I think I’ve found the problem.
MrDibble, could you point out a god that currently has followers that you do not believe is silly?
Is an atheist lashing out at a Christian saying his Jesus God does not exist any different from a Hindu or a Jew doing the same thing? Atheist means lack of belief in all gods, not just person X’s god.
If you could convince any of these people to post here, I’d be interested in if they really believed this once the nearly infinite number of possible gods was pointed out to them. In our society a lot of people think that god in general means Judeo-Christian god in particular. Teddy Roosevelt said that Tom Paine was an atheist. He wasn’t, and said this explicitly in The Age of Reason. He did not believe in the Christian God at all, which no doubt prompted TR to say that.
A typical atheist would say that he does not believe in the tea pot, but would be willing to view any evidence for it. A strong atheist thinks that the absurdity of the tea pot is good reason to believe (but not claim to know) it is not there. The positive atheist would claim to know. And also know that there is no tea pot in orbit around Jupiter either.
Remember, 1/4 of college students are sophomoric by definition.
I didn’t say that the god was silly, just that a belief in the god was silly. I didn’t say anything much about the god at all.
I’ve read George H. Smith and have one of his books buried somewhere, and I don’t recall disagreeing with his definition. But it’s been a while. However I can see why philosophers use nonstandard definitions. The standard one is more around how much evidence justifies belief, and is more legal than philosophical.
No one has really responded to your four possibilities yet. Here they are again
First, this has nothing to do with belief. Let’s look at them. If one thinks the statement “a god exists” is true, then we can assume this person believes in this god. If false, we can assume the person lacks belief - in fact it is likely they believe no god exists, which is a subset of lacking belief.
If there is not enough evidence, one would hope a person would withhold belief until the evidence is demonstrated, but actually the person having this opinion can either believe or lack belief.
And one would hope someone thinking the statement is incoherent would lack belief. Plenty of theists have told me this about the IPU. Now, the person must be aware that the statement is incoherent. Plenty of people believe in the incoherent tri-omni god either not accepting its incoherence or not being able to figure out its incoherence.
Perhaps it would help if you used something like P-atheism for the definition the philosophers use and leave plain old atheism to us atheists.
I get that you think you’re Humpty Dumpty and that when you use a word it means just what you choose it to mean—neither more nor less. However the way the word seems to be used by most folks is “Your answer to ‘Do you believe in any gods’ is not yes.” It doesn’t matter which of the six thousand flavors of “not yes” it is, as long as it’s not yes. If it’s not yes, then you can be accurately categorized as an atheist. Whether or not you like the label.
I know there is no tea pot in orbit around Jupiter.
I realized a while ago that the way most people use the word “know”, it doesn’t mean 100% certainty. It just means 100% belief. (Or, if you prefer, absolutely zero belief in the possibility it’s false.)
Here are some examples of things that people claim to “know” that they can’t actually prove with 100% certainty at the time they say it:
-That god exists.
-That their parents love them.
-Where their car keys are (if they’re not currently holding them).
-That some country that they’ve never been to actually exists and that they’re not merely the victim of a widespread conspiracy to deceive them about it.
I know there’s no teapot orbiting Jupiter, I know Australia isn’t fictional, I know there’s not a unicorn currently being kept at the Boise zoo, I know that nobody’s been abducted by aliens, and I know that nobody on earth has ever interacted with any god worthy of the term.
Not undermining your point, MrDibble, but I think there are even more than four positions to take. Down below, I’ll provide one more.
I think the problem lies in this approach to the term and its underlying question. I speculate, as I did with the Stanford cite from Voyager (with excellent commentary afterward), that the problem is rooted in the term originating from a theist’s (likely a monotheist’s, despite the application of Greek orthography) point of view: Either you believe in [The one and only true] God or you don’t. %
This would follow the binary perspective that historically brings us Black or White, Christian or Heathen, Jew or Gentile, in-group or out-group, Male or Female, and America, Love It or Leave It.
They’re catchy as memes and sound bites, but not really good for dealing with reality. The reality is not so limited as “You’re with us or against us” or “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.” The reality is that we don’t live in a world of black & white – we don’t even live in a world of grays. We live in a world of trillions of colors. Yeah, that’s even more than the 2^16 our old monitors could handle; even more than the modern monitors can handle – probably more than the latest 6K monitors can handle! We live in a non-dichotomous world.
