I’m still waiting for you to demonstrate you actually read my posts rather than reading only what you want to, and then asking me to explain what I’ve already explained.
I read your posts. I gave you the same exact scenario twice. You claimed that I must believe you aren’t wearing white socks if I don’t have a belief you are and you even said I’m in denial about it, yet you claimed that you were without belief I was wearing white socks and didn’t have a belief that I wasn’t. I asked you to explain why it was different for you and your answer was:
“First of all, I was treating the white socks thing as a metaphor for believing there’s no god when I referred to your denial about it. I’m sure you don’t have a belief about my socks primarily because there’s no payoff in thinking about it.”
That you thought it was a metaphor and that there’s no payoff is irrelevant. The scenario was exactly the same except we switched roles. Why with the same exact scenarios do you not have to have a belief and I do?
OK, I’ll spell it out for you one more time.
If you go back in the thread, you’ll recall that I said something like, “If you told me you don’t believe I’m wearing white socks, that tell me you believe I’m not wearing white socks.” In other words, in the instance where you say what you said, I’m saying that indicates a kind of belief. I’m not saying you actually do believe it; I’m saying I would think you do if you said that.
It not different for you than it is for me. If I said I didn’t believe you were wearing white socks, the same inference could be made. The point is, I’m not making that claim, so therefore, I have no belief about it because, not knowing anything about you coupled with the fact that humans sometimes do/don’t wear them, I have to say, I don’t know (the evidence being a key difference here, another point which seems to be lost on you).
I’m pretty sure what I just wrote I’ve said in this thread about six different ways now, but there you go.
It’s a blatant contradiction. Look how close the wording is between the two statements.
And how strange a choice of words it would be to say “I honestly believe atheists try way too hard…”
as supposedly referring to atheists on the sdmb specifically, without any context to suggest that.
No, I’m not trying to provoke. But then I’m not trying to tell people what they believe.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. That contradiction is basically what brought me into the discussion in the first place.
The irony is that Some Schmo’s point, if there is one, is basically that many atheists are in denial about their position…yet twice he’s been walked through contradictions in his own position that he can’t refute but refuses to acknowledge.
It indicates a kind of belief, not that I actually do believe it? Which is it?
I said:
“So you think I believe you are not wearing white socks because I am without a belief that you are? Just answer so I can be clear on this.”
You said:
"Again, for your benefit, yes, that’s what I think. It also appears you’re not even aware you believe I’m not wearing white socks. You seem to be in denial about it, in fact.
So, I’m in denial and I do believe you aren’t wearing white socks but you are merely without belief that I am and you don’t have a belief that I’m not. Why?
Want me to show you again where you said differently?
What claim did I make that you didn’t? You claimed I was with a belief that you weren’t wearing white socks and also claimed that you were without belief without having a belief that I wasn’t. Why the difference?
I didn’t scan but a few of the pages. My bad then, and thanks for the correction.
Really? I seem to remember you accusing me of misrepresenting the atheist position. Since I’m an atheist, it sounds to me like you’re telling me what I am supposed to believe.
My point has been made over and over. It’s not my fault if you don’t get it (makes me wonder why you’d respond to a point that I may or may not have made).
:rolleyes:
While it’s clear you think I’ve contradicted myself, I would say that’s more a result of your misunderstanding than anything else, given you don’t think I’ve either refuted the contradictions or acknowledged your thinking you’ve pointed something out.
I think it’s hilarious that I’ve been accused of not respecting what other people have written when people can’t be bothered to read what I have.
Read those last two sentences back to yourself. Your point doesn’t work.
For example, I’m British yet it is still possible for me to misrepresent the British public.
And if someone were to point out that I’d misrepresented Britons, that would not be telling me what I’m “supposed to believe”.
You’ve said that over and over, but your point seems rather elusive…
It’s strange that two people believe they’ve found direct contradictions in your arguments. Some sort of conspiracy perhaps?
In any case, the contradiction I found was rock solid, and it’s shameful that you tried to alter what you’d said, rather than simply acknowledge it.
Once again I doubt whether you’re debating here in good faith.
Sure, if you feel like bullshitting. I’m not BSing about my position.
There is not one catch-all philosophy that sums up atheists, so it’s not like anyone can really represent them all accurately.
Not in the case of being British… it would be more like telling them how they are supposed to be (again, assuming you weren’t BSing). The implication is that you think that being an atheist means one particular narrow thing (the thing I’m apparently misrepresenting).
Well, I simply disagree with what you think. OMG! What will the Flying Spaghetti Monster say about this?!
