Definition of Atheism

[pocaracas]

I'm with ignoramus...
Let 'X' be any word that defines my attitude towards the concept of the divine.
I do not accept the proposition by which some divine entity exists, in some unknown and unknowable form.
But I'd be intellectually dishonest if I was to claim that such an entity does not exist at all.... it may... I just haven't been presented with any good reason to accept that.
In fact, all reasons presented by those who do believe it (can) fall into the category of "psychological condition" and be honestly dismissed as some uncontrolled mental state.

If 'theist' describes these people who "believe that such an entity exists", then the inclusion of the negation prefix would lead to someone who "does not believe that such an entity exists".

un-theist?
dis-theist?
a-theist?

I don't know the rules to use one negation prefix over another.... perhaps it has to do with the origin of the word, either greek or latin, or other... but language evolved to favor the a-, in this case.

So it seems this "atheist" word is a good candidate for the 'X' above.

You can then compartmentalize further with extra qualifiers to include people who couldn't care less about the believers, people who actively attempt to sway believers away from their beliefs, people who claim that every belief is man-made, people who... well.. the possibilities are somewhat limitless, but let's stick with these... or else we may end up with blue atheist: a smurf who's atheist.
This is where the gnostic, agnostic, strong, anti, etc qualifiers come in handy. People are complex and to use one single word to describe a very large group of people will oftentimes seem inadequate or insufficient, no matter how right that qualifier is.

Take the gender qualifier as a simple example.... and try to apply it to the whole population of the planet... you'll find it can become tricky, at times to call someone "male".

[Whateverist]

I believe it's a bit of a play on words.
We have a finite set of words to interpret an infinite amount of mental thoughts and ideas.
Just because the words don't fit, doesn't mean we can't feel a certain way towards an idea.

I don't care if there is a god or not, I can swing either way.
I have no proof which satisfies me enough to invest belief in any deity.
I have no proof that said deity cannot exist.
Deities are not important to me in my everyday life, so not very interested in wasting time trying to get to the bottom of it.
Pick or invent a word that reflects the above and that's me.
You can't use "ignoramus", it's taken.

^^ My sentiments exactly.

I've responded in more detail elsewhere without receiving a response. So there doesn't seem to be any point in doing so again. Whatever it is that has you worked up about this is in you. You won't be able to fix it by getting our agreement.

[MindForgedManacle]

Oooh, I've got a lot to pull you up on here but I'm at work now. In a nutshell, you've over-simplified some definitions (accurate use vs common usage vs common misuse) and you've conflated 'belief' and 'knowledge' a couple of times. I'll elaborate later.

I don't see how I've conflated belief and knowledge. I specifically said they're different. o.o And the common usage of these terms turns out to be accurate.

The way I see it, there's no difference between disbelief and lack of belief. The distinction that should be made is between "belief" and "knowledge".

Well, there is. At least as I'm using here, disbelief is "to believe X is false" but to lack belief is just "to believe X is not true". The former is a negation while the latter might be termed a nullification.

Not sure where the belief-knowledge distinction was crossed. Knowledge is just a kind of belief, but clearly not everything i believe constitutes knowledge.

I believe it's a bit of a play on words.
We have a finite set of words to interpret an infinite amount of mental thoughts and ideas.
Just because the words don't fit, doesn't mean we can't feel a certain way towards an idea.

I don't care if there is a god or not, I can swing either way.
I have no proof which satisfies me enough to invest belief in any deity.
I have no proof that said deity cannot exist.
Deities are not important to me in my everyday life, so not very interested in wasting time trying to get to the bottom of it.
Pick or invent a word that reflects the above and that's me.
You can't use "ignoramus", it's taken.

Sounds like an apatheist or an agnostic.

When you say you have no proof they cannot exist, I think you're missing the point. Proof is somewhat irrelevant here. I can't prove all sorts of things, yet it's perfectly rationale to accept them. However, there does seem to actually be good reasons to swing one on this issue, for those who are interested in the topic.

^^ My sentiments exactly.

