Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!

[jstrodel]

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.

Theists seldom identify themselves as theists in order to escape epistemological issues. Some theists subscribe to fidism, but I think that is a bad position.

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.

I don't overestimate it. It disgusts me how atheists can make the incredibly destructive, nihilistic, evil claims that they do, using the mocking, derogatory, demonic language intended at teaching youth it is ok to blaspheme and then have this pathetic and cowardly fidism which is just the same that they accuse intellectually immature Christians of. Some Christians do accept fidism, which is similar to the atheist rejection of Christianity, but this position is typically reserved for those whom God does not gift with the ability to defend their ideas rationality. This is not necessarily a mark of poor character, so long as they are guided by those who have a sense of justification.

It is incredibly irresponsible to fail to justify any belief in a rigorous and comprehensive method. While it is true that most Christians do not do this as individuals, the Christian church DOES do this.

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

Agreed, but have you ever been to a seminary library. There are tons and tons and tons of books devoted to this question. Theists certainly must, at some level, ground their entire worldview in responsible views of epistemology, but some do this, and most theologians do this. I wish more did, at a popular level.

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?

Theistic critiques of atheism proceed out of the internal ethical understanding of theism (sometimes interpreted through atheistic concepts).

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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?

Not intended to refute atheism, only to refute the definition of atheism, as a sufficient expression of rational belief, as mere non belief in theism. I would put this non-rational rejection of theism at the same level ignorance. Atheism that sees "atheism is not belief, atheism is nonbelief" as a sufficient expression of a rational belief has the same level of rationality as ignorance because the statement "I do not believe your claims about theism" require either a complex chain of heavily ideological criticisms of religious belief to plausibly fit into the category of K=JTB or something similar.

Saying that "atheism is not belief, atheism is non-belief" is about as authoritative as saying "I do not believe atheism is true because I am ignorant of theism or ignorant of atheism". For the statement "atheism is not belief, atheism is non-belief" to justify the proposition "A certain claim about theism is false", a large amount of evidence for the entire epistemic chain required to support the atheist critique of Christianity.

The statement "atheism is not belief, atheism is non-belief" is as justified as "I do not believe in Christianity because I don't believe it" or "I do not believe Christianity because I am ignorant of it". If the content of the proposition merely refers to the assent of the person making the claim, it is a non-rational fidist claim, equally justified as "I do not believe the earth is round" because "I do not affirm the position that the earth is round" and then seeming to claim that the belief "I do not believe the earth is round" is rational because it is not affirming a specific proposition about the earths roundness. Of course this is all sophistry, and it is completely obvious why someone would intend to make the impossible claim that to withhold assent implies some sort of justification given to the assent being withheld.

Christianity acknowledges that it is a propositional religion, affirms the need for rational justification of Christian belief, places Christian belief in the same universe as other beliefs and using similar standards (though some Christians do not do this) and justifies Christianity using a very wide variety of epistemological approaches ranging from the early church's immersion in the neo-Platonists and Greek and Roman rhetoric (see Augustine), Aquinas's natural theology which uses Aristotelian philosophy, the monastics quest for mysticism and the miraculous through prayer and contemplation, Anselm's reasoned defense of theology, Descartes rationalistic skepticism, Berkeley's idealism, Pascal's aphoristic apologetic, Newtons fusion of science with Christian mysticism, other early scientists and philosophers like Bacon and Locke, who contributed substantially to the modern scientific understanding of epistemology, the Jesuits and their scholastic and neo-scholastic approaches to the defense of Christianity, the Protestants Biblical approach to apologetics, often versed in Aristotle as in the works of Theodore Beza, figures like Jonathan Edwards who intercepted intellectual currents at Princeton which he was an earlier leader, early Christians at Harvard University, initially trained to instruct ministers and also to integrate and understanding of the world not to mention the medieval universities and non-Jesuit approaches to intellectualism, 19th century Calvinist followers of Edwards such as BB Warfield at Princeton and Charles Hodge, John Wesley and his revival preaching and manifestations of the power of God in holiness to prove the veracity of the Christian faith, Count Zizendorf and the moravians who prayed and embraced a form of pietiesm to quicken the heart to understand God, the American Scientific Affiliation a protestant organization designed to explore the relationship between science and the Christian faith, the modern Neo-Evangelical Association the the modern Christian colleges, Catholic Universities such as Georgetown, Boston College, Fordam, Notre Dame, Catholic University of America which perform rigorous research that costs billions of dollars, English apologists like CS Lewis, NT Wright, Alaisdair MacGraph, modern Reformed epistemologists such as Alvin Plantiga, Nicholas Wolterstaff, contentential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, and many, many, many, many other figures.

