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How is "God isn't real" an extraordinary claim????? "God isn't real ergo Jesus didn't turn water to wine, heal the sick, exorcise, fly up to heaven, resurrect..." to me that sounds like Occam's Razor giving you a massive bitch slap to the face. It's a claim that reduces YOUR extraordinary claims to zero -- back to neutral/default -- as opposed to tainting "GOD" with your particular culture's take on the monster, which is the real extraordinary claim.

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I am referring to that claim, but I reject your definition, as it appears to be custom-crafted to support your claim. It isn't even remotely close to any definition that's used around here or anywhere else I have seen.
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I defined atheism that way to support the claim that atheism is not only the words "I do not believe God exists" it is, in fact, all symbols, verbal or nonverbal that are aimed at creating the representation of God not existing in peoples minds. I think it is trivial to define atheism as peoples words which are directed towards atheism, because people are not only what they claim to be, they are what they do.

Would you at least agree with this, that people are not only what they claim to be, but what they do?

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"Without theism" will do nicely, which encompasses both active denial of existence as well as more provisional beliefs.
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To define atheism as "without theism" will fail to describe the telos of statements made about atheism that are aimed at other ends.

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Much of the remainder of what you have written, I would need to take more time to digest than I have at the moment, and so for the time being I will refrain from comment other than to say that when arguing these points with theists, I do make every attempt to ensure my argument is consistent with my viewpoint. As such, I don't make arguments from the viewpoint of non-existence, but rather focus my arguments on the theist's justification. In other words, I don't know, and I don't think you do either. Any argument directed at me that unjustly accuses me of arguing beyond my position [except in the rare case where I might play the devil's advocate] is going to result in me saying something to the effect of "don't put words in my mouth".
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I did not mean to put words in your mouth. I am sure you are a nice enough person in real life and we could get together and have a bar-b-que or something like that. Nothing that I say is ever intended to personally attack people.

But the fact remains that the telos of atheism commonly is not "without theism" but "God does not exist", as you mentioned earlier. I want to do philosophy that is practical and accessible to all and for the benefit of all, a philosophy that lives in the real world and not the world of the scholar or the propagandist.

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No. It only requires that I do not believe your claim. I am the only one who can know if it is true, and I need not justify it to anyone by myself. In order for that truth proposition "I do not believe you" to be true (and therefore be classified as JTB), it is only necessary that the non-belief be sincere, and I'll be damned if I can determine how I could prove that to you or anyone else.
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To deal with the statement "I do not believe you" as a proposition is the height of philosophical legalism. Who cares whether it is true if you are believing or not? The question is obviously not the truth of the proposition, it is the rationality and justification of the belief.

There are two options:
1. I do not believe you - Is a belief that comes from rational belief formation processes, fully engaging the cognitive faculties with the specific reasons for rejecting belief, appreciating the nature of what is believed, and the act of belief itself (which follows the pattern of K=JTB or some similar formula).
2. I do not believe you - Follows the pattern of a non-rational belief, in which the belief is not subject to the concerns of evidence and justification and truth but only the desire to believe. If you accept this, this puts atheism on extremely poor epistemological footing, and there is essentially

Either you have rational justification and you have everything that goes with it (if K=JTB is not exactly the right way to say it, it is something like that, not sure it matters that much, Gettier included the concept of warrant) or you have a non-rational belief. Note that a non-rational form of belief is not irrational. It is not irrational to trust in a church authority without understanding everything, perhaps because God has not gifted you enough to come to an appreciation of the nature of morality solely through your intellect.

That is a non-rational form of belief. To say that belief need not follow K=JTB or some similar pattern means that the belief is non-rational, which is ok, provided that the ultimate source of knowledge is reliable.


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Fortunately, I don't need to in order to rationally hold such a position - I need only refrain from deluding myself.
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You are intentionally weakening the requirement to believe atheism in order to make it easier to accept. You cannot be a rational atheist and have core tenets of atheism justified by non-rational forces. Atheism standards and falls on the rationality of the statement "I do not believe God exists". As soon as you introduce a "because", you always introduce another proposition, which follows K=JTB. "I do not believe God exists because of the strong evidence for evolutionary theory which conflicts with the Genesis account". Ok, but that relies on something like K=JTB. "The strong evidence for evolutionary theory which conflicts with the Genesis account" is a proposition that either follows K=JTB or it doesn't.

