And, I never brought up True either, except when a poster would rather fight the hypothetical than participate.
In any case, my opinion, one shared by many, is that “Hard” Atheism, a conviction that no Gods possibly can or do exist- is indeed a “belief” a from of “faith” and almost a religion.
I consider that prejudicial.
It accepts / presumes or implies that religion is the one binary game to beat.
And many hundreds of religious versions.
There’s no compulsion to prove a negative, or disprove myths perpetuated for millennia, but never supported by logical argument or material evidence.
And candidly, if god wishes to punish me with eternal torment for rational contemplation and logical conclusion, then I wouldn’t want the curse of having to waste the rest of eternity in his neighborhood anyway.
I vow today to try to Athe harder and better.
You are missing the point. I was replying to one specific post, about why the question is invalid. You responded by simple lining to an analogous thread.
My point and only my point was:
that’s it. You can respond to that or not at all, but I’m going to chance the topic around as you respond to things I’m not arguing.
The part your missing is this: “Hard” Atheism, is a conviction that no Gods possibly can or do exist until proven otherwise.
Based on the existing information, I am 100% positive gods do not exist. I am happy to change this belief shoudl evidence support a change. That is belief but not faith.
Faith is not evidence-based. A belief can be evidenced-based and be changed with new evidence.
Belief does not always equal faith.
My Atheist Belief: I believe that nothing approaching verifiable evidence has been presented so far that would lead me to accept the existence of any god.
If that’s too long a statement, just end the last sentence at “presented”.
As many have stated already, an atheist (true or otherwise) is simply one who does not believe in god(s).
Atheism is a religion or a belief in exactly the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, and bald is a hairstyle. (not claiming originality there)
Yet this proves incomprehensible to many believers…the ones I encountered have been Christian, but that is likely just an artifact of where I live my life. “I just don’t understand how you can not believe in God!” they will say. I put it to them in this way. (not original to me)
I believe in Jehovah/Yahweh/Elohim/Capital G-God in exactly the same way that you believe in Zeus, Poseidon, Vishnu, and Pele the Polynesian god of vulcanism. We are both atheists when it comes to all those gods, and I simply believe in one less god than you do.
This is usually met with the reply that all those are false gods, and or myths, and there is only one true God. Then I point out that this is circular reasoning because the terms “myth” and “false god” are simply labels applied to gods in which someone doesn’t believe. Again, I have a list of such one item longer than theirs. I am also happy to point them to bible passages in which God refers to other gods with nary a hint that these might not actually exist. (Starting with the second commandment)
At which point they often go to the “One God with many names” approach. This can of course be addressed by the many contradictory descriptions of the nature of various gods…and given the dichotomy between the God of the old testament, and that of the new, it is far easier to imagine many gods using one name than the converse.
If you just wanted to talk about the rare “hard atheism” instead of the garden-variety atheism, you should have just said so. You wouldn’t have too many posters respond because there just aren’t too many of that sort, but the few that do would have no problem citing their logical reasons for not believing that God (as he is usually described) exists.
As I’ve stated already, I dislike this definition, because it follows that an infant, a gecko, and a doughnut are atheists like me. I think my relationship with the concept of gods is fundamentally different from those relationships with the concept of gods; for the word “atheist” to reflect that difference requires more than a simple absence of belief in gods.
There is no hypothetical! What are you even talking about?
If that’s all that’s bothering you, why not just define it as “a person who does not believe in (any) god(s)”?
Because he thinks babies are people?
Because the relevant difference isn’t personhood, it’s that you’ve considered the idea of gods and found those ideas wanting. The considered rejection of deities is why I set myself on one side of the line, and infants and geckos and doughnuts on the other.
A person who’d never encountered the idea of gods would be fundamentally different in their relationship to the idea of gods than I am. By analogy, think of two people:
Those two people have very different attitudes toward Egypt, despite the fact that neither believes in Egypt. In this way, I have a very different attitude toward God than has an infant.
I see your point. If I go with Kevbo’s definition of atheism, I must take note of the fact that one can be an atheist for very different reasons. Unlike you I do not consider that a problem. If I call myself an atheist, very few people will assume that it might be, because i have never heard of the concept of deities. So I am not at risk of giving anyone the wrong idea.
I like Kevbo’s definition for its clarity. If a theist is someone who believes in deities, it makes some sense to define an atheist as someone who does not.
I was going to reply, and then I saw this, which said what I was going to try to say.
I think it works just fine to use the word “atheist” for anyone who doesn’t believe in any god(s), without opening the can of worms of trying to sort out why or how they don’t believe, or which gods or ideas of gods you’re rejecting.
Man, being an atheist is just getting too complicated. I’m giving it up.
I think belief in “god” or “gods” is not sufficient to talk about belief or Atheism.
If an entity appeared in front of you, claimed to be Zeus, launched lightning at you, is certified by experts to be fluent in ancient Greek and all the myths - or if a Christian god shows up performs miracles - all that shows is that there is some alien race or type of being with some “indistinguishable from magic” technology, and maybe they were around to influence myths of the past, so that being exists.
I’d posit that the proof only changes from “some kind of being we don’t understand” to “an actual god” by answering: do these beings have some connection to the fate of your “soul”, and is your “soul” somehow separate from your body - will your soul outlast your body in some form, and does this purported god in front of you have some kind of influence over that?
So the question: is it even possible to have empirical proof, within your lifetime and before you die, that your soul can outlast you? I just don’t think it’s possible for such proof to exist as “verifiable evidence” in the scientific or philosophical sense.
I’m talking about verifiable evidence, not proof. There is a palpable difference between “convinced that enough evidence exists to take some time to consider the matter”, and “convinced beyond a doubt”.
There is no empirical “proof” in science. Empirical evidence, yes. If God started making it so all souls interacted with us, e.g., you could continue communicating with dead people through their Casper like ghosts, that would be pretty good evidence. Sure, it could be aliens screwing with us or “magic”, but that’s a possibility with all of our experiences.
ETA: It would be evidence of souls/ghosts, not God.
Fair enough. How would you “empirically verify” the difference between a god and a powerful alien to any degree? What would be the fundamental quality of the difference between the two for you to make it “close enough”?
In the case of Antarctica, there’s already a set of reasoning we can trace back, with small jumps of empirical evidence between each.
But being presented with a god or alien is such a leap of faith from any body of empirical knowledge that exists, it’s hard to imagine how to get from here to there empirically.