(October 7, 2016 at 3:05 am)ray3400 Wrote:

(October 7, 2016 at 2:44 am)Alex K Wrote: Before we address the question whether it can be disproven and whether anyone actually claims that it is, can you properly define what "God" is?

"Before we address the question whether it can be disproven and whether anyone actually claims that it is"

Don't atheist claim that God does not exist?

If they do claim this, is their belief absolute or is there a degree of uncertainty?

I can't speak for all atheists, but basically all the ones I know don't claim absolute certainty for anything but logically inconsistent god concepts.

Quote:"can you properly define what "God" is"
For the purposes of this discussion, I will define God as: "The creator of the universe, a spiritual being that is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. The source of absolute morality and absolute truth."

Apart from the fact that "spiritual being" is ill-defined as well, this definition is not sufficient to say anything interesting about it or disprove it. According to your definition, it could almost be the universe itself that fits the bill.

(October 7, 2016 at 5:57 am)ray3400 Wrote: robvalueOkay, fair enough.

Not many people are asserting that. You're arguing with gnostic atheists only.

Interesting that you don't even think I should care about your God, though.

(October 7, 2016 at 5:15 am)robvalue Wrote: I'm not saying there must be a degree of uncertainty. I'm saying you can claim to be certain, or just to believe. That's the difference between being agnostic and gnostic.


You're using the word "faith" in many different ways, I'm not sure what your aim is. What is your aim, anyway? Like I said, you're only even arguing with gnostic atheists, of which there are very few. Are you saying faith is a good or a bad thing?

In my opinion, absolute certainty, about anything, is unrealistic. We can just be certain beyond reasonable doubt.

The theist is 50% uncertain? I think this is highly unlikely. If they feel it's a coin toss, they are an atheist. You don't have a positive belief in god if you think it's that up in the air.

"You're using the word "faith" in many different ways, I'm not sure what your aim is."
In this case what I mean by faith is "one's ability to hold a belief despite a degree of uncertainty".
If one knows something for certain there is no need for faith. If one does not know something for certain, faith is required to varying degrees to hold a belief as true.


"In my opinion, absolute certainty, about anything, is unrealistic. We can just be certain beyond reasonable doubt."
This position makes sense, my purpose is not to doubt everything to the point of not knowing anything for certain. Many atheists (but not all), do express that they believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist.


"The theist is 50% uncertain? I think this is highly unlikely."
The point is, despite the extreme values given, faith is still required for the strong atheist position.

My aim is to show that what you call a "strong atheist" requires some degree of faith. Here is a refined version of what I'm proposing given what you've stated so far:

---

Proposal:
The strong atheist position requires faith.

Given:
Question 1: Do you have an active belief there are one or more gods?
Question 2: Do you have an active belief there are no gods?

Position 1: Y, N: Theist (could be agnostic or gnostic)
Position 2: N, N: Weak atheist (agnostic) - since this position makes no claims of belief, it cannot claim to "know for sure".
Position 3: N, Y: Strong atheist (could be agnostic or gnostic)

Everyone is in one of those 3 positions by definition.


Conclusion:
Position 2:
Position 2 is logically consistent with not requiring faith because it makes no claims.

Positions 1 and 3:
God has not been formally proven or formally disproven, so there is a degree of uncertainty with positions 1 and 3.
Do to this uncertainty, positions 1 and 3 do inherently require faith.


Example:
Let's suppose the amount of faith required is proportional to the degree of uncertainty involved.

If the strong atheist has a 0.0001% uncertainty and the theist has a 50% uncertainty, then the theist requires 500,000 times more faith than the strong atheist.
The strong atheistic position requires faith nonetheless. The only way for the strong atheist position to be logically consistent and not require faith is to bring the uncertainty level down to 0%. This is impossible without a formal disproof of the existence of God.

Also, if it is impossible to formally disprove the existence of God, and we cannot assume that all things impossible to disprove are automatically false, then the uncertainty level will never reach 0%.

I will let a good man answer that better than I ever could:
https://youtu.be/QkhBcLk_8f0

Faith, as in belief based on solid evidence which makes the likelihood extremely high is totally different to faith about some unknown thing for which there is no credible evidence at all.

Everyone needs the former in order to function in the world. If you waited for absolute certainty, you'd be waiting forever. No one needs to believe in gods, based on flawed logical arguments and story books, in order to function.

