I think my wording may have misled you; I’m not implying that ‘not believing’ requires opportunities (even though that might be what I seemed to be saying); I’m that atheists may be forced into taking up a position of believing that there is no god because they are not left alone by theists (if they were left alone, then they could quite merrily [sub]UN[/sub]experience the absence of belief, but that isn’t the case; they are frequently presented with beliefs that they reject; I suggest that this might result in a position of belief in the contrary).
Of course, even a belief that there is no god is not anything like religion; for many (if not most) theists, the active phrase is to ‘believe in’, which implies more than a simple acceptance of the existence of.
There’s a question on the table in another thread as to whether hard atheism might be the least tenable philosophical position to hold in that it denies a positive existential statement. As Alston said, you can’t deny Descarte’s “perfect being” without first presuming that the existence of a perfect being would be possible. Otherwise, you’re saying that something is possibly impossible — which is nonsense. Existence cannot consist of solely contingent things. Some aspect of it must be necessary.
Please, please stop saying this. There is middle ground between believing something, and believing that that something is impossible. You can’t “force” athiests into believing there is no god. Do you think that if a judge dismisses a case due to lack of evidence, the judge is somehow forced to believe it is impossible the accused could be guilty? Just bringing the case to court does not force anyone to believe either side.
I agree. Why would anyone even try to prove a negative?
Dangerosa is right, this is not how most agnostics define themselves, nor is it the only definition of agnostic, so why try to force this definition on people? Here is how I define it:
“Formerly I could not understand why I received no answer to my questions; today I cannot understand how I could have believed I could question. But indeed I did not believe, I simply questioned.”
Your courtroom analogy is IMHO an inadequate parallel to the situation; consider someone who lives in the heart of an area where religion is very entrneched and almost universally practiced; this person is assailed with theistic propaganda at virtually every moment; this is hardly like a court room where the judge dismisses the case and is then free to forget all about it.
(and I should point out that I’m not using ‘force’ in quite the sense that it might seem; I’m not saying that the atheist would have no volition, only that constant assault by what you feel to be a false position could well cause you to form opinions and beliefs about the validity of those positions and the veracity of their underlying ‘truths’)
“constant assault by what you feel to be a false position”?
You are assuming your conclusion as part of your example!
How about this: “would constant assault by a position of which you have no absolutely no evidence with which to determine its veracity cause you to determine its veracity?” It might cause some people to deny it, just because they are tired of being “assaulted”. But it would not actually give them absolute faith in the non-existence of god. Is it really that incomprehensible to you that, knowing about different theories of god, someone could determine that there is no real evidence either way, and therefore not believe either way?
This is exactly the position that I do not understand, if one is just an atheist why is ‘theistic propaganda’ such an affront? Even stranger given that others witnessing is said to be so disturbing; why is it that said atheist feels the need to go witnessing? If indeed surrounded by religious zeal and under constant assail of convert attempts; why not just walk away? Technically it shouldn’t make a difference, what do you care? God doesn’t exist and their just wrong… in your opinion that is. You could be wrong, but then again that shouldn’t matter to you either. Or is it the customs, morals and engrained cultural aspects of religion that so disturbs you?
If religion is so offensive to you, you are more than just an atheist you are a moralistic atheist that believes in not believing. IMHO this is the point were atheism starts taking the form of a belief system and we have wandered from atheism to close to having a nihilistic religion, which obviously is a dichotomy. In the least such an atheist is religious about atheism (a point which has been made in several ways several times in this thread already).
Actually, I think that we are confusing atheism with nihilism and vice versa.
Atheist, but not a nihilist! …Why the hell am I witnessing all the time in this thread?
It’s not a matter of that. The perceived inability to prove a negative is a recent myth. Even the assertion “you cannot prove a negative” is self-contradictory. If you cannot prove a negative, then how can you prove that you can’t?
I suppose it’s an annoyance thing (I couldn’t say for sure, because I’m not an atheist, in fact I’m not even going to assert that my statements above about being forced to form an opinion have any basis in fact, only that they seem to be plausible to me).
Suppose you don’t have a favourite colour; the issue of what, if any, colour is better than the rest had crossed your mind a few times, but you dismissed it as too trivial to think about.
