I don't believe that's true. For instance, you believe that, right now, the land mass of China exists, but you can't physically see it right now. I mean, you could fly over there and look for yourself, but that would take time, and by then you would be long past the point "right now."
the difference being, that if i had the time and money it would take, i could obviously fly to china and prove to myself that it exists. i know that i have the power to do this. heaven and hell, on the other hand, i cannot buy a plane ticket to. the existance of china can be proven, but the other two cannot.
Quote from mondu_the_fat »
Then how can you claim the Christianity is a lie when you do not have proof of the truth?
exactly the same way that christianity can claim to be true when christians do not have proof of the truth.
Okay, so, Blinking Spirit, now that you are a mod, can we possibly get a sticky somewhere with the following in gigantic, blinking, red text:
Atheism does not require proof as it is not a belief. It is, rather, the lack of a belief in a god. Any philosophical proposition requires some proof (even if it is in the form of faith), whereas a lack of belief requires no evidence.
Thanks,
Harkius
Alas, no, because that's not quite true. Strictly speaking, the most sound response to "I see no evidence of God" is agnosticism. Getting all the way to atheism does require a positive belief about the universe: a belief that Ockham's Razor generally holds, if not a specific belief that there is no God.
I do, however, advise all religious people posting on this thread to direct their arguments to the Razor (those of you who aren't already doing so).
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That's actually not true. Agnosticism is also known as implicit atheism. What this belief structure consists of is merely a lack of belief in a god without an explicit argument that there is not one. I.e., it is to say that you don't have a belief in one, but that you are not sure.
Which is the default scientific stance when when presented with a a theory but having not yet seen any evidence.
Quote from Harkius »
Explicit atheism is to say that you don't believe in a god and you are sure in that absence of belief.
Certainty implies belief. You cannot be sure of anything unless you believe, positively or negatively, in that thing.
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Agnostic means you are "without knowledge" of God. You believe God's existence is unknowable.
Atheism means "without God." You do not believe in God.
Within atheism are "strong" and "weak" atheism. A strong atheist explicitly and consciously denies the existence of God. He is an antitheist. He is under some obligation to support his claim.
A weak atheist neither consciously affirms, nor consciously denies the existence of God. In practice, he "denies" the existence of a God that assigns commands and administers retribution for failure, but that's quite a stretch of what "denial" means.
the difference being, that if i had the time and money it would take, i could obviously fly to china and prove to myself that it exists. i know that i have the power to do this. heaven and hell, on the other hand, i cannot buy a plane ticket to. the existance of china can be proven, but the other two cannot.
Whoa dude, you totally missed my point. Remember, I said:
"I mean, you could fly over there and look for yourself, but that would take time, and by then you would be long past the point 'right now.' "
Let's step it back a few years.
You cannot physically see "China, two years ago."
As far as we know, there is no possible way to see "China, two years ago" (if you flew to those supposed coordinates, you would arrive at "China, hours from now," not "China, two years ago").
You believe in "China, two years ago." Therefore, you do believe in something that you cannot possibly physically see. The reason that you believe in it is testimonial evidence and the neural desire for reality to conform to those circumstances that have given you positive feedback in the past ("All these people wouldn't lie about China existing right now," "To subscribe to a conspiracy theory about the false existence of China two years ago would be too much of a paradigm shift," etc.).
For most people, the claim that "the testimony for God's presence is false" is not much of a paradigm shift for their worldview. That's why it's not hard to reject that testimony. It's a lot harder to reject testimony for, for instance, "all news media is completely made up," because that's a giant paradigm shift.
I realize this is a major mindbender, because the immediate reaction is to say, "Well I could conceivably check to make sure that what they're telling me is true or false." But that in itself is a leap of faith you make inside your paradigm. Unless you actually check, you are making a subscription of faith.
Regardless of terms used, Harkius, the definition you posed is equal to Stan's "strong atheism" - the positive belief in the non-existence of God or a god-like being.
The belief itself wouldn't need proof anymore than theism would, as a belief in a void, but as an argument, "I don't have proof of God's existence" is not proof of God's nonexistence.
Belief that there certainly is no such thing as God is a strong opposition to the belief that there is a God, which is different from the weak opposition that there simply is no proof of God (and therefore no empirical or rational reason to accept it). As such, that strong opposition incurrs the burden of proof.
I hope I didn't misinterpret your definition, but if I did, what we are talking about is still relevent to the what was pointed out earlier in this thread - that the lack of proof for God is not proof of Christianity's fallaciousness.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the light that you see. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
But the rainbow is an image of hope for many reasons, as it is a brilliant sight coming out of oftimes dismal weather.
I find it interesting how many athiests don't believe in God because they have not seen Him, and yet some of them believe in Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and aliens that have actually landed here on Earth. Sometimes ghosts, though they tend not to believe in souls. I'm not saying that all do, or even that most do. Just that some do.
