Back up, back up. Why isn’t it showing? There must be a flaw in the coding. ___. What? I tried it again and it’s coming up blank. Where’s ___? That’s it. I’m becoming an atheist.
Let’s take a look at what “exist” means, shall we?
to have actual being; be: The world exists, whether you like it or not.
[size=75]Oooh, to be; not to not be.[/size]
to have life or animation; live.
[size=75]To be alive; not to be six feet under.[/size]
to continue to be or live: Belief in magic still exists.
[size=75]The act of belief continuing to exist; not what’s believed in.[/size]
to have being in a specified place or under certain conditions; be found; occur: Hunger exists in many parts of the world.
[size=75]To exist in a place or under conditions; not to not exist in a place or under conditions but rather somewhere. Absence of being found or occurring is an antonym.[/size]
to achieve the basic needs of existence, as food and shelter: He’s not living, he’s merely existing.
[size=75]To show signs of a needy creature; not giving without end or weakness.[/size]
___must not fit the description of exist. I wonder if a mermaid will. Perhaps if we parade a mascot and write a story? A loving mermaid who comes from the depths of the ocean to tell the land dwellers of what the future holds in the great beyond; the underneath.
What we can “know” is damned little. We can know our physical world, we can see patterns that allow prediction about what is likely, but that’s about it. We can make all sorts of suppositions , create elegant abstractions to explain the unexplainable, but possibles are still supposition.
To pick on the atheists instead of the theists, we know that there is something in the universe called a black hole. We have seen them in our telescopes under a variety of different wave length spectrums. But what we “know” is almost nothing. There is a lot of speculation about this phenomena, but scientists caution that what goes on inside a black hole may not function within the known laws of physics. Which is just another way of saying we don’t know jack.
Supposition is just that - an entertaining of ideas. What you know is that you stubbed your toe on the chair leg in the dark last night. Supposition is that it was caused by a hex placed on you by that witch next door.
There is much confusion between knowing and supposition which was more than confirmed in the case for theism thread.
You’re not following me here. I’m saying that I think the evidence in inconclusive for the assertion that there is, or that there is not a god. If you say that there is, then I’ll ask you to prove it. If you say that there’s not then I’ll ask you to prove that as well. My problem is that all the theists, and all the atheists so arrogantly claim that they have some real knowledge one way or the other while only being able to articulate that so called knowledge with nonsense.
No offence but that’s a load of horse shit dude… you are as atheistic as I am… I am not claiming that there is no god… Nor is any other atheist here…
we’re just pointing out that you cannot prove that god exists… and in the absence of that “proof” we will not believe god to exist… since nothing follows from ignorance… and in the absence of a belief in gods existence… we are A-theists…
What the hell? The entire purpose of this thread was to demonstrate that theists (not you) are irrational in their beliefs. You were going out of your way to attack other people’s beliefs, not express your own lack of one. You said that theists who claim that God exists are irrational to me in another thread not an hour ago. And now, when somebody presses you, you’re claiming that atheism is just about you, saying that YOU won’t believe something because YOU don’t have evidence? Talk about horse shit!
The atheism you’re promoting isn’t a position, or even a lack of a position - it’s an attitude towards philosophy. It’s an attitude that says “Destroying the claims that other people make is easy and safe, and as I can be as picky and stringent in my demands for proof as I want, because as long as I never claim share anything that I believe, nobody can use my own standards against me.” To me it seems like the intellectual vice of cowardice.
This stems from the assumption that we are all born “atheist” and only later become “theists”…
by showing the arguments theists use and expect to be convincing, as weak if not down right invalid, I am demonstrating that they are irrational for having acknowldged those arguments at one time which lead to them becoming theists.
If a theist were to simply say “I believe in god because he has revealed himself to me” than I can assure you… I would leave it be… and say no more.
