First of all, I dispute that “belief system” is a useful or supported paradigm.
I won’t repeat my arguments, I’ve described some of the issues in post 388 and 395.
Secondly, yeah, as a non-belief it’s misleading at best to describe it as part of a belief system.
I mean, is you disbelief of Foobarus part of your belief system?
Oh…you don’t know what Foobarus is? Foobarus is a demon I just made up who takes all the lead away from planet earth, replacing it with gold, every night.
I presume you don’t believe in Foobarus. So it was a part of your “belief system” all along.
Why do you assume these opinions must be based on an emotional component?
Because we do so well in that regard *with *religion? Religion is just another way to sub-divide human beings. And if by “outreach” you mean standing in the park and screaming at the top of your lungs that I am going to hell, well please reach out a little less; I am just trying to eat my lunch in peace.
While this may not be cosmodan’s answer, this is my take on it:
Even when a belief appears to follow a logical analysis of data, it is almost impossible to eliminate the emotional component of our brains that is tied into everything we do. Which means that the data we let into the equation is somewhat governed by our emotions.
I still suspect there might be some definitional disagreement going on here. For example, it so happens that I believe (that is, I claim that the following clause is true) that all the lead on planet earth remains lead throughout the night. This belief of mine contradicts the existence of Foobarus. While I don’t have any belief directly concerning Foobarus, my general beliefs about the cosmos are incompatible with a belief in Foobarus.
Not that parenthetical clause, the definition of belief that I’m using throughout this thread.
Personally, I’ve never given any thought to what might happen to lead at night, just as I’d never thought of Foobarus, before I made her up (it’s a female demon btw).
There’s no belief, or “belief system”.
The default position is to assume nonexistence of entities or events, until we have reason to suppose otherwise.
Well, I’m using belief system because I think all people have one.
Some time ago when San Harris was making his End of Faith tour the idea he pushed and I agree with is that religious beliefs don’t deserve any protected status or respect simply because they’re “religious” beliefs. According to Sam they need to be examined just as any other belief is. My take on that is to look at why we believe whatever we believe. Rather than put religious beliefs in a separate category lets look at them in light of how our basic consciousness seems to work in regard to whatever we believe about anything.
That led me to the idea that all humans have a belief system about life and the world we liver in. So, the premise is that whatever we believe, about the physical realities of our world, or what we value , our priorities and preferences , make up our individual belief system.
I won’t repeat my arguments, I’ve described some of the issues in post 388 and 395.
I don’t think it’s the same. God belief pervades our society and every person is surrounded by it. We’re not faced with the question “are unicorns real” in the same way we’re faced with the question “is there a god”
I believe most people, even those who say they never really believed , have at least had to ponder the question.
Because it appears to me that all humans operate this way. Emotion and perhaps conscious vs subconscious affects our belief system.
If religion and religious faith is simply a construct of our human consciousness then we might understand the roots of the religious mind by looking at how human consciousness functions. We might find that there are other aspects of human consciousness that are similar, when we remove the separate label of religion.
For instance; this
Since there is no way to measure this , or compare our world to one without religion, this belief is built on nothing but emotion, bias and preference. As an opinion, or a , “I tend to believe” it’s irrational.
But it is only with religion that faith is valued, sometimes even mistaken for wisdom. In every other area of discourse, certainty that doesn’t scale with the supporting evidence/ reason is frowned upon. That’s where the danger lies.
Actually, it’s the other way around. Most dictionaries and encyclopedias of philosophy define it primarily as the active belief that there is no God.
Consider the entries at www.dictionary.com, for example. The definitions listed therein are rendered as follows:
[ul]
[li]The doctrine or belief that there is no god[/li][li]Disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings[/li][li]Rejection of belief in God or gods[/li][li]Denial that there is a God[/li][/ul]
Every single one of these entries refers to the active rejection of the claim that there is a supreme deity rather than a mere absence of belief. (BTW, lest anyone seize on the second definition, in this list, dictionary.com defines “disbelief” as “the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true.” This clearly goes beyond a mere absence of belief as well.)
That doesn’t prevent some of us from trying to do our best to be aware of such biases, and to take pains to disentangle their unwanted influence as to the truth value of a proposition. This is one way of expressing one of the defining characteristics rational thought.
That may have led you to the idea but what ever made you think it was true?
I’ve studied minds in at least three different capacities: I work in AI, I have a postgrad degree in neuroscience and philosophy of the mind has been one of my main hobbies for years. None of this has led me to the idea that human minds need core or foundational beliefs on which everything else rests, and there is plenty of reason to suppose it does not work that way.
The only time I hear about “belief systems” is when someone has a position that they can’t logically defend, so they want to at least claim their idea is the equal and opposite flip side of the coin.