One day you wake up and everyone is suddenly stating ‘purple is the best colour’, 'you must like purple , ‘one day everything will be purple’, ‘admire purple now or suffer’, ‘all colours pale before glorious purple’, ‘would you like purple on a train, or in the dark, or in the rain?’, huge swathes of purple appear on billboards along with the message ‘perfect purple’ and so on (you get the idea; they won’t let you escape from it); you are now at every turn made to think about the relative virtues of colour and rather than having no opinion on the subject (this would still be possible, but IMHO, it becomes an effort to maintain a neutral stance under so much pressure), you might end up forming an opinion - that opinion might be something like:[ul][li]‘Actually, I have now decided that I do not like purple’[/li][li]‘Actually, I think I prefer red’ (or some other colour)[/li][li]‘Purple is nowhere near as important as you folks seem to think it is’[/li][/ul]and so on, but it would be quite hard (IMO) for you to maintain a position of ‘purple? - bah! I never even think about it’.
I didn’t say it was impossible, I asked why you would want to try it. Certainly, if you have the urge go right ahead.
…you are making less and less sense. I’m starting to wonder if you are just continuing this to be annoying. Nobody is saying they never think about the concept of god. In fact, liking or disliking the concept of god, which is all your analogy is about, is irrelevant.
Mangetout your analogy, although somewhat entertaining in its simplemindedness is utter croc. By extension you’d have to admit that having any belief that deviates from the obvious norm is irritating and necessitates spreading it so that you don’t have to be surrounded by the ‘bad’ faith(s). Fair enough for a religion to do (well I disagree, but that’s another discussion altogether). Again if we are talking about atheism, the behavior you describe is nihilism, active aggressive, convinced and intolerant nihilism even.
I am living with the purplians, there are at least 7 church towers along the skyline that I see as soon as I look out my office window. Chrurch bells toll every hour. I see crucifixes, everywhere, crucifixes oh no crucifixes…master…master we must hurry back…back to the coffin before sunrise, arrrrrrrghh ha ha ha ha haaa :rolleyes:
Please be assured that annoying you is the last thing on my mind; I am simply attempting to participate in the debate in my own fumbling way.
No, it isn’t, you have merely misunderstood it.
The analogy is about liking, yes (and I did say it’s only an analogy), but I’m trying to draw a parallel between liking in the analogy and believing in real life; I am definitely not talking about ‘liking the concept of god’
[‘I like purple’] [symbol]º[/symbol] [‘I believe in God’]
not
[‘I like purple’] [symbol]º[/symbol] [‘I like believing in God’]
Simply not true:
Of course I recognise that Dangerosa was specifically talking about evangelical atheists, but certainly it’s true that some atheists do claim to have an ‘absence of belief’ in the sense that the issue is totally outside of their personal universe.
Mangetout ok, point to you. I was using tongue in cheek I did not mean to call you simpleminded. Sorry.
Just in the off hand case you were not only being sarcastic; I am saying that when atheism passes from being not believing in God to not thinking that it is right to believe it stops being simply atheism and becomes nihilism, which has to be viewed from a different philosophical perspective. Nihilism can for instance be part of existentialism in its most dire form where it does have a belief system and a dialectic connected to it, hence becoming close to religion. Of course nihilism denies the value of belief and therefore in that context suffers a paradoxical death and becomes purely existentialism, a dialectic which Sartre uses to try to resolve this paradox in several of his works.
Thanks for that; I think that’s probably the most satisfying answer so far; that atheism becomes an incorrect definition when/if it turns into a belief system.
But my husband is colorblind. He really isn’t sure of what you mean by “purple” He really can’t tell the difference between purple and red. Color is an alien concept to him.
(He isn’t, he sees color just fine, but to hear him explain his lack of faith, he doesn’t “get” God at all. It isn’t a rejection of the concept - and he’s an intellegent guy with a degrees in anthropology and sociology, so he certainly gets it from a intellectual perspective. It just doesn’t parse into emotional meaning for him. Then again, we don’t buy lottery tickets either - understand the concept - see why other people buy them “religiously” - they don’t parse into any meaning for us and seem kind of silly).
That should be silly for us. My hubby certainly understands why OTHER PEOPLE would choose to believe (although he has a hard time understanding why I want to drag the kids off to church - Unitarian Universalist). And I think he is of the belief that as long as faith gives you a net gain (makes you a better person, gives you a sense of purpose, grants comfort) its a good thing. Like most of us he believes when faith is used to justify hate, it isn’t a good thing.
Thanks for that Dangerosa; it’s an angle that I hadn’t particularly considered; the idea of colourblindness fits in rather neatly, the individual is not, in that case, forced to form an opinion about his or her preference regarding the colour, only come to the conclusion that he/she can’t understand what all the fuss is about (something like that, anyway).
