(March 12, 2013 at 6:54 pm)jstrodel Wrote:Quote:Full stop. Who here has asserted "I do not believe any gods exist" and argued for the non-existence of god? I have not. I personally have only claimed that your own argument lacks merit, by virtue of it being fallacious and claiming conclusions that do not follow from the argument. In other words, my claim is "I do not believe your claim that god exists" and my justification for that belief is that you have failed to meet the burden of proof. It is not a knowledge claim because the truth value of it is unknown (and no truth value has been asserted by myself) - I consider it an unanswered (and quite possibly unanswerable) question.
Fair enough, but this seems like a very legalistic way to deal with epistemological issues. When you say, "your argument" are you referring to to claim that atheism, which i would define as "language aimed at proving that God does not exist" requires the same epistemological standard as K=JTB?
I am referring to that claim, but I reject your definition, as it appears to be custom-crafted to support your claim. It isn't even remotely close to any definition that's used around here or anywhere else I have seen.
"Without theism" will do nicely, which encompasses both active denial of existence as well as more provisional beliefs.
Much of the remainder of what you have written, I would need to take more time to digest than I have at the moment, and so for the time being I will refrain from comment other than to say that when arguing these points with theists, I do make every attempt to ensure my argument is consistent with my viewpoint. As such, I don't make arguments from the viewpoint of non-existence, but rather focus my arguments on the theist's justification. In other words, I don't know, and I don't think you do either. Any argument directed at me that unjustly accuses me of arguing beyond my position [except in the rare case where I might play the devil's advocate] is going to result in me saying something to the effect of "don't put words in my mouth".
(March 12, 2013 at 6:54 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I would agree that the statement "I do not believe your claim that God exists" is not a knowledge claim about whether God exists or not, so the sense of justification that it requires is not K = JTB for K of the existence of God it is K = JTB for K = JTB for K of "I do not believe your claim that God exists".
But to disbelieve a certain claim is to make a negative claim about that claim, and you could fit that sort of weak atheism/agnosticism into the above formula. It still requires the cultural, scientific, technological, linguistic, philosophical justification for the categories of defining K = JTB or something similar for the proposition "your claim that God exists is inadequate, unjustified, fallacious, etc". These are all epistemological notions, whether you think K=JTB is a transcultural, universal value or not, and some sort of culture and ideology will always underlie the sense of justification of negative claims of knowledge for religion.
No. It only requires that I do not believe your claim. I am the only one who can know if it is true, and I need not justify it to anyone by myself. In order for that truth proposition "I do not believe you" to be true (and therefore be classified as JTB), it is only necessary that the non-belief be sincere, and I'll be damned if I can determine how I could prove that to you or anyone else. Fortunately, I don't need to in order to rationally hold such a position - I need only refrain from deluding myself.
Quote:You have shown that it is possible to have a weak form of atheism which does not require knowledge of a proposition of whether God exists or not. I will acknowledge this. But, as I mentioned above, you still require propositional knowledge of the state of affairs in the world such that "I do not believe your claim that God exists". To not believe my claim is to believe something, to reject the claim is to believe something about the nature of rationality and epistemology and many different things about human cognitive functioning, about all the relevant issues, etc.
You claim this. You have not demonstrated it to be true. In fact, you appear to be making a statement of belief contingent on knowledge, which is reversing the relationship between the two according to your own definition of knowledge (JTB).
