Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!

[Mister Agenda]

You're right here: atheism has no statement for anything other than as a response to the question on belief in theistic propositions.

How can atheism's critique of religion proceed out of the information contained in this? Atheism could be defined as an absence of theistic belief, but that definition does not actually defend the belief in atheism.

Very insightful. The same thing can be said of theism. It's not a flaw. They are words that descibe beief in one or more gods, or the lack thereof. Different people have different reasons for the positions they hold. Theism doesn't defend the position of theism, theists do. Atheism likewise.

Practically, atheism requires not only a rejection of theism, but all of the tools and methods required to defend this rejection, which encompasses hundreds of years of history and many, many different ideologies and movements working together towards the goal of eliminating religion.

Or you can just not believe in God. There's no rule that says you have to justify your position. And I doubt most atheists have eliminating religion as a goal. Who has that kind of time? I think you overestimate how energetic, goal-oriented, and anti-religion most atheists are.

But, you can't define atheism by any of those traits. Atheism neither demands any of those behaviors, nor does it in any way lead to them, passively. The same cannot be said of Christianity, a religion which derives from a God who revels in bloodshed, rape, misery, and torture, who commands people to murder, loot, and enslave, who will condemn a person for not believing in him. God embodies every one of humanity's worst behavioral traits and almost none of its best, and your religion, your dogma, your very faith, comes from that.

This is a good example of the role that ideologies non-central to atheism play in defining atheism's rejection of God. Consider the many reference of the words used and how they point back to different philosophical notions.

Consider the Raellians.

For an atheist critique of religion to be successful, it is necessary not only to demonstrate that atheistic beliefs critiques of Christian morality are true, but that the atheist morality that underlies these critiques is an authoritative understanding of morality.

Did you not read my post about swapping the words 'theist' for 'atheist' in a post to see if it makes equal sense?

For a theist critique of atheism to be successful, it is necessary not only to demonstrate that atheistic critiques of Christian morality are false, but that the theist morality that these crtitiques are aimed at is an authoritative understanding of morality.

Are you willing to wear both those shoes or do you want to kick off the one where theism carries the same weight you say atheism must carry?

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Atheists feel like they are persecuted. Hah. If you want to see serious persecution, goto a public university. See how bad the atheists making $100,000 grand a year are being persecuted.

Yah, if only a Christian could make a hundred grand a year, then I'm sure they wouldn't claim to be persecuted anymore, because any group with rich members can't be persecuted in any way. I will not rest until Christians can make the same salaries as atheists. Solidarity, brother!

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In order to defend your default position, you need to rely on some sort of external ideology.

Which would be...external. In order to defend your theism, you need to rely on some external theology. So what?

Atheism as a default position is really more of an argument from authority.

I don't need to appeal to authority to say I don't believe in God. Saying so doesn't involve me telling you that you should agree with be because I have the support of an inappropriate 'authority'. Are you just slapping random concepts together?

You need to know a great deal about the world to believe that there is nothing responsible for the creation of the world.

You need to know the origin of the universe to justifiably believe you know that it was created by a being, you need to know that being's attributes to justifiably claim to know about that being. You do not know the origin of the universe and you do not know anything about the cause of it. All you know is that you don't want it to be 'not God'.

Christian also suffer persecution throughout the world. It is a shame and I wish that the earth could be a peaceful place.

Word.

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You need to know a great deal about the world to believe that there is nothing responsible for the creation of the world.

Anyone here believe there was nothing that 'created' the world? I certainly don't. I just don't believe that anything with a face did it; and if anyone does I'd like to know what they think justifies that belief. That's pretty much all there is to it.

I think it's oxymoronic to say nothingness ever existed.

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1. K = J T B ( Knowledge = justified true belief ) - an accepted model of epistemology
2. Negative claims that something are not so are knowledge claims (to know that something is not, is not epistemologically different from knowing what is) - (self evident)
3. Negative knowledge claims are based on Knowledge equals justified true belief or something similar (Knowledge is defined as justified true belief) - N = negative truth claims - if N = K then N = KTB
4. Atheist knowledge claims are negative knowledge claims (self evident)
5. N = KTB so atheist negative knowledge claims require justified truth belief

I would figure this all so far would be completely self evident.

It pretty much is, which is why most of us are weak/agnostic atheists rather than stron/gnostic ones. It leaves the mystery of why so few theists are (or will admit to being) weak/agnostic theists, but I suppose that's their problem.

6. K=JTB requires an external ideology for its sense of justification, of truth, and nature of belief, as well as knowledge, and in the context of modernity, ideologies and science to support all the requisite labs, books, social freedom, everything that is required for K=JTB to exist in (self evident)
7. N=K=JTB and atheism is is N, so to know atheism is true you must have 6.

I would have thought that is all self evident (whatever you think of K = JTB) ...

I would have thought you've been here long enough to have a better grasp of our actual positions: one, that they're diverse; and two, that most of us don't claim to know atheism is true.

The only default position that people can have is ignorance, does not follow the form of K = JTB, is not knowledge. How is this an argument from authority? Because the certainty of justification is not based on rational considerations, such as knowledge = justified true belief or something similar, but it is based on invoking the authority of atheism as it has been transmitted from some other source or as it exists in the mind from non-rational sources. In this sense it is similar to religious belief, as good as the authority that it relies on.

Atheism is not an authority, has no authority, and no one is invoking it as an authority. We ARE ignorant. Everyone is. We're just making the best guess we know how to with the information we have. We can say that you don't seem to be aware of a reason to believe in God that isn't flawed in its premises or fallacious (or both). We can say that we are justified in holding the null hypothesis until it is overcome. We are not justified in saying that we have justified true belief/knowledge that there is no God...so we don't. Why is this so hard for you to grasp?