RE: Is atheism a belief?
March 14, 2019 at 4:45 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2019 at 4:48 am by Belacqua.)
(March 14, 2019 at 3:09 am)Catharsis Wrote: I'm sure atheists believe in some things, or am I wrong about that?
Just because it's disbelief or the conviction there's no possibility a creator god exists doesn't mean they don't believe in other things, I think, things like loyalty or servitude.
Your response here is really interesting to me, because you're going by a different usage of "belief" than most people here.
When you say you believe in loyalty (and I do too, by the way) I think you're not saying you agree with the intellectual proposition that loyalty exists. Instead, you're saying that you think it's a good thing.
I would be making the same general kind of statement if I said, "I believe in equal rights for women." In fact, I think that equal rights for women don't exist now, but I say I believe in them because I want them to; I am committed to them.
On web sites like this one, the definitions and usages are extremely narrow and strictly enforced. When people talk about belief in God, they mean consent to the intellectual proposition that God exists. In the same way that you can believe UFOs exist, or bigfoot.
Does that make sense? That these are different kinds of belief?
I suspect that when some Christians say they believe in their religion, they mean the commitment kind of belief, rather than the existence kind of belief. Or they may not be clear on the difference, but for them religion is about commitment first and foremost, and assent to a proposition is a follow-on. Working that out would require a certain amount of subtlety, and would require us to look past the constant unending discussion that normally occupies us.
And you'll find that people here are adamant about the fact that an atheist lacks a belief in God. That's the one and only definition that is acceptable here. The fact that any number of other beliefs lead to that conclusion, or cause the atheist to judge that (so-called) evidence for the existence of God is not good evidence, is dismissed as irrelevant. Atheism is lack and lack only, a pure and unsullied lack, virgin rising from the mire, and therefore requires no defense or justification.