Noboru fills his opaque candy jar on his desk.
I come by on my usual afternoon hunt-for-snacks and I ask, “Ame’ arimaska?”
Noboru shakes his head, so I shrug and turn to leave.
Noboru then reaches into his candy jar, pulls something out, and pops it into his mouth.
I stop and say, “I thought you said you didn’t have any sweets – y’know…candy!”
Noboru frowns at me and says, “Is that what you said? I grew up in Fresno; I only speak English.”
“Yes, that’s what I said.” I nod and point at the jar expectantly.
Noboru shakes his head again.
I frown and ask, “Really?”
Noboru shrugs, pulls off the lid, and reveals, “They’re not sweet, They’re not even candy. They’re salted almonds.”
For the “Is there a god?” question there are many alternative answers
[ul]
[li]Yes[/li][li]No[/li][li]Not enough evidence/data[/li][li]Incoherent (poorly defined) question (or terms); please improve and restate it [/li][li]I have no opinion on the matter (though I have thought about it)[/li][li]The question is not worthy of my attention.[/li][li]There are as many more as there are people on the planet, I’m sure…[/li][/ul]
–G!
- Japanese for “Is there candy?” which, by implication, is asking Jeff if he has any and, by social standards, is asking if there’s any in the candy jar he always (and presently) has on his desk and if he’s willing to let me take a piece or two.
% I may be wrong on the origin of this perspective. Given the either/or approach that our modern example of strongly religious devotees present in politics, medicine, human relations, et cetera, I’m kind-of reverse-engineering and assuming such an approach is the source of the false dichotomy in the philosophical/theological question, as well. Perhaps it’s rooted in misinterpretations of their First Commandment. Then again, if I assume…
My first glance at that last item had me picturing you as a heavy-lidded stoner, answering the Is-There-A-God question by saying, hey, there are as many gods as there are people on the planet, maaaan.
Guilty as charged, maaaaaan.
Or maybe Hindu, believing in the ten thousand* divinities.
–G!
- “Ten thousand” being an ancient shorthand for “countless” or “googleplex” or what I as a child would call “infinity minus one (only because infinity doesn’t stop)” The point being that one variant considers everything worthy of the respect of the divine. It’s quite a refreshing contrast to monotheism…
Man, that is some some dreadfully fucked up semantic contortionism. Hey, look at me, I can make words mean whatever I want them to.
I did a paper on this very subject in college based on a book by John Maynard Keynes. Basically “know” means the probability of the fact approaches 100%. So I think it is reasonable to be a positive a-tea potist.
I know people say the know god exists, but given that they retreat to faith this know is more like John Hinckley Jr. knowing Jodie Foster loved him. As for the second, to quote that scholar B B King
“Nobody loves me but my mother,
And I think she’s a jiving too.”
(from memory)
All this arguing about who’s an atheist and who’s an agnostic and why you (whoever you are) are wrong about the whole thing – this is why we atheists can’t have nice things, like regular social gatherings for fellowship. That is the only thing I envy the religious for.
Here’s a long story, I’ll try to remember to do a tl;dr summary at the bottom.
My only sister is born again, has been for maybe 35 years or more. We came to a deal quite a while back, that she wouldn’t attempt to proselytize me, because that would drive me away, and she doesn’t want to do that. We love each other and have agreed to disagree.
When she talks about her feelings I listen, including the religious ones, because they reflect who she is, and that makes me feel closer to her. She talks about things she calls facts and logic and information, related to her religious journey, and I don’t call them out for what they are – feelings. I, on the other hand, in addition to generally not being a sharing-of-feelings sort of person, have not shared my attitudes about the nature of reality, because I don’t know how to do it without strongly implying how strongly I disagree with her point of view and what I really think of it. I don’t want her to feel I am judging her, which I really am not, but she can’t separate herself from her religious feelings. So I am largely silent.
This was, I now realize, at least a tactical, as well as a personal mistake. Last week she broke our pact by sending me a long-handwritten letter because: she feels her own soul is in jeopardy if she doesn’t do her utmost to save the people she loves, and she thinks that if only I understood X, Y and Z about God and Jesus (what she called “information”), I would fall into their waiting arms. She also said she felt she doesn’t know me very well (while I feel I know sometimes a little too much about her). So, although she forewarned me about the letter and gave me leave to either not read it or to read it and ignore it, I felt compelled to answer it.
