Many theists think that when we say we are not convinced that a God exist, we are saying that we believe there is no God.
2 Likes
Very true, and in another perversion of logic, many of those same theists believe that if they debunk and destroy atheism, that proves a god.
1 Like
I do not even understand how one thinks he/she can debunk another’s inability to believe in a serious assertion that is backed with no evidence.
I do not hold my opinions to be a definition of my character. They are mine, but they are not permanent. I can change them, trade them for better ideas and opinions, they do not define me absolutely.
Since knowing what is considered to be true is more important to me than never being wrong, I do not mind learning.
I want to have an open mind, especially when it feels uncomfortable(When deeply personal ideas are shown to be wrong)
I sense that many people come onto this forum not to partake in healthy discourse with the aim of improving knowledge (to learn), but rather to tell others what to think. To preach.
4 Likes
@Kersvader I used to think that way, when I was a theist. What these theists forget, is that an atheists makes no claims, one way or the other, with respect to the existence or nonexistence of God
@David_Killens Correct. Disproving atheism does not prove the existence of God, as atheists do not make the claim or assertion, that God does not outright exist. They make no such claims at all.
@Kersvader That is correct. The same thing with the Facebook groups for atheists, as well as the comment section of Yahoo articles and YouTube videos. I am very much against evangelizing,
My speculation:
For some reason; people seem to think that atheists don’t believe anything, and that therefore they are ripe for recruitment into whatever someone’s pet project is (be it a religion, conspiracy theory, hate group, etc). Every atheist organization I’ve been a member of has been bombarded with such outside non-sense.
When they inevitably discover that people won’t just take their word for their claims; they turn antisocial.
1 Like
Sometimes I watch televangalists. And I have often heard the message from them that atheists are lost souls who need to be led back to the glory of god.
@David_Killens I just noticed something, that theists keep missing about this forum:
“This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park.”
I guess the theists forgot about this…….conveniently.
Yes.
They do make it their personal business to try and spread their beliefs, and it smells…like manure.
Reminds me of Mr. Hitchens who likened religion to toys.
You are welcome to play with it if you like, but do not expect me to play with it.
We should not make the same mistake some thiests make, of expecting the same behavior from a group they have identified. While we often have many fringe radical theists visit us, there are also many very decent, sane, and reasonable theists who are not crazy or abusive.
IMO most theists are good people, sane and upright citizens in their community. They just spend their time taking care of their families and don’t put much effort into spreading religious propaganda.
They are the silent majority and we should respect them.
3 Likes
I wanted to say something like that earlier in my speculation, but it just didn’t happen.
I think there is a huge selection bias in the theists we see here. If for no other reason: they have to seek us out; and jump through some hoops (like forum registration) before we get to read anything from them.
I’m suggesting the sane ones tend not to do this; so we don’t see them near as often.
4 Likes
@David_Killens I agree wholeheartedly. Not all theists like to go out and try to shove their beliefs down other people’s throats, or even speak openly about their faith, which, to me, seems like bragging.
What I have observed, however, is that the more religious you are, the more you are likely to speak openly of your faith in public, or to try to convert others. So it seems like it is the highly religious is the group we need to worry about, and not theists or religious believers, as a whole.
1 Like
Me too. I find proselytising atheists as obnoxious as proselytising believers. They seem to have the same arrogant certitude.
Oh I think they can read a dictionary as easily as I can, it’s just a handy lie they use to “fight the good fight.”
Lies for Jesus are not lies see. Just as murder is wrong, unless god does it, or asks his followers to do it.
You’ll get the gist of it all after a while. 
1 Like
Well, one can always use the myths of pre-christian religions as basis of speculations. For example, in old greek mythology, the gods actively interfered with human comings and goings. Humans could pray to the gods and make a salient offering, like sweet wine, a prime cut of a newly sacrificed animal, or some such. If the offering was to the god’s liking, the god would help the human. Or the god would actively pursue and hassle him(*). In the years of the Trojan war, the gods would take sides; some would side with the Trojans, others with the Greek, and they would alternate in giving advantages to their preferred side, depending on the intensity and eloquence of the prayers and how nice the offerings were.
