If we define “rational” as meaning ‘thinking based on sound principles’, then everybody thinks of themselves as rational, more or less by definition. The way the term is used today has made it almost meaningless. In the 19th century it was meaningful to talk about “rationalist” thinkers and writers in opposition to romantics. Today almost anyone labels themselves rational and calls their opponents irrational or hysterical or emotional. Plenty of blogs, clubs, and other groups put the word in their title, but does it really mean any more than politicans who label themselves “bipartisan” at every opportunity?
Christianity has a long history of incorporating logic and reasoned argument. Saint Thomas in the 12th century was in the mainstream of theological thinking, and still is, in asserting that we know some things by investigation and reason and other things can only be told to us through Revelation, but there can be no conflict between the two. In other words, facts we observe in reality and logical conclusions from those facts must be true, and if they conflict with some doctrine then the doctrine must include an error arising from misinterpretation of something.
At the same time, we know that emotions are an essential and inseparable part being human; they always have been and always will be. C. S. Lewis’ book The Abolition of Man begins from this point by asserting that all civilized humans have believed that certain things compel certain emotional responses, and that if we subjugate or ignore them then we become less than fully human. For instance, natural beauty has a definite value in the feelings it awakes in us, which can’t simply be weighed against and found inferior to the rational benefits of destroying it by bulldozing, mining, drilling, logging, etc…
So, in short Christianity does not try to elevante emotionalism above pure (old definition) rationalism or vice versa, nor try to balance them fifty-fifty, but instead seeks to bring them into unison. For example, in Rev. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, rational argument and emotional appeal run side-by-side.
Atheism isn’t true or false as it isn’t a claim. Atheism is being without belief in the existence of God/gods.
Of course you can.
One doesn’t reject atheism; they accept theism. I highly doubt you accepted that God/gods exist because you thought atheism meant being unable to find terrorist acts wrong.
You can’t actually believe atheists must find those things meaningless, can you?
So I was right, you don’t think atheists must find those things meaningless. I guess you didn’t mean what you said?
Aside from how absurd this definition of atheism is (-isms are normally statements of objective reality, not about someone’s belief), the statement “God exists” still has a true/false value. If it is false that God exists then there is no transcendent basis for morality. Whether someone has a belief in that God or not is irrelevant.
Well, you can physically say it, but it just won’t have any meaning.
I think here your definitions are all messed up. Atheism is not somehow true until proven otherwise. Even accepting your definition that “atheism is the lack of belief in God” that naturally leads to the question “is it correct to lack belief in the existence of God”. It is only correct to lack belief in the existence of God if God does not in fact exist. One of the problems with your definition is that there is an unstated and yet assumed implication that the lack of belief in God is correct. Just the raw fact that you have or lack a belief is not important. What is important is whether or not your beliefs correct. You at some point must have accepted that your lack of belief in God is correct, and in that sense you have accepted atheism.
Also, I don’t just think that God exists because terrorist acts are wrong. But it certainly doesn’t hurt.
I don’t think that many atheists think that morality is meaningless, because I think most atheists have inconsistent and/or incoherent views of morality. If atheists were well thought out (like Nietzsche, Camus or Sartre) then they would see where their atheism leads with respect to morality.
So for instance Richard Dawkins, in “The God Delusion” almost unintentionally shows how atheist morality is entirely arbitrary. In picking his “atheist 10 commandments” all he does is pick some stuff out from a website that feels right to him. He really does not try to show how his feelings are transcendent, or even why his commandments are moral in the first place. And in reading that what I was left with was thinking just how arbitrary and poorly thought through his morality really is.
This is the same view of morality that I think a lot of atheists have. That their own personal view of morality is somehow objective and whatever they think to moral is objectively moral for all people. This is obviously impossible, because not everyone has the same moral sense, nor is there any reason to think on atheism that there is any connection between human emotion and moral reality. Nevertheless it seems that this is how a large number of atheists think.
just to chip in Calculon, we’ve been here before many times and it is always useful to correct people on this.