Even if being a gnostic (strong as you call it) atheist requires faith, so what? I still don't get your point. Gnostic atheists are as unreasonable as theists? It's not a defence of your own position to say "You do it too!" Especially when it only applies to a very small subsection of atheists.

Even a gnostic atheist would usually consider any new evidence presented, however. A gnostic theist generally isn't interested in evidence, because there isn't any, and as such cannot logically review their position.

But thanks for conceding that some positions do not require faith. I do not need to be certain that there is no Yahweh, or Allah, in order to believe they don't exist. I carry on regardless. It is overwhelmingly likely they are fictional characters, which do not represent any actual creator accurately, if there is one. All my experience confirms this position.

So:

If we do not know everything, then there will always be a degree of uncertainty when it comes to the existence of God.
If there is a degree of uncertainty, faith would be required to the extent of which there is uncertainty, if one were to be able to make any absolute claim about God's existence.
Therefore, it is hypocritical for the strong atheist to judge a Christian for having faith, for they themselves depend on faith to attain their absolute certainty in their belief.
They can judge the degree to which Christians have faith, but it would be incorrect to claim they themselves do not have any faith.

---

(October 7, 2016 at 6:04 am)LastPoet Wrote:

(October 7, 2016 at 5:57 am)ray3400 Wrote: robvalueOkay, fair enough.

Not many people are asserting that. You're arguing with gnostic atheists only.

Interesting that you don't even think I should care about your God, though.


"You're using the word "faith" in many different ways, I'm not sure what your aim is."
In this case what I mean by faith is "one's ability to hold a belief despite a degree of uncertainty".
If one knows something for certain there is no need for faith. If one does not know something for certain, faith is required to varying degrees to hold a belief as true.


"In my opinion, absolute certainty, about anything, is unrealistic. We can just be certain beyond reasonable doubt."
This position makes sense, my purpose is not to doubt everything to the point of not knowing anything for certain. Many atheists (but not all), do express that they believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist.


"The theist is 50% uncertain? I think this is highly unlikely."
The point is, despite the extreme values given, faith is still required for the strong atheist position.

My aim is to show that what you call a "strong atheist" requires some degree of faith. Here is a refined version of what I'm proposing given what you've stated so far:

---

Proposal:
The strong atheist position requires faith.

Given:
Question 1: Do you have an active belief there are one or more gods?
Question 2: Do you have an active belief there are no gods?

Position 1: Y, N: Theist (could be agnostic or gnostic)
Position 2: N, N: Weak atheist (agnostic) - since this position makes no claims of belief, it cannot claim to "know for sure".
Position 3: N, Y: Strong atheist (could be agnostic or gnostic)

Everyone is in one of those 3 positions by definition.


Conclusion:
Position 2:
Position 2 is logically consistent with not requiring faith because it makes no claims.

Positions 1 and 3:
God has not been formally proven or formally disproven, so there is a degree of uncertainty with positions 1 and 3.
Do to this uncertainty, positions 1 and 3 do inherently require faith.


Example:
Let's suppose the amount of faith required is proportional to the degree of uncertainty involved.

If the strong atheist has a 0.0001% uncertainty and the theist has a 50% uncertainty, then the theist requires 500,000 times more faith than the strong atheist.
The strong atheistic position requires faith nonetheless. The only way for the strong atheist position to be logically consistent and not require faith is to bring the uncertainty level down to 0%. This is impossible without a formal disproof of the existence of God.

Also, if it is impossible to formally disprove the existence of God, and we cannot assume that all things impossible to disprove are automatically false, then the uncertainty level will never reach 0%.

I will let a good man answer that better than I ever could:
https://youtu.be/QkhBcLk_8f0

(October 7, 2016 at 6:14 am)robvalue Wrote: Faith, as in belief based on solid evidence which makes the likelihood extremely high is totally different to faith about some unknown thing for which there is no credible evidence at all.

Everyone needs the former in order to function in the world. If you waited for absolute certainty, you'd be waiting forever. No one needs to believe in gods, based on flawed logical arguments and story books, in order to function.

Even if being a gnostic (strong as you call it) atheist requires faith, so what? I still don't get your point. Gnostic atheists are as unreasonable as theists? It's not a defence of your own position to say "You do it too!" Especially when it only applies to a very small subsection of atheists.

