostic” is much cooler.
Nope, Big Atheist Frank. I do have to congratulate you, however, on cleaving to an argument that is both ignorant and chock full of smarm, more so than virtually any theist and, well, pretty much any atheist I’ve seen post here. Der is strident in his atheism, but your argument is just deliberately frustrating in its “nunh uhnh!!!” ism.
Luckily I never said it did.
For fuck’s sake, how hard is it to pay attention? That is exactly where it came from, and it does follow the same rules of English grammar, and your own cite shows that but you are still unable or unwilling to understand that. A + theos. A means without, theos means god or gods. That gave us atheos = godless, having no god, or actively denying the gods.
Which point, exactly, are you denying?
-That English, as well as Greek, puts a- in front of a word to denote “not”?
-That the words “theistic” “theism”, etc… in English are derived from the Greek, and that the meaning of both root and prefix is kept 100% intact through 2500+ years of linguistic use?
-That the word “atheistic” was derived directly from the Greek and came down to us, virtually intact, through the French, with its meaning and grammar intact?
Or is this just more “nunh uhnh!!!” ism?
See above.
No more “nunh uhnh!!!” ism. Deny a specific point rather than repeating your errors ad nauseum.
:rolleyes:
a - theos.
No, you’re wrong in what you said, namely that atheism doesn’t mean a-theism, which it does, and doesn’t come to us from a-theism meaning without god or gods, which it does from the Greek, verbatim. You’re pretty much wrong all around and being as difficult as you can rather than just admitting that you, are, a, big, ol’, atheist.
That was the point, that is the point. Atheism is litterally a-theism, via long established rules of English grammar, it comes to us, directly, from a word that was kept intact from a-theos, which means without god or gods. And, more than that, its linguistic usage also puts paid to your mistake.
Atheism means without god or gods, and it entails a spectrum from hard to soft ahtiems. You are an atheist. Just get over it already.
This really has gotten surreal. Seriously, are you just arguing so you can argue, or do you not understand where the words “theistic” and “theism” came from, either? Do you really think that anybody has argued that we just invented a word “theism” and tacked a- onto it? Do you not understand why pointing out that we get the word from a- + (theo +ism) doesn’t mean that the English language needed to have the word “theism” intact before it could create the word “atheism” through a well recognized and consistent grammatical process that is intact and unbroken through usage for over 2,500 years?
-Do you honestly not understand that “theism” came to us from theo + -ism, that atheism came to us from a + -theo + -ism?
-Do you honestly not understand that it preserves the exact same grammar, morphology and semantic value, kept intact for more than two and a half millenia, through the french of a- +theo + -isme?
-Do you honestly not understand that the original use, directly from the Greek and using exactly the same grammar and having the exact same semantic content was a- + theo?
What’s the disconnect you’re having here? I’m trying to fight your ignorance but you’re making it difficult. What is the source of your confusion/ignorance? Is it that you don’t understand how languages generate words, how they borrow them, perhaps how languages can share the same grammatical rules for certain situations? What’s causing you problems, perhaps I can dig through some old textbooks or find something online that can help you.
But I’m going to need a bit more than reflexive denial and smarmy text if I’m going to clarify this for you.
I’m still conflicted. I think that if you are considering belief to be defined as saying “well, even though I’m not sure, I’ll just pick a side to be on and then qualify it by saying I’m not sure” then yes, I suppose you actually have no belief until you declare a position. That’s not what I’ve been suggesting though. I think that the fact that you even consider probabilities implies you think one option is more likely which is what I would define belief to be.
Say I flat out tell you now that my socks are white. Would you agree that you now actually do have a belief in the color of my socks? If so, what changed that prompted this emergence of a belief? Surely, there was nothing so spectacular in reading a line on a computer screen that caused you to reevaluate your perception of reality and think well now I actually have a belief or non-belief in this idea?