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I find it interesting how many athiests don't believe in God because they have not seen Him, and yet some of them believe in Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and aliens that have actually landed here on Earth. Sometimes ghosts, though they tend not to believe in souls. I'm not saying that all do, or even that most do. Just that some do.
To be fair, though, for some it is easier to conceive of a weird beast or animal existing without proof than it is to believe in a deity without proof. Because even though it hasn't been proven either, the possibility of some unusual animal like a sasquatch would be considerably more mundane and easy to swallow (we already know that animals exist).
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All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the light that you see. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
But the rainbow is an image of hope for many reasons, as it is a brilliant sight coming out of oftimes dismal weather.
You are putting words in my mouth, I think. I think that you can be sure of the absence of belief as much as you can be sure of the presence of belief, whether that belief is positive or negative.
You do not have to believe that there is no god to have no belief in god.
A != B.
I'm not so sure about that, but anyway it's beside the point. You say that these "explicit atheists," whom I call simply "atheists," require some sort of backing-up of their belief/nonbelief, with which I agree.
Quote from Harkius »
For the record, most dictionaries will list both definitions. I choose to use mine because it creates a delineation between antitheism, atheism, and theism, which sets up a useful trichotomy that covers all possible cases, and has other merits. What merit(s) does your definitional schema allow that mine does not?
I can't speak for extremestan, but it was my impression that the usual trichotomy, which is the one I've been using, was between atheism, agnosticism, and theism. Within atheism we might set up a distinction between "strong" and "weak," but they are alike in that they affirm the nonexistence of a God. An agnostic, in contrast, takes the scientifically-neutral stance I mentioned earlier, having not seen any corroborating or falsifying evidence, and possibly stating that the thesis is non-falsifiable. An agnostic is to be distinguished from a "weak atheist," or "implicit atheist," in not positively affirming God's nonexistence. After all, a good scientist would not affirm the falsehood of a new theory without seeing falsifying evidence, though he would also not believe it without seeing corroborating evidence.
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i have a friend who is agnostic. and from what i've heard from her and our own talks about religion, she believe's in a "higher power," but not necessarily the same god that christians believe in.
Whoa dude, you totally missed my point. Remember, I said:
"I mean, you could fly over there and look for yourself, but that would take time, and by then you would be long past the point 'right now.' "
Let's step it back a few years.
You cannot physically see "China, two years ago."
As far as we know, there is no possible way to see "China, two years ago" (if you flew to those supposed coordinates, you would arrive at "China, hours from now," not "China, two years ago").
You believe in "China, two years ago." Therefore, you do believe in something that you cannot possibly physically see. The reason that you believe in it is testimonial evidence and the neural desire for reality to conform to those circumstances that have given you positive feedback in the past ("All these people wouldn't lie about China existing right now," "To subscribe to a conspiracy theory about the false existence of China two years ago would be too much of a paradigm shift," etc.).
For most people, the claim that "the testimony for God's presence is false" is not much of a paradigm shift for their worldview. That's why it's not hard to reject that testimony. It's a lot harder to reject testimony for, for instance, "all news media is completely made up," because that's a giant paradigm shift.
I realize this is a major mindbender, because the immediate reaction is to say, "Well I could conceivably check to make sure that what they're telling me is true or false." But that in itself is a leap of faith you make inside your paradigm. Unless you actually check, you are making a subscription of faith.
ok, that honestly makes no sense whatsoever. i mean really, "china, two years ago?" what is that? ok, if i saw china now then obviously i would know that it was there two years ago. the fact that it's there now is proof enough that it was there then. countries don't just appear out of freakin no where. and besides i'm not looking for heaven two years ago, i'm looking for heaven now. and again, no one can prove it's there.
and to reply to simurdiak about the beliefs in aliens and sasquatch and the like, i find belief in sasquatch and loch ness rather amusing. i think the odds are in their favor as far as comparing their existance to the existance of god. but i don't usually take to believing that fictional characters exist. and when it comes to aliens, i don't know. it's a proven fact that the universe is billions of light years huge, so i don't really see how earth can be the only planet out there w/ life on it, but at the same time their existance has never been proven outside of bad movies, so i can't really say that i absolutely "believe" that aliens do, in fact, exist.
Calibretto, I think that, in a way, extremestan is discussing realism.
Philosophically speaking, realism is the perspective that things we perceive have their own independant existence. If I leave this room, my computer will continue to go on existing with or without me to interact with it. That's realism.
Most people subscribe to realism - well, more precisely, to naive realism, which is tacit assumption of realism. But realism can't actually be proven. Since there is no way for me to verify to myself the presence of my computer without simultaneously perceiving it. Thus, I cannot prove that my computer has independent existence because I can't prove that it's not just my perception of it (a sense bundle - phenomenalism).
You cannot prove that China does actually exist. You can go over to China and witness it, but once you stop witnessing it, you cannot prove that it does not stop existing. However, it's practical to believe that China exists, even without proof.