"I do not believe God exists" apart from justification is a non-rational statement. It also isn't falsifiable.

Atheism requires rational justification just like everything else.



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You claim this. You have not demonstrated it to be true. In fact, you appear to be making a statement of belief contingent on knowledge, which is reversing the relationship between the two according to your own definition of knowledge (JTB).
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Let me know if I have demonstrated it to you above. I don't feel like I am saying anything remotely controversial and it is self evident from my perspective, but perhaps I'm not being clear enough.

Belief is often contingent on knowledge. Do you know what classical foundationalism is? That is that the certainty of one belief depends on another. K=JTB will almost always involve its justification involving some other aspects of knowledge, basing the certainty of its belief on another piece of knowledge which serves to justify the original claim. This is how science works.

I would not define knowledge that way, that is an accepted academic definition of knowledge.

I like this verse better:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge Pr 1:7
Knowledge is when people have justified true beliefs that are done as they respect and see the wisdom and holiness of God direct their actions

Knowledge is obviously an ethical as well as epistemological term, so I think an appreciation of what knowledge is ought to have some relationship to the foundation of what knowledge is, what is important, what is good.

William James did not think it was right to consider things true unless they had some practicality. I think this is what the the verse the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge Pr 1:7. I think this is a better understanding the K=JTB or the modified versions to account for the Gettier problem with warrant.

What do you think? Do you see knowledge as an ethical as well as epistemological notion?

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[quote='Cthulhu Dreaming' pid='413748' dateline='1363125987']
[quote]
1. People do not have an inherent sense of epistemic justification that is precisely defined and trans-cultural (self evident)
2. Where there is a lack of a requisite aspect of something, that lack must be met.
3. The lack of a sense of justification must be met. (MP 1,2)
4. Similar problems exist for concepts of truth and sources for belief (self evident)
5. The entire linguistic, social, economic, scientific, social processes required to allow the culturally constructed sense of knowledge to be justified true belief, must themselves be subject to K = JTB
[/quote]

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Incidentally, I have not forgotten about this portion of your argument, I am considering it. I do not find it compelling.
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1. People do not have an inherent sense of epistemic justification that is precisely defined and trans-cultural
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I see wide disparities between different cultures in how they justify their beliefs. You could notice the wide variety of different religious beliefs in existence. You could see the different stages and differing methodologies of science. You could see differences in superstition. You could see different political affiliations that color what people consider justified belief.

I would say that people do have some sense of epistemic justification that is trans-cultural and universal, that all people have a sense that they shouldn't lie and that their beliefs about the world should to a great degree describe the world and they should hold their beliefs to some degree in a way that is connected with how well they consider the belief to be true. But this is very far away from the way that atheists typically attack theism, which relies on many different concepts and assumptions. I am not sure that captures what may be the trans-cultural aspects of belief. Perhaps I should have been more careful to delineate between general epistemological concepts such as honest and specific manifestations of those concepts such as Anglo-American philosophy of science. The former may be universal and the latter specific to one culture (it definitely is specific). I said "precisely defined" to separate the two.

Part of epistemology is very technical and part is common sense. It is a good skill to be able to learn to be able to separate the two, most people in America today reason about complex epistemological statements involving thousands and thousands of propositions as if they are simple facts they can deduce from sense experience and a syllogism. This is unfortunate.

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You claim your first premise to be self-evident, and I do not necessarily agree that it is so. I think it could be true, but is not self-evident.
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It is self evident to me, from what I know about the world. I apologize for any lack of clarity.


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Your fourth premise is too vague. What specifically do you mean by "similar"? It is not clear, and therefore you cannot claim self-evidence. It is clear to me that belief and knowledge are two different (but related) concepts.
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4. Similar problems exist for concepts of truth and sources for belief (self evident)
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There are different ways in which different cultures understand truth. Some cultures appreciate the concept of myth, and a correspondent theory of truth is not really relevant to their appreciation of truth values. Different cultures may consider some senses stronger than others. Similarly, cultures may appreciate the role of belief in different ways. Commonly, belief is not understood individualistically. Belief is not the belief of one individual, it is the entire society or entire religious order (this is similar to the way that the atheist community has a common sense of justification, using the methods of science, which are unproven to each of the members).