I would of course not believe him… since he can not demonstrate this in any way… but I would have been a theist too if god had spoken to me directly… so I can hardly blame his reasoning. I can only doubt his sanity…
No… I’m saying that atheism is a LACK of beliefe in god. No more… no less… and pointing out that a LACK of belief in a positive does not mean that it is a positive belief in a negative…
I am in fact ignoring the question of “god” entirely because there is NO QUESTION… there is in fact NOTHING to question… “god” is an empty set…
You ask is there a God or not… I say what the hell is “god?” you go on to describe something I am utterly unfamilar with… and then refuse to introduce me to it… and so I refuse to question it’s existence… I don’t even know what “it” is…
What a selective memory you have… I spent a long time explaining my take on epistomology on the materialism thread. I have described the standards I find reasonable to use and I have defended them successfully… I am not afried of sharing my own beliefs and admitting to any mistakes I might have made…
You fled into the “case for theism” thread when you could not dent my position from a skeptic’s point of view… and tried instead to posit a “better” position… which as it turns out was mostly based on a shallow epistemic principle of “seeking truth rather than avoiding falshood”… which is really a clever way of trying to turn the burdon of proof on those who reject a positive claim… and then you posited some nonsense method of rejecting the existence of ghosts that compleatly contradicted the method you used to affirm theism. Giving rise to RC’s “A Ridiculous Proposition” thread… which again you fled from…
It seems all you can do is shift the burdon of proof… and are thus far unable to construct an epistemic position which you can remain consistent with while affirming the existence of god yet rejecting that of ghosts… short of allowing appeals to consequence as epistemically valid…
this whole “theism/atheism” is rooted in epistomology… and you have ducked out of having to present your position in full again and again…
Smears
I don’t believe in the existence of god either… and if there is no belief in god… there is NO belief in god…
and that is what makes us BOTH atheists… even if you want to call yourself an “agnostic”… it matters little to me if you want to define “atheist” as a person who claims to know for a fact that god does not exist… that’s at best a straw man… and you will find very few atheists here who would qualify by your definition… and even fewer who would agree to it…
The agnostic, by definiton, admits an inability to assert the existence or nonexistence of God, and makes it his/her business to question toward an answer, or accept that none can be asserted.
The atheist, by definition, asserts at least a belief in the fact that there is no God, despite his or her inability to adequately convince the agnostic or theist.
The difference is that one can be an agnostic theist… but one cannot be an atheistic theist…
I am an agnostic atheist… but since i consider it fairly obvious that I cannot positivly prove a negative… I leave out the “agnostic” bit and just take it for granted…
Based on what I know of Uccisore… He is an agnostic theist… he too leaves out the uncertainty of his position and simply states that he is a theist…
Simply saying you are an agnostic only means that you are denying either the possibility of certain knowledge or certainty of personal knowledge of the existence of god. It says nothing about what you actually believe despite this lack of certain knowledge…
Nov. 2nd
EP: I can’t be sure that this table isn’t going to collapse or if the coffee I’m about to sip will be too hot and burn my tongue. What I can be sure of is when it happens only then will it be my concern.
The probability of this table collapsing is slim because it seems sturdy, however, the coffee feels pretty hot. In either case, even with evidence pointing to what may or may not happen, I remain uncertain and, therefore, careless because it is not in my power to change the circumstances that lead to this.
This is why I disregard any worries of a god and deny its existence because it does not yet exist.
“This is why I disregard any worries of a god and deny its existence because it does not yet exist.”-- southerngurl
Another agnostic position, in essence, right?
perhaps I’m a little anal on this point, P, but
to modify “atheist” OR “theist” with the preface “agnostic”
sounds more like an agnostic than either or…
To say that I believe God’s existence is likely (for ME! i could be mistaken but it makes sense) but that I’m not sure, either because reason cannot prove it, or I doubt that I have had a personal revelation, or even that I doubt experience I may have once believed was revelation…any of this to me qualifies as agnostic, despite the leaning to belief. Is it a comfortable position? Still.
To say I find it highly unlikely that God exists, but say, “hey, you never know”, or, “Geez, I’d better be careful in case there is a God”, or “maybe it could happen, but I doubt it”, this too is agnostic.
Now to contrast–
We agree that God’s existence cannot be demonstrated, or, if we don’t, that’s the subject altogether for a different debate.
But if I believe, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God exists, in the sense we refer to in theism, than I AM a theist, whether I can prove God or not. Theism is a personal belief system.
If I am utterly convinced, and therefore believe, that God cannot and does not exist, then and only then, in my view, am I an atheist.
These are two very strong views, aren’t they? Most of us fall into the agnostic category, and I concede, Mad Man, we can, with philosophical clarity, employ the compound concepts agnostic atheist and agnostic theist (and certainly not “atheistic theist”!) where the second word indicates of which position on God’s existence we are more convinced.
