RE: Is atheism a belief?
February 28, 2019 at 5:21 am
(This post was last modified: February 28, 2019 at 5:27 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(February 28, 2019 at 5:04 am)bennyboy Wrote:I'm not debating that at all, why would I? I note that if something can possess a state of belief in gods, and that something does not - then the term atheist accurately refers to it. I don;t know whether or not dogs can, but if so, then it would fit. I don't know that bunions can, but if so, it would fit. I don't know that google can, but if so, it would fit. On and on.(February 28, 2019 at 4:30 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: If we have to refer to alternate timelines we're already spiraling around the moon. Maybe in the Kelvin timeline I'm a starship captain!If there are no alternate timelines, then by what criteria do you establish that one might believe other than one already does? You talk about capacity, but what does that mean to you? That an entity capable of language lacks a belief (because that's mainly what differentiates my beagle from me)? Say. . . the google mainframes? Are they atheist? I'd say no, because they aren't people, and because when I say "-ist," I'm talking about a person who is a proponent of a position.
You, so far as you've defined it, would say yes-- unless there's something more than language by which you'd establish the capacity for being a theist. Care to elaborate? Cuz I think you're going to have a hard time detailing those entities which should / shouldn't be called atheist.
Can people believe in gods? Clearly. Do we all? Clearly not. There's nothing to argue here. People have the capacity to be theists or atheists.
(February 28, 2019 at 5:11 am)Belaqua Wrote:(February 28, 2019 at 4:30 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: There's at least one thing that's been the same for as a long as I can remember, and apparently it's been that way for you as well. If what you're looking for are refinements to the position
But for me it's not like some continuing characteristic of myself, like having blue eyes. It's just the position I currently hold based on the best input that I've gotten.
I used to think the Clintons were good, once upon a time. Then when new information came in I changed my mind.
When I was in kindergarten I thought that Goldwater should win the election, and I thought I had a good reason: Johnson had already been president, and as a kindergartener I thought that it was important for people to take turns. My reasoning then is not at all relevant to my reasoning today.
That's cool, I don't know what it was like for you, if you had some identifiable reason for being an atheist when you were that young then your description of some 1.2.3 being the cause of atheism at least with respect to you would be accurate.
I wonder what it is (or even could be) because that's just not how I came to be an atheist so far as I can tell. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't reason myself into the position, so there's no reason from then to be relevant to reason from today, and it would simply be untrue to state that some bit of knowledge I now possess, that I didn't then, is the cause for a state of being that precedes my acquisition of that knowledge.
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