If you want to infer that’s I meant, go ahead. You’d be wrong.
Please let me know whether a reasonable atheist can state “I have no beliefs” and also deny (or, at least, not accept) the basic concepts of current science on the origin, age, and structure of the universe, and on the origins and development of life on Earth.
There are a few who convert from one religion to another, but most just blindly accept the one pushed on them when they were growing up. That is why there are Muslims in the Middle east, Buddhists in India, Catholics in the US and mormons in Utah. That proves getting them while they are young works. But in no way does it suggest most people are raised open minded. Almost all carry religious baggage from our families. It is not easy to overcome. So do I accept a religious person as a believer or as a person who accepts training?
No, you do not need a first cause. You have to accept that we are here. The world in all its enormity exists are we are pretty damn irrelevant in the big picture.
You are taking a step when you decide a first cause is needed. It is not. I don’t take that step, because it just keeps reflecting in my face like a room with 2 mirrors facing each other. Is there a last reflection? Do you need to know? yet to say it is god that started it, does not tel,l you who started god. Was it another bigger ,stronger god? What did that accomplish?Because that god needs a seed to sprout from. It is wasted and endless and proof of nothing.
Well, then I cheerfully admit your point in invoking “Pascal, Descartes, Liebnitz, and Newton” escapes me and I eagerly look forward to enlightenment. My interpretation was pretty much that they believed in the Judeochristian God (as opposed to Zeus, Ra, Odin or no god at all) because that was what their parents and societies expected of them.
Well, I figure the reasonable atheist (and indeed anyone, reasonable or not, atheist or not) is free to deny or not accept anything they want, and if this leads to contradictions in their daily lives (i.e. they deny that electricity works as described yet they get shocked when they touch exposed wires) they can doublethink away the conflict as they choose.
I am not arguing in favor of theism nor am I arguing against atheism.
All I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully, it seems) to demonstrate is that atheism, in any practical sense, is more than just “I don’t believe in God”, and, peripherally, that we all have beliefs.
When I bring up the religiosity of scientists, it is to demonstrate that, without the recent scientific evidence, it is perfectly reasonable to believe in God. My evidence for that claim is the simple fact that highly intelligent (awesomely brilliant) people in the past believed in God. I’m fairly sure that they would change their mind if they had access to current evidence, but that’s not the point. It was perfectly reasonable for them to believe what they believed, given the lack of evidence to the contrary.
And yet, some atheists continue to insist that theism is ridiculously unreasonable.
Seriously, would someone please address my actual argument rather than point out what’s wrong with theism? Thanks.
The claim talked about “out there”. Isn’t that a claim about the world?
Seems like you’re using some presuppositions there. “Has to be”? According to whom or what?
Again, I’m not arguing that you are wrong. I’m just pointing out that you are starting your argument with the assumption that this is an issue that must be dealt with using the scientific method. You are not merely saying “I don’t believe that God exists” which is what some people are saying is all that there is to atheism, or even “I have no beliefs”.
It isn’t. That’s all it means. I have met Buddhists that are atheists yet believe in literal reincarnation and have other fantastic beliefs, e.g. karma, yet they’re atheists simple because they are without belief in the existence of any gods- whatever else they believe or don’t believe is irrelevant. IIRC, there are millions of Buddhists that are atheists yet have beliefs that aren’t typical of those of us that participate in discussion like these on message boards.
You don’t have to argue that. No one here has said some people have no beliefs.
I don’t have enough information to even guess. It’s like asking you who is more likely to slap my Uncle Lucky for he did last year-Aunt Edna or the Bettson twins.
Okay, then. I will cheerfully oblige. 
Do you think that Newton just blindly accepted the Judeo-Christian God as expected by his parents and his society? I fairly sure you know that his religious beliefs were … uh … unorthodox. But he didn’t conclude: Hmmm … there’s no evidence for God – none whatsoever – so therefore God doesn’t exist.
He spent a lot of time on the subject, and I’m sure you’ll agree that he was exceptionally intelligent – much more intelligent than theists today. Why did he continue to believe in God? Was it just because he was trapped in an epistemological prison created by contemporary religionists? Newton? The guy who formulated the laws of motion, universal gravitation, and optics, and *created *calculus? Newton? The guy who practically became a god because predictions based on his “laws” were “perfect”?
Newton was wrong about a lot of things. But was he unreasonable in his belief in God? I don’t think so. Likewise the other creator of calculus, Liebnitz, and the creator of analytical geometry, Descartes.
Does that help?
I see that you have confused “science” with “technology”.
What are the negative consequences for the average person who believes in geocentrism, besides possible ridicule? On a day-to-day basis, what difference does it make how old the universe is? Does it matter how species developed? Not really. But if you think that God was awesome enough to create “the whole world”, then that belief becomes a key part of person’s thinking and actions.
Yes, it’s possible for an atheist to know practically nothing about current science. But, then, why do atheists bring up science so often in discussions about religion? I say because it matters, and because it is a core “belief” of educated atheists.
