Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!

[jstrodel]

[quote='jstrodel' pid='413727' dateline='1363122698']

Actually, you missed the argument that I made, so I will put it in another form. You are over simplifying, reading my words literalistically, and ignoring other posts which establish my arguments and responding with one sentence answers.

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.


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...

6. is word salad. Can you clarify?

Sure. I love to argue, I don't like trading insults though.

1. People do not have an inherent sense of epistemic justification that is precisely defined and trans-cultural (self evident)
2. Where there is a lack of a requisite aspect of something, that lack must be met.
3. The lack of a sense of justification must be met. (MP 1,2)
4. Similar problems exist for concepts of truth and sources for belief (self evident)
5. The entire linguistic, social, economic, scientific, social processes required to allow the culturally constructed sense of knowledge to be justified true belief, must themselves be subject to K = JTB
============================================
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)

All of this results in a very interesting process that is very, very different in different cultures. You don't find many people in ancient African culture talking about how the African word for "fool" refers to "someone who fails to understand the teachings of our father Karl Popper and accept his criterion for scientific knowledge".

There are just different methods for learning. Our methods today allow us to destroy the entire earth with nuclear weapons. Is there any problem to that?

It would be hard to for me to accept an argument that the modern approach to knowledge is the best and should be accepted unconditionally at all times, given the sort of epistemological fruit of the weapons of modernity.

People just have different approaches to thinking about the world.

I will grant you that "God exists" and "no gods exist" are truth claims that both require justification, and that some atheists make the claim that "no gods exist".

Agreed.

You are, however, ignoring an alternate atheist position, which is "I do not believe any gods exist". That position is not a knowledge claim.

If it is not a knowledge claim, than it is non-authoritative and should not be used to de facto argue for the non-existence of God while requiring a different sense of justification for God (sneaky). To argue for the non-existence of God requires knowledge that God does not exist, otherwise it is lying. If there is not a strong sense of justification attached to claims against God's existence it is immoral to advocate anything which dramatically affects peoples lives without a strong sense of clarity that it is acceptable. To start with the position "I do not believe any gods exist" and argue from that much weaker sense of belief which has no authority is to reject the epistemological norms which require more serious considerations to deserve a higher degree of certainty to attain to ethical justification (first do no harm - Hypocrites).

I would also argue that that statement "I do not believe any gods exist" is inconsistent and does not capture the rhetoric of the atheist movement which is almost always in actual practice saying "no gods exist". If a weaker sense of justification is understood, that sense should translate into the spirit of the words.



Regardless of what people describe about their actions, their words signify the sense of epistemic justification. The positions "I am not making a knowledge claim" and "I am making a knowledge claim are mutually exclusive". If a knowledge claim is being made, an argument can be made. If no knowledge claim is being made, no argument can be made, since it is morally wrong to lie (lying is sharing false beliefs and where there is no knowledge there could be false beliefs).

[Jackalope]

I will grant you that "God exists" and "no gods exist" are truth claims that both require justification, and that some atheists make the claim that "no gods exist".

Agreed.

You are, however, ignoring an alternate atheist position, which is "I do not believe any gods exist". That position is not a knowledge claim.

If it is not a knowledge claim, than it is a non-rational and should not be used to de facto argue for the non-existence of God while requiring a different sense of justification (sneaky). To argue for the non-existence of God requires knowledge that God does not exist, otherwise it is lying.

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.

Perfectly rational. You are refuted. That is not to say that your conclusion is necessarily wrong, per se, but your argument does not support your conclusion, and therefore your argument can be dismissed, and your conclusion treated as nothing but your own opinion.

That I have not made a competing claim does nothing to buttress your argument.

Regardless of what people describe about their actions, their words signify the sense of epistemic justification. The positions "I am not making a knowledge claim" and "I am making a knowledge claim are mutually exclusive". If a knowledge claim is being made, an argument can be made. If no knowledge claim is being made, no argument can be made, since it is morally wrong to lie.

See above.

In addition a knowledge claim has been made - by you - and that is the claim we are addressing here.

Speaking of calling names, I would appreciate if you would desist from implying that I'm lying.

---

1. People do not have an inherent sense of epistemic justification that is precisely defined and trans-cultural (self evident)
2. Where there is a lack of a requisite aspect of something, that lack must be met.
3. The lack of a sense of justification must be met. (MP 1,2)
4. Similar problems exist for concepts of truth and sources for belief (self evident)
5. The entire linguistic, social, economic, scientific, social processes required to allow the culturally constructed sense of knowledge to be justified true belief, must themselves be subject to K = JTB

Incidentally, I have not forgotten about this portion of your argument, I am considering it. I do not find it compelling.