When x-ray vision says, “Atheism is being without belief in the existence of God/gods.”
That is true, that is all there is to it. You think that is absurd but I can’t fathom why, it is as clear a definition as it can be. Just being an atheist means very little in itself.
Someone who is atheist may have a whole set of other beliefs and worldviews as well but they are not part of, nor spring directly from atheism. They are merely explanations that clarify our place and role in the world more persuasively than a creator god or other forms of deity.
And here
.
You show your misunderstanding. We are all born without belief in gods. At some point we are given evidence that may or may not convince us of the god hypothesis. Those that find it convincing are theists, those that don’t, remain atheist (and some may swing back and forth throughout their lives).
It isn’t that the negative claim is thought to be true (“there is no god”) just that the positive claim (“there is a god”) is lacking in evidence.
That’s how it is for me anyhow and many, many, many others out there.
and here
Do you not see how the same is true of theists?
You realise that the underlying instinctive human morality you, and others, use to skip the “nasty” bits of the bible and accept the “nice” bits is the same that the godless amongst us use as well?
Hijack : your other signature (“the last priest hanged…”) is uncorrectly attributed to Diderot. It was written by the abbot Meslier, who after living an unremarkable life as a village priest, left after his death a voluminous “testament”, proclaiming his atheism, and arguing violently against religion, its inanity, ist manipulations and its compromission with the powers that be.
I suspect this guy would be in your personal list of great men.
An atheist saying terrorism is wrong has just as much meaning as a theist saying it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
None of my definitions are messed up. Nothing is ever proven. Atheism in neither true or false; it’s about whether or not one believes in the existence of God/gods. It’s irrelevant whether or not gods roam the heavens.
What is your definition of ‘atheism’? I accept that there is no good reason to believe in the existence of God/gods because there is no evidence for them and it is “correct” to not believe in extraordinary things sans evidence.
So you think because terrorist acts are wrong, that is further evidence for God? Explain.
If that’s what you got, you didn’t understand a thing you read.
Why do you think a lot atheists believe what they think is moral must be moral for all people and how does it differ from what Christians believe?
Do you yet see how the last sentence of what you wrote below contradicts the two above it?:
What precisely do you mean by that? You appear to be defining “right” and “wrong” as words that only have meaning within a religious context, but that’s at the very least idiosyncratic. Please be straight: What exactly is “morality” such that atheists cannot coherently believe that it exists? To pick obvious examples, many virtue ethicists or ethical egoists would find it quite baffling to hear that they must either believe in god or make no meaningful statements about right and wrong.
If you wished to argue that all non-theistic moral systems are incorrect, well, that would at least make more sense than stating outright that a non-theistic moral system is a contradiction.
I agree with much of what you’ve written but I quibble a bit with the above statement. Although true that atheism is best defined as a lack, it is not necessarily nonsense to describe atheism as correct or not correct. That depends on context – on the question being asked. Consider: assuming that the Christian god exists, who has the correct set of beliefs with respect to religion? Those without belief are just as wrong as those who believe in, say, the Norse pantheon or shinto. On the other hand, if no god exists, those without any belief are correct (have the correct set of beliefs with respect to religion, i.e., none at all).
Generally, I think too much stress is put upon the status of “atheism” as a default belief – it’s simply not that important and sticks out as rhetorical hair-splitting. When someone states “I believe that atheism is incorrect”, it should be understood as “I believe that some brand of theism is correct”.
Atheism isn’t a set of beliefs. There is nothing correct or incorrect about being without belief in an extraordinary claim that doesn’t have evidence to back it up.
I’m without belief that a lottery ticket that I possess will be the winning multi-million dollar ticket because the odds are too great to have that belief. If I had that belief I’d already be shopping for a new house. If the ticket is a winner, was my non-belief incorrect? If you think so, then we probably have nothing more than a disagreement on a semantics issue. Not having a belief in the ticket being a winner was rational regardless of the outcome, and it’s not incorrect to remain rational.