I explained that we have very different views of the nature of reality, and that my skepticism and need for evidence for seemingly impossible or self-contradictory assertions is as much a part of me as her religious feelings are a part of her. I said that if something disastrous happened to me, such as a sudden brain injury or a descent into dementia, and I started saying things indicating I might believe in God, then she should start mourning for me then, for my real self will have departed from my physical body. And much more like that. (I don’t think she’s received my letter yet, so I don’t know what her reaction will be.) I suspect she will put my letter aside and act like the letters never happened, which is OK. But I have to figure out if there is a way for me to let her see more of myself without appearing to criticize her beliefs. This should not be my concern, but I don’t want to drive her away either. Is there any skeptic/atheist here who knows a way to resolve this conundrum?
tl;dr – my born-again sister tried to proselytize me for the first time in years, and I let her know in no uncertain terms that my skepticism (and resulting atheism) runs as deeply in me as her religion does in her.
Anyway, all this is why I prefer to think of myself as a skeptic (small “s”). I am a skeptic about all kinds of claims, and that includes claims about religion or anything else supernatural. Also, your feelings are not evidence of any truth outside your own mind. The universe is a wondrous place and does not need any gods to attempt (and fail) to make it more so. I will die one day and my soul will go out like a light; there may be some faint residual flicker for a moment or two, like an old incandescent bulb, but that is just meaningless movement of electrons. You are entitled to think what you want to about these issues; you are not entitled to tell me what I can call myself for what I think about them.
Not quite. You can’t always divide things into two categories. We do have belief or lack of belief, but we can’t say that if I don’t believe in the God of the Bible then I don’t believe in any gods at all. That is exactly the fallacy of Pascal’s Wager.
And to belabor the point, the negative of belief in some god is lack of belief in some god, not belief that no gods exist.
Your list demonstrates that it is often fallacious to divide sets into only two categories, but that’s not what atheism is doing.
Yeah, there are two types of things: those that can be divided into two categories, and those that — hey, wait a minute.
Coming back around: there are theists who don’t happen to believe in an afterlife, right? Are there, likewise, atheists who do believe in an afterlife? If so, then what are the ramifications for this thread?
The gods of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Deists, the Brahman of Hindus.
Incoherent =/= silly.
No, I did. Because I find the way it is described to be silly.
No. That is not what belief means. You’re claiming to be a mind-reader, or just accusing your debate opponents of being liars about what they really believe. Neither is honest debating.
No. Once again, saying the proposition is incoherent is NOT a statement of disbelief in the proposition. It’s a critique of the proposition, not an assessment of its truth value.
Because the IPU is a proposition that (hopefully) everyone can see is incoherent, it is both incoherent and silly. But people act as if “deity exists” is a coherent proposition. Boy, do they act on it. Which renders it far from silly.
Perhaps it would help if *other people *just left me alone to self-describe my own beliefs, and didn’t feel obligated to label them as other than what they are?
Even though my answer to the question “do you disbelieve in God?” is also not yes? That’s some wildly inconsistent use of language and logic, there.
Oh, true enough. I believe you’ve illustrated the apatheist perspective, there.
And no matter how often you repeat it, it doesn’t become any more true. There is one and one way only in which you stop being an atheist in any god or gods, silly, unknown, coherent, incoherent whatever. And that is to have a belief in it. There are myriad ways to think or not think about this but until such point as that tips over into a positive belief…an atheist you remain.
Welcome to theology.
Do we not hear that the christian god moves in mysterious ways? That it isn’t possible to know their plan or their reasons for their action or inaction. All of that is a position on the knowledge of a god and so it isn’t a massive leap to think they’d extend that to the overall properties of a god itself.
Now how they then can actually believe in it is beyond me but that is their position.
Hey, Kettle, I’ve got news for you, said the Pot…
But doesn’t that have the problem of not fitting with current scientific theory that there was a big bang and nothing before that?
Yes, the big bang seems to be the best explanation that fits the observable facts, at the moment. If the facts change then the scientific consensus will change.
But I’m not making a claim that there was anything prior, nor that there was *anything *for *anything *to be in.
If anyone does make such such a claim (i.e. for a pre-big bang/eternal god or gods) then they are stuck with also explaining why that cannot also apply to a far simpler universe or proto-universe. I’ve heard no coherent explanation so far that isn’t merely special pleading and so remain unconvinced.