This is probably futile, but since I brought this up, the answer is, whaddya got? I can define various flavors of the western god. I can define it as Hindus do. Or Greeks. Or cargo culters. Or the Norse. Or, being creative, I can imagine all sorts of gods. By default, this being a universe not appearing to require a god, I believe none of them exist. I’m willing to look at evidence for a particular god - but you need to define it.
And, to restate, the OP talks about faith. Someone can (provisionally) believe no gods exist without faith. Since so many theists believe despite the evidence, I can see why they think faith is required here, but it is not true.
Finally took the time to read this thread. IMHO, the simplest and best answer to the OP was Seven’s at Post #32. Not the only good post by any means, just the one that for me cuts to the chase most cleanly.
Cegstar, would it be in order to inquire why you have posed the question? If your implicit argument is true (i.e., that strong atheism depends on some sort of faith), what of substance follows from that? Or is this just a semantics debate?
To be an atheist is to be “without God.” So far, you have not demonstrated that you understand this.
Except you have yet to define “God.” It is your term. You introduced it. I don’t know what you mean by it. Please tell me, so I can adequately address your OP.
Yes.
This – *Why don’t you ask some atheists what God/gods their talking about when they call themselves atheists?
*
Until you have defined “God,” you have not defined “atheist” of any stripe. What you fail to understand is that absent an assertion of theism, atheism is incoherent. How can someone express uncertainty about the existence of a being that has never been conceived?
Sarcasm duly noted. Until you define your terms, the OP is stuck in first gear.
Exactly.
You said this – That left me with three possible positions when I grew up:
If those were the only possible positions, then they were your only options, unless you think that you can have an option that is impossible.
A much better definition would be a belief in something for which there is no evidence, not an absence of all the facts. There are precious few things for which we have “all the facts.” Offhand, I cannot think of any. I submit that your definition of “faith” is fatally flawed.
You believed that you could not subtract 5 from 3 because you were ignorant, not because you had faith that it was impossible. Was it really am affirmation of yours that such an operation was impossible? Did you investigate it? Did you ask anyone? Or was it simply something that you thought little about, if at all?
Why is it necessary to take this on faith? Even a casual critical analysis of Christianity (or theism generally) will reveal flaws and contradictions undermining it completely. It collapses on its own.
There are numerous better explanations than “stuff happens”, including delusions and schizophrenia on the part of biblical prophets, fraud and deceipt, mistranslation, conflation with earlier myths, etc. but one has to be willing to expend the mental effort. Just shrugging off the bible isn’t so much strong atheism or weak atheism but lazy atheism, and not an act of faith.
Oh, spare me the condescending comments. What possible evidence do you have that I know nothing about how science works? You know nothing whatsoever about my fields of expertise.
What we’re arguing about here is the definition of the word “faith,” not about how science works.
This indicates that you haven’t performed a casual critical analysis of theism. There are many highly intelligent people have that submitted credible analyses of the possible existence of God (or some higher being). I simply don’t see enough evidence to support the statement that only an idiot (or a highly ignorant person) could be a theist.
The King James Bible taken as 100% literal? Yep. Full of holes and contradictions. The concept of a God? It’s a complex subject.
Cegstar, I’ve got a couple points below, but I just wanted to say that I agree with your perceptions that in many cases (not all) posters have been either defensive or assumed you were taking a specific religious position that you may or may not have been taking as opposed to responding strictly to the logic of your question.
Also, please let the types of comments quoted below roll off you. If this was the intent of the SDMB they would have made it part of the slogan, but as you can see, they did not.
Defining God
If you agree to use the same definitions used in the atheism articles in Wikipedia, then problem solved.
Strong vs Weak Athiest
Is there really a difference? These are from Wikipedia:
Weak:those who have made up their minds, deciding that the evidence doesn’t warrant belief
Strong:those who believe that God does not exist based on current evidence
While I know someone will say “one is the lack of belief and one is the belief that something doesn’t exist”, I’m just not convinced there is a difference. In both cases I’m reviewing the current evidence and deciding that the evidence does not support the belief.
Faith
Definition: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
Given that logic and evidence are part of the very definition of atheism, it would be hard to argue that faith is the result.
The Real Question, Possibly?
Are you really getting at the fact that we are using logic and evidence for something that exists outside the scope of our ability to apply logic and evidence? If that is what you are really getting at, that we are basically saying that no god could exist even though there may be a god outside of our nature that could not possibly interact with us in any way, then yes we are concluding something without any evidence or even the ability to acquire that evidence. If so, I think it would be fair to call what was just described as faith.