In order to rationally defend any idea, it is necessary to defend every single idea that this depends on. Otherwise, it is an argument from authority. To say for instance "evolutionary theory proves that based on modern genetics, people could not possibly be descended from Adam" is not a self evident statement, it is an argument from authority.

My argument is simply to say that for an argument to be understood as being K=JTB, every single supporting idea must also be justified. In the case of the above argument, that is an extremely large number of ideas that span many, many journals and books.

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I have not looked too closely at the rest of your premises due their dependence on the flawed premises.
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I do not think they are flawed, my argument is quite simple: to have a justified belief, it is required that all beliefs that justify it must also be justified. I am a computer programmer by trade, we have a concept in computer programming called recursion, in which a function calls itself. In K=JTB, there is an element of recursion in which every single time K=JTB is assessed, each of the supporting ideas must be assessed. Have you ever written a computer program before? It is like that.

I don't really think I am making an argument, per se, I think that is just the way that foundationalist epistemology works. Do you really think that you can have rational belief with some supporting elements unjustified?

Dead philosophers the world over are spinning in their graves tonight.



I hope you aren't responsible for writing mission critical software on which people's lives depend. I'm afraid to hit the enter key now, for fear you had some part in programming the software involved.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote:

Quote:I am referring to that claim, but I reject your definition, as it appears to be custom-crafted to support your claim. It isn't even remotely close to any definition that's used around here or anywhere else I have seen.

I defined atheism that way to support the claim that atheism is not only the words "I do not believe God exists"

Wait. Full stop again. Atheism isn't words. An atheist is a person who lacks a belief in deity. That can be the person who says "I do not believe gods exist" as well as the person who says "No gods exist".

Your definition attempts to exclude the former, and as I am not one who holds to the latter, if you're going to insist on such a definition, I'm going to insist on discontinuing my involvement in this thread, as I am in no mood to play devil's advocate and argue from a viewpoint that I do not subscribe to.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote: it is, in fact, all symbols, verbal or nonverbal that are aimed at creating the representation of God not existing in peoples minds. I think it is trivial to define atheism as peoples words which are directed towards atheism, because people are not only what they claim to be, they are what they do.

Would you at least agree with this, that people are not only what they claim to be, but what they do?

I would agree that people are the sum total of their thoughts and actions, and more.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote:

Quote:"Without theism" will do nicely, which encompasses both active denial of existence as well as more provisional beliefs.

To define atheism as "without theism" will fail to describe the telos of statements made about atheism that are aimed at other ends.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote: But the fact remains that the telos of atheism commonly is not "without theism" but "God does not exist", as you mentioned earlier. I want to do philosophy that is practical and accessible to all and for the benefit of all, a philosophy that lives in the real world and not the world of the scholar or the propagandist.

No, it isn't. Some atheists may subscribe to that, but many (such as myself) do not.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote: You are intentionally weakening the requirement to believe atheism in order to make it easier to accept.

Really. And you know this how? Perhaps you can read minds.

As you've now gone off the rails, and attempted to ascribe motives to me which do not exist, and seem to have a fundamental disagreement as to whether I really ought to be continuing with this discussion (as you appear to want me to argue a position that I do not hold) I'm going to refrain from addressing the rest of your argument until you can reframe it.

...because as I said, I have no interest in arguing from a viewpoint that you ascribe to me that I do not hold. Nor do I have an interest with bandying words with a sophist.

You're awful quite to tell us what we believe, and assign motives to us - and you are wrong to do so. In my case, you're just plain wrong.

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(March 12, 2013 at 8:06 pm)apophenia Wrote: (Oh, and I'll stick this in here, since it's been weighing on my mind. My assessment of you is that you're essentially channeling other authors' arguments. This in itself might not be fatal, but you appear to have poor taste in authors, an inability to assess the credibility of the authors whom you choose to channel, an inability to profitably assess the merits of the arguments you read, and a general inability to faithfully represent those arguments without making them far less credible than they likely were in the original. You don't even appear fully capable of understanding them, period. As such, I have almost zero interest in substantively replying to your arguments because they aren't your arguments, and I would be replying to a ghost who isn't here.)

Pretty much this. I strongly suspect he's been cribbing material from other sources. If that's the case, at least it would be nice if he cited his sources- if for no other reason than knowing exactly who is being argued against. Then there's intellectual honesty.