No, it isn’t. As I’ve said before, the vast majority of dictionaries and encyclopedias of philosophy that I’ve encountered specifically define it as the belief that there is NO god. it has become fashionable for atheists to declare that it is simply the absence of belief, but that is not THE definition of atheism.
At best, one could argue that this is one way in which people use the term – a way that has not yet been accepted as the primary definition according to the references in question. To contend that it is THE one true and accurate definition, however, is simply incorrect.
Atheism itself may not be a set of beliefs, but to refer to oneself as an atheist is to make a statement about which set of beliefs one holds. Namely, that one does not believe in a deity. The term “atheist” is thus not without content with respect to someone’s belief system. So we can ask: how well does my set of beliefs correspond to reality? If I fail to believe in a true deity, then to some extent my beliefs don’t match up.
Again, it depends on the context (and I don’t think it’s merely an issue of semantics; the answer has implications for one’s theory of knowledge). If I wish to collect a group of individuals who were correct about the winningness of their lottery tickets, who do I choose? Losers who believe themselves to have lost and winners who believe themselves to have won. From that perspective, withholding judgment is simply another way of being wrong.
Hm. “Rational” is not a word that seems at all relevant to the distinctions I’m making. One can rationally make a wrong choice or irrationally make a correct choice.
Read better dictionaries. Try the OED, or better still, ask an atheist as we get to define what the word actually means don’t we?
OED
And Websters, is much the same. They both have that sort of definition as the first one.
So my definition is the primary definition in the two most used dictionaries in the world.
What do you put forward to counter that?
Atheism is the lack of belief in god or gods. Note - no positive claim that they don’t exist. Now you can choose to make “atheist” mean whatever the heck you want but you still have to deal with the fact that most people who would identify with that word consider it to mean exactly what I have stated.
If you think it would be helpful to choose another word instead for us then please do. Makes no difference. non-theist? yeah, I’ll be that instead if it helps.
Let me take the word “atheist” out of the equation here as it seems to confuse some people.
If I say “I don’t have a belief in a god” then I am stating a belief that I don’t have.
How is that also a statement on the beliefs that I do have? I have said nothing else.
As JThunder points out, the historic definition of atheism is the statement that no Gods exist, and therefore atheists are those that believe that this statement is more probably correct (not necessarily absolutely certain) then incorrect. Other “-isms” would be things like theism (the statement that a personal, interventionist God exists) pantheistic monism (that statement that all of existence is part of one impersonal God), ect, and “-ists” are people that believe that the corresponding “-ism” statement is most likely true. That is useually the way the terms are defined. Defining atheism as merely “the lack of belief in Gods” has several problems as a definition:
Most fundamentally it avoids the central question as to whether Gods actually exists or not. While someone may or may not have a belief in God, the important question is whether or not it is correct to lack a belief in God. If God actually exists then atheism in the “lack of belief” sense is simply a denial of reality. So really someone is only correct in being an atheist if no Gods actually exist. Presumably if someone lacks a belief in God, then that person feels that they are most likely correct to lack a belief in God. Which if they believe that they are correct in their lack of belief necessarily means that they think it most likely that no Gods exist, which brings us back to the tradition definition.
The reason that I think the “lack of belief” in Gods is gaining traction amoung atheists as a definition is that it is a rhetorically self-serving definition. Using this definition atheists try to shift the entire burden of proof in arguments over to the opposing side by trying to place themselves in some sort of default position, and then insisting that everyone else must prove their own position. Since atheism is however a definite statement of reality then it cannot be a default position.
Defining atheism in this way means assumes a binary situation where one either believes in God, or lacks a belief in God. However atheism and theism are not the only metaphysical options. Other positions like pantheistic monism, animism, new ageism, ect exist, and should be considered. I think that it is simply inadequate given the range of possible beliefs to simply define atheism as a lack of theism.