But then you’re just defining belief in a way that no one else does. I know it’s possible that if I buy a lottery ticket I may win. I have zero belief that I actually will win; I just am aware of the possibilities. If the probability is 1:1,000,000, that doesn’t mean I have a tiny belief I will win, just a complete belief that it’s possible, yet highly unlikely. And this is where probabilities are clear cut; I wouldn’t even no where to begin assigning probabilities to the existence of gods; I’m just without belief since I’m aware of no evidence of any.
No, I believe ALL gods are INTELLECTUALLY unknowable. You cannot prove or disprove the existence of any God - whether that be Jesus Christ or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I personally, am equally convinced that the FSM does not exist and the Jesus Christ was (at best) a human being.
But I do believe in a God that is neither Jesus Christ, nor the FSM - but that this is a matter of faith, not fact. I’m an intellectual agnostic and an emotional Deist.
Nothing “narrow” about it at all, Marley. I was correct.
If I finally got through to him that he was incorrect…and he is now correcting himself…good.
Why do you people call things with which you disagree “silly” so often? It is quite silly to do that.
In any case, you are wrong.
One of the reasons Huxley essentially broke away from atheism in the mid 19th century was because atheism…as it has consistently been known since classical times…meant people who denied the existence of gods.
The notion that simply “not having a belief in gods” is relatively recent…and certainly after the time of Huxley.
But of course, debating atheists don’t want to use the classical definition of atheist, because it puts them at a disadvantage. Their arguments become as “silly” as the ones for which they show such scorn.
The whole point that Finn was trying to make was that if one DOES NOT HAVE A BELIEF IN GODS…one is by definition an atheist.
Classically, that is not so. For almost the entire of the existence of the word “atheist” it has not been so.
I understand Finn and the rest of the atheists wanting agnostics to be one of them…the intelligence level raises if that happens…and the logic improves in the aggregate.
But it simply isn’t going to happen.
I argued with Finn because he was wrong in the contention he was making.:smack::smack::smack:
Your lottery example is excellent because all you need to do is flip it around for my position to make sense. I.e., it does sound weird to say I have a very weak belief that I will win but does it sound odd at all to say I have a very strong belief that I will not win?
In reference to gods, there are two cases: the gods you have heard of (and possibly had “evidence” presented for) and any other of the infinite number of entities no one has thought of yet. All I’m claiming is that in the case of a god you have heard of, the fact that you reject the positive belief makes you at minimum a non-believer and possibly an active believer in the positive statement that the god does not exist (depending on certainty). It does not make you “without belief” as you have already considered evidence for the hypothesis and rejected it.
In my own defense, I only do so when people are being ridiculous. For instance, when they are trying to define the beliefs of a group of people by citing what the root word for the title they use meant several millennia ago, rather than its current usage.
You’re disagreeing with your own citation.
And why should they? The meaning of the word shifted to something different. That’s what happens in language. If we were redefining it in this thread, that would be one thing, but it’s been used to mean ‘someone who lacks belief in gods’ for centuries.
It occurs to me there may be confusion between what I mean when I say non-belief and what I consider “without belief” to mean. Hopefully this makes it clear.
In response to the question, do you believe in X?, a believer replies “Yes”, a non-believer “No” and someone without belief says “What’s an X?” (which I am distinguishing here but can also be considered to fall under the non-belief category)
Frank? Stop this bullshit of talking about me in the third person. I offered up two very detailed posts trying to help educate you on how linguistics works. I’ve even gone to the trouble of breaking the issue down into bite-sized pieces so you can explain which part is giving you trouble. Instead of more vacuous smarm and telling but not evening attempting to prove (and to someone else and not even me, no less) that I don’t understand, why don’t you try to challenge a single postulate that I’ve laid out.
Just one. If you’re right, you should be able to do that. If you’re wrong and you know it, you’ll continue to avoid it and cast smarm and snark while declaring yourself the victor and never even trying to rebut the actual, ya know, facts.
Otherwise I will assume that you cannot and are deliberately avoiding the facts because while you are philosophically an atheist, you are argumentatively a nunh unhn!!!ist and your argument is only about adopting a position of faux superiority above atheists and theists. (hint: atheists and theists are binary, and make up 100% of the world. It’s a bit like trying to claim that you’re cooler than people who play video games and people who don’t play video games because you’re not a “non-gamer”, you’re just someone who isn’t a gamer).