All you’ve demonstrated is that for Buddhists, atheism is more than just “I don’t believe in God”, which is what I said.
How about this?
How about the topic was God, so that was what I was obviously referring to. All other uses of “belief” in my life are shortcuts for “previous experience and available knowledge make me accept this for now, but new input could change my mind.”
No, I demonstrated that people can have any beliefs, reasoning abilities, lack of belief, etc., and be an atheist simply because they are without belief in the existence of gods. It’s not more than just “I don’t believe in God”; it’s exactly that, no more and no less.
So you couldn’t have added “in God”?
I’m fairly sure that some other posters in this thread said that they have no beliefs – of any kind – but I can’t find the pertinent posts.
Well, if everyone agrees that everyone has beliefs, that’s one less reason for banging my head against the wall …
First of all, your interpretation of my “intentions” is wrong; my argument is about the logic, not about theism. The context of religion is not all that important to me; I am not, as you seem to assume, a theist. Second, I elaborated on my point. But I strongly suspect that you didn’t read that far in.
Please stop implying that I am trying to trick people. I am not.
Whew, I thought for a second you were criticizing me personally. Thankfully, you were just making an innocent observation.
By the way, thanks to the rest of you for continuing this debate. It has been a very interesting one to read, and many compelling arguments have been made. My conclusion about all this is that the broad definition of an atheist as someone who does not believe in [a] God has a non-belief, but that someone within that subset of who believes that there is no God does have a belief.
The basic annoyance that triggered my question is that it seems like atheists I’ve met move between these two definitions quite freely, and take refuge in the broader definition of atheist when it comes time to defend their arguments that “there is no God.”
Carry on.
And this means one can’t think about where we came from?
You also take a step when you decide a first cause is not needed. Philosophically speaking.
As far as this last part, you not been paying attention to what I’ve been writing. I will admit there’s a lot of navel gazing in all of this, this. Yet you did choose to participate in this thread.
You are confusing God and gods. I’ll agree that just lacking belief in the Judeo-Christian god might be silly, since there are lots of good reasons to actively disbelieve. But that is not the only god an atheist must lack belief in. How about the deistic god, who set the universe in motion 14 billion years ago, and then withdrew. By definition there will never be evidence against the existence of this god. How does it make sense to do anything more than just lack belief in it? How about potential gods that neither of us has ever heard of? How can we actively believe such a god does not exist?
Fine. If you had been strolling with Moses, it would have been reasonable to believe in a god also. Who has been saying that the ancients should discovered evolution before breakfast and become atheists by lunch? Science is all about the most reasonable hypothesis given existing evidence. Without evidence for the age of the earth and natural causes for phenomena, theism makes perfect sense. Not after the natural causes have been discovered. I see a big change in writing from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 18th, where the trend of saying that a discovery illuminates the wisdom of god’s design is replaced by a purely naturalistic discussion.
It is now. Not necessarily for Ugg the caveman.
I read the claim as being for the default hypothesis.
The claim of god’s existence is a claim about the nature of the universe, and so can be examined by the scientific method. If the claim is by definition unfalsifiable, there is no reason to move from the null hypothesis, right? If there is evidence for god, then it can be examined.
As for “has to” I explained. If you say that the null hypothesis should not be “no gods,” please explain what it should be. Remember the null hypothesis is not a statement about what you believe, but is a statement of what the default should be. In most papers the author definitely does not believe the null hypothesis, and the whole point is to falsify it.
As for the statement of lack of belief, I’m sure you realize that atheists are not limited to just lacking belief. But someone who only lacks belief is still an atheist. What else do you call him. He may or may not be an agnostic, but that is orthogonal to the belief issue.
As long as you give us the definition of “belief” that you are referring to each time you use it, we’ll be fine. I’m getting mighty damn tired of religious “gotcha” word games:
“I believe I’ll have another beer.”
“Aha!! you do have beliefs!”
Now, do you accept that the use of “belief” when it comes to religion has very little to do with it’s use in every day situations?
No, it’s not like that at all. We have a thing, a universe. It is one of a gazillion things. In each and every thing man has looked at there has been a cause. But for some reason, you think the universe is the one exception…the only thing to not to be able to be traced back to a cause. So, you choose a position that has ZERO history of existing. Why is that not the less rationale position?
How is that any different than what you did with God?:
You’ve put words in Czarcasm’s mouth, btw. He didn’t choose the position you claimed he did.
Um… what? There are lots of things we can’t figure out the cause of. That doesn’t mean we don’t think there isn’t a cause, just that we don’t know what it is yet.
That’s exactly right. Pretty much all theists agree that those who believe there is no god are atheists. Some claim we claim knowledge of this, but not around here. The problem always has been those who claim that people lacking belief in god are not atheists - or don’t exist. I haven’t noticed anyone moving between these definitions, except perhaps to say that anyone believing no gods exist necessarily lack belief in the existence of any god. But, of course, it is not the case that someone lacking belief in any god must actively believe that no gods exist.