I think Stan is saying that it's not really a very good idea to only believe what you can empirically verify to yourself. Because then you would end up believing very little.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the light that you see. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
But the rainbow is an image of hope for many reasons, as it is a brilliant sight coming out of oftimes dismal weather.
mamelon, you do make a very valid point. but i do find it very naive to actually believe that something would actually stop existing if i were to stop perceiving it. once i've seen something once i know it's there and it's gonna be there until some outside force causes it to not be there. i know there's no way to prove to myself w/o personal interaction w/ it that it actually exists, but that's a whole different belief structure not really pertaining to christianity and the existance of heaven and hell.
Yes, but (once again, if Stan doesn't mind my speaking on his behalf) Stan's point was that there are many times when we must simply believe something even without proof, because we have other kinds of reasons to believe it. Often, it is because there is utility in doing so.
It's kind of complex getting into why anyone should believe in the notion of God; as unlike realism or phenomenalism, it's more of a personal matter. However, belief in God isn't absolutely baseless, or useless.
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All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the light that you see. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel. All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
But the rainbow is an image of hope for many reasons, as it is a brilliant sight coming out of oftimes dismal weather.
The problem with this trichotomy is that the original meaning of atheism and agnostic are the same. And their literal meanings (without belief in god and without knowledge (presumably of god)) are also the same. Therefore, an actual trichotomy requires a third.
Their original meaning may have been the same - but do they still carry their original meaning? And their literal meaning is definitely not the same.
Quote from Harkius »
My point was that I cited an authority on the subject whose use of language was non-ambiguous, and therefore useful. Instead, everyone insists on inventing their own terminology, resulting in confusion with what the various terms can mean.
Well, I disagree with that authority's usage, on the grounds that classifying agnosticism as a type of atheism does both a disservice, blurring the line unnecessarily between them.
Quote from Harkius »
No, these are your definitions of the terms, which is the problem. Instead of having these terms continually redefined, we need a sticky with philosophical schools somewhere on the page for this. Then, we don't need to particularly be concerned with what someone means when they say nihilist or atheist. We can look. And, when people say, "Oh, that is not what I meant," we can harrass them for not following the rules of productive debate.
Until this thread, I assumed that these were the common definitions of these terms. After this thread, I will continue to assume this, as you and your authority are the only ones I've ever heard seriously classify agnostics as atheists.
Quote from Harkius »
You can go ahead and use the wrong ones that are commonly used, if you wish, but they should be established somewhere.
"Wrong terms that are commonly used" is an oxymoron.
Quote from Harkius »
My argument was merely that the terms that I am using come from a source and so are to be preferred to ambiguous and contradictory terms that arise merely from common misconceptions.
A theist thinks there's a God, an atheist thinks there isn't, and an agnostic reserves judgment. There is nothing ambiguous about this. There is nothing contradictory about this. The three terms do not overlap. They're intuitive, fitting popular conceptions of what they mean. What the hell is wrong with this scheme?!
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Ok, I feel like I'm being trolled here, so I'll just summarize what I've been saying to you and will say no more:
1) You claim that you won't believe in the existence of something unless you physically see it with your own eyes.
2) You believe in the existence of things when you cannot physically see them with your own eyes.
3) Thus, your claim is false.
Therefore, they are not as different as you think. Atheist has nowhere in its literal meaning any declaration of belief. Rather, it is simply without belief. This is a critical difference.
Right. Just like an astronomer's job is to name the stars, an enthusiast is one possessed by a deity, a silly person is a blessed mask, the bizarre has a big moustache, to sin is to be true, all bears are brown and all hens sing.
Not that your conclusions from the words' literal meanings makes any sense anyway. Atheism, after all, is not apisticism ('without belief'); it just means that the atheist has no god, without going into the wherefores of the matter.
Quote from Harkius »
Also, if you go to any dictionary (that I have ever seen, at least) it will list both definitions for atheist. And, the necessity of calling agnostics atheists is that it is more accurate. I personally believe that accuracy in all things is to be strived for.
Why is it more accurate? If I walk up to an agnostic, and ask whether he has a belief in god, he'll most likely say he's not sure. He doesn't know. That's what it means to be agnostic. It's the middle ground between atheism and theism, not a subset of atheism. If I call this agnostic an atheist, he'll probably deny it.
Oh, and extremestan wins again.
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As such, I prefer dictionary.com and its related subdictionaries, all of which list both definitions. For the reasons that I cited, I will continue to use the definitions that I gave.