Or like in the Odyssey, where Odysseus was helped by the goddess of wisdom and warfare, Athena. At the same time, Odysseus was being harassed and actively pursued by Poseidon, the ocean god and the earth mover, due to a lack of offerings from Odysseus and his men early on in his travel from Troy back to his home in Ithaca. Odysseus was even stranded for seven years on the Island Ogygia together with the goddess Calypso, where there was no lack of sex and love-making with the goddess.
And in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods change into human shape and walk among men, interacting with them, and giving them advice, even helping them directly in war and battle, killing of the enemies. This is a much more interesting approach than the weird interactions of the god of the myths of the abrahamitic religions.
(*) because the grek myths were all about the dealings of men in a very patriarchical society.
Firstly I feel if people want to speculate without objective evidence, then they ought to pay themeselves and others the intellectual respect of accepting that the subject of their speculation, whatever it is, is not real until that sufficient objective evidence is found, and demonstrated for everyone to test to destruction.
The more we are emotionally invested in any belief, the less likely we are to see any flaws that it may have.
Faith, emotion, the weight of inheriting long held traditions from loved ones, and cultures we were born raised and live in, and a whole host of other baggage, are things we need to ignore if we want to know whether a belief claim or idea is objectively valid.
If we disbelieve even one unfalsifiable claim, then it is closed minded to believe any of them, and we must know at some level, if we really care to that any claim idea or belief based on an emotional attachment, rather than objective evidence, that despite being falsifiable, has amassed overwhelming evidence to support it, and none to falsify it, is not even remotely comparable. If faith can literally do anything, why hasn’t this been objectively demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt, instead of always relying on the inherent bias of anecdotal claims.
Sadly we are not taught this as children, or in our formative years, and while we struggle to find our place in the world, not offend our peers and those we love and to survive and support loved ones, the idea of critical thinking and skepticism, if it’s considered at all, is not considered a useful toll to master.
Yet scepticism, which comes from a Greek word meaning to examine carefully, will help us in almost every aspect of our lives, to examine claims, and ideologies and beliefs that we and others hold, and to ultimately see if they are worthy of belief or respect, or are erroneous or pernicious.
How many people genuinely think it is moral to do or say things that are deeply pernicious? Yet how many good people, ostensibly well meaning, say and do things that either help perpetuate such pernicious beliefs, or even rashly say and do things that are directly harmful to others, for a whole raft of reasons stemming from an inability, or unwillingness to creatively examine them?
As a young man, I hated it when older people smiled knowingly and stopped talking, and often mistakenly perceived their reticence for smugness or arrogance, and only years later realised they were trying to avoid offending me by pointing out my naivety or ignorance…
It’s ironic, but when I’m faced with young people now, I think I owe those people who held their tongue when they could have easily humiliated me, and try not to behave like the ones who did humiliate me, remembering how I felt when that happened.
Anonymity given by the internet may well make us all less inclined to be courteous, and patiently hold back on occasion, but surely it’s far better to find out anonymously from strangers that we are being foolish or ignorant? And we can if we strive to, strain and challenge our own credulity in such exchanges, all it takes is an honest desire to pursue the objective evidence. If we are strident with others because we are sure, then owe it to ourselves to examine afterward that confidence.
What in the end do we have to lose, except ignorance and prejudice.
Sorry for the mental splurge, sometimes I find my uneducated and I’ll disciplined rationale running through exchanges and ideas I hope are representing objective evidence, and if not epistemological humility, ot thinking things over more than perhaps I need to as I’m not bright enough to express it in a concise and compelling way.
No harm done, and if I’ve offended anyone, especially ratty, then I’d just like to say sincerely, and from the heart (euphemism, it’s a pump made of insentient muscle 
)…
Man the fuck up, no one likes a cry baby…
Oh alright I’m sorry if you took offence, it is seldom my goal, and you can bet I will be sorry again, bank on it you fuckers…
Whilst this is true, I prefer when dealing with generic claims for a deity, which are usually unfalsifiable, to point out that we don’t accept other claims without any object evidence, and certainly not all unfalsifiable claims, which is absurd to even contemplate, and accepting some or one is biased, and by definition closed minded.