There are many statements regarding the possible state of just about everything. The ones that rely on demonstrable evidence go on to form the body of what we call science and the rest do not. I’ve read various teleological “proofs” of a God/intelligent designer and find they lack an understanding of just how massively large the universe is and how massively long it’s been around. The perceived order being used to justify an overall plan is attributable to random chance, with successful lifeforms continuing and unsuccessful one dying out. It’s based on an assumption of that which they’re trying to prove - the existence of God.
That said, I’ve no problem with issues of basic faith. If one wants to believe in God because it makes them feel better, I’m not going to be a jerk and ridicule them for it (though I will express dismay when they try to use their beliefs to warp politics or education) and I didn’t say such beliefs were proof of idiocy; merely a lack of critical thinking. I don’t see how suddenly I became a practitioner of basic faith in the process and, classically, denying the unproven claim earns not convincing evidence but accusations of “you’re getting defensive”.
The problem is that Wikipedia gives a variety of definitions for strong and weak atheism, and in fact it seems to provide every possible definition of both. Some of those definitions overlap. Both you and Cegstar make the error that because the definitions given overlap, then strong atheists must be the same as weak atheists. Remember that this is a Wikpedia article and not a definitive theological summary. If this question is to be considered, then both terms need to be defined clearly in a way that excludes the other, something the OP has failed to do.
At least three groups of strong atheists listed in the article base their position on something other than faith, that being either evidence or logic. These categories may overlap.
Two groups of strong atheist listed do not base their position on evidence, and might be said to basing their belief on faith.
The final group also doesn’t base their position on evidence, but probably can’t be said to base it on faith either.
The Wikipedia article gives five groups of weak atheist. I think the first three are really what the term weak atheist means. The fourth are agnostics, who might be considered atheists in the broadest sense in that they do not believe in god.
The Wikipedia article includes one more definition among those for weak atheist, but this is pretty clearly wrong. Strong atheists, by the definition given by Wikipedia itself, are those who have made up their minds about the subject. (Wiki: “Strong atheists are those who accept as true the proposition, “god does not exist”.”) Since those in the fifth category have made up their minds, they clearly are strong atheists, and Wikipedia is in error in including them among weak atheists.
What you and **Cegstar ** have been doing here is cherry-picking, selecting the two definitions that overlap (and one of which is erroneous) and ignoring the others.
Personally, I would define a strong atheist as someone who has made a positive decision that they do not believe in a god or gods. This includes some people who base that decision on evidence and/or logic, and some people who do not. Those in the first category, who I think are in the majority, do not base their decision on faith.
I would define a weak atheist as someone who doesn’t believe in god, but hasn’t made a definite decision not to do so. This includes those who don’t know, don’t care, or think the question is meaningless.
Other definitions might be possible, but they need to be exclusive.
I think your post is accurate, but I was working from a position that the only relevant atheism positions to this thread related to those that involved logical reasoning and the lack of evidence, which seemed to the be the contradictory definitions.
There has been a lot of confusion in this thread, based on the failure to clearly define terms (and the outright refusal to do so of by OP), coupled with the fact that the Wikipedia article contains what I regard as a pretty clear error. I probably shouldn’t have blamed you for “cherry-picking,” since the two definitions you chose were the two that have been bandied about the most in this thread - exactly because they overlap. The fact that they overlap (but shouldn’t) has muddied the water about what strong and weak atheism entails.
Strong atheism is not defined by whether the decision there is no god is based on evidence and logic; it is defined on the basis of whether a definite decision has been made at all. Weak atheism is the mere absence of a belief in god, one not based on a positive decision that god does not exist.
Being in science nearly 40 years, I have never observed anyone having faith in anything. Care to give some examples? Your nonsense about your “faith” in mathematics doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. In fact, your giving examples from math for “faith” in science really doesn’t make me think you understand this stuff too well. A standard creationist argument is that science and evolution require faith. I’m not accusing you of being a creationist, but you really shouldn’t use their arguments.
Hey, a new way to describe myself! Up till now I’d been annoying everyone by describing myself as an agnostic atheist Christian…
The Universe appears to be here, and either there is intent underlying it, or else there isn’t. (I don’t think there’s an excluded middle there, but somebody might be able to spot one.) On this subject, I’m an agnostic. If there is an underlying intent, I doubt we’re any more capable of spotting it than a flatworm is. If there is such an entity as The Intender, it appears to have set up the initial conditions and laws of physics and left everything to roll on by itself. It is possible The Intender is tweaking and pruning here and there, but we have no evidence of such activity and probably couldn’t recognise it as such even if we saw it.