You claim your first premise to be self-evident, and I do not necessarily agree that it is so. I think it could be true, but is not self-evident.

Your fourth premise is too vague. What specifically do you mean by "similar"? It is not clear, and therefore you cannot claim self-evidence. It is clear to me that belief and knowledge are two different (but related) concepts.

I have not looked too closely at the rest of your premises due their dependence on the flawed premises.

[jstrodel]

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 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.

How about this:
1. "I do not believe your claim that god exists" -
With that unanswered/unanswerable question you are free to use language to express things related to this proposition, and it is a proposition if you understand it as a fact about the world, rather than the act of believing (which would be a non-rational factor)

Perfectly rational. You are refuted. That is not to say that your conclusion is necessarily wrong, per se, but your argument does not support your conclusion, and therefore your argument can be dismissed, and your conclusion treated as nothing but your own opinion.

That I have not made a competing claim does nothing to buttress your argument.

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.

Nothing that you have said has refuted this. You have shown an example in which it is possible to make a claim which requires a sense of justification which does not require a sense of justification for the question of whether God exists. This does not answer the central tenets of the argument, which is that atheism presupposes the worldview necessary to reject theistic claims, if rationality is a condition imposed upon the process of belief rejection.

You have minimized the question that atheist discourse minimized the question that justification is required for the proposition "God does not exist" and that the language of atheism commonly expresses not only the epistemological tools and cultural ideology necessary to reject "a claim that God exists" but to express the philosophy underneath atheist discourse that really says "God does not exist", whether they consider themselves weak atheists or not.

A weak atheist is an atheist who is always a weak atheist. If someone says they are a weak atheist but they switch to strong atheism here and there to make their points, I would say that they are doing something that is similar to lying. Language should always reflect the sense of epistemic justification that the words signify. Imagine a doctor who has never performed open heart surgery saying "I KNOW THAT I CAN PERFORM OPEN HEART SURGERY" when he does not. Imagine the damage that someones false, unjustified knowledge could cause. I do not at all mean to target you personally in that, only to share what I believe to be an objective and self evident principle of being a decent human being.

If atheists wanted to be consistent and moral people, they would always "proportion their belief to the certainty of their conclusions", and this would be reflected in everything they do, so they would be atheists not only in debating people, but atheists from their heart.

Speaking of calling names, I would appreciate if you would desist from implying that I'm lying.

I did not mean to imply that you are lying, only to trace out the contours of what I believe to be a moral philosophy of epistemology. Appreciating the nature of dishonesty and truth is close to the heart of what epistemology is, not something that belongs to scholars but something that is part of the human experience.

I apologize if I have offended you.

[Angrboda]

Allow me to point out something.


First, you claim there is no universal standard as to what constitutes proper epistemic procedure. As a matter of fact, you appear to claim that this fact is self-evident. Then you attempt to construct an argument, which must by its nature appeal to shared epistemological assumptions, if not a universally shared epistemology, in order to be fruitful. This is fine if inconsistency is okie-dokie according to your epistemological assumptions, but if that's the case then our epistemological assumptions aren't shared and our meanings are incommensurate.

Without unfolding all the ramifications of this, it appears to be a case of you wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.




(Oh, and I'll stick this in here, since it's been weighing on my mind. My assessment of you is that you're essentially channeling other authors' arguments. This in itself might not be fatal, but you appear to have poor taste in authors, an inability to assess the credibility of the authors whom you choose to channel, an inability to profitably assess the merits of the arguments you read, and a general inability to faithfully represent those arguments without making them far less credible than they likely were in the original. You don't even appear fully capable of understanding them, period. As such, I have almost zero interest in substantively replying to your arguments because they aren't your arguments, and I would be replying to a ghost who isn't here.)

[Jackalope]

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".

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.

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).

[Lion IRC]

Naturalism. (Belief in supernatural events would be heretical. In fact, the acceptance of souls, angels, miracles, for example, would mean you were NOT an atheist.)

Not all atheists are naturalists

Well in that case, such atheists wont have any difficulty accepting the supernatural claim that a person saw a ghost. (Or a dead person come out of their grave. Or water turned into wine.)

Empirical evidence-based scientism. (Myopia. Only tool you own is a hammer. All problems resemble a nail. We ''ought'' to rely on the scientific method but science doesnt do "ought". Science only does "IS".)