I’ve no problem with pointing out that the objective evidence we understand works without the need for any deity, or that adding a deity invokes Occam’s razor, but we must be careful always IMHO, to point out that while this is a justifiable rational and epistemological reason to withhold belief, it does not in and of itself rationally indicate the belief is false. How could it if the belief is unfalsifiable.
Note here the evasion and mental cartwheels contrived by the credulous to avoid requests to accurately define that deity without simply resorting to parotting archaic unevidenced assumptions about its nature. As if these are justified by the length these assumptions have been held as true, or the number of people who believe it.
Anyway, I have no more objective reason to accept claims for an unfalsifiable deity, than I do for an unfalsifiable trip aboard an alien mother ship, to be scrutinised by super intelligent, but bashfully reticent intergalactic travelling, aliens. Who having travelled impossible distances, seem content to move on unannounced, pausing only to terrorise lonely cowboys and farmers, whose mental health has likely not benefitted from living too long in the most uninhabited parts of the world, like the wilds of Montana.
When they land in time square, make the technology that enabled them to get here available to everyone, and it is validated by that evidence being demonstrated as objectively valid by a global consensus, then I’ll be gobsmacked but will admit my incredulity is irrational as it flies in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Why set the bar low enough for a belief so that no objective evidence can be demonstrated, if not to hold onto a belief that we ought really to be disbelieve.
2 Likes
Another oversimplification bordering on sophistry, it is logically incomplete. Disbelief can also involve holding a contrary belief, but need not, and they definitely are not the same thing as that claim implies.
Disbelief in X, is expressing doubt and incredulity in X.
Belief in “not X” is a belief that X is false.
Why waste time pretending they’re the same, when a ten second Google search demonstrates they are not.
Oh dear, and the inability to read a dictionary continues apace.
This is fucking hilarious, from “An actual person I met” to “There is no such thing” in a single sentence.
Yay, he got one almost right, it’s the belief that nothing is known or can be known about the nature or existence of god. Agnosticism would of course depend on the concept of deity being presented, as some such concepts are falsifiable, if only through rational extrapolation of the claims made about them. Even a unfalsifiable concept of deity, is often accompanied by claims from theists, who when asked to evidence those claims run to the “god is mysterious” excuse to evade their burden of proof.
And we are back to rank stupidity that contradicts the dictionary. All humans are born without any beliefs, and this includes theistic and deistic beliefs, they are by definitions atheists. Some remain so.
You are confusing knowledge with belief, whilst hilariously asserting that any knowledge of deity being negated entirely does not preclude believing things about deities, and the hilarity is you don’t see the error or the contradiction.
I can only state that I tend to invest belief based on knowledge, and disbelief on the lack of it, or the lack of sufficient knowledge. FYI it is perfectly rational to doubt and disbelieve two contradictory claims. Since disbelieving a claim, is not a belief.
Oh really, as you broached the idea of Schrodinger’s cat above you mean? You are funny, fair play, it’s like watching a small but precocious child working furiously to join two mismatched pieces of Lego. Whilst one cannot help but admire the effort, the zeal and even the ingenuity to a certain extent, one can see the simple flaw right from the start. What you want people to think, is not necessarily what they do think, and using labels and then contradicting common usage is inevitably going to fail.
If I may, this lengthy diatribe could perhaps be better expressed by one sentence, atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, some atheist also hold beliefs about the nature and existence of some deities. How hard is that, no need for all the finger pointing and hand ringing.
Uh uh! Our survey said 0%…atheism is not a belief.
Directly contradicts this:
Wrongity wrong wrong wrong….atheism is not a belief, agnosticism is, and so is theism, atheists might hold beliefs, and have a philosophy, but atheists and atheism are not the same thing. Atheism is not a belief, it is not a worldview, it is not a philosophy, anymore than not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Oh dear, since rational is defined as “in accordance with the principles of logic” that is another comedic gem.
