I am interested in the brain and the mind in general but I’ve been talking about atheism as non-belief, which I thought was the topic of the thread. I saw and see no need to complicate it.
Btw, the link you posted sounded interesting but when I clicked on it I didn’t find anything about a split brain.
Yes, because a person who is an atheist is also many other things(as are all people). You are assigning those other social values to atheism, which isnt correct. Its like saying all atheists are moral nihilists.
From the OP:
“It seems to me that atheism is a belief about there not being a God.”
Which is generally a true statement, as is the statement that an atheist lacks belief in a god. But they are not equivalent.
Same thing happened to me when I tried it, here is the link again copied a different way, not sure if it will work:
http://machineslikeus.com/news/split-brain-one-half-atheist-and-one-half-theist
If not, just go to machineslikeus.com, and look for the story about split brain, half atheist and half theist. It should be on current page for about 12 more hours at least.
This is my post you responded to:
“Ok, so you think that under all circumstances Atheism represents a lack of belief in god and never represents an active belief that god doesn’t exist?”
So let’s be clear. You are saying that to be an Atheist you must have the following attributes:
From my perspective, the only people that meet criteria #1 and #2 are people that have not been exposed to the idea of god and therefore never formulated the belief that god does not exist.
But, I think for someone to describe him/herself as an Atheist, the idea has probably been at least minimally explored and the conclusion logged away and therefore he/she both lacks belief in god and has a belief somewhere in his/her set of beliefs that there is no god.
Do you disagree with this?
When I decided that I no longer believed in god(s), atheism did not confer a new and different belief on me.
What you are attempting to do is reify a certain phrase that you find useful. This is the same as people saying “Close the door, dont let the cold in”. What they really mean is “dont let the heat out”. Cold doesnt really exist, there is only localized specific heat, and we say cold as a frame of reference.
Atheism, like universal heat, is a mobius strip. Its not a two sided coin any more than heat is. You seem to be suggesting that lack belief is a belief.
Also, “Lack belief that there is no god” is really terrible grammar. Its like me saying
It is false, yes or no, that I never said I heard you deny, and I quote, “I’m so mad I no longer can bite my own elbow”?
You might want to get that checked out, or maybe just run for public office.
Ah, Ramachandran. Good stuff.
When you decided you no longer believed in god(s), one of the beliefs that was added to your set of beliefs is that there are no god(s).
I am saying that “lack of belief” and “believe that X does not exist” are 2 different things.
Let’s say X=Belief in god(s)
You can have a set of beliefs that includes (not X), and you can also have a set of beliefs that does not include X and does not include (not X).
It was precisely worded, and while it can be confusing, I don’t believe it is really terrible grammar.
I used English because sometimes that is more clear than using symbols. I’m happy to describe the idea any way you are able to understand it, but I assumed that was a reasonable approach.
Here’s a a semi-symbolic way of illustrating the point:
Some beliefs:
X=There is at least one god(s)
not X=It is not true that there is at least one god(s)
Y=The sun will rise tomorrow
Z=Coke tastes better than Pepsi
A fictitious person’s set of beliefs prior to exposure to the idea of god(s):
(Y,not Z)
Same person after deciding that he/she believes in god(s):
(X, Y, not Z)
Same person after deciding that he/she does not believe in god(s):
(not X, Y, not Z)
Notice that the “not X” is part of the persons set of beliefs after considering the issue. Once you have considered something and decided on a position, the idea doesn’t just disappear from your consciousness (unless my brain works differently than yours). For me, I may forget that belief at some point in my life but most likely, upon re-considering the issue, I will probably remember my previous belief.
This is based on personal experience, if you, on the other hand, purge the conclusion from your brain once you decide on a negative and therefore do not posses a belief regarding the negative, then that would be the reason we view this differently. However, I would be surprised to find out that our brains operate so differently.
It makes me curious what the nature of the difference is.
It could be that, due to the split, the 2 sides grew apart in their world view. Or, it could be that both sides represent a portion of the persons world view and accessing them separately gives erroneous (or just different) results.