Protip: read the cites you’re trying to dispute. They weren’t very long, I provided two that were, what, fewer than five lines each?
Protip the second: 2,500+ years is, in fact, not relatively recent unless you are talking geological time.
Hell no. I’d much prefer that you’d be part of a totally separate group. Unfortunately, you’re not. I’ll also note that you display the style of argument common to most fundamentalists and dogmatically inflexible ideologically driven folks: you automatically assumed that those who disagree with you must be your enemies. I never self-identified as an atheist, you just decided that I had to be. As it happens I’m a gnostic agnostic a-theist Jew, but I’m at least intellectually honest enough to admit that my lack of a positive belief in God means I’m an atheist. Your reflexive “enemy = aaaaaaaaaaaayiiiiiieeeetheist!” tactic just happened to be accurate, is all.
No, actually you argued with me because I was right and the truth gets in the way of your faux superiority.
Yet again, rather than simply avoiding the facts, try addressing them. I broke them down very explicitly for you. I guess I’ll repost them so you can either point out to me what you are ignorant of if you feel like clearing up your ignorance, or try to challenge the facts if you just want to be smacked with a rhetorical clue-by-four. Something tells me you won’t address them because you know you’re wrong, though.
Or are you going to just ignore it some more with the time honored nunh unhn!!!ist position of “LOL, U R wrong!!!” ?
Finn…when speaking with someone other than you, as when I was when replying to Marley…I must use the third person when referring to you. Sorry your education never covered that point.
I have already spoken with you on this issue…but obviously you are not prepared to simply acknowledge you are wrong and I am correct…so what do you think we should do?
You claim I am an atheist because the word atheist means “without a belief in gods.” And further you indicated the definition occurs as it etymologically derives from “theist” with a “a” in front of it…and since theism is “a BELIEF in gods”…atheism means “without a BELIEF in gods.”
But that etymological progression has been pretty much established as false.
Atheism throughout history has been the denial of the existence of gods. Atheists DENIED that gods exist…and the word derives from the Greek for “without gods.”
As I pointed out…and a couple of others now…atheism came into the English language before theism, so it could not have occurred the way you originally proposed. You were wrong!
Now I understand that you want to define everyone who does not have a belief in gods to be atheists…which makes all babies atheists. But it just does not work…as anyone with a functioning brain would easily see.
I am not an atheist. You are wrong in that assertion…and you were wrong in the avenue that took the assertion.
When you refuse to address my rebuttal but ignore it and begin talking to someone else about how I’m wrong, you demonstrate that you are unable to actually refute the facts, and you engage in a behavior that is rude. Your continual smarmy, snark villed and vacuous barbs just made your argument look that much more hollow. Jabs about my ‘education’ are puerile, and serve no purpose. Especially since it’s a total non-sequitor.
“Sure, I was dodging your factual refutations because I cannot address them, and I was claiming victory and talking about you in
the third person rather than addressing your arguments… but that just shows your college sucked! Ooooh, burn!!!”
I was right, wasn’t I? You refuse to address my refutations because you can not and know that if you try, it will show that you aint got nuthin’. So you just repeat, endlessly “LOL, U R wrong!!!”
Of course it’s false, because you are pretty much just free associating at this point and that bears only an impressionist painter’s relationship to what I actually said. And clarified. Several times. I pointed out that evolution from Greek to French to English, and the etymological derivation at each step. You cannot address it, because you are wrong. That’s really all there is to it at this point, no?
Prove me wrong. Address it.
Already pointed out for you what the word “godless” means and the shift in connotation in Greek around the fifth century BCE. Your willful ignorance of the facts is pointless.
Yet again, it is hard for me to be wrong because your imagination created a totally alternate reality. Yet-a-gain, I never said that the word “theism” existed first and we tacked an A onto it. Not only did I originally point that out to you to clarify, I just did, again, right above.