According to the “lack of belief” definition, atheism does not necessarily mean that theism is wrong. If one simply lacks a belief in God, that, in it’s strictest sense is not saying anything about whether or not God actually exists. Lacking a belief in God does not give any reason for thinking that theism is actually false. It is possible to both lack a belief in God, but also think that theism could be possibly true. So people who deny theism are in that sense not speaking as atheists because they are speaking beyond what atheism means. So there needs to be another term that we don’t have to descrbe people who deny theism.
Defining atheism in this way unneccessarily muddies the waters of definitions. This definition swallows up agnoticism, which also lacks belief in God but for different reasons. So if you accept this definition then atheism then you would have to say that there is no distinction between agnosticism and atheism because both lack belief in God. Worse still, people like Richard Dawkins are not strictly just atheists according to this definition. Richard Dawkins stated position is that he is “almost certain that God does not exist”. This places him squarely under the traditional definition of atheism, but leaves him somewhat outside this new definition of atheism. Because Dawkins goes byond just lacking a belief in God his position is distinct from someone who has more of an agnostic position. If we re-define atheism as the lack of belief in God we lose atheism as a useful term to describe people like Richard Dawkins, as well as technically lumping together people traditionally understood as atheists and agnostics who have distinct views. So rather than making descriptions clearer this definition makes them more difficult and less clear. Therefore I think it is a very poor definition.
First of all, I think it incorrect to say that we are all born without belief in God. I think we are all born agnostic, in that we are all born not being sure what to believe. As we grow and learn we come to conclusions about what to believe. Babies don’t lack belief in God in any conscious way because babies don’t understand the concept of God. To meaningfully lack belief in something you have to understand the concepts involved in that belief.
Secondly I think your way of assessing atheism is fundamentally illogical. If someone lacks evidence for a claim it simply does not follow that the negation of that claim must be true. If there is no evidence for either a statement or its negation then the truth/falsity of the statement is undetermined. To take a simple example, say I claim that I am drinking coffee. The fact that you lack any evidence that I am drinking coffee does not mean that logically I cannot be drinking coffee. All that it means is that my coffee drinking state is undermined. Likewise even if there is no evidence for God, it does not logically follow that God does not exist. In that sense the definition of atheism as a lack of belief in God is simply based on poor logic.
To take another example, how would you respond to a creationist claiming that creationism is simply the lack of belief in evolution? That we are all born lacking a belief in evolution, and then some choose to accept evolution. This creationist doesn’t say that they can disprove evolution, they just think there isn’t enough evidence to believe in evolution.
I think that is a fundamentally illogical way of arguing, but it is the same sort of argument that is happening here with respect to atheism.
I simply reject the claim that Christians pick and choose the nice bits out of the bible and skip the nasty parts. The traditional view of Christianity is that the entire bible is the inspired word of God and that Christian morality is based on the entire bible. I don’t skip over passages because I find them “immoral” on my own view of morality.
And under what objective basis does the atheist claim that terrorism is wrong?
As I said before, if God does exist then atheism is simply a denial of reality. So I think it matters a lot whether or not God exists.
Just because you lack evidence for a statement does not make the negation of the statement true. The best you could do without any evidence is to say that it is unknown whether the statement is true or not. Without any positive reason to think that God does not exist, then it is simply not logical to lack a belief in God.
Simple moral argument:
Premise: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
Premise: Objective values do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.
If terrorism is objectively wrong, that demonstrates premise 2. The lack of any atheistic basis for objective morals demonstrates premise 1. Therefore the conclusion follows that God exists.
Care to explain what I am not getting?