I've responded in more detail elsewhere without receiving a response. So there doesn't seem to be any point in doing so again. Whatever it is that has you worked up about this is in you. You won't be able to fix it by getting our agreement.

I didn't see the post you're talking about. I'm not really much interested in aggreement, but my general point is that using this 'lacktheism' is just silly. The reason I'm worked up is more or less that atheists using this definition seem to be working against themselves in several ways when they use it, i.e they loose the ability to nuance their position on the issue because their definition creates a bivalence which permits no degrees.

[Cato]

I agree that there is more to the term atheist than just a rejection of a god claim for the reasons you mentioned. I'll also add that you'll find most believers couldn't care less of the strong, weak, agnostic, etc. divisions or labels of various flavors of atheism. Many atheists don't care for the distinctions either as it all becomes very tedious. Most of the world will consider somone an atheist if their tonsils aren't as firmly wrapped around god's cock as the one making the claim.

I have a friend that doesn't care about my atheism; he happens to be a deist of the "there's got to be something bigger than ourselves" variety. He often asks that I drop the 'atheist' lable since it comes with its own stereotypes and baggage. I said fuck 'em. He shrugged his shoulders and said so be it.

[MindForgedManacle]

I agree, which I why I usually just call myself an atheist. xD Sure, "gnostic strong atheist" might be somewhat more accurate, but it's generally pointless to identify as such.

[eyemixer]

1) I believe something does not exist if the requirements for its existence are contradictory.

2) If there is expected evidence for its existence and that evidence does not exist, a theoretical 100% of all possible observations failing to provide evidence where expected would cause me to believe something does not exist. Since that is not currently possible, my position is that I do not believe something exists with a confidence scaling based on number of failed observations completed out of all possible (subjective I admit, but it is confidence after all)

3) If there is no expected evidence for an entity, there is no possible way to determine if the entity exists, but lacking the ability to manifest in the material world means such an entity can have no effect upon the material world so the question 'does the entity exist' becomes pointless to me.


I consider myself an agnostic atheist. I don't assert 'there can be no god' but rather 'If there is a god, he doesn't hang around here'

What would you call my position on the entity called 'god'? Aside from erroneous, that is always someone's prerogative I suppose

[Mister Agenda]

So, this topic is a minefield. I was rather surprised that this even gets emotional at times.

Yes, who would have thought telling people they're not what they say they are no matter the objections they raise would be met with anything other than cool, dispassionate responses?

Okay, so right off the bat atheists are up against the usual usage of the word and a few other words. If you really don't think the average English speaker doesn't think "atheism" is what they use to refer to people who claim God doesn't exist, I suggest you talk to more people.

You seem to be emphasizing that you have no evidence to support your claim and that it is up to us to prove you wrong. I'm getting to the point where I wonder why I expect better from you.

And you all should know this already.

You should know what constitutes a good argument already, but you don't let that stop you from posting.

I mean how many times have you had to explain to theists that when you say "atheist", you just mean those who lack belief?

Occasionally.

If that wasn't what people usually mean by the word, you wouldn't have to explain that to theists, just like you don't have to explain to them what theists are.

People usually mean 'educated guess' when they say 'theory', and try to tell me 'evolution is only a theory'. Am I to bow to 'what people usually mean by the word' or explain why their statement is invalid?

And in fact, the usual definitions of atheism and theism are what those in academic philosophy, where people are being the most precise with their definitions, use them to mean.

Additional unsubstantiated claims don't make your original claim less unsubstantiated.

In the interest of your phone limitations, I will stop at this point, but it's also not true that you had to make your OP so long.

---

Now, these are generally what people mean by these words:

-Theist: One who believes God/gods exists, to some degree

-Agnostic: One who views the question of the existence of gods either unknown or unknowable

So far, so good.

[quote='MindForgedManacle' pid='701034' dateline='1404461241']
-Atheist: One who believes gods don't exist, to some degree

Funny, that's not how most atheists define it.

-Belief: To accept a proposition as true

I believe that.