What reason, exactly, is stopping you from understanding?
Ding ding ding! We have a winnah!
A lack of belief in God, gods, or demi-gods is the default. It’s the “factory setting” that we come with. You have to be taught that there is a God, you do not have to be taught that you do not yet have a belief in any God.
I’m not someone who plays video games either, I’m just a video gamer.
That’s right it does sound weird. Because we know rational people don’t have a belief that they will win the lottery every time they buy a ticket, not even a little belief. This whole notion of having a little belief is nonsensical. You either believe something or you don’t. Which is why there are no fence sitters; you’re either an atheist or a theist. If you say you have a little belief god exists, you’re making no sense. I have zero belief any gods exist although you don’t believe me. I realize I can’t know anything for sure; do you believe that means I have a little belief in every proposition that can be made? I guess I must a little belief that gods do exist too? You said earlier:
Does that mean that since theists are not acknowledging a negative belief in God they are also placed on the opposite side of the spectrum? They must have a little belief that He doesn’t exist? Sounds silly doesn’t it?
Nope. There’s good reason for that belief so there’s no reason for it to sound odd. But it does sound odd to think a rational person has a little belief they will win rather than just total belief that’s it’s possible.
Exactly. “Possibly” an active believer in the positive statement that the god does not exist, not “necessarily.” That’s been exactly my point all along.
All you know is if I have a non-belief in something is that I am without belief. If I reject evidence as even counting as evidence, then I’m without belief in the claim. That’s it. You don’t know that I have a little belief that gods don’t exist. I also have zero belief that you are wearing white socks. Realizing something is possible is not ‘having a little belief.’
Okay, but you’re just talking in a way most of us don’t. Just because I have a concept of what X is, there’s no reason to exclude me from the possibility from being without belief. Everyone I know considers me to be without belief and they realize I’ve heard of gods.
Why would you call me a non-believer when you’re convinced I must have a little belief? What’s the cut-off percentage where I have so much belief I’m no longer a non-believer but something else? And then what would you want to call me? (Might not be able to respond again 'til tomorrow.)
Let’s say X are Flampors which are 1,000 foot tall giant Amazon women living in Detroit. As soon as that person is told what Flampors are, they’re no longer without belief, because they must now have a little belief in Flampors?
Thank you for the delightful laugh, Finn. You are alright in my book.
I gotta tell ya, though, that I respond to other people because they have posed questions to me, not because I am trying to avoid you. Last thing in the world I want to do is to avoid you! But it is not all about you, Finn…although it was a delight to hear you think it is.
And for you to lecture me on puerile posts is so goddam hilarious I almost spit my soda onto my keyboard! Wow…that was funny. You are a delight…and I enjoy your cyber-company despite your many faults.
As for the “a” in front of “theos”…well ole friend, whether you try to sell it the way you originally did as an English construct (which was blown out of the water) or as something that the Greeks did and the French borrowed…the bottom line still is that you still end up with the word meaning “without gods” not “without a BELIEF in gods.”
Gosh, even someone with only a little education would have finally grasped that concept by now. I’m only trying to help you grasp it, Finn…but why are you having so much trouble with it?
“Theos” means gods…not BELIEF IN GODS. Putting an “a” in front of it in Greek, French, or English…does not ever make atheist into “lack of a belief in gods.” It means…WITHOUT GODS.
Look…I can understand why you atheists want to define the word as meaning “without a belief in gods.” Doing so saves you from having to defend your obvious position of having a belief that there are no gods. Listening to your posts pretty much tells us all what you actually “believe”…but pretending that you are merely expressing “a lack of belief” eases the burden on you.
Hey…go for it. Anything that makes defending atheism any easier should be allowed…in the interests of charity.
But there is no way you are going to use that dodge to require that because agnostics do not believe in gods, they have to be considered atheists…simply because you want to define the word that way.
If you are that desperate to increase your ranks…visit mental hospitals and recruit people who are less able to tell you to shove your protestations where the sun doesn’t shine.
You draw conclusions like Jackson Pollock drew straight lines.
