Perhaps he is silent because it’s obvious a newborn baby meets Smith’s criteria for one to be an atheist.
[/i]The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist.[/i]
Yes: science to determine the truth value of initial premisses, and logic to then determine the truth value of conclusions. The former need not be modern science, though (which is not really science–scientia–, anyway, but only a method).
I did not forget that, and I’ve already answered your questions multiple times. Here are my answers again:
First question: 2) 2 statements.
Second question: a) if the first statement is false, then so is the last.
In my understanding,
you consider the first statement, “A person who doesn’t hold the belief that a god exists is an atheist”, false;
you consider the second statement, “A newborn baby human is a person”, true;
you consider the third statement, “A newborn baby human doesn’t hold the belief that a god exists”, true;
and you consider the last statement, “Therefore a newborn baby human is an atheist”, false.
Please confirm whether I’ve understood you correctly.
Should or do? I’m fine with using Websters.com, but don’t use a different definition from Dictionary.com against my arguments then.
Then it would make no sense for him to say that thing about children with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved: for if even newborn babies meet those criteria, then such children self-evidently meet those criteria.
According to Webster.com, an atheist is one who believes that there is no deity (which Smith would call an explicit atheist). So unless newborn baby humans are capable of believing that there is no deity–and possibly even then–, they are no atheists according to Webster.com.
He is well aware or each and every word that he is saying.
Do not underestimate or consider him ignorant. He just plays ignorant as a cover when finds it difficult to answer. That is his modus operandi. He is some sort of philosophical con, if you want to put a level at him.
There are two ways to tackle him. Either to ignore completely, or refute hardly but patiently as long as he does not lose the patience. And, we have only the later option left now.
That is why I did the other thread of tweaking the definitions. He knows very well that the thread is targeted to him, yet he chose not to participate as it has nothing to do with him. That is exactly how he use to play ignorant.
He will keep repeating his con, and we have to keep exposing him, without getting irritated. It is not about logic or winning an argument anymore, but just a testing of patience of both sides. And, whichever will display more, would win the battle at last. The loser will get some kind of whip from the mods because of faulty language, sooner or later. Some internet discussions tend to end that way.
So, you need not to do anything extraordinary but just keep repeating your old arguments, That is enough.
Fair enough.
No matter what your thinking is, you at least did not try to play sematics and said the truth. But, Mucter will never accept this reality that it is not about the reality but how one wants to define the reality.
But, you have to realize that one can use the same tactics to include agnosticm into theism too, if atheism is taken as an initial point of reference, instead of theism.
Like -
All those who believe that the god does not exist - Atheists.
All those who do not believe that the god does not exist - Theists.
Now, all newborns, rocks and trees would become Theists according to this classification, and agnosticm will become a subset of theism too.
Now, one can say that this classification is wrong, which certainly it is, but it is also a fact that this is right according to my definition of atheism.
The same is true in the case of Mucter. He is right according to his definitions only, not in reality.
I have been pointed out his trick many times to him but he chose not to reply me. That is his level of intellectual honesty.
dictionary.com) atheist
[ey-thee-ist]
Spell Syllables
Synonyms Examples Word Origin
noun
1.
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
webster.com atheist
: a person who believes that God does not exist
atheist (n.) Look up atheist at Dictionary.com
1570s, from French athéiste (16c.), from Greek atheos “without god, denying the gods; abandoned of the gods; godless, ungodly,” from a- “without” + theos “a god” (see theo-).
The existence of a world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell. [Armand Salacrou, “Certitudes et incertitudes,” 1943]
Note that nowhere does it say that such a position must be arrived at through a willful or conscious process.
Denying the gods is just such an act. And look at the example they give, the quote. Clearly a conscoius process was involved.
That said, etymological definitions can be entirely different from current usage. They do not demonstrate what one should take the word as today.
And today people use the term to mean a lack of belief and people also use the term to mean a belief there is no God. Sometimes they mean this state has been arrived at through conscious processes, sometimes they do not.
It would also be silly to say babies are agnostic. Though it is possible that they do not know if there is a God or not.
If you guys are going to get back into the dictionary game; TODAY in ENGLISH “Atheist” means:
The indented quotes give allowance for merely a lack of belief, a distinction not found in ancient Greek or Latin.
So about a ratio of 21 : 3 in favor of “Atheism” meaning; “a [size=150]belief in the lack[/size] of any fundamental theory” (aka “God”).
And it just so happens that infants subconsciously believe in a fundamental theory that we commonly call Causality (or the ancient concept of God called “El”). They have to grow up to gain a conscious understanding which is usually obfuscated into bizarre foolishness by adults arguing with each other over what each wants others to believe.
No Mutcer, it does not redirect there. What redirects there is webster.com on purpose before or not, but in any case, I used Webster.com because there is no such thing as Websters.com (the latter redirects to the Dictionary.com entry for the word “webster”…).
Anyway, if you want to use Dictionary.com, that’s fine with me, too, though only if we then stick to it.
Yes, as “disbelieve”, according to Dictionary.com, among other things means “to have no belief in”, a person without the capacity to believe in the existence of a supreme being or beings–if such a thing exists–would indeed be an atheist according to Dictionary.com.
Not Websters.com; Webster.com. But sure, fine: any person without the capacity to believe in the existence of a supreme being or beings is a D-atheist.
Indeed.
Who says that’s what “we” do? Can you provide an indisputable argument for why we should do so?
A newborn baby always knows to suck on it’s mothers tit… it’s like the saying that we all have assholes. Therefor they are rational. We’re just working with definitions here though, not the proofs. Now can a being be rational and not self conscious… perhaps that deserves it’s own thread.