Beliefs are indeed fluid and everchanging, and are, as I believe, rarely felt with the intensity of absolute certainty, which is why it seems that if we had to choose one word to most accurately sum up the positions argued on either side of this topic, that word would be agnostic.
Does this mean that you haven’t looked into the subject very deeply or that you have examined the subject and found the evidence on both sides to be roughly balanced?
Believing that a thing is not there when you do not (nor does virtually anyone else) see, hear, feel, taste, or smell the thing there is common sense unless there is a good reason to believe otherwise.
Disbelieving in the existence of atoms, for instance, was common sense until the late 1800s/early 1900s when good reasons to believe otherwise were discovered.
How do you know that there IS anything to know beyond the physical world?
If you do not know this, then for all you actually know, by our knowing everything there is to know about the physical world, we will know everything there is to know, period. It is unhelpful and unnecessary speculation to assume that there are other things to know beyond the physical. Maybe there are, maybe there are not. No one knows.
Along that same line, how do you know that there is the “unexplainable”? Isn’t it better to say that we humans in 2007 have not figured everything out yet? To assume more than this, to assume that there are phenomena which will never be explained, is to assume among other things that humans will never get smarter, that our brains have, for no apparent reason, stopped evolving into ever more sophisticated thinking machines, that future experience for the first time in human history will not improve our understanding of the universe, that humans are the smartest creatures in the universe and not just on planet earth, etc. Now, all of this may be true, but I see no reason to assume that it is.
Now, compare this to the case for the existence of god. Has anyone seen a god in a telescope or seen one anywhere else? No. Is there some sort of mathematical equation that suggests a god’s existence? No. The two cases are nothing alike.
The two cases would be somewhat analogous if black holes were claimed by science to be able to perform miracles and if God were claimed to have been seen by theists. Otherwise, the analogy doesn’t work at all.
ALL scientific knowledge is provisional. It not only can change, it WILL change. Scientists freely admit this.
On the other side you have 99% (or more) of the world’s religious who do not regard the existence of their god as speculative in any way. They consider that proposition to be anywhere from highly probable to an absolute certainty.
To evaluate those two epistemic positions (and the methods that lead to the positions) and not to see the difference in them is to be intellectually blind.
While I agree that everybody is agnostic to a certain degree, the belief in god isn’t an empty proposition. If someone believes in the gods of Ancient Greece, they have to arrange for specific sacrifices to take place on certain days, Jews have to fast on High Holy Days, Catholics need to confess their sins and take communion, Protestants need to . . . do whatever it is that they do, ect. So, it isn’t sufficient to simply say that most reasonable people recognize the limitations of their knowledge with respect to god and leave it at that. Belief in specific gods demands specific actions, whereas (at least I would argue) that belief in “god” as a general concept is an empty term and doesn’t really mean anything. I do not think that when atheists and theists argue that they are arguing for the latter position.
The reason an agnostic, in most instances, is either a theist or, more often, an atheist is because “agnostic” usually refers to an epistemic position in regard to the possibility or availability of knowledge, while “theist” and “atheist” refer to metaphysical positions concerning BELIEF in the existence of god.
Either we have a particular belief or we don’t have that particular belief so from that standpoint everyone is either a theist or an atheist – even the people who had rather drink hemlock than to admit it. Either a person believes that the proposition “God X exists” is probably true or he doesn’t. There really is no other option despite the semantical games that some very confused people insist on playing (i.e., “I do not not not not believe that a god does not not not not exist.” – please!)
No one can both believe that a god exists and not believe that the same god exists at the same time no matter how desperately he desires to straddle the question.
Agnosticism says that knowledge about the existence of god is either impossible or unavailable. Either way, this position, rationally, leads to disbelief in the proposition “God X exists.”
Some agnostics, however, believe that, although knowledge of god’s existence is beyond our ability to know rationally, belief in the existence of god can still be had by taking a leap of faith beyond the rational.
Ah, so that’s toddlers who were born ‘atheists’ do when they become theists? They debate the relative incoherence of naturalism? Come on. We already established that what you’re doing here has everything to do with criticizing how theists meet atheists in arguments, and nothing to do with theism in itself. Already agreed on that.
And then you switch again, we’re back to discussing what theists say to you in arguments. Also, you’re making Smears point for him. You’ve talked a ton about what you’re doing, and what you wouldn’t do in certain situations. Again, completely avoiding the fact that you believe something, and that it could be criticized. You’re putting yourself in the position of the unassailable critic, because it puts you in a position of power. This has nothing to do with philosophy. Of course if someone made the above claim you would ‘leave it be’- you’d actually have to put forward some examinable notion of how the world is in order to disagree with them, and we can’t have that!