Due to other duties, I had to step out of the thread for a few days. Reading the last three pages, I have to say I’m unclear what people think is the point under discussion. Part of it is usage and semantics, but what’s the substance? I thought I understood the OP. His objection (see Post #57) was that some atheists use non-belief as cover when, in fact, they have an agenda, i.e., disbelief.
What I (and others) have argued is that there’s less to this than meets the eye. What most of us atheists believe (heh) is that we don’t have a good reason to believe. Further, and importantly, we reject that we have the burden of proving God doesn’t exist. This was Bertrand Russell’s position and it’s mine. Whether one calls this belief or non-belief, atheism or agnosticism, is of little significance. What matters is the substance. Can someone please explain why it’s important to call this belief? As distinguished from what we mean when we say someone believes in God?
For me it’s just a matter of accuracy. To say that a conclusion reached in the negative is not added to a persons set of beliefs is completely unsupportable. While nobody has a working model of the human brain/consciousness, the evidence that we do store conclusions and they match our common usage of the word belief is extremely strong.
I don’t understand why anyone would even object to stating that “yes, I am an atheist and I have a belief that the god(s) whose description I’ve been exposed to don’t exist, and I lack belief in all god(s) that I have never been exposed to”.
For me, saying “yes, I am an atheist and I have a belief that the god(s) whose description I’ve been exposed to don’t exist” would not be accurate for all definitions of ‘belief’, especially definitions used by some theists for rhetorical purposes.
If you were to tell me, “the inside of the moon is made of blue pepperoni pizza”, I might casually say “I don’t believe that,” but what I’m really thinking is “while not inconceivable, this sounds implausible and without motivation… unless you have something serious to say, I’m going back to my crossword.” If you want to call that a “belief that the blue pepperoni moon does not exist” then so be it, but honestly I’m not sure my position is that strong on the issue (again, depending on your definition of ‘belief’).
The primary common definition of “belief” and the philosophical definition is something that is accepted as true.
Any other usage should be qualified by the communicator.
Well, there are some interesting nuances in your statement that would require much discussion, but basically yes, of course that is a belief.
I think the thing that you are not appreciating is that this is not the usual meaning in this context.
It’s more like the situation where someone asks me “You don’t believe in evolution, do you?”, where the answer “Yes, I do believe in it” would be misleading. I have to give a more full answer to show that it is not a issue of faith.
You have to consider why some (usually not atheists) are so determined to label atheism as a belief.
You are correct, I don’t think I have ever been in any discussion previously in which people did not equate the term “belief” to be simply things that we think are true.
It sounds like you are saying that when the topic involves god and/or religion that the typical usage of the term “belief” shifts to be equivalent to the term “faith”?
This is certainly counter to any experience I have with philosophical discussions.
Why?
The answer to the evolution question can easily be “Yes, I do believe in it”, no explanation required. All of our beliefs (theists and atheists) are based upon some process in the brain, we don’t have to qualify every answer with the route we took to arrive at our answer.
I think the mistake you are making is worrying about anyone’s motivation. The only thing that matters is whether the terms are applied correctly.
If you feel that a theist is mislabeling your position, don’t try to argue that the term"belief" needs to change, just explain your position.
For example:
Theist: “See, atheism is a belief, just like my belief in god”
Atheist: “Yes, atheism is a belief that there is no god. I arrived at that belief based on deductive reasoning and the following data… And yes, it is similar to your belief in god in the sense that we both think we see data that supports our conclusion, the difference is that my data is the kind that can be tested with experiments and your data can not.”
I have a belief, sure, but not a belief that no blue pepperoni moon exists. Not according to the definition of belief that you provided. No where in my mind do I store such a truth value, nor did I express such a truth value in the statement I provided.
This is to be contrasted with, for example, my belief that the moon is made of rocks. Granted, this is in contradiction with belief that the moon’s insides are made of pizza. But that does not mean I hold a belief reifying the solution to said contradiction. The reason is clear: the moon could just as well be green pepperoni pizza, or purple pineapple pizza, or orange meatloaf … there are an infinite number of equally unmotivated possible beliefs that I do not dignify by assigning a truth value to. Again the reason is clear: one of those infinite number of equally unmotivated possible beliefs may be correct, so one should not assign a truth value until some actual evidence or motivation is presented in its favor. This is a restatement of “the burden of proof is not on me to prove [something whimsical and unmotivated and without evidence] is true.”