Even a gnostic atheist would usually consider any new evidence presented, however. A gnostic theist generally isn't interested in evidence, because there isn't any, and as such cannot logically review their position.

But thanks for conceding that some positions do not require faith. I do not need to be certain that there is no Yahweh, or Allah, in order to believe they don't exist. I carry on regardless. It is overwhelmingly likely they are fictional characters, which do not represent any actual creator accurately, if there is one. All my experience confirms this position.

"It's not a defence of your own position to say "You do it too!" Especially when it only applies to a very small subsection of atheists."

I'm not defending Christianity, I'm questioning strong atheism. I'm proposing the idea that "The strong atheist position requires faith.".

Again, many atheists (but not all), do express that they believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist.


I would assume that just as people shouldn't blindly follow Christianity, people also shouldn't blindly follow atheism. Believe it or not, many do in the secular world because it seems more convenient.

Most of you seem to have at least held you own beliefs to the same standard of skepticism as you do Christianity.

Anyways, I'm headed off this discussion. The purpose of this was not to "win", I personally think the mindset of "winning" and insulting others gets in the way of having a meaningful discussion. The purpose of this was to propose an idea out of curiosity, for entertainment and to learn more about what the atheist's perspective is regarding the topic.

(October 7, 2016 at 6:26 am)ray3400 Wrote: Again, many atheists (but not all), do express that they believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist.

Again, apart from the fact that your definition is still lacking, and apart from inconsistently defined ones, you probably won't find many atheists here who express that they believe with 100% certainty, if any.

I wouldn't say many atheist say that. I'd estimate maybe 1%, and that's a generous amount.

It doesn't make much practical difference to act as if a particular cartoon God is 99.99% fictional or 100% fictional. I do agree that making statements of certainty is not something to be encouraged. And again, it's quite different to talk about a generic creator, than talking about "this character in this book come to life".

OK, so you consider some atheists hypocrites when they make certain statements. Fair enough. I'm still not sure what that matters to anything. You still have to defend your own position, even if you think theirs suffers from similar problems.

(October 7, 2016 at 7:05 am)robvalue Wrote: I wouldn't say many atheist say that. I'd estimate maybe 1%, and that's a generous amount.

It doesn't make much practical difference to act as if a particular cartoon God is 99.99% fictional or 100% fictional. I do agree that making statements of certainty is not something to be encouraged. And again, it's quite different to talk about a generic creator, than talking about "this character in this book come to life".

OK, so you consider some atheists hypocrites when they make certain statements. Fair enough. I'm still not sure what that matters to anything. You still have to defend your own position, even if you think theirs suffers from similar problems.

We have to draw the line somewhere. Can we say for certain there is no Santa Claus , at least the one that delivers presents to every child on the planet in one night by flying reindeer sled?
Can we agree on that much certainty?

As long as there is a gap where god needs to hide.

When it comes to specific character gods from books, I think yes, we have certainty for all practical purposes. It's as much certainty as one can reasonably have. If you're not prepared to act as if you're certain about that, you're not going to be certain about anything. I don't need to justify my strength of belief against story book characters to anyone, anyway. I'm not going around telling people how to act based on their non-existence.

Even gnostic atheists would (I expect) usually admit that there is a fundamental problem with knowing anything with complete, absolute certainty. This is more to do with the limitations of our perception rather than the subject at hand. I imagine most theists would happily say "Santa doesn't exist" without a paragraph of preamble about epistemology.

I will say though that Ray has been respectful, and appears to have learnt some things. So kudos for that. It's an improvement on what we normally get, even from members who have been here for years.

(October 7, 2016 at 7:21 am)robvalue Wrote: When it comes to specific character gods from books, I think yes, we have certainty for all practical purposes. It's as much certainty as one can reasonably have. If you're not prepared to act as if you're certain about that, you're not going to be certain about anything. I don't need to justify my strength of belief against story book characters to anyone, anyway. I'm not going around telling people how to act based on their non-existence.

Even gnostic atheists would (I expect) usually admit that there is a fundamental problem with knowing anything with complete, absolute certainty. This is more to do with the limitations of our perception rather than the subject at hand. I imagine most theists would happily say "Santa doesn't exist" without a paragraph of preamble about epistemology.

So, why does any claim about god(s) deserve epistemological preambles?