If ideas conflict or contradict each other, then they cannot be asserted as logically sound, as they would violate the law of non-contradiction, if they do this then by definition they are not rational, since something is defined as rational only if it is in accordance with the principles and laws of logic, that’s what rational means.
Agnosticism and atheism do not contradict each other, since agnosticism is a belief about epistemic limits regarding god or gods, and atheism a lack of belief in any deity or deities, and is not a claim no deity or deities exist.
Let’s try Schrödinger’s cat:
We cannot know without opening the box, or gaining more knowledge, if the cat is alive or dead, yes?
So do you believe the cat is dead? Do you believe the cat is alive? Personally I believe neither, note this is not a claim to knowledge, it is an expression of doubt, and therefore since neither position can be known, I would disbelieve both claims.
Now lets take baby steps and try that with a deity;
A deity may exist, or may not exist.
Now in the complete absence of any more information, I would disbelieve both claims. This by definition would make me an atheist and possibly an agnostic. I say possibly as not knowing anything about the nature or existence of something, does not necessarily mean I cannot know anything about it.
Yeah, I think you don’t know what logic means, and I am becoming dubious that you know what belief means. FTR, all beliefs are the affirmation of a claim that “something is true, or that it is the case”. All beliefs qualify as knowledge, whether they are correct is another matter. Asserting disbelief of a claim, any claim, is not a claim for knowledge, asserting a claim is false, or untrue, is a claim to knowledge and therefore a belief.
I am not going to lie, it was mighty entertaining, but then so are videos of cats being frightened by their tails.
It’s not often something appears to be both wrong and word salad, fair play.
Agnosticism is a belief about epistemic limits. Atheism is the lack or absence of one specific belief - theism. Theism is a belief. No need to tie yourself in knots.
So you used the example of Schrodinger’s cat, but think it of no value, interesting. It’s ironic, but perhaps inevitable when people who desperately want to believe something they can offer no epistemic or empirical justification for, tear away at simple word definitions, as if the genie is hiding in semantics, used to create sophistry.
Like the idea of Schrodinger’s cat of course, some ideas are unfalsifiable, science has learned to discarded these as worthless, at least until some data becomes available to make them falsifiable. Why is it that doubt instils so much fear in theists I wonder. That’s rhetorical btw.
I don’t believe that - see what I did there, or rather see what I expressed with actual words there.
Is your mind capable of conceptualizing doubt? You might learn this simple idea, and then the humility of not using sweeping absolute claims that so often contradict facts, even facts you have expressed alongside them.
Nope, an agnostic has formed a belief, it is a claim as are all beliefs. The belief formed is about epistemic limits, that “the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is unknown or inherently unknowable”. It is not incompatible with doubt and disbelief, quite the contrary I’d say. It is of course utterly compatible with any claims to knowledge about the nature or existence of any deity.
That’s one possible result of the belief, it’s not what it means.
Always end with a joke.
All this effort to redefine common usage with your own bias, but nary a single word to evidence a deity, or even define it. The irony is of course palpable.
I think here, (for this post) a simple explanation of the three laws of traditional logic might help.
the Law of Identity (P = P), the Law of Non-Contradiction (P is not non-P), and the Law of Excluded Middle (P or non-P).
God exists vs god does not exist, two contradictory claims. These cannot both be true in the same time and at the same place without violating the law of non-contradiction. Since the claims are a negation of the other, the law of the excluded middle applies, there is no third alternative. The law of identity is why apologists who believe in a specific deity, arguing for a generic deity, are starting with a false equivalence that always (in my experience so far) end in some form of special pleading, any arguments doing either of those is also by definition irrational, since they are known common logical fallacies.
My apologies if I have erred, or for any typos, but I am mega busy in work, and this was typed in a hurry during a quick tea break, with mind firmly ties into conformity inspections for test articles, the old day job takes priority.
1 Like