ETA (outside of edit window): you could argue I am an agnostic. I wouldn’t mind having that definitional discussion. I am an atheist by the most widely used “self-ascribed-atheist’s” definition of the term. Essentially there are a range of positions from “gives equal weight to all unprovable assertions” to “a priori belief in NOT x.” On one end of the spectrum is the word agnostic, and on the other end atheist. Definitionally, there is a bit of a fight for the middle-ground. Some theists would have you believe that an atheist is one with an “a priori belief in NOT x”. But most atheists are in reality “X is unmotivated and unlikely. I am open to the possibility of X, but as with all unmotivated assertions I assign it equal weight to the blue pizza-moon hypothesis or to the FSM. Effectively this gives it an infinitesimal probability of having positive truth value, therefore for all practical purposes I am the most extreme version of the atheist, even though technically I am agnostic in the sense of giving all unprovable assertions equal weight, and do not flatly reject them.”
I think that the core of the issue is that theists would have you dignify their beliefs by rejecting them in isolation, by not putting them in their proper context within the infinite set of all unmotivated un-evidenced notions. Within that context one can be “agnostic” and yet at the same time theism is trivially absurd. That’s what I mean when I use the term atheism.
You are assuming that the question only has true or false answers, not I don’t know or I’m uncertain answers. Some atheists are telling you that when they switched the truth value of “I believe in at least one god” from true to false, they did not switch the truth value of “I believe there are no gods” from false to true, but rather kept it at false. It is certainly logically possible for “I believe in a god” and “I believe there are no gods” to both be false. I was personally in that state for several years. (I am not now.) Telling a weak atheist that he or she believes there is no god is insulting because you are telling them what they believe despite their denials. Is it really any different from a theist telling an atheist that he does believe in god, despite his protestations?
I see this accusation mostly from theists who believe that atheists claim knowledge of the non-existence of God, not just belief, and thus that atheists claim non-belief because they can’t meet the challenge of proving no god exists. You then get into the burden of proof problem and the belief vs. knowledge problem.
This brings up an interesting point and debate in itself about what to classify as a belief given that we rarely operate from a position of 100% certainty.
I was certainly taking shortcuts around the issue, but allowing for the fuzziness of our biological computer, it seems to me fair to say that in that case you do have a belief. There is lots of room for debate as to what level of confidence becomes belief, but that is my opinion in this case, would be happy to debate all of this further.
Yes there are infinite possibilities and generally (I have some opinions here that I will skip for now) it seems that those that have not been considered probably would not be considered a belief.
But, once you do actually have the idea enter your consciousness, how do you purge that thought? How do you become unaware that someone has proposed the idea and your brain immediately rejected it? I personally don’t think that is an easy task, maybe if someone practices they can accomplish it, but it seems to be part of our nature.
Again, there are some ideas surrounding this topic that I haven’t fully explored in my mind and would certainly be a tangent from this thread, but it almost seems that we store a model more than we store facts (although we clearly do store facts) and the model is used to arrive at conclusions and therefore it raises the question “what is a belief?” Is it any data/fact/position/conclusion that can be immediately drawn from the model? I’m not sure, but if so then that changes how we would categorize the answers we give to all of the infinite un-asked questions, maybe all of that should be considered belief. Just thinking out loud.
Also, regarding burden of proof: The only thing we are doing is classifying an atheist’s position as belief, non-belief or both or something else. Burden of proof is a completely separate problem.
I think worrying about theists distracts from the problem at hand. I notice that Mijin seemed to be worried about that also.
The only thing we are doing is classifying a particular group of people’s position using our term for a particular type of mental state which is “belief”. That is all we are doing. Anything about other people’s motivation, who has the burden of proof, etc. are all separate issues from this definitional issue.