Really? Then what are you arguing against? It seems silly to be debating against a non-existent point.
You mean two people who happen to agree with each other on this topic amounts to evidence that I’ve contradicted myself, or could it be a matter of confirmation bias which is clouding your judgment? That’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not that strange. It’s just bad communication (I’ll take part of the blame for perhaps not expressing myself more clearly, although I’ve done it so many times now, I don’t know how else to say it. But you guys certainly bear part of the responsibility for reading what you want to and discarding the rest).
It’s only a contradiction if you decide to look at individual trees rather than the whole forest. What’s shameful is your insistence that your interpretation is correct over what was intended after I explained myself.
Funny… I’m starting to feel exactly the same toward you.
I don’t know why I keep stepping into these waters, especially since no one seems to notice what I say, but I agree with Some Schmo. Atheist may “technically” refer to anyone who doesn’t have a positive belief in God, including agnostics, infants, and sea cucumbers, but IRL, everyone I’ve ever met who identifies as an atheist believes that God does not exist, either as a certainty or (much, much more commonly) as the overwhelmingly likely situation. Even on-line, you can look at the other threads about this and see that almost everyone recognizes that absence of evidence IS evidence of absence and that the evidence of God’s absence is, for atheists, overwhelming. So I would say Mijin is the one misrepresenting the most common atheist position.
Of course, most common doesn’t mean universal. There is no universal atheist position. Somewhere out there there is probably someone who calls himself an atheist because he doesn’t believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but believes in some other god. He’s misusing the word in my opinion, but what’re ya gonna do? All we can do is try to communicate effectively and express our own positions clearly.
I see no contradiction in what Some Schmo said about (some) atheists trying too hard to deny having any sort of believe whatsoever about God’s existance or non-existance and the fact that most atheists do believe there is no god. As I said earlier, the only time I hear athiests claiming not believe God doesn’t exist is when they are trying to make atheism the “default” position. (Which is really just a muddled form of the Occam’s razor argument.)
The apparent contradiction in the “white socks” argument is really just a red herring caused by the extreme convolution of that analogy. Again, I think it’s a silly argument meant to force people to use labels a certain way instead of just expressing our own positions clearly.
Mijin, you said that the man-on-the-street identifies agnostic with an exactly 50-50 position on God’s existence. I don’t think that’s true. I think most people use agnostic to describe anyone who has no firm opinion on whether or not God exists, including people who think there is no evidence one way or the other, and people who think the odds of a god existing are unknown. (The last is not the same as thinking the odds are 50-50. This is called the fallacy of indifference.) In the poll thread on what agnostics believe, more than half think it unlikely that God exists. But there is no universal agnostic position either.
I’ve noticed what you’ve had to say, have agreed with pretty much everything, and think you’ve expressed it far more eloquently than I have.
FYI
You’ve misunderstood my point here. I was saying that few atheists profess to know god does not exist. This is different from saying atheists would not put low odds on god’s existence. Indeed, I’ve implied many times that I and many atheists would consider the odds of god existing to be extremely remote.
One thing I’ve said, is that in everyday usage “belief” can often mean “think there’s a high probability of”. By this definition atheists usually do indeed believe that there’s no god.
But philosophically speaking you must be careful with such words. “Belief” in philosophy and theology usually implies a faith that something is true.
I have no such faith, nor does Richard Dawkins et al.
I don’t know where to begin with this. But suffice it to say: I haven’t seen examples of such fallacious thinking, and believe this is a straw man.
The standard dictionary definition is that god’s existence is unknowable. And, as I alluded, the-man-on-the-street (IME) has his own implicit definition of the term.
As I explained, neither definition would fit me, so that’s why I don’t call myself agnostic, ditto for all the other “weak atheists” (who are really the majority of atheists).
I have not seen agnostic defined to be that the odds of god existing are unknown. But nevertheless, I don’t agree with that either – A precise number would be pretty arbitrary, but I can give my own opinion of the likelihood based on my current understanding and expectations, and give, say, a cap on the highest probability that seems reasonable to me.
So it doesn’t make any difference to my point.
As for Some Schmo, this is my final response to you: I’m done.
If I again gave a point-by-point response explaining how you’d dodged the issue and contradicted yourself again, you’d just respond with another set of dodges and contradictions.
Life’s too short.
Do you know anything then? As I’ve said several times, I know God doesn’t exist as surely as I know most things about the world.
Cite? I’ve never heard the word used that way in philosophy. Even in theology, beliefs are usually arrived at by faith, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen belief used to mean only a truth held by faith.