Not all atheists are empiricists

Great ! Such atheists wouldnt therefore demand empirical evidence for God's existence because they would understand that we dont possess the empirical tools to measure
how much a Supreme, transcendent Being weighs or how tall He is or where He lives. (Parallel universe? Multiverse?)
I would like to hear from such an atheist so that we can talk about the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Presuppositionalism. (An unverified past-eternal, perpetual motion universe/multiverse can and must exist without a cause. This is necessary to avoid the Kalam cosmology.)

Not all atheists are presuppositionalists

Yes. Logically they must be by necessity. (Presuppositional atheology) The absence of a creator God forces an atheist to adopt an alternative metaphysical atheistic cosmology. And if you dont have that, on what basis then do you reject theistic cosmology?

There are only two prevailing non-theist cosmologies.

1. Spontaneous flickering universe
(Randomly appearing for no reason, popping into existence out of nothing, uncaused, undesigned. Such spontaneous singularities might also happen in reverse.)
2. Uncaused, past eternal universe.
(Inhabited by sentient beings who mistakenly think there is fine tuning and ''laws'' when in fact what actually exists is something chaotic that can never be defined in terms of a permanent unified theory of everything.)

Both of these are contenders against the KCA. And you cant be atheist if you accept the KCA. Therefore you MUST adopt (presuppose) an alternative atheistic cosmology. And the atheist has no source of information for cosmology events prior to 13.7 billion years ago. All they have is speculative theory. (eg. Multiverse, unstable quantum vacuum, cyclic big bang/crunch...)

You might say, well atheists dont 'presuppose' such theories, we are open-minded agnostics. But that is NOT atheism. If it were, then atheists would accept intelligent design and fine tuning and teleology as plausible explanations and not mock them as faith-based God-of-the-Gaps wishful thinking.

The fallacy of the default position / burden of disproof. (It is a logical fallacy to claim that your own metaphysical position is automatically the default truth against which all others must carry the burden of disproof. Especially when theism is the prevailing, long-standing, majority worldview.)

Not a fallacy: the burden of proof lies on those making a claim not on those who don't accept the claim on face-value.

OK. In that case. I'm not making a claim. And neither are any of the billions of theists. We are happy with theism as the best explanation for how we got here.
End of discussion.

...what''s that? Sorry, I didnt hear you. (Perhaps because atheists are such a small minority.) Can you speak up a little?

*I dont believe God is real*

Pardon me?

*I dont think religious people should have so much influence*

...Why not?

*God isnt real. Its a figment of your imagination*

Thats an extraordinary claim. Care to back that up?

[Angrboda]

Not all atheists are naturalists

Well in that case, such atheists wont have any difficulty accepting the supernatural claim that a person saw a ghost. (Or a dead person come out of their grave. Or water turned into wine.)

---

Not all atheists are empiricists

Great ! Such atheists wouldnt therefore demand empirical evidence for God's existence because they would understand that we dont possess the empirical tools to measure
how much a Supreme, transcendent Being weighs or how tall He is or where He lives. (Parallel universe? Multiverse?)
I would like to hear from such an atheist so that we can talk about the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Not all atheists are presuppositionalists

Yes. Logically they must be by necessity. (Presuppositional atheology) The absence of a creator God forces an atheist to adopt an alternative metaphysical atheistic cosmology. And if you dont have that, on what basis then do you reject theistic cosmology?

There are only two prevailing non-theist cosmologies.

1. Spontaneous flickering universe
(Randomly appearing for no reason, popping into existence out of nothing, uncaused, undesigned. Such spontaneous singularities might also happen in reverse.)
2. Uncaused, past eternal universe.
(Inhabited by sentient beings who mistakenly think there is fine tuning and ''laws'' when in fact what actually exists is something chaotic that can never be defined in terms of a permanent unified theory of everything.)

Both of these are contenders against the KCA. And you cant be atheist if you accept the KCA. Therefore you MUST adopt (presuppose) an alternative atheistic cosmology. And the atheist has no source of information for cosmology events prior to 13.7 billion years ago. All they have is speculative theory. (eg. Multiverse, unstable quantum vacuum, cyclic big bang/crunch...)

You might say, well atheists dont 'presuppose' such theories, we are open-minded agnostics. But that is NOT atheism. If it were, then atheists would accept intelligent design and fine tuning and teleology as plausible explanations and not mock them as faith-based God-of-the-Gaps wishful thinking.

Not a fallacy: the burden of proof lies on those making a claim not on those who don't accept the claim on face-value.

OK. In that case. I'm not making a claim. And neither are any of the billions of theists. We are happy with theism as the best explanation for how we got here.
End of discussion.