The key point however was that disbelief is not necessarily part of any belief system.
Rubbish. Just because I can’t do the experiment doesn’t mean I can’t have a reasoned opinion.
Would it be bad for humanity if the distance between the Earth and Sun were halved? Yep, I’d say so – we can’t test it though, so I guess it’s an irrational, emotional opinion. :rolleyes:
JThunder – there is some serious definitional ambiguity in this thread that I attempted to address here, but was more or less ignored.
I would argue that the active belief that there is no goblin in my bread box is in general practice to most atheists synonymous with the absence of enough evidence to take the idea seriously, rather than some a priori rejection.
One can read what religion has driven people to do over millennia. One can witness how secular societies behave compared to religious societies today, compare statistics, see what legislation more religious politicians want to and have passed compared to less religious politicians, etc. To say this “belief is built on nothing but emotion, bias and preference” is bullshit. There’s nothing irrational about drawing conclusions based on evidence even if the evidence is less definite than something like concluding that the Earth is a spheroid. Theists keep wanting to pretend that atheists must believe things that are just as irrational as believing there’s an all powerful sky fairy that knows if we’ve been good or bad and weak arguments like this aren’t very convincing.
You started by saying it’s an “active belief” and then went to “active rejection”. How ridiculous. How is “active rejection” different than “rejection”? “refusal to believe” is not “active belief”. Keep trying. The desperation in this thread to put atheism on par with theism is pathetic.
Dictionary.com also links disbelief to unbelief, which specifically defines it as the following in regards to religious belief:
–noun
the state or quality of not believing; incredulity or skepticism, esp. in matters of doctrine or religious faith.
Since you put so much stock in how atheism is defined based on dictionaries, the second Google hit for dictionary is Merriam-Webster:
atheism:
1 archaic : ungodliness, wickedness
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity
disbelief:
: the act of disbelieving : mental rejection of something as untrue
disbelieve:
transitive verb
: to hold not worthy of belief : not believe
intransitive verb
: to withhold or reject belief
Oh, please. I specified “active” rejection for emphasis, nothing more.
Rejecting a belief is entirely different from merely not having a belief. I can be agnostic about the validity of superstring theory, for example. I have no particular belief regarding its validity, but this does not mean that I reject it.
When someone rejects a belief, it’s because they consider that belief to be unreasonable. Nobody rejects a belief simply because they have no opinion on that matter, as a “lack of belief” would encompass. Rather, when somebody holds no opinion, a belief is neither accepted nor rejected.
Moreover, all you have to do is look at the four definitions in question. The very first on specifically states that atheism is the belief that there is no god. The second describes it as disbelief, where disbelief is defined as a refusal (rather than mere agnosticism or unpreparedness) to accept something as true. The fourth specifies a denial of any god’s existence – again, as opposed to merely having no opinion on the matter, which a mere lack of belief could entail. So even if we were to accept your claim regarding what “rejection” means, the point remains that most of the aforementioned definitions do NOT imply a mere absence of belief. Rather, they go far beyond that.
Of course it was for something more; there was no emphasis needed. I doubt you ever bother to put active before rejection in other circumstances, but when using the word in regard to atheists, it makes it seem like we’re doing something- like believing.
I reject theism because of a lack of evidence for the ridiculous assertion. Since I have heard of theism, of course I have an opinion. My opinion is due to lack of evidence for the ridiculous assertion, I will be without belief. I don’t have to have an"active belief that there is no God" as you asserted. That’s total bullshit. So is your cherry picking of dictionary definitions and telling us atheists we’re using the wrong word to categorize ourselves. It’s the best word to label us without belief and we’ll continue to use it.
Hey, you don’t need to precede your posts with apologies like these: we can tell your arguments are desperate just from the fact that you’re having to make up demons with silly names to advance them. But go ahead and denigrate yourself if it makes you feel better.
Well, of course not. But have you given some thought to the stability of matter? I have: I figure that most things don’t change unless there’s some force operating on them, and I figure I know the broad outlines of the forces out there operating on things. I also believe that I have a decent handle on the extent of human study of stuff, and on what constitutes remarkable phenomena; your alchemical adversary would be performing something remarkable, and I would’ve heard about it by now.
The problem with your stupid demon is that it contradicts things I believe to be true. You can nitpick the way I phrased that earlier, but of course I believe that what you describe is not happening, even though I haven’t thought of that particular example of silliness before.
Gosh, I wouldn’t go that far. I will say that the paranoia about equating atheism and theism in this thread is bizarre, with your post as my first cite. Now: can you point to the posts that show an intent to put atheism on par with theism? Because I certainly haven’t done that, and neither has anyone else here that I’ve noticed. Rather, you and certain other people have insisted on reading ulterior motives into what seems to me primarily a definitional issue.