-Disbelieve: To affirm a proposition as false

Blatantly false. You've been given the dictionary defintion, so you can't be ignorant of this. There is no practical difference between saying you don't believe something and saying you disbelieve it.

There are good reasons we regard these words as meaning those things (or rather, we use those words to convey those concepts), as opposed to this lack of theism definition.

The reason YOU believe these words as meaning those things is your agenda to get everyone to agree with your definition.

Firstly, think about comparable situations. When someone asks you if you believe Santa Claus exists, it is absurdly obvious their question is exactly equivalent to saying "Do you think Santa exists or do you think he does not exist?" They are not asking you if you lack belief in Santa.

I see you avoided responses to this exact same argument in the other thread, so I'm not going to waste my time again. If you can refute objections to this particularly stupid argument, be honest and do it there instead of making us refute the same arguments repeatedly.

I'm going to stop here. You lack the most basic capacity for honest discourse in that you can't acknowledge any error on this topic, so you can't adjust your argument or position to accomodate new information, you've got your conclusion and all you care about is arguing for it, not whether it is actually reasonable. You're just repeating yourself because saying the same thing in different ways is all you've got. This topic isn't worth discussing with someone who is irrational about it.

---

Anyway, that's all I've got to say. Let the witch hunt begin.

It's a troll hunt. There's a difference.

[MindForgedManacle]

\
Yes, who would have thought telling people they're not what they say they are no matter the objections they raise would be met with anything other than cool, dispassionate responses?

Didn't say that, blatant straw man.

You seem to be emphasizing that you have no evidence to support your claim and that it is up to us to prove you wrong. I'm getting to the point where I wonder why I expect better from you.

I wonder why I expected better of you. Lemme ask you, how do you know what any word means? Based on your experience with how it's used.

You should know what constitutes a good argument already, but you don't let that stop you from posting.

I see you're using your own advice. By all means continue to.

Occasionally.

Now, WHY do you have to do that? Clearly, it's not because they already know that atheism is just a lack of belief.

People usually mean 'educated guess' when they say 'theory', and try to tell me 'evolution is only a theory'. Am I to bow to 'what people usually mean by the word' or explain why their statement is invalid?

Now you're equivocating along with those people. Theory DOES mean an educated guess in ordinary parlance. The definition of theory used in academia is different.

Additional unsubstantiated claims don't make your original claim less unsubstantiated.

No problem, here:

‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God....

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/

"Atheism is the view that there is no God."

[...]

"It has come to be widely accepted that to be an atheist is to affirm the non-existence of God."

[...]

"So negative atheism would includes someone who has never reflected on the question of whether or not God exists and has no opinion about the matter and someone who had thought about the matter a great deal and has concluded either that she has insufficient evidence to decide the question, or that the question cannot be resolved in principle. Agnosticism is traditionally characterized as neither believing that God exists nor believing that God does not exist."

(though I would argue that 'negative atheism' is just another word for either an agnostic. In fact, it was Antony Flew who started doing this and even he admits he was making an argument in an attempt to move people away from the usual definitions of these words).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/#H1

In the interest of your phone limitations, I will stop at this point, but it's also not true that you had to make your OP so long.

In the interest of not being misrepresented and fully expressing what my problems were, I think I did. It was a little easier to do that from a desktop computer though.

[SkepticismFirst]

This whole conversation seems ultimately useless, because the "lack belief" crowd is wrong anyway. There are good reasons to belive that the proposition "God does not exist" is true. If you don't believe that, you should.

Predictably, someone will probably come along and say, "but which god? neener neener neener!" The answer is: all of them. For any being which the word "God" in the above proposition can refer to, either there is a strong argument against that being's existence (see: argument from evil, argument from divine hiddenness, etc.), or allowing that thing into the set of things which "God" can refer to broadens the concept into uselessness and makes us all theists by default.

[Welsh cake]

You forgot apatheism, i.e. pragmatic atheism/practical atheism.

We don't give two shits about belief or disbelief in ludicrous meaningless sky-daddy beliefs either way.

And debating such silly concepts is doubly pointless. The only good it does is kill time if you're absolutely bored stiff.