Purchasing One's Atheism Cheaply

[pocaracas]

edit: Poca is, I think the first person to engage with the question of an infinite regress of skepticism. His argument is a bad one, being arbitrary in it's application of "truncation" (I appreciate the CS-related terminology). But kudos.

LOL, my argument...
Mine is just an "observation" that most people just leave things be at first-order, instead of going for your seemingly preferred second-order introspection.

[Esquilax]

How many atheists here have discussed a skepticism of their own skepticism? How many of them have discussed the question of whether skepticism needs a qualifier?

I keep trying to unpack the phrase "skepticism of skepticism" and the only thing I can come up with is the idea that one should question whether skepticism should be applied? To which the answer is, of course it should, because otherwise you're in the boat of accepting all claims uncritically, which would put you in the position of simply being wrong much more than you are right.

And the truth is, you're a skeptic too, in most places. For some reason you just think that methodology should be questioned and undermined when it comes to atheism, and not when it comes to, say, claims of space whales and whatnot.

"Those a-spacewhaleists have purchased their a-spacewhaleism cheaply! Where is their intellectual rigor over whether they should be skeptical over their disbelief in space whales?!"- No one, ever.

[Rahul]

How many atheists here have discussed a skepticism of their own skepticism?

How many theists have discussed a skepticism of their own religious beliefs?

Actually, a lot of the atheists here did. That's why they're atheists now.

Some generalizations, it seems are supported by the weight of evidence represented by this forum itself.

All religious belief generalizations, it seems are supported by the weight of the non-skepticism of their own congregations, churches, and holy scripture.

Are you attacking atheism by accusing it of the most blatant flaws of theism? That's funny.

[Strongbad]

So says the critic. Who, I might add, has refused to state his own position after many hundreds of posts.

Vinny considers himself an "intellectual apologist" ala Ryft; he is as smug in his beliefs as Statler Waldorf; as evasive as fRod0; and as fundamental as drich.
He just won't admit it.

[Zazzy]

My atheism is the cheapest of all- I was raised by godless people and never thought at all about religion until I was in middle school, and never had any belief. It has always been just absent from my life, and I have trouble understanding why people feel so strongly about it. Unlike many people here, who have paid dearly in family and friends to be who they are intellectually and morally, I have never paid any price at all.

And I couldn't care less about whether people think atheists are intelligent as a group or not. I've met some dumb-ass atheists and some brilliant theists. This is a weird topic.

[downbeatplumb]

My atheism is the cheapest of all- I was raised by godless people and never thought at all about religion until I was in middle school, and never had any belief. It has always been just absent from my life, and I have trouble understanding why people feel so strongly about it. Unlike many people here, who have paid dearly in family and friends to be who they are intellectually and morally, I have never paid any price at all.

And I couldn't care less about whether people think atheists are intelligent as a group or not. I've met some dumb-ass atheists and some brilliant theists. This is a weird topic.

The implication is that we are all supposed to be wandering around in tweed jackets smoking pipes and discussing where Einstein went wrong with his relativity thing.

This is just as much a sterotype as all christians being totally blinkered self deluding morons.

I mean some of them can't be surely!

[sarcasticgeographer]

I still say unicorns don't exist! And now, according to your arguments, I must PROVE that they don't exist? Hogwash.

[zebo-the-fat]

I still say unicorns don't exist! And now, according to your arguments, I must PROVE that they don't exist? Hogwash.

I have a non existent unicorn in this cage... come and look at it not existing there!

[Doubting Thomas]

According to Vinny, atheists have to prove that everything they don't believe in doesn't exist before being justified in not believing in it. However, this apparently never applies to Christians who disbelieve in all the gods we don't believe in, except one.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

How many atheists here have discussed a skepticism of their own skepticism? How many of them have discussed the question of whether skepticism needs a qualifier?

I keep trying to unpack the phrase "skepticism of skepticism" and the only thing I can come up with is the idea that one should question whether skepticism should be applied? To which the answer is, of course it should, because otherwise you're in the boat of accepting all claims uncritically, which would put you in the position of simply being wrong much more than you are right.

And the truth is, you're a skeptic too, in most places. For some reason you just think that methodology should be questioned and undermined when it comes to atheism, and not when it comes to, say, claims of space whales and whatnot.

"Those a-spacewhaleists have purchased their a-spacewhaleism cheaply! Where is their intellectual rigor over whether they should be skeptical over their disbelief in space whales?!"- No one, ever.

Your reasoning is just as valid in defense of skepticism as it is against skepticism.

Being too credulous leads to accepting too many wrong claims. But being too skeptical leads to rejecting too many right claims. The pendulum swings both ways.

Just as even "non-skeptics can be skeptics, skeptics can be non-skeptical about many claims:
-That the external world is real.
-That people are people as opposed to p-zombies.
-That they are not brains in a vat.
-That skepticism is a good way to go about life.
-That their atheistic position is justified.

None of the reasons you provide actually end up supporting skepticism, at the end of the day. In fact, skepticism is not even a tenable epistemic criteria. It's just a meaningless buzzword appropriated by internet atheists that sounds plausible on the surface but as I've shown above, doesn't make skepticism a view worth holding.

PS- I'm not an advocate of the opposite of skepticism, ie blind acceptance of all beliefs. I think the whole dichotomy is typical atheist bullshit.

If you want to save the idea of skepticism, you must give it a criteria. Thus you should be skeptical of things that meet a certain criteria, and accept things that don't.

For example, if you have no criteria, you would have to be skeptical of everything. But if you have a criteria, say, that "I won't be skeptical of claims that are scientifically supported", then you won't have to be skeptical of the fact that the earth is a sphere.

This is pretty much how I figure out whether someone's atheism is logical or bullshit. And by the way, most of the atheism on this forum is based on bullshit.