2) You believe in the existence of things when you cannot physically see them with your own eyes.
where do you get that? i never said that i believe something exists that i cannot physically see. sure i believe that when i leave the room, my computer continues to exist even tho i cannot see it. but i have seen it, so i know it's there. it's very very naive to believe that you are the center of the universe and everything else only exists while you are interacting w/ it. i only believe in something that i have not physically seen (such as china) because it's on a map, i've got plenty of electronics that say "made in china," and i know that i can go to the nearest airport and get a plane ticket there.
i don't understand why people try to convince you that what they believe is right. i never said anyone was wrong, i'm trying to argue my point. as i stated above, i've got nothing but respect for people w/ enough faith to believe that god exists, but i just can't wrap my brain around it. i don't believe, you do, end of story. i'm not going to convince you that he doesn't, and you aren't going to convince me that he does.
i only believe in something that i have not physically seen (such as china) because it's on a map, i've got plenty of electronics that say "made in china,"
Exactly. You believe it exists due to apparently strong testimonial evidence; not because you've physically seen it.
and i know that i can go to the nearest airport and get a plane ticket there
Again, no, you don't know that. You just believe it because of apparently strong testimonial evidence from other people.
I know it sounds like I'm being a solipsist here, but one of the basic roadblocks to understanding why theists believe what they do is the notion of faith. To the common secularist, it appears as if there's a fundamental distinction between the world of "fact" and the world of "faith." To overcome that roadblock, the secularist must be convinced that, every day, he must make thousands of practical leaps of faith based on past positive experiences. In other words, it's not the leap of faith itself that makes theism different. It's the fact that our pattern-recognizing neural networks don't have a lot of experience to apply to it.
Exactly. You believe it exists due to apparently strong testimonial evidence; not because you've physically seen it.
Again, no, you don't know that. You just believe it because of apparently strong testimonial evidence from other people.
ok, i'll give you this one. i have never actually gone to the airport and physically bought, or even asked for the option to buy, a plane ticket to china. but because of the 'strong testimonial evidence' of it, i'm pretty positive that, if i were to go to the airport, they would gladly provide me w/ my ticket to china. however, i see no strong testimonial evidence of heaven or hell, so, outside of faith alone, what reason do i have to actually believe that they exist?
however, i see no strong testimonial evidence of heaven or hell, so, outside of faith alone, what reason do i have to actually believe that they exist?
I'm glad we've gotten this far.
Certain Christian claims, like the states of heaven and hell, the Trinity of God, angels, etc., cannot be generally demonstrated. Witnesses in Scripture and Tradition testify toward those claims, of course, but we cannot "see" those things for ourselves, in general.
(In order to arrive at a belief in those things, we have to start with the premises. You can't debate about whether God is Triune unless everyone agrees that God exists. You can't debate about the nature of the New Covenant unless everyone agrees that Jesus established it. Unless the unbeliever is pointing out an internal systemic contradiction, he has no place debating claims that depend on premises he does not subscribe to, unless it is understood that he is pretending to subscribe to them as an intellectual exercise.)
Let's say you're a well-off citizen in a marketplace. There are three merchants: Joel, Amos, and Bartleby. Each one sells mystery items in little boxes. Each one says, "Buy a box from me! My boxes contain things of great value."
1) You've bought a dozen boxes from Joel, and every time, the box contained something valuable.
2) You've bought a few boxes from Amos, and each time you got worthless rocks.
3) You haven't bought any boxes from Bartleby yet, because he always has his "gone to lunch" sign up.
The merchants' advertisements represent different (not necessarily exclusive) claims. The actual content of the box represents whether the claim is true or false.
a) Joel tells you that Bartleby has good stuff in his boxes. This is testimonial evidence from an apparently trustworthy source.
b) Amos tells you that Bartleby has bad stuff in his boxes. This is testimonial evidence from a failure source.
c) As you're walking by, you notice a slip of paper on the ground. Picking it up, it says, "Wow, I bought a box from Bartleby and it contained a big diamond!" This is testimonial evidence from a source with uncertain trustworthiness. You take note of the handwriting and memorize it.
d) You poll the browsing crowd at the marketplace about whether Bartleby's wares are valuable. Many were uncertain, a few said they were valuable, and still fewer said they weren't. This is testimonial evidence from common consent. Problems include the fact that most of the people who said his wares weren't valuable just didn't like Bartleby for having his sign up almost all the time. Likewise, many of the people who said his wares were valuable were doing so based on what they've heard from friends and Joel.
e) One day, as you're looking in Bartleby's direction, he gives you a peek inside one of his boxes from across the marketplace. This is partial revelation. But maybe it was a trick of the wind? Perhaps you were hallucinating? Regardless, what was inside looked very valuable. Perhaps Joel and the mystery letter-writer knew what they were talking about. Perhaps they are also useful resources of information on other mysterious wares.
f) You become fatally ill and begin to die. As your last request, you want Bartleby to come over and show you the content of all of his boxes. He does so. This is full revelation.