Chistians have traditionally thought that morality is defined by the character and nature of God. So since God is objectively real then morality must be objectivly real and therefore the same for everyone. I suppose there is no requirement that atheists believe in an objective morality. Atheists could subscribe to some sort of subjective ethical egoism or some such. However when you read a lot of popular atheists they talk of morality in absolutist, objective terms. Consider atheist writers talking of the evils of religion. What they most commonly mean is not that religion is subjectively wrong to them, but that religion is objectively wrong and that all people should be able to see the errors of it just as they do. So I think that atheists believe in objective morality because I take them at their word.
It is not contradictory. What I mean is that I could not live practiaclly without objective moral values. Atheism has no basis for objective moral values and therefore is univable in that sense. However the fact that atheists commonly talk of morality in objective terms shows that they, like me, desire that some sort of objective morality exists. The fact that there is no consistent way that objective morality can exist within an atheist framework does not stop atheists from desiring that objective morality is actually true. That is what I meant, that many atheists seem to share my view that subjectively moral belief systems are unlivable, even through their own belief system is subjectively moral. The atheists are just inconsistent on this point.
I assume you see it as irony because Christians just take their morality from some book (ie: the bible) without really questioning it? And in that sense are doing the exact same thing as Richard Dawkins?
I fundamentally disagree, based on what Christians actually believe the bible to be. Christians believe that the bible is the self-revelation of God. Therefore it is through the bible that we understand the transcendent nature of God. Therefore by baseing their morality on the bible Christians see themselves as grouding their morality in the objective reality of God.
Richard Dawkins however AFAICT, does not believe his source website to be inspired in any way, nor contain any deeper reality than what some guy with a blog account thought. So in using those commandments I don’t think he sees himself as baseing his morality on anything transcendent at all.
So in terms of what each sees themselves doing, I think the two situations are not the same. One group sees themselves as baseing morality on the transcendent reality of God, and the other sees themselves as baseing morality on their own imminent opinion. Of course you may argue that the bible is not actually the self-revelation of God, but in this sense that is beside the point. The point is whether within their own understanding Christians and Richard Dawkins uses the same base for morality and in this case I think it is clear that they do not.
This is possibly a bit unclear.
What I am primarily concerned with is objective morality. So when I use terms like right or wrong I mean objectively right or wrong, likewise meaning I take to be objective meaning. What I mean to say is that I don’t see any objective basis for morality in atheism, therefore where atheists claim to have objective morals then I think they are inconsistent within their atheism. I have no real problem with atheists like Jean-Paul Sartre who acknowledged that there was not possible atheist basis for morality. While I disagree with that position I at least think that it is consistent. Moral beliefs like ethical egoism are also inherently subjective (in ethical egoisms case subjective based on the good of the individual) and also lack objective meaning. They can have subjective meaning within their framework, but are ultimately not transcendently real.
Atheism is just the absence of theistic belief. It doesn’t necessarily mean categorical denial of the existence of gods, and it’s a waste of everybody’s time to try to use that strawman definition. Most atheists are not strong atheists, and you aren’t going to convince them that they are by trying to insist on your own personal (and inaccurate) definition of “atheism,” so why bother?
Atheism is not a “denial” of anything. Atheism is not an assertion or a belief. It’s a null position. Anyone and everything that is not a theist is an atheist.
Agnosticism is not a position on the existence of gods, but a position on what it’s possible to prove about gods.
No, it doesn’t work that way. The null hypothesis is automatically assumed to be true until it can be falsified. Non-existence is the logical default assumption. A hypothesis does not attain “undetermined” status just because you can imagine it. Evidence for negation is not required. negation is assumed from the outset. That’s how it works. If I say the univers was created by left-handed, cross-dressing orcs, that doesn’t mean that anyone now has to disprove that, or that my hypothesis is “undetermined” with both sides having equal value.
There is no evidence for gods, so the hypothesis is not entitled to any consideration at all until evdience can be produced. Until such a time, then the null wins (handily) by default, just like it holds for spaghetti monsters and smurfs.