...what''s that? Sorry, I didnt hear you. (Perhaps because atheists are such a small minority.) Can you speak up a little?

*I dont believe God is real*

Pardon me?

*I dont think religious people should have so much influence*

...Why not?

*God isnt real. Its a figment of your imagination*

Thats an extraordinary claim. Care to back that up?

---

[Lion IRC]

Naturalism. (Belief in supernatural events would be heretical. In fact, the acceptance of souls, angels, miracles, for example, would mean you were NOT an atheist.)

If only, yet I have met atheists who believe in astrology, homeopothy, and reincarnation.

How does an atheist accept reincarnation, astrology, homeopathy if theres no evidence that these are possible, probable or true?

And how do they reconcile their open-minded gullability in relation to one form of woo with their dogmatic insistence on scientific rationalism and empirical evidence in relation to another? (God)

Looks and smells like hypocrisy to me.

WAIT!
Dont tell me. Let me guess.
Atheists can be hypocrites if they want.


The main point I cant understand is; atheist (A) thinks its OK to believe in reincarnation and still call themself an atheist
but atheist (B) says they dont believe in reincarnation because...---> insert text book atheist mantra here <--- and that is the same reason they give when defining their atheism. ("theres no evidence")

[jstrodel]

First, you claim there is no universal standard as to what constitutes proper epistemic procedure. As a matter of fact, you appear to claim that this fact is self-evident. Then you attempt to construct an argument, which must by its nature appeal to shared epistemological assumptions, if not a universally shared epistemology, in order to be fruitful. This is fine if inconsistency is okie-dokie according to your epistemological assumptions, but if that's the case then our epistemological assumptions aren't shared and our meanings are incommensurate.

Without unfolding all the ramifications of this, it appears to be a case of you wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.

I don't think it is inconsistent. There are some universal principles, such as lying is wrong in all cultures and that there be some relationship between certainty of conclusions and evidence which is closely related to lying and exaggeration, which is a form of lying. Postmodern critiques of epistemology, at a certain point, become ridiculous. There are other values which are related to specific cultures, such as the scientific methods of modernity, which are related to specific cultures and are obviously not universal.

Not everything is black and white.

(Oh, and I'll stick this in here, since it's been weighing on my mind. My assessment of you is that you're essentially channeling other authors' arguments. This in itself might not be fatal, but you appear to have poor taste in authors, an inability to assess the credibility of the authors whom you choose to channel, an inability to profitably assess the merits of the arguments you read, and a general inability to faithfully represent those arguments without making them far less credible than they likely were in the original. You don't even appear fully capable of understanding them, period. As such, I have almost zero interest in substantively replying to your arguments because they aren't your arguments, and I would be replying to a ghost who isn't here.)

Maybe you are smarter than I am. That's ok. If you argue with me, maybe that would help me to understand the world better. I will admit, I do not understand it that well. I probably have above average intelligence, not much more than that. I could use all the help I could get. I could care less if other people are smarter than me. All I care about is whether I am doing good. If you can show me how I am wrong, I would change as I am eager to be more wise and more good. But your personal attacks can not affect this end in me and what does not belong to glorifying God I could care less about.

Your critique of my reliance on other authors seem to imply that the pursuit of genius weighs greater than other factors, such as fidelity to simple and readily discernible principles. I would encourage you to consider the fact that seeing wisdom as a creative process tends to result in severe distortions and is unfortunately linked to cults of personality in the academy that are deleterious to human understanding. I would urge you to refrain from critiquing knowledge from the perspective of genius and encourage creative talent as a means to prove how smart or creative you are and instead see the aim of learning is to love others. God did not give people brains to prove that they could be creative or original, God gave them to people so that they could love others and rely on the help of others as much as they can, which I am proud to say that I do.

[Whateverist]

I recently conducted a poll on this very forum aimed at addressing this specific topic. The results of the poll seemed to indicate, among the self-selected atheist respondents, only 15-20% considered that atheism required the complete rejection of the supernatural.

Really? I want to know how people are defining "the supernatural". I don't recall the poll, but of course the question you asked wasn't whether atheists embraced anything supernatural. Rather you just wanted to know whether atheists thought the rejection of the supernatural was definitionally an aspect of atheism. I would have answered the same way.

What troubles me is what could possibly count as supernatural. If a god did exist, what about it would make its existence supernatural? Mercury at room temperature is pretty unusual but we don't call it supernatural. A real hermaphrodite would be rare, but again not supernatural. Do supernatural thingies have to be made of something other than standard matter?

I find that category hard to understand.