According to Christianity, God gives us two things in order to draw us to him intellectually:
i) Many "letters," analogous to the Word of God in Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium
ii) Specific, personal "peeks," analogous to God's subtle, but real, communication with us and influence in the circumstances our lives
Once a person experiences (ii), then (i) is granted more intellectual weight, just as seeing the Bartleby's "peek" lent more apparent weight to the mysterious letter and the testimony of Joel, even though there's still plenty of other "possibilities" or "explanations" (trick of the wind, hallucination), as well as possible disconnections (Joel could be telling the truth about Bartleby, but lying about other things related to the marketplace). It also helps if (i) seems to "make sense" intellectually, or at least can easily be reconciled with what the reader has already intellectually subscribed to.
A person might say, "I refuse to spend my hard-earned money on Bartleby's box unless he shows me the content first," until his death. But that's just not how, for whatever reason, Bartleby works. And if Bartleby's box contains the greatest treasure imaginable, in a retrospect, the person should have probably looked for ways around the mystery instead of stubbornly and futilely complaining about the fact that it's mysterious.
wow, dude... you really think out these analogies, don't you? first it's "china two years ago," and now it's "boxes in a marketplace." ok, here's the deal: i understand why christians believe the way they do. as i said before, my grandfather was a southern baptist preacher. so i'm not trying to argue w/ you. i'm not going to, nor am i even trying to, convince you that heaven and hell do not exist. i'm not saying you're wrong and i'm right. what i'm saying is you have your beliefs and i have mine. it's just a difference of opinion, there is no right or wrong here.
How can you not know what you believe? I think to that question the answer would simply be either yes or no. You can still not believe in something even if you know it might exist. The question "Does god exist?" is something else.
Hmmm...
Okay, let's put it this way. For every proposition, we can assign that proposition a certain amount of certainty, with a low certainty corresponding to a high certainty that the counterproposition is true. For the proposition "There is a God (or gods)," theists assign it a very high amount of certainty (usually 100%), atheists assign it a very low amount of certainty (probably straying from 0% a little more than the theists stray from 100%, but always close to 0%), and agnostics exist somewhere in the middle.
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wow, dude... you really think out these analogies, don't you? first it's "china two years ago," and now it's "boxes in a marketplace."
You know, I wrote out that whole thing so that it would be read with genuineness and an attempt at common understanding. This dismissive and disingenuous attitude is what made me initially want to stop talking with you.
You know, I wrote out that whole thing so that it would be read with genuineness and an attempt at common understanding. This dismissive and disingenuous attitude is what made me initially want to stop talking with you. I'll go ahead and stop then.
whoa, dude. i wasn't trying to offend you. and i wasn't trying to be dismissive at all. i'm actually really sorry if i came off that way. what i'm trying to get across to you is that you are not going to convince me that i'm wrong. religion is not a matter of fact, it's a matter a faith. this is simply a difference of opinion. you believe one way and i believe another. and i even said exactly that before you went and typed out your attempt at common understanding. look, the fact of the matter here is, growing up in bible belt, i've had several "religious experiences" in my day. i've been surrounded by it from day one. i've been to church, i've read parts of the bible, i've talked to preachers and friend's who are christian. and still i can't make myself believe that god is up there watching down on me from heaven. i've got plenty of friends who do believe and i've got friends who agree w/ me. i very much enjoy talking about religion and beliefs and what you believe and what i believe, but i don't like people telling me that i'm wrong. that's a close minded attitude. "what i believe is right and what everyone else believe's is wrong." what kind of attitude is that to have, really? i'm open to everyone else's beliefs. more power to you for being a fan of christianity and everything that comes w/ it, but i'm not. and i don't see why you keep insisting on trying to prove me wrong.
the difference being, that if i had the time and money it would take, i could obviously fly to china and prove to myself that it exists. i know that i have the power to do this. heaven and hell, on the other hand, i cannot buy a plane ticket to. the existance of china can be proven, but the other two cannot.
exactly the same way that christianity can claim to be true when christians do not have proof of the truth.
calibretto
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Alas, no, because that's not quite true. Strictly speaking, the most sound response to "I see no evidence of God" is agnosticism. Getting all the way to atheism does require a positive belief about the universe: a belief that Ockham's Razor generally holds, if not a specific belief that there is no God.
I do, however, advise all religious people posting on this thread to direct their arguments to the Razor (those of you who aren't already doing so).
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Which is the default scientific stance when when presented with a a theory but having not yet seen any evidence.
Certainty implies belief. You cannot be sure of anything unless you believe, positively or negatively, in that thing.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Atheism means "without God." You do not believe in God.
Within atheism are "strong" and "weak" atheism. A strong atheist explicitly and consciously denies the existence of God. He is an antitheist. He is under some obligation to support his claim.
A weak atheist neither consciously affirms, nor consciously denies the existence of God. In practice, he "denies" the existence of a God that assigns commands and administers retribution for failure, but that's quite a stretch of what "denial" means.
Most weak atheists are agnostics.