Yes, that’s what atheism is, because that’s what it’s safe for you to say it is. If you actually said that God didn’t exist, you might actually have to cough up an argument or evidence of something yourself, instead of letting everybody else do the work! But even if atheism is a lack of belief, PEOPLE aren’t. In the world of philosophy, a person who does nothing but poke holes in other theories because they can’t run the risk of having one of their own is…do you know the expression ‘like tits on a fencepost’?
That’s the problem you’re missing- a theory is only injured with respect to some other theory. “Mad Man P isn’t convinced” doesn’t defeat theism. “Mad Man P can think of a theoretical hole in an argument” doesn’t defeat it either. You need something else- some other idea that’s competing with it. Without that, your criticisms are useless. A theist can just say “Yep, it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we got!” and your “I swear to God I don’t believe anything!” is utterly blown away unless you give them a better answer- and then, the critics come for you. See the atheistism thread. You have a huge record of statements building and building about all the reasons a person shouldn’t believe anything, and it’s all going to come crashing down on top of you the moment you say “I believe X”- and so you won’t.
And [i]that[/i], is the problem with atheism in itself.
Explain to me how this thread ignores the question of God entirely.
Then perhaps it's time to stop presenting arguments against something about which you are totally ignorant? I mean hey, maybe it's my fault, or the Church's fault, or your fault, or God's fault that you don't know what God is. But doesn't it seem reasonable to leave the discussions about God to those who know what the hell they're talking about?
But you just spent three paragraphs telling me you don’t have a position on this matter. That’s the issue- you don’t count. Like I told you before- Oh, there seems to be historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ? Let’s just say all history is suspect! Oh, there seems to be logical and rational reasons to believe in God? Let’s just make up an epistemology that counters them all! Oh, someone asked me to defend the claim that God doesn’t exist? Well, let’s just say I don’t know what this “God” business is about in the first place!
You see, it’s all so very easy for someone who refuses to have any position on anything. But it’s not philosophy.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about induction, you didn’t make any attempt to understand my epistemology, I doubt you even comprehend what a ‘virtue reliablist’ is. Our discussions about my epistemology were your vocal obsessing over how you worried that it didn’t let you deny the existence of things easily enough. Are you seeing a pattern here? The only thing that concerns you is developing systems that allow you to tell other people that they’re wrong about stuff, without claiming anything yourself. That’s exactly what you did in our ‘discussion’ about epistemology. You don’t make yourself look any better by RC’s thread. An atheist, materialist, microbiologist spent a week trying to explain to you why it was bogus, and you didn’t get it. Why? Because the reason it’s bogus has to do with the way it applies to large bodies of other things we believe- which doesn’t matter to a “You’re wrong” machine like yourself.
What burden of proof? You aren’t questioning the existence of God, you haven’t asked me any questions, and you don’t even know what ‘God’ is such that you could ask a question if you wanted to. There is nothing that anybody is trying to prove to you.
Perfect example of what I’m talking about. The only way you can think of to evaluate an epistemological system is to see how efficiently it rejects belief in things. Besides that, you’re wrong anyway- belief in ghosts or God is always going to be tied up in the particulars of why a person is faced with the choice to believe in something, not appeals to broad concepts like ‘ghost’ and general epistemic principles. The very idea that you can evaluate an epistemological system in terms of the kinds of things it doesn’t let you believe in is silly.
Again, same thing- “you haven’t given me enough stuff to criticize from my non-position, so therefore blah”. Do you have any intended function here other than to demand other people to try to prove things to you so you can tell them they didn’t do it good enough? Do you understand that no matter what I do, what I demonstrate, nothing is going to physically prevent you from typing “I don’t agree” into your keyboard, or pretending the discussion never happened like you did by starting this thread?
For what it’s worth, I’ve been presenting my position every week for months now, to people who have forgotten more about atheism than you’ve learned, while you argue with Kriswest. You’ve always chosen your level of involvement. And don’t think I didn’t notice that this thread as a brief, non-specific way of dealing with the specific points I raised in my theism thread without actually having to confront their presentation, and a begging for help for other atheists to come in and help you. I can’t understand why you’d pull something like that, and then accuse me of ducking and running on conversations.