All this effort to try to redefine the word 'atheist' into something more convenient, and we just keep kicking the straw away before they can build their man. It's a shame really.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I do not think they are flawed, my argument is quite simple: to have a justified belief, it is required that all beliefs that justify it must also be justified. I am a computer programmer by trade, we have a concept in computer programming called recursion, in which a function calls itself. In K=JTB, there is an element of recursion in which every single time K=JTB is assessed, each of the supporting ideas must be assessed. Have you ever written a computer program before? It is like that.

You're conflating belief and knowledge again.

(March 12, 2013 at 10:07 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I don't really think I am making an argument, per se, I think that is just the way that foundationalist epistemology works. Do you really think that you can have rational belief with some supporting elements unjustified?

I don't recall saying that. I recall saying that I don't have to justify my belief to you in order to hold that belief. For the record, I did justify my belief (by virtue of you not successfully convincing me that your argument had merit). I understand you disagree. It's a free country. Be wrong all you like.

Quote: Nor do I have an interest with bandying words with a sophist.

Come on now. You tried to define the rationality of the belief "I do not believe God exists" by seeing the truth of the statement as a proposition that is justified in terms of the belief of the person making the claim. This is what you call "grabbing onto anything possible, no matter how little it has to do with common sense". The rationality or justification of the statement "I do not believe God exists" really has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition.

You are trying to rely on a form of fidism to defend atheism. That is beyond sophistry, if you put Bill Clinton, Karl Rove and Noam Chomsky together and sat down and said "lets talk philosophy", you couldn't get something more contrived, tortured and further from reality than that.

Atheism is the union of the worship of rationality and replacement of ethics with epistemology combined with... fidism? You gotta be kidding me.

Quote:Pretty much this. I strongly suspect he's been cribbing material from other sources. If that's the case, at least it would be nice if he cited his sources- if for no other reason than knowing exactly who is being argued against. Then there's intellectual honesty.

I have been influence by Alvin Plantiga and the philosophy I had years ago as an undergraduate. Also a lot of my philosophy comes from mystical experiences that I have had. The argument that I wrote above is not something that I copied out of a book, it is more of a reflection on atheism. I have studied philosophy of science a little bit which is also an influence. I think about things quite a bit and I don't always remember where I get all the ideas from or how they end up back in my head, so I apologize if I have taken anything from anywhere.

http://www.amazon.com/Warranted-Christia...ian+belief

I am proud to say that I am not smart enough to do philosophy by myself, if you want an example of someone who has a much higher IQ but who was dumb enough to do that you can turn to someone like Spinoza. There is more to life than proving that you are smart enough to create a bunch of complex ideas and jumble them together such to create something like mathematical literature that really has no ability to solve real problems in the world and help people.

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Quote:You're conflating belief and knowledge again.

Are you arguing that fidism is adequate concept of rationality, when it applies to supporting propositions? Are you saying that not all beliefs that are involved in epistemic justification must be justified? You realize that you are rejecting classical foundationalism when you do that and saying something that is as radical as advocating for Young Earth Creationism, even more so, something that is self evidently false.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you. I apologize if I am. The way I understand your statements, it seems like you are saying that there are some parts of belief that must not be justified somewhere. I see this as a very serious and obvious error.

You could possibly argue, as Christians do, that all beliefs must have some sense of justification, but it is not necessary for the person believing to actually be a part of the justification, only that the beliefs are justified.

Quote:I don't recall saying that. I recall saying that I don't have to justify my belief to you in order to hold that belief.

You sound like a Christian women who is upset because atheists tried to take her faith away and tell her that her mixed argument from authority mixed with reason was irrational (which is exactly what you are doing, and you are not justifying my belief to me because there is absolutely no way that you could justify the rationality of non-belief in God because the method that you use is not scientific, it is a mixture of a great number of things and arguments from authority and guesswork that points to non belief)

Quote:For the record, I did justify my belief (by virtue of you not successfully convincing me that your argument had merit). I understand you disagree. It's a free country. Be wrong all you like.

You are using 'justify' in the everyday sense. For that method to yield knowledge, you would have to prove that your method of justification expressed the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge. I do not think that it does.


I think the core of your argument goes like this: It is ok for atheists to have faith

(March 12, 2013 at 11:58 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I am proud to say that I am not smart enough to do philosophy by myself, if you want an example of someone who has a much higher IQ but who was dumb enough to do that you can turn to someone like Spinoza. There is more to life than proving that you are smart enough to create a bunch of complex ideas and jumble them together such to create something like mathematical literature that really has no ability to solve real problems in the world and help people.