Whoa dude, you totally missed my point. Remember, I said:
"I mean, you could fly over there and look for yourself, but that would take time, and by then you would be long past the point 'right now.' "
Let's step it back a few years.
You cannot physically see "China, two years ago."
As far as we know, there is no possible way to see "China, two years ago" (if you flew to those supposed coordinates, you would arrive at "China, hours from now," not "China, two years ago").
You believe in "China, two years ago." Therefore, you do believe in something that you cannot possibly physically see. The reason that you believe in it is testimonial evidence and the neural desire for reality to conform to those circumstances that have given you positive feedback in the past ("All these people wouldn't lie about China existing right now," "To subscribe to a conspiracy theory about the false existence of China two years ago would be too much of a paradigm shift," etc.).
For most people, the claim that "the testimony for God's presence is false" is not much of a paradigm shift for their worldview. That's why it's not hard to reject that testimony. It's a lot harder to reject testimony for, for instance, "all news media is completely made up," because that's a giant paradigm shift.
I realize this is a major mindbender, because the immediate reaction is to say, "Well I could conceivably check to make sure that what they're telling me is true or false." But that in itself is a leap of faith you make inside your paradigm. Unless you actually check, you are making a subscription of faith.
The belief itself wouldn't need proof anymore than theism would, as a belief in a void, but as an argument, "I don't have proof of God's existence" is not proof of God's nonexistence.
Belief that there certainly is no such thing as God is a strong opposition to the belief that there is a God, which is different from the weak opposition that there simply is no proof of God (and therefore no empirical or rational reason to accept it). As such, that strong opposition incurrs the burden of proof.
I hope I didn't misinterpret your definition, but if I did, what we are talking about is still relevent to the what was pointed out earlier in this thread - that the lack of proof for God is not proof of Christianity's fallaciousness.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
Gaymers | Magic Coffeehouse | Little Jar of Mamelon | Natural 20
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
To be fair, though, for some it is easier to conceive of a weird beast or animal existing without proof than it is to believe in a deity without proof. Because even though it hasn't been proven either, the possibility of some unusual animal like a sasquatch would be considerably more mundane and easy to swallow (we already know that animals exist).
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
Gaymers | Magic Coffeehouse | Little Jar of Mamelon | Natural 20
I'm not so sure about that, but anyway it's beside the point. You say that these "explicit atheists," whom I call simply "atheists," require some sort of backing-up of their belief/nonbelief, with which I agree.
I can't speak for extremestan, but it was my impression that the usual trichotomy, which is the one I've been using, was between atheism, agnosticism, and theism. Within atheism we might set up a distinction between "strong" and "weak," but they are alike in that they affirm the nonexistence of a God. An agnostic, in contrast, takes the scientifically-neutral stance I mentioned earlier, having not seen any corroborating or falsifying evidence, and possibly stating that the thesis is non-falsifiable. An agnostic is to be distinguished from a "weak atheist," or "implicit atheist," in not positively affirming God's nonexistence. After all, a good scientist would not affirm the falsehood of a new theory without seeing falsifying evidence, though he would also not believe it without seeing corroborating evidence.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
ok, that honestly makes no sense whatsoever. i mean really, "china, two years ago?" what is that? ok, if i saw china now then obviously i would know that it was there two years ago. the fact that it's there now is proof enough that it was there then. countries don't just appear out of freakin no where. and besides i'm not looking for heaven two years ago, i'm looking for heaven now. and again, no one can prove it's there.
and to reply to simurdiak about the beliefs in aliens and sasquatch and the like, i find belief in sasquatch and loch ness rather amusing. i think the odds are in their favor as far as comparing their existance to the existance of god. but i don't usually take to believing that fictional characters exist. and when it comes to aliens, i don't know. it's a proven fact that the universe is billions of light years huge, so i don't really see how earth can be the only planet out there w/ life on it, but at the same time their existance has never been proven outside of bad movies, so i can't really say that i absolutely "believe" that aliens do, in fact, exist.
calibretto
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Philosophically speaking, realism is the perspective that things we perceive have their own independant existence. If I leave this room, my computer will continue to go on existing with or without me to interact with it. That's realism.
Most people subscribe to realism - well, more precisely, to naive realism, which is tacit assumption of realism. But realism can't actually be proven. Since there is no way for me to verify to myself the presence of my computer without simultaneously perceiving it. Thus, I cannot prove that my computer has independent existence because I can't prove that it's not just my perception of it (a sense bundle - phenomenalism).
You cannot prove that China does actually exist. You can go over to China and witness it, but once you stop witnessing it, you cannot prove that it does not stop existing. However, it's practical to believe that China exists, even without proof.
I think Stan is saying that it's not really a very good idea to only believe what you can empirically verify to yourself. Because then you would end up believing very little.
Am I correct, Stan?