I’m not sure what makes it a straw man. It isn’t fallacious. If absense of evidence is NOT evidence of absence, on what basis do you say that the odds of God existing are low? Faith?
Most dictionaries have both definitions.
Depends on what you mean by “weak atheists.” I typically see it defined as one who lacks a belief in God, but does not claim that God does not exist. As I’ve said several times, I’ve only met these on-line, and even then, only when they are trying to make claims about atheism being the “default” position. Even people claiming to be weak atheists will almost always say that the odds of God existing are extremely low, which IS a belief about god’s non-existance as these words are commonly used both in philosophy and ordinary conversation IME.
I commonly see people actually using the term “weak atheist” to mean someone who thinks God almost certainly doesn’t exist but doesn’t take it as 100% certain, even though the same people who use it this way ususally define it as above. This conflation is one of the biggest obstacles to clarity in these discussions. I’m not 100% certain about anything, but I usually don’t make a big deal about it. See my earlier posts on the subject.
I’ve never seen it defined that way either, but a lot of people who posted in the thread I refered to were unwilling to define the probablity of god’s existing. It’s a perfectly reasonable position to take, and one perfectly consistant with agnosticism by any definition (and arguably required by the stricter definition).
Oh yes, it’s all my fault and you are blameless. How convenient for you.
Good. I’m done with your disingenuous silliness and intellectual dishonesty too.
Of course, from a philosophical point of view there’s little I “know” for sure. I can always have doubts about empirical facts.
But there’s a difference between knowing, say, that there’s a glass on the table in front of me versus god does not exist.
What difference? Well, the fact that I can see a glass supports specifically the claim that a glass is there. I could be mistaken of course. But I have grounds for my belief.
But for the claim “god does not exist” what specifically supports that claim? The fact that I can’t see him doesn’t prove anything.
And after all, it all rather depends on what definition of god we’re talking about. Some definitions of god are empirically falsifiable. Some are logically inconsistent. I’m happy to rule out such gods.
But I can’t rule all popular definitions of god. All I can say is, I have no reason to suppose such entities exist.
You had said: “absence of evidence IS evidence of absence and that the evidence of God’s absence is, for atheists, overwhelming”.
I certainly wouldn’t argue that way, and for good reason.
After all, there’s an absence of evidence for extraterrestrial life, too. Are we, right now, being “overwhelmed” with evidence for the claim that there is not extraterrestrial life too?
The absence of evidence is a given before we can even talk probabilities. How I work out the probability is down to the specifics of the claim.
Thus the claim “there is not a wedding cake on the surface of pluto” has a higher probability for me than “there is a wedding cake on the surface of pluto”, though in both cases there is an absence of evidence or certainty.
Again, that is how I’d define weak atheism and is how I’d define my position.
But you say “Even people claiming to be weak atheists will almost always say that the odds of God existing are extremely low” – that’s perfectly consistent with the definition of weak atheism (why the even?).
I’ve said the same as you: that many weak atheists attribute a low probability to god’s existence. So what is your point? That they should become strong atheists?
I’d like to hear that argument. Just because something is empirically unknown it does not follow that we cannot assign probabilities to the claim.
We may never know if Robocop was responsible for the mystery of the Mary Celeste, nonetheless there’s nothing irrational in suggesting that it’s unlikely.
Virtually all gods are claimed to be able to break the laws of physics. The laws of physics are formalized observations of what happens in the real world. So, virtually all gods are defined as being incompatible with observed reality. That is evidence that they don’t exist.
There are certain exemptions to this, notably including all gods who do not interact with observable reality and never have. Atheists generally tend to admit such gods might exist while pointing out that they’re irrelevent; they don’t do anything and nobody worships them. (Which actually raises the question of why they deserve the label “god”, come to think of it.)
Now, of course, we mold the laws of physics based on what we observe. If a god existed and did things in some kind of verifiable way, then this wouldn’t be just evidence for the god, it would also compell us to revisit the laws of physics to account for what we saw. But there is no evidence of this occurring, so the laws of physics stand, so in the absence of evidence the laws of physics are left unaltered and stand as evidence of absence.
That’s the good argument.
The actual argument is that outragous claims require outragous evidence. Anybody can make things up, but that doesn’t mean that we need to seriously assess wether there would be irreconcileable internal logical contradictions if Harry Potter really existed. The default assumption is that it’s fiction. We believe that it’s fiction. Without any doubt. Despite the fact that we only have Rawlings’ word that she made it up.