You are yet again somehow wrong about that, when I’ve corrected you, what, four times now? Two of them within the last couple hours and within the last dozen or so posts? How, exactly, do you manage to repeatedly ignore facts in order to sling this shit?
Anyways, as I doubt you’ll answer that with anything substantive, I will note that I pointed out it was from a- theism. I didn’t realize you were ignorant of where the word theism came from as well, so I suppose I could have spelled the whole thing out as (a-) + (theo -ism). Once I understood that you are ignorant of linguistics, I tried to clarify and demonstrated the linguistic derivation, consistent rules of grammar and semantic value… I no longer believe that you are unaware though as I’ve done a pretty good job of giving you a primer on the concepts involved.
That you cannot challenge them and only try to change the subject, at this point, I’ll simply take to mean that you really cannot address the facts and would prefer to discuss something else. Fair enough. Unfortunately, I also already offered you a definition of “godless” and you can’t act as if you didn’t see it (well, you can and you do, but you really shouldn’t if you want to craft a cogent and coherent argument).
Wrong. As your own cite pointed out, that’s not what it originally meant in the Greek. It meant simple godlessness. As I’ve already shown you what the definition of “godless” means, you can’t claim to be ignorant on that point either. Although you can act as if you were ignorant of it, I suppose.
And, obviously, if one is without gods, then they are an atheist because they do not have any God or gods that they believe in. One cannot be “without gods” and be a Hindu or a Christian or what have you. You’re playing silly word games and obviously rationalizing after the fact and misunderstanding the use of the words involved anyways.
“Hey Pete, do you have any gods?”
“No Tim, I’m sorry, I left them at home. Will you take a demiurge?”
“Sorry, I can’t break a demiruge, do you have a demi-god on hand, maybe a couple titans?”
Something tells me this is yet more rhetorical chaff and you’re just rationalizing. You’ve backed yourself into a corner and can’t really admit at this point that being godless and having no god or gods means exactly what the definition of godless says: “not acknowledging a deity or divine law.”
What, you think being without gods means that you went to a club and Zeus and Thor stayed home? You’re at a business meeting but Vulcan and Hera are stuck in traffic? People accept payment in Gods? When someone says that they’re godless, they mean that there are plenty of gods but that they haven’t paid their God-dues so their God-service was turned off for the month and they have to pay some late fees?
No, godlessness means without gods, which despite your deliberate misuse of English, does not mean that one simply happens to be unaccompanied by gods at that particular moment, or has no gods in his pocket, or whatever rationalization you plan on pulling out of your hat when challenged on the fact that your gloss is incoherent, irrational and simply makes no sense. Since, ya know, being without gods means that that one has no god or gods.
And I can understand why you, atheist, want to mangle language until you’re not an atheist: both because atheism has been successfully slimed by bad press to a large degree and to prop up a position of faux superiority. It’s neither true nor convincing, but as you’ve evinced it’s quite sufficient for the purposes of feigning intellectual and epistemological superiority.
Enough of the stupid semantic games and very much enough of the let’s see how far over the insult line I can stretch my comments before I get caught.
Everyone will back away from their hostilitiy or we will start passing out Warnings like candy and then close the thread.
For the record, the definitions that have most frequently been accepted in this forum on this message board over the last ten years, or so, have been:
Strong atheist: does not believe there is any god.
Weak/soft atheist: does not believe that any god thus posited exists.
Agnostic: does not believe that it is possible to ever know whether or not a god exists.
HOWEVER: even those “accepted” definitions get routinely challenged and there has never been a definitive declaration upon which all parties have agreed,
THEREFORE: anyone claiming that their defintions are “true” is being ludicrous. It is far better to propose working definitions for a specific thread and employ them for the life of that thread. Language only works when it supports commuinication. Any attempt to declare that only one’s own definition is acceptable simply indicates a desire to engage in solipsistic omphaloskepsis–a practice that I tend to equate to trolling.
Now, I don’t care what you all agree to call anything, but you will all be much more polite about it.