Christianity has never shied away from the question of rational defense of Christianity, what it has shied away from is the requirement that every single Christian must provide a rational defense of their beliefs. Why is this? Because Christianity is a life and death issue, that is tied to to the believers sense of right and wrong and the knowledge of God, the most important topic in that there is. This does not make the Christian faith irrational, it only means that for some Christians, the rationality of their faith depends on non-rational factors. In actuality, this is not very much different from the way that figures in academia rely on each other for insight into the nature of the world without necessarily being able to check every single issue due to lack of professional specialization. It is an argument from authority, but there are ways for Christians to still test the fidelity of what is being taught, to the scriptures, to their own witness of the Holy Spirit and to their conscience.

There are thousands upon thousands of books written on the intellectual justification, aimed at a wide variety of cultures and philosophies. The church has been defending Christianity for two thousand years, and that process of defense has led to the creation of the modern universities.

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?

No, I am not slapping random concepts together. If you are arguing that it is rational to believe that God does not exist, not as a justified epistemological proposition but as a default argument, that belief is sort of like an argument from authority to yourself -"I do not believe theism" would seem to imply - "Theism is false because I do not believe it". This is obviously a logical fallacy.

p - "I do not believe theism"
q - "Theism is false"

if p then q

If the truth of atheism can be verified similarly to the truth of other things, try and substitute something else:

As mentioned above, look at the form this takes:

if p then q

p - "I do not believe the earth is round"
q - "The earth is not round"


Obviously this is extremely basic logic, not even undergraduate level. It is an extremely foolish thing to believe that p > q for p is a non self evident belief. It is an argument from authority, and a completely arbitrary authority, unless p has some reason why their belief of p would have any bearing on the truth of q.

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'.

I don't think you need to know the origin of the universe to have justified beliefs about God. Where does this requirement come from? Why the origin of the universe? Why not the number of hairs on the head of an ostrich?

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.

I appreciate your honesty and your willingness to yeild to the truth. It shows that you are serious about philosophy, which is much more than a debating, ego centered game and is more like a spiritual exchange between honest people both commited to the truth.

When I first became a Christian, honestly I couldn't say that I knew that God existed or not, I was told to have faith and I had some evidence for the existence of God and felt that God had done some things in my life. Now, I do not have any doubt that God is real. I have seen God hundreds of times. I am positive that God is real.

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.

If you don't know if atheism is true, why blaspheme God? Why say Christians are idiots.

I know that there are a lot of scientists who are agnostics, who are pretty convinced that Christianity isn't true. But a lot of the time, they don't shout it from the rooftops. They don't define their movement by blasphemy and by ridicule and using non-rational persuasion techniques to advance a culture war. They just don't believe in God. I respect people like this, who are weak atheists not only as a title, but weak atheists in practice, and the language that they use refers not to words and phrases that signify strong atheism but weak atheism.

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).

I appreciate your humility.

Sounds fair, but in order to say that you must argue for what is presupposed in the ground of the justification of the rejection of theistic evidence. I would argue that this will be very difficult for atheists to ground all of their reasons for rejecting theistic arguments, as well as their assumptions about what the nature of belief should be, if they can talk about should at all.

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?

I understand what you are saying. But the way that you use the terms "null hypothesis" presupposes that this is a valid method for knowing whether God exists. How do you know that you should not hold the null hypothesis concerning the applicability of the null hypothesis to theism until the null hypothesis concerning the applicability of the null hypothesis is overcome.

Let me say that another way because it is complicated:

The proposition:
1. p - The null hypothesis method is suitable for arriving at a concept of God
2. ~p - The null hypothesis method is probably not suitable for arriving at a concept of God
3. q - God exists
4. ~q - God does probably does not exist


To believe ~q presupposes p. But this violates the method of the null hypothesis, which is obviously cultural and is not a self evident method.

Everyone has to do a Kierkegaardian leap of faith somewhere, whether it is to the null hypothesis or some other philosophy of science or epistemology, or it is to Christianity.

I made my leap of faith to Christianity and became a mystic and I can promise you that it is real. I have no doubt that there is value to science as well, as virtually everything around me is tied to science. But that does not demonstrate the relevance of modern science to understanding theism, anymore than scientific achievements 200 years ago demonstrated the relevance of science for the problems it was unable to understand then.


I do not believe that atheism is the default position. I believe the default position is that people have intrinsic, objective morals that are a result of some feature of the universe, based on a human priority placed on these morals that transcends all other priorities and has embroiled all of human history in intrigue surrounding their application. I would argue that universality of morality defeats atheism as the default position, and would affirm that atheism is the proposition that not only "I do not believe your claim that God exists" but "I believe it is likely that ethics are reducible to opinions".