To me, someone who claims there is definitely no underlying intent behind the Universe, and therefore no such entity as The Intender, is a strong atheist, and such a position does require faith. in this sense I agree with Cegstar. But it is a philosophical argument, not an evidence-based one, and if there is such an entity as The Intender, it has little to do with “God” as he is commonly understood.
Now, as to Yahweh and Zeus and Odin and all the other gods mankind seems to have invented for himself, I am atheist through and through. I disregard the concept of a god that acts like a human tyrant with superpowers, demanding worship and making arbitrary rules and raping mortals and smiting and punishing everywhere. It seems immensely childish and human-centric to imagine that the whole thing is all about US. Most of the stuff of the Universe is “Dark Matter”, not even visible to us and we know almost nothing of its nature. The vast majority of the matter we do understand is ultrahot ionised plasma, star stuff, nothing like the solids and liquids and gases that make up our world. But we still have the hubris to think that what goes on with one single, relatively new species, among millions, upon this speck of star waste product, in an unremarkable corner of the Universe, is what it’s all about.
So, to me the concept of a God lies somewhere between unknowable and laughable. “Meaningless” fits quite nicely!
OK, if I ever meet an atheist who fits this description, I’ll know what to call him. From my experience, there are either zero or very few of them, so I’m not sure what value the term “strong atheist” has.
I describe myself as a staunch atheist - I have looked at the evidence I can find, and have a very strong opinion. I am willing to revise this opinion given new evidence, or even new arguments based on old evidence. My belief about God is now equal to my belief in leprechauns - I have no evidence that they don’t exist, and I guess it’s possible that they could, but based on the evidence I have, I have a strong opinion that they don’t.
When creationists say that science and evolution require “faith,” they are implying faith in some higher power. I’m not. I thought we’d already determined that you and I are using the word “faith” completely differently, and that there are no religious overtones of any kind in my usage.
I have faith that when I overlay combinations of P and N doped silicon in certain ways with a few thin layers of insulation and metal, it’s going to form transistors. I believe that. I really do. Does this faith in the behavior of semiconductors make me a theist somehow? Yes, my background is primarily engineering, not science, although I’ve written about science a fair bit, but when I started in the semiconductor biz, you didn’t get far in electrical engineering without understanding some scientific concepts and working with scientists.
You have also refered to my math example as both nonsense and ignorance. Are you really implying that you didn’t believe at some point in your life that you couldn’t take the square root of a negative number? Are you really saying you had no faith your teacher’s knowledge and honesty? Did you rush and and check it yourself when the teacher told you that?
Where digital watches are still considered a neat idea…
I can’t speak for Voyager, but I remember making a serious high-school effort to trisect an angle, after having been told it was impossible. It turns out you can for some angles, though it involves inscribed polygons which themselves may not be drawable with compass and ruler alone. I was quite proud of that effort, actually.
To be fair, I was the one who referred to a lack of knowledge as ignorance. I fell that I am on fairly firm ground there. No need for it be taken as a pejorative; it certainly was not intended that way.
To be fair, I was the one who referred to a lack of knowledge as ignorance. I feel that I am on fairly firm ground there. No need for it be taken as a pejorative; it certainly was not intended that way.
No, they’re talking about “faith” in evolution or science. They think we’re all atheists anyhow, even those who accept evolution and go to church. So their accusation of faith is not in a higher power, unless you consider science a higher power.
I work in testing, and our whole speciality is based on lack of faith that an IC is going to function correctly. The development of a new process involves lots of testing. It takes a long time, and lots of test wafers, to validate a new process. If you have the right access, and a need to know, you can find the process recipe and look at all the parameters - which we do for yield improvement or tracking down some defect.
I think you’re confusing lack of knowledge with faith. If I wish to understand a fab process without faith, I can - all the information exists. If I wish to understand the reality of the resurrection without faith, I cannot.
I was the obnoxious kid who always corrected the teacher’s mistakes. My real objection to the use of the math example is that math is fundamentally different from science (or engineering.) You can never prove that F=ma, but you can prove that 2+2 = 4. I’m sure that when I was 10 I didn’t understand the difference between provisional belief and faith. I’m more concerned about people who are a bit older. However, I’m sure my teachers would have quickly told me about imaginary numbers if I had asked - but I had good teachers.
Let’s distinguish a claim from belief. Claiming that no god exists is stronger then believing that no god exists. Both fall under strong atheism, in my opinion, since a claim almost certainly includes belief.
To go in the other direction, a theist who claims something about God has more to justify than one who just says he believes in God. There is clearly more faith involved in claiming without evidence than believing without evidence.