(April 3, 2019 at 8:03 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: Put it this way: I personally think that atheism, to be internally consistent, implies a whole range of other positions. But I also point out that atheists don't necessarily have to be, and often aren't, internally consistent. The "Lackism" is the minimum requirement, the price of admission to be an atheist. Individual atheists may not make the effort to be consistent. Some people just want to live ordinary lives without religion, and so ignore the deeper issues involved.
Yeah, I don't think atheists have to be internally consistent or reasonable or anything like that.
To be fair to you, this was a discussion I had earlier with some of the Pure Lackists, and I'm kind of drawing you in. They hold a pretty extreme position.
I've been clear that I'm talking about adult atheists who were raised in a society and who are capable of language. Not rocks, lizards, children raised by wolves, or people in a persistent vegetative state. I hold that adult atheists raised in a society and capable of language have all heard and rejected religious claims. They rejected those claims according to some standard of judgment. The standards may be better (e.g. science, not revelation, gives us reliable information) or it may be worse (e.g. the nuns were mean to me). But all such atheists are atheists because they hold to some standards of judgment. That is, they have beliefs (in the sense of things they hold to be true) and they are atheists for reasons.
The Pure Lackists deny this, say they are atheists for no reason at all, and in some cases claim that their minds are the same as when they were infants.