(March 12, 2013 at 11:33 pm)Stimbo Wrote: All this effort to try to redefine the word 'atheist' into something more convenient, and we just keep kicking the straw away before they can build their man. It's a shame really.

Not redefine, I want to position a atheism in a world in which rejection of theism is subject to the same standard of justification as acceptance of theism.

What this amounts to is demanding that atheist rejection of theism proceed along the same lines of rationality, impartial analysis of known facts.

An atheist cannot be a fidist unless an atheist can be a liar.

(March 12, 2013 at 11:58 pm)jstrodel Wrote:

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Quote: Nor do I have an interest with bandying words with a sophist.

Come on now. You tried to define the rationality of the belief "I do not believe God exists" by seeing the truth of the statement as a proposition that is justified in terms of the belief of the person making the claim. This is what you call "grabbing onto anything possible, no matter how little it has to do with common sense". The rationality or justification of the statement "I do not believe God exists" really has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition.

You are trying to rely on a form of fidism to defend atheism. That is beyond sophistry, if you put Bill Clinton, Karl Rove and Noam Chomsky together and sat down and said "lets talk philosophy", you couldn't get something more contrived, tortured and further from reality than that.

Atheism is the union of the worship of rationality and replacement of ethics with epistemology combined with... fidism? You gotta be kidding me.

Quote:Pretty much this. I strongly suspect he's been cribbing material from other sources. If that's the case, at least it would be nice if he cited his sources- if for no other reason than knowing exactly who is being argued against. Then there's intellectual honesty.

I have been influence by Alvin Plantiga and the philosophy I had years ago as an undergraduate. Also a lot of my philosophy comes from mystical experiences that I have had. The argument that I wrote above is not something that I copied out of a book, it is more of a reflection on atheism. I have studied philosophy of science a little bit which is also an influence. I think about things quite a bit and I don't always remember where I get all the ideas from or how they end up back in my head, so I apologize if I have taken anything from anywhere.

http://www.amazon.com/Warranted-Christia...ian+belief

I am proud to say that I am not smart enough to do philosophy by myself, if you want an example of someone who has a much higher IQ but who was dumb enough to do that you can turn to someone like Spinoza. There is more to life than proving that you are smart enough to create a bunch of complex ideas and jumble them together such to create something like mathematical literature that really has no ability to solve real problems in the world and help people.

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Quote:You're conflating belief and knowledge again.

Are you arguing that fidism is adequate concept of rationality, when it applies to supporting propositions? Are you saying that not all beliefs that are involved in epistemic justification must be justified? You realize that you are rejecting classical foundationalism when you do that and saying something that is as radical as advocating for Young Earth Creationism, even more so, something that is self evidently false.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you. I apologize if I am. The way I understand your statements, it seems like you are saying that there are some parts of belief that must not be justified somewhere. I see this as a very serious and obvious error.

You could possibly argue, as Christians do, that all beliefs must have some sense of justification, but it is not necessary for the person believing to actually be a part of the justification, only that the beliefs are justified.

Quote:I don't recall saying that. I recall saying that I don't have to justify my belief to you in order to hold that belief.

You sound like a Christian women who is upset because atheists tried to take her faith away and tell her that her mixed argument from authority mixed with reason was irrational (which is exactly what you are doing, and you are not justifying my belief to me because there is absolutely no way that you could justify the rationality of non-belief in God because the method that you use is not scientific, it is a mixture of a great number of things and arguments from authority and guesswork that points to non belief)

Quote:For the record, I did justify my belief (by virtue of you not successfully convincing me that your argument had merit). I understand you disagree. It's a free country. Be wrong all you like.

You are using 'justify' in the everyday sense. For that method to yield knowledge, you would have to prove that your method of justification expressed the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge. I do not think that it does.

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I think the core of your argument goes like this: It is ok for atheists to have faith

You have grossly misunderstood my argument if that's what you think I'm arguing for (along with the rest of the bullshit you attempted to foist upon me). The core of my argument is "You are employing logical fallacies, assuming as axiomatic things that are not in fact self-evident, and your conclusions do not follow from your argument."

Nice try. I think we're done here. Again.