RE: Atheism is a religion
January 9, 2012 at 10:02 am
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2012 at 10:19 am by genkaus.)
(January 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm)amkerman Wrote: 1. Everything that is beyond your perception is unknown.
Bullshit. I cannot perceive the sea right now, but I do know that it exists.
Or were you talking about something that is imperceptible by definition? If so, then nothing imperceptible exists.
(January 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm)amkerman Wrote: 2. Things that are real exist beyond our perceptions of them
Bullshit. Things that are real exist independently from our perception of them.
This is a cheap attempt at confusion using dual meanings of the word "beyond" taken to mean both "independently of" and "inability of". This is called the fallacy of equivocation.
(January 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm)amkerman Wrote: Belief is defined as confidence in something not susceptible to rigourouse proof; confidence in the unknown.
Incorrect. Belief means holding a proposition to be true. Presence or absence proof is immaterial. What you are talking about here is faith.
(January 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm)amkerman Wrote: Therefore, if you are confident the computer screen is real, you believe it is real. (You do not "know" it is real, we have already established that we can't know if things are are, because by definition if they are real they exist beyond perception, and things that are beyond perception are unknown)
Your argument is based on false premises and fallacies as demonstrated above. I do know that the computer screen is real and I believe it as well.
(January 8, 2012 at 3:25 pm)amkerman Wrote: you are conflating knowledge and perception. Just because you perceive something doesn't mean you "know" it. Perception does not dictate reality, or do you think it does?
Perception dictates knowledge of reality, not reality itself.
However, human beings are special in the sense that they go beyond perception as a tool for gaining knowledge about reality. They integrate perception into concepts by process of abstraction and by doing so gain knowledge about things they do not perceive at that very moment.
(January 8, 2012 at 5:08 pm)amkerman Wrote: No, I can't shell. It was a question. I assumed no answer. Words are just words. We can define them however we want. People have been creating. Definitions for words since the advent of language. I get to do it to. You have defined atheism as a "lack of belief". I have defined God as reality. Deal with it and argue against "God" if you want.
And here I thought you were here for actual conversation.
Any intelligent discourse of ideas between two or more people requires a mutually agreed upon language and words with clearly defined meanings. By implicit consent, the language here is English and the words are used in the sense they are defined in a dictionary. And according to the dictionary atheism is lack of belief in god and god is not the same as reality.
Attempting to change the meaning in the middle of the discussion is devious, disingenuous and dishonest.