Are cats atheists?

[libalchris]

Not necessarily. Everytime there is an absence of evidence it is not always the case that we should disbelieve something.

In a sense, this is true. Requiring evidence of every claim (such as simple conversations in everyday life) would be ridiculous and make communication impossible. However, when supernatural and incredible claims are made, especially those involving some sort of risk, you must meet your burden of proof for your claim. I will not believe your claim so long as you fail to put forth evidence.

Because there is not evidence for X, it doesn't necessarily follow that one should disbelieve X. Only if there is another premise in the argument like, "there is no evidence for X, and if X were true, we would expect more evidence than there is for X." However, this is not just an absence of evidence then. There is a claim here.

What? By that logic you should be believing in just about everything imaginable. If I said that somewhere in the universe there is a pink space unicorn, there is no reason you shouldn't disbelieve it exists right? After all, the reason no evidence exists is because we wouldn't expect any to exist at this time, or we don't have the means of testing my claim. You should therefore believe my claim to be true. This logic could apply to most anything.

Sound ridiculous? That's because it is. That's not how science works. You're trying to escape your burden of proof by pushing the positive claim you're making (that god exists) onto us. You're trying to force us to make a positive claim that god doesn't exist and support it with arguments. We're not going to do that because it's not our job. You're making a positive claim, and it's your job to back it up with evidence. We're playing the skeptics, judging the validity of your claims based on the evidence your provide for them. We disbelieve your claims because they lack evidence, and/or there is no way to test them at this time. Depending on what god you're pushing, we may make a positive claim that your god does not exist, at which point we'd provide our reasons in an attempt to make our burden of proof.

The reason we lack belief in any god is because the idea of god has virtually no phenomena left to explain in the universe. That is, the only need for a god hypothesis would be to explain the origin of the universe, and possibly the origin of life. But there are many other explanations that explain those two phenomena equally well, many of them less complex. Since there is no supporting evidence for nor any way to test those ideas at this time, the only intellectually honest way to meet those claims is with disbelief until evidence is provided.

Just because they do not believe based on some argument doesn't mean they do so irrationally or ignorantly.

by definition believing without supporting evidence is blind faith. So yes, it is irrationally.

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How do you know? I am one of the most skeptical people out there.

Ahhhhh...... and I bet you think that YOUR god is the special one, huh?

Yes
[/quote]

Fantastic, if you're so skeptical, stop playing word games and being intellectually dishonest by trying to force a burden of proof on us that you earned by making an extraordinary supernatural claim, and start providing some evidence for your claim.

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So atheism isn't defined as the lack of a belief?

I'll renew my claim that atheism refers to a class of belief systems--specifically, those systems which do not include (or imply) the proposition, "At least one god exists". In this way, in order to be classified as an 'atheist', one must have a belief system that falls into the Atheist class; cats and trees don't have belief systems, so in particular they don't have belief systems that fall under Atheism.

The suffix -ist denotes a personal noun. Stop playing word games. How you just defined atheism is the same as saying lack of belief.

Let's apply set theory. Let's define a set for every individual. Each element of this set is something the individual believes with respect to god/gods.

If I were to say I am an atheist, atheist meaning lack of belief in god or gods, it would mean my set is the empty set. Now, if I were to say what you said, and say "my belief system does not include the proposition that any god/gods exist" my set would still be empty. It's a different way of saying the same exact thing.

That is the point that defines atheism, the set containing an atheist's accepted claims with respect to god/gods is empty. It doesn't say anything about what belongs to an atheist's "disbelief set." That is, the set containing what an individual believes to be false.

Strong atheists (those who do make a positive claim (that no god exists)) would have a "disbelief set" = U. That is all possible claims about god/gods are false.

However, for the purposes of this discussion, the definition of an atheist is someone who lacks belief in any god/gods, or their set of beliefs with respect to god/gods = ∅