Editted because I can't read names, I guess.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
Gaymers | Magic Coffeehouse | Little Jar of Mamelon | Natural 20
calibretto
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It's kind of complex getting into why anyone should believe in the notion of God; as unlike realism or phenomenalism, it's more of a personal matter. However, belief in God isn't absolutely baseless, or useless.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to be the peace that you feel.
All that I yearn for, for richer or poorer, is to fill your heart on my own.
Gaymers | Magic Coffeehouse | Little Jar of Mamelon | Natural 20
Their original meaning may have been the same - but do they still carry their original meaning? And their literal meaning is definitely not the same.
Well, I disagree with that authority's usage, on the grounds that classifying agnosticism as a type of atheism does both a disservice, blurring the line unnecessarily between them.
Until this thread, I assumed that these were the common definitions of these terms. After this thread, I will continue to assume this, as you and your authority are the only ones I've ever heard seriously classify agnostics as atheists.
"Wrong terms that are commonly used" is an oxymoron.
A theist thinks there's a God, an atheist thinks there isn't, and an agnostic reserves judgment. There is nothing ambiguous about this. There is nothing contradictory about this. The three terms do not overlap. They're intuitive, fitting popular conceptions of what they mean. What the hell is wrong with this scheme?!
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Ok, I feel like I'm being trolled here, so I'll just summarize what I've been saying to you and will say no more:
1) You claim that you won't believe in the existence of something unless you physically see it with your own eyes.
2) You believe in the existence of things when you cannot physically see them with your own eyes.
3) Thus, your claim is false.
Sigh sigh sigh.
http://www.strongatheism.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_atheism
http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/strong_weak.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist.htm
http://www.amadan.org/atheism/terms.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-definitions.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html
Right. Just like an astronomer's job is to name the stars, an enthusiast is one possessed by a deity, a silly person is a blessed mask, the bizarre has a big moustache, to sin is to be true, all bears are brown and all hens sing.
Not that your conclusions from the words' literal meanings makes any sense anyway. Atheism, after all, is not apisticism ('without belief'); it just means that the atheist has no god, without going into the wherefores of the matter.
Why is it more accurate? If I walk up to an agnostic, and ask whether he has a belief in god, he'll most likely say he's not sure. He doesn't know. That's what it means to be agnostic. It's the middle ground between atheism and theism, not a subset of atheism. If I call this agnostic an atheist, he'll probably deny it.
Oh, and extremestan wins again.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
k, you go for it dude.
where do you get that? i never said that i believe something exists that i cannot physically see. sure i believe that when i leave the room, my computer continues to exist even tho i cannot see it. but i have seen it, so i know it's there. it's very very naive to believe that you are the center of the universe and everything else only exists while you are interacting w/ it. i only believe in something that i have not physically seen (such as china) because it's on a map, i've got plenty of electronics that say "made in china," and i know that i can go to the nearest airport and get a plane ticket there.
i don't understand why people try to convince you that what they believe is right. i never said anyone was wrong, i'm trying to argue my point. as i stated above, i've got nothing but respect for people w/ enough faith to believe that god exists, but i just can't wrap my brain around it. i don't believe, you do, end of story. i'm not going to convince you that he doesn't, and you aren't going to convince me that he does.
calibretto
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Exactly. You believe it exists due to apparently strong testimonial evidence; not because you've physically seen it.
Again, no, you don't know that. You just believe it because of apparently strong testimonial evidence from other people.
I know it sounds like I'm being a solipsist here, but one of the basic roadblocks to understanding why theists believe what they do is the notion of faith. To the common secularist, it appears as if there's a fundamental distinction between the world of "fact" and the world of "faith." To overcome that roadblock, the secularist must be convinced that, every day, he must make thousands of practical leaps of faith based on past positive experiences. In other words, it's not the leap of faith itself that makes theism different. It's the fact that our pattern-recognizing neural networks don't have a lot of experience to apply to it.
ok, i'll give you this one. i have never actually gone to the airport and physically bought, or even asked for the option to buy, a plane ticket to china. but because of the 'strong testimonial evidence' of it, i'm pretty positive that, if i were to go to the airport, they would gladly provide me w/ my ticket to china. however, i see no strong testimonial evidence of heaven or hell, so, outside of faith alone, what reason do i have to actually believe that they exist?
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I'm glad we've gotten this far.
Certain Christian claims, like the states of heaven and hell, the Trinity of God, angels, etc., cannot be generally demonstrated. Witnesses in Scripture and Tradition testify toward those claims, of course, but we cannot "see" those things for ourselves, in general.
(In order to arrive at a belief in those things, we have to start with the premises. You can't debate about whether God is Triune unless everyone agrees that God exists. You can't debate about the nature of the New Covenant unless everyone agrees that Jesus established it. Unless the unbeliever is pointing out an internal systemic contradiction, he has no place debating claims that depend on premises he does not subscribe to, unless it is understood that he is pretending to subscribe to them as an intellectual exercise.)
