(October 16, 2013 at 6:14 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: In my view if can answer no to the question "do you believe in god?" you are an atheist.
It really is that simple.
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a conjecture or premise to be true.
Or as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy similarly states it, "Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true."
If an individual does not hold the premise that a god or gods exist to be true, they are an atheist.
I wonder which god's existence Carl Sagan (a personal hero of mine) held to be true? If the answer was none (which is was), he was an atheist.
Quote:I may have written this before.
Yeah, we all have. And yet here we are still dealing with Vinny...
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