The first claim - "I do not believe your claim that God exists" seems on the face of it to be a default position, and that is fair enough, to withhold assent until some burden of evidence is met (though the nature of that burden should be questioned, and proved and defended, if it is to be rational, some faith is required to avoid circularity). I would not accept the claims of theists without some sort of standard of epistemic justification, although I would not judge them based on superficial characteristics (he is not using the standards of chemistry in his analysis of theology, obviously this would not fit, an easy mistake to make though in assessing what a good standard would be to judge theological claims by, there is a lot written about this).

a. "I do not believe your claim that God exists"
This is different from, but often reduces a sufficient expression of weak atheism (a is not a sufficient expression of weak atheism, only a specific belief):
b. "I do not believe any claims that God exists"

When you look at B, take a look at this syllogism:
b. "I do not believe any claims that God exists" -
b. "To disbelieve any claims that God exists is to believe that it is likely that ethics are reducible to subjective claims"
c. "I believe that it is likely that ethics are reducible to subjective claims"

You could look at the issue of the null hypothesis as a matter of perspective.
Why not take the null hypothesis of c - "I believe that it is likely that ethics are reducible to subjective claims'. This is startling radical, powerful and subversive claim that has been rejected in virtually every society in history, and yet it is widely taken seriously among academic atheists. In addition, ethics is not something that people have distance knowledge of, it is something that people have direct experience of. The moral argument for God's existence was the reason that Francis Collins, the man who sequenced the genome became a Christian. It is a powerful argument, although it does not demonstrate the existence of God (as much as things can be demostrated, not much can be), it casts serious doubts about whether atheism can be seen as a default position.

Without assessing the validity of the claim "I believe that it is likely that ethics are reducible to subjective claims", I think a null hypothesis could easily form around this just as easily.

I believe I have demonstrated that weak atheism is not a more suitable default position than weak theism, and I welcome any challenge.

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Can you give an example of an atheist using atheism to argue for the non-existence of God?

"Christians R a bunch of idiots, the Bible was written by Satan's penis. BTW I am a weak atheist, fuck ur bullshit religion. "

Sounds like strong atheism to me. Somebody convinced all these little ones that God's existence was proven false by science, or it was reasonable to think of something very close to that as so. Not meant to characterize all atheists of course.

So I can't argue that it's unlikely that you have a skunk in the trunk of your car unless I know you don't have a skunk in the trunk of your car? Your position seems awfully tailored to the convenience of someone who wants to assert something for which there is no evidence.

The relevance of the existence of God to human understanding is of a different quality than an arbitrary claim. Also, it is not the case that there is no evidence for the existence of God, arguments for the existence of God have been widely accepted among people even if you select only from that group that have had a dramatic influence on atheist thought (see: Aristotle, Newton, Bacon, Descartes, Occam, Kripke, Mendel, etc).

There is plenty written about "great pumpkin type objections". This has already been refuted a million times and is pure propaganda. God is not the great spaghetti monster, God is a serious idea that all people have wrestled with.

We're not arguing anything from our lack of belief. Our not believing in God is in no way an argument against the existence of God, and not only do we not do that, it's kind of silly to think that we would.

We are in agreement. I have seen a lot of atheists do that.

I would also argue that the statement 'I believe some god or God exists' is inconsistent and does not capture the rhetoric of the theist movement which is almost always in actual practice saying a particular God exists (even though they can't agree on which god or how many).

They agree on quite a bit. Most of the world accepts Christianity, Judaism or Islam. These three agree on a vast number of things. Other religious systems are more or less true, but the largest ones tend to agree on a great number of things.

There is no 'atheist movement'. I know there are atheists who refer to one, but they are just as wrong as a Ba'hai who claimed there is a 'theist movement' would be. You repeatedly argue with us by making assertions about what the 'atheists out there' are saying without (or likely, to avoid) addressing what the 'atheists in here' are saying. You're just going to have to live with the heartbreak of our not conforming to your sweeping generalizations about atheists, and I have a faint hope that, years from now, you may realize the problem is not with us but with your stereotyping of us.

I see no way to distinguish the negative category of stereotype from the positive category of impartial assessment. To bias an impartial assessment to avoid the appearance of stereotyping would create an artificial perception of atheism, politically correct as it might be.

It's morally wrong to use rhetoric to poison the well of debate. Do you know that an asteroid the size of Mongolia isn't going to hit the earth in the next 72 hours? Then apparently, it would be wrong for you to make any argument that we'll still be here in 73. I'm trying to take you seriously, but you're not making it easy. I recommend thinking of possible counters to your claims before you make them. I don't know where you're getting your stuff, but you should consider another source.

What was not serious about what I said? You just agreed with me "it's morally wrong to use rhetoric to poison the well of debate". Why is that not an important question to address?

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Like I said, I have average intelligence, if you are trying to prove that I'm basically average, that is unnecessary. There are millions of people smarter than me. If you want to actually argue about ideas, that is a different story.

Actually, your original claim was that you probably had above average intelligence. Your decision to revise your estimate of your own abilities downward is likely wise. Kudos to you for that.

I think it is all the same.