Let's say you're a well-off citizen in a marketplace. There are three merchants: Joel, Amos, and Bartleby. Each one sells mystery items in little boxes. Each one says, "Buy a box from me! My boxes contain things of great value."
1) You've bought a dozen boxes from Joel, and every time, the box contained something valuable.
2) You've bought a few boxes from Amos, and each time you got worthless rocks.
3) You haven't bought any boxes from Bartleby yet, because he always has his "gone to lunch" sign up.
The merchants' advertisements represent different (not necessarily exclusive) claims. The actual content of the box represents whether the claim is true or false.
a) Joel tells you that Bartleby has good stuff in his boxes. This is testimonial evidence from an apparently trustworthy source.
b) Amos tells you that Bartleby has bad stuff in his boxes. This is testimonial evidence from a failure source.
c) As you're walking by, you notice a slip of paper on the ground. Picking it up, it says, "Wow, I bought a box from Bartleby and it contained a big diamond!" This is testimonial evidence from a source with uncertain trustworthiness. You take note of the handwriting and memorize it.
d) You poll the browsing crowd at the marketplace about whether Bartleby's wares are valuable. Many were uncertain, a few said they were valuable, and still fewer said they weren't. This is testimonial evidence from common consent. Problems include the fact that most of the people who said his wares weren't valuable just didn't like Bartleby for having his sign up almost all the time. Likewise, many of the people who said his wares were valuable were doing so based on what they've heard from friends and Joel.
e) One day, as you're looking in Bartleby's direction, he gives you a peek inside one of his boxes from across the marketplace. This is partial revelation. But maybe it was a trick of the wind? Perhaps you were hallucinating? Regardless, what was inside looked very valuable. Perhaps Joel and the mystery letter-writer knew what they were talking about. Perhaps they are also useful resources of information on other mysterious wares.
f) You become fatally ill and begin to die. As your last request, you want Bartleby to come over and show you the content of all of his boxes. He does so. This is full revelation.
According to Christianity, God gives us two things in order to draw us to him intellectually:
i) Many "letters," analogous to the Word of God in Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium
ii) Specific, personal "peeks," analogous to God's subtle, but real, communication with us and influence in the circumstances our lives
Once a person experiences (ii), then (i) is granted more intellectual weight, just as seeing the Bartleby's "peek" lent more apparent weight to the mysterious letter and the testimony of Joel, even though there's still plenty of other "possibilities" or "explanations" (trick of the wind, hallucination), as well as possible disconnections (Joel could be telling the truth about Bartleby, but lying about other things related to the marketplace). It also helps if (i) seems to "make sense" intellectually, or at least can easily be reconciled with what the reader has already intellectually subscribed to.
A person might say, "I refuse to spend my hard-earned money on Bartleby's box unless he shows me the content first," until his death. But that's just not how, for whatever reason, Bartleby works. And if Bartleby's box contains the greatest treasure imaginable, in a retrospect, the person should have probably looked for ways around the mystery instead of stubbornly and futilely complaining about the fact that it's mysterious.
calibretto
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Hmmm...
Okay, let's put it this way. For every proposition, we can assign that proposition a certain amount of certainty, with a low certainty corresponding to a high certainty that the counterproposition is true. For the proposition "There is a God (or gods)," theists assign it a very high amount of certainty (usually 100%), atheists assign it a very low amount of certainty (probably straying from 0% a little more than the theists stray from 100%, but always close to 0%), and agnostics exist somewhere in the middle.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
You know, I wrote out that whole thing so that it would be read with genuineness and an attempt at common understanding. This dismissive and disingenuous attitude is what made me initially want to stop talking with you.
whoa, dude. i wasn't trying to offend you. and i wasn't trying to be dismissive at all. i'm actually really sorry if i came off that way. what i'm trying to get across to you is that you are not going to convince me that i'm wrong. religion is not a matter of fact, it's a matter a faith. this is simply a difference of opinion. you believe one way and i believe another. and i even said exactly that before you went and typed out your attempt at common understanding. look, the fact of the matter here is, growing up in bible belt, i've had several "religious experiences" in my day. i've been surrounded by it from day one. i've been to church, i've read parts of the bible, i've talked to preachers and friend's who are christian. and still i can't make myself believe that god is up there watching down on me from heaven. i've got plenty of friends who do believe and i've got friends who agree w/ me. i very much enjoy talking about religion and beliefs and what you believe and what i believe, but i don't like people telling me that i'm wrong. that's a close minded attitude. "what i believe is right and what everyone else believe's is wrong." what kind of attitude is that to have, really? i'm open to everyone else's beliefs. more power to you for being a fan of christianity and everything that comes w/ it, but i'm not. and i don't see why you keep insisting on trying to prove me wrong.
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I'm not doing that at all.
You asked, "Outside of faith alone, what reason do i have to actually believe that they exist?" I answered that question.
I'm not trying to "prove you wrong." Never have I even implied that that's even possible.