RE: Do you wish there's a god?
April 3, 2019 at 7:51 pm
(This post was last modified: April 3, 2019 at 7:52 pm by Alan V.)
(April 3, 2019 at 6:16 pm)Belaqua Wrote: To be fair to you, this was a discussion I had earlier with some of the Pure Lackists, and I'm kind of drawing you in. They hold a pretty extreme position.
I've been clear that I'm talking about adult atheists who were raised in a society and who are capable of language. Not rocks, lizards, children raised by wolves, or people in a persistent vegetative state. I hold that adult atheists raised in a society and capable of language have all heard and rejected religious claims. They rejected those claims according to some standard of judgment. The standards may be better (e.g. science, not revelation, gives us reliable information) or it may be worse (e.g. the nuns were mean to me). But all such atheists are atheists because they hold to some standards of judgment. That is, they have beliefs (in the sense of things they hold to be true) and they are atheists for reasons.
The Pure Lackists deny this, say they are atheists for no reason at all, and in some cases claim that their minds are the same as when they were infants.
Yeah, I see that as extreme too.
The usual reason people say they are atheists is that they've seen no convincing evidence for the kind of God typically described by theists. They also often maintain that the standard philosophical arguments are flawed or inconclusive, especially in regards to the kind of God typically described. All are good reasons to lack belief.