I am an atheist, because I do not accept any currently claimed existence of deity, be they of the creator type or one of many. I do not know whether there are no gods at all but, on the basis of what we so far can prove (that no currently accepted scientific explanation requests or requires the action of deity) I believe it to be highly unlikely that any will ever be found to exist. I am no more “undecided” about this issue than I am about the existence of Santa Claus or Superman (although I have arbitrarily decided that Black Widow may well be a goddess).
It’s all about the claim that gods exist. If people didn’t claim that, there’d be no need for atheism or even the word “atheist” and few atheists I know of will explicitly claim that there is no god because that’s almost as dumb as claiming there is.
This feels pretty much like a strawman.
To my mind, there is only one version of atheism - if you do not believe or do not currently accept claims that a god or gods exist, you are an atheist. Simples!
I’m an atheist because I don’t buy into the religious claims that deities exist. I myself don’t know whether there are gods or no gods. I have been given no sufficient evidence that proves that they exist.
So you are decided and the decision is “I do not know if a deity exists or not”. But it seems you do go further, you are of the opinion that the existence of a deity is “unlikely” (a statistical claim) but that’s fine I think I understand your overall position.
Very well, I regard the proposition “God exists” as true myself. I regard it as entirely rational and consistent with what I understand about the universe, physics, cosmology and mathematics. Why we reach different conclusions from the same data is the interesting point for me.
Well I can’t see why you’d say that but never mind. I can’t see any semantic difference between saying “I don’t know” and “I do not hold a belief”, if there is one I’d be interested to learn more of is.
Someone who identifies as Christian and is non practicing doesn’t mean they’re any different than a Christian whom is devout, prays to their god, and goes to church. They’re both Christians to me. So which one has to say “I believe in god” or “god does exist!” for me to make that proposition in your rule book? The non practicing one or the devout one?
I don’t understand that. I wanted to understand more about what you mean by “a religious claim” - from what you’ve said all claims about God are religious claims.
The claim many theists make “God exists” or “There is a God” is a reasoned conclusion, argued and rationally argued, based on basic logic.
The “religious” stuff is a consequence of belief in God, once a person decides that there is a God, then they might or might not embrace some religious group.
What one does with a belief, how one uses it and so on, is distinct from the belief.
How is someone not of a religious belief when they claim they believe in this god or that god? If I were to say that I believe in Kali, would you not ask me if I was a Hindu?
As would I, then one someone insists it is true, I would say I don’t believe them.
That’s a lie, nearly all the atheists here have expressed that they are also agnostics about claims for deities when they are unfalsifiable. Unlike theists though they have the intellectual integrity not to make bare unevidenced assumptions, but unevidenced assumptions are the bread and butter of all superstitions.
Of course, but unlike theists atheists tend not base claims on not knowing. So when someone does this they disbelieve that claim.
Like a court of law, where the burden of proof rests with the accuser who makes a claim, the defendant has no burden of proof, and the jury must decide if they believe the burden of proof for guilt has been met, if they don’t then they must say they don’t believe the accusation, but that need not know whether that person is innocent, only that they don’t believe the accusation of guilt meets it’s burden of proof. It’s a pretty simple concept as well. Sadly theists are so blinded by their desire to believe they can’t cope with those who declare they don’t share that belief.
I am an agnostic as far as all unfalsifiable claims are concerned, and I also disbelieve all unfalsifiable claims, as believing some would be biased, and all would inevitably violate the law of non-contradiction. I am also an atheist as I don’t believe in any deity or deities.
Never heard one, can you give an example. FIY they would carry the same burden of proof, that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated to support the claim.
