“I know without a shred of doubt that deities don’t exist” is a straw man characiture of an atheist position. Outside of a few 12 arrogant year olds who just figured it out, I’m not sure anyone actually holds that position. That’s a position created by believers in arguments with atheists to give themselves an argument they can score points on.
Who’s the strongest, most outspoken atheist you can think of? Most people would probably answer Richard Dawkins, and yet even he doesn’t say “God doesn’t exist”, just “it’s extremely unlikely god exists”
You’d have to ask someone who self-identifies as agnostic. After discussing it with them, they’d likely agree with you that they are, in fact, an atheist. I just think it’s rude and arrogant to “correct” someone the way that I’ve seen happen around here a lot.
As an aside, if the OP or a mod would like me to refrain from further hijacking of his thread, just say so and we can take this elsewhere.
I meant “meaningful distinction” rather than “meaningful decision” where you quoted me.
Anyway, usually they spell out their position. “I don’t believe in a god, but I also don’t want to say that I’m 100% sure there are no gods out there” - and this is factually completely compatable with atheism.
Their misunderstanding is because of a deliberate strawman created by believers that to be an atheist means you’re saying you know everything and are absolutely sure there are no gods. In this case, pointing out their misconception is fighting ignorance - they misunderstood (with good reason) what the terms mean, and you’re indicating to them that their position is actually pretty much exactly atheism. You’re correcting a misconception.
I don’t mind if we talk about it here or not… I like the ‘bumps’ because I wanted to get at least 200 people to take the poll, but would gladly read another thread on this matter, (make sure to send a link to it).
I hope I wasn’t rude. I just wanted to help some people answer the poll’s question accurately. You can be an Agnostic and **not **an atheist I believe. I just wanted to tell those who *ARE *atheists to vote that way.
I’d say I’m a Taoist/Buddhist by training – elements of those philosophies (not religions) just seem to work well with the various martial arts I’ve studied.
I’d say I’m an atheist by upbringing – my parents and peers didn’t sponsor or encourage anything in particular.
I submit to you that I’m a **non-**theist by choice – although the term is heavily used on a relatively new site for the Secular Coalition for America as an encompassing term to include atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, positivistic scientists, etc. my usage for decades has been to say “I don’t believe the question [what’s your religion?] should be validated because the resulting discussion diverts energy, thought, and action away from a world of issues, causes, and problems that are more deserving of our attention.”
As an aside, I’ll note that many facets of life that are associated with religion are, in fact, more cultural than mystical. I dated a girl in high school who participated in the family seders, candle-lighting, and other rituals. Her artwork was often the illustration of a scene from the Torah. However, when I asked if my lack-of-belief made it difficult for her parents to accept me, she said they didn’t believe in God, either; they weren’t orthodox. They were simply Jewish and did Jewish stuff at the same times and in the same manner as their Jewish peers.
Something about the term atheist bothers me. I didn’t answer the poll. By knowledge I am an agnostic (how could anyone claim otherwise). By belief I am an atheist. It is not so much that I do not believe there is a god as that I believe there is no god. But that is a belief, almost a religion by itself) but with no priests, (un)holy books or other paraphernalia.
Atheism is the absence of belief, not the belief in absence. That is, there is a wide gulf between “I don’t believe in any gods” (all atheists) and “There are no gods” (a subset of atheists).
Theism/Atheism is all about the belief dichotomy. Agnosticism is about knowledge. These are two different questions, and by conflating the two we destroy the clarity and nuance of language.
But surely agnosticism (“we can’t have the knowledge of any gods”) is a subset of atheism. It makes no sense to say there’s no way we could know if there were gods, but then to say you have a belief in specific gods, right?
How does agnosticism differ from simple skepticism? That is - there’s no reason to believe something unless there’s evidence that that thing exists?
I think atheism is the belief that there is no god or gods. Agnosticism is the lack of belief one way or the other - abstaining from coming down on a side.
And there is something about atheism that lends itself to making piddling distinctions about the nature of belief or disbelief that we wouldn’t worry about in any other intellectual domain.
If I didn’t believe I was wearing pants, I would also be perfectly comfortable saying I believed that I was not wearing pants, without introducing the concepts of “weak apantsism” and “strong apantsism”. Similarly, I don’t^H^H^H^H^Hwouldn’t feel at all arrogant to discount the possibility that I might be wearing extremely lightweight and very transparent pants without knowing it, even though none of the major pants manufacturers make that type of pants.
But that’s not the distinction we’re talking about here. The better analogy would be “I don’t believe I’m wearing pants” versus “There are no pants, anywhere.”
Are you trying to blame this on atheists? Because it’s almost all based around mischaracterizations and straw men thrown about by believers during arguments. They have nothing substantive, so they get into ridiculous “you can’t prove a negative” or “atheism is its own religion!” nonsense.
“Strong atheism” is essentially a straw man. Almost all atheists think basically: I see no reason to believe in Leprechauns or magic crystal healing or lizard people or god. God gets thrown into a grab bag of shit that lots of people believe when there’s no evidence to. Would we be discussing “weak a-leprechaunism and strong a-leprechaunsm”? No, of course not - there’s no reason to suspect leprechauns exist, so why believe in them? This is the exact same way that 99%+ of atheists feel about any specific idea of god.
Would we try to disect whether people are really saying “I have no reason to suspect leprechauns exist” and “I know leprechauns don’t exist”?
But the religious really can’t refute that basic logic, so we get into straw men and ridiculously contrived arguments (ontological argument, various arguments from design, etc). Any complexity of the issue is added by them in an effort to obfuscate a very simple point. It’s all special pleading about why god is different from leprechauns.
I guess. Would “knowledge” in this case include the gut feeling that God existed, and when you see evidence for him (“I was $50 short on my rent, then I found $100 in my piggy bank. God exists!!!” and stuff along those lines? In that case you’re just substituting anecdotal experience for actual hard evidence, but you believe that you know that god exists.
Now, are there people who are convinced that there’s no way to believe god exists one way or another, yet form some very specific belief about god by joining a religion or even just in more general terms describing god as however they view him? Some sort of vague entity causing things or enforcing karma, etc. Essentially, they pick a specific belief in god, yet at the same time hold that there’s no way of knowing if god exists or anything about him? How many people do you think actually subscribe to such a view?
Please explain why that analogy is valid, because it strikes me as meaningless. I mean, even beyond the fact that, as I said, strong atheism is almost an irrelevant straw position, the analogy still doesn’t make sense.
