[Serious] Atheist Dogma

[Belacqua]

At work.

Hello Bell!

Uhm.... just a few points/questions.

Always willing to discuss these things! This is fun for me.

I have mental constructs (A 'Belief' if you will.) of a myriad of things. 

When I type the word 'Dragon', then any ond reading said word will have a concept which maps pretty much to the same (Or similar) idea, or concept  or belief of a hexapedal  scaled and flying creature.  (Flames optional).

Are 'Dragons' real? Does the term correspond to something 'Other' in the reality around us?

This is something that has been worked on a lot. 

Way back when, philosophers started wondering about how it is that the stuff "out there" could appear as pictures to us in our brains. Very roughly, they decided that there are two faculties at work. The first was often called "imagination," which had a meaning different from the modern one. It was the faculty that presented us with images of what's "out there." (Kant used the term "imagination" in this way.) The second was "fantasy," which they said was an activity in the mind recombining elements of things that we have taken in through the imagination. 

So when Aquinas said that there's nothing in the mind that isn't first in the senses, he didn't mean that to imagine a dragon you first have to see one. He was aware that we can make up stuff out of elements of things that we have sensed. 

Dragons can be imagined, but are not real. 

So, my 'Non-theism' as a term operates in the same way.

By this do you mean that you take God to be a creation of the mind, in the way that dragons are? That seems like a reasonable conclusion. I can easily imagine that people take elements they have experienced -- authority, goodness, power, and recombine these in the mind into an image of something fictional.

In the way I've been rolling it out on this thread, I'd say that you believe that God is a creation of the mind. Lots of people agree with you.

The other thing is going back to your disagreement with the lizard's mind thing.

Just what would change if, for example, lizards did in fact demonstrate obedience to dietys?

Say someone stumbles across a reptile (The size is optional) which when presented with the iconography any... heck lets expand and say every diety, assummes the appropriate pose performed by said diety's worshippers.

In all other respects. All we can tell is that it is, in fact, 'Just' a lizard (Well... novel species).

How might such a thing effect those who profess 'Belief'?

Granted, I am operating on the assumption that lizards don't have the concept of a deity. If there is evidence that they do, then I have to choose a different example. 

But it seems pretty likely that most animals don't have that concept.