Your stance on Hard Atheism

[BrokenQuill92]

That's ludicrious! They're a fundy with no god.

[Whateverist]

My atheism tends to be the hardest in the morning.

It is important to stretch first.

[Dystopia]

People who don't think hard atheism is irrational. To think that is to align with hard atheism. You can't agree with that and not be a gnostic atheist. Even though I'm fascinated with the stance, I am in no doubt that it's irrational.

Ah OK.

Is it irrational to believe what the evidence leads you to believe? Is it irrational to claim something doesn't exist due to the lack of evidence? Why can't I say "god doesn't exist" but simultaneously I can say "Santa Klaus doesn't exist"? What difference is there?

[fr0d0]

Is it irrational to believe what the evidence leads you to believe? Is it irrational to claim something doesn't exist due to the lack of evidence? Why can't I say "god doesn't exist" but simultaneously I can say "Santa Klaus doesn't exist"? What difference is there?

I believe what the evidence leads me to believe. I think it's irrational to claim something exists that lacks evidence. I believe in God and I believe the Santa Klause tradition originated with an actual person.

You can say what you like. Until you can prove any of it, I will regard it along with pinches of salt.

Irrational = unprovable

[Dystopia]

^ Irrational belief summed up in a few sentences.

[Cyberman]

Wow - Opposite Day comes around fast.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Interesting. Thank you.
Would you say this helps the position of the people who - do - say it is manmade? Like we atheists do? Let's face it: The consequence of not believing in the god many of our fellow christian po(e)sters claim to have personal experience with - on an atheist discussion forum in particular - means you are saying it is man made. Many of us actually do so in these discussions.

I'm one of those who believes that gods are manmade constructs. I'm also inclined to believe that global warming is manmade, though my suspicion there is weaker than my suspicion about gods.

I think AGW deniers are much fonder of us AGW agnostics for the simple reason that their belief is such a fringe belief that they appreciate anyone who doesn't appear to dismiss their position completely. (Pardon the sidebar, and not to derail the topic at hand, but -- on that topic I'm not agnostic about whether man's activities are aiding the retention of heat, but I am agnostic about whether our activities are sufficient to send us past the tipping point. And in a parallel to theistic discussion, I hold to a Pascal's Wager-sort of argument: "We may or may not be sending the world past the AGW tipping point, isn't it better for us to assume we are and act accordingly?")

I'm saying it's too goddamn specific. Especially here. To me it's like starting a scientific article on the origins of life with the text: 'well, we can't be sure about anything, after all god or the devil could be tricking us by leaving fake fossils all over the place, but we believe we found out etc.' It's like throwing out 10 miles of line when catching a fish, while you don't really need to.

The difference is, here our audience is not entirely fellow scientists who share our assumptions. Our audience includes theists who are all too happy to impute onto me a position I don't hold; so no, it isn't too specific, it's precisely the right word for what I stand for. It's happened too many times that I've been told that I am making a positive claim that god doesn't exist, when in fact the only claim I'm making is that I don't believe he exists. It's a subtle difference, but it is a difference, and on a forum as nit-picky as an atheist forum, that distinction is important and like Mr Agenda, I prefer to get it out of the way so that any strawmen erected thereafter are obvious to the audience of the discussion as well as myself.

(Mind you, in the matter of gods I'm not a logical or purist agnostic, who maintains that we cannot know about their existence. It's my simple assertion that I cannot logically discount them.)

[fr0d0]

^ Irrational belief summed up in a few sentences.

So you're calling yourself irrational?

[roaster]

This is what brought me to this forum to start with. I am a long standing Non-Thiestic guy. i had a great parochial education but never got the 'warm fuzzy' feeling my classmates did.
No biggie. I never felt it was important for me to go out and proselytize about my non-belief in a supreme being control everything.

I work with a man about 15 years my junior(I'm 46) and he is a big Epicurus/Bertrand Russell supporter.
I read most of this material YEARS ago, so initially it was a common point of interest.
Now, though, he has this tendency to go out and discuss this point of view with all the people we work with, who are predominantly Christian (or Protestant as I would describe them).
When someone ends a point with "well thats just what I believe, thats why I believe it" he gets worked into a lather.
Eventually they usually wind up submitting just to make it end, but i hate it for him, and them.
He refers to these exchanges as trying to 'teach evolution to creationists'

I guess I am asking if anyone has been on one side or another of this point of action, being so strong in your understandings that its eerily similar to the proselytizing of a Southern Baptist minister?

Thoughts??

[robvalue]

Depends entirely on the God claim at hand.

Towards any omni- claims, I'm a strong/gnostic atheist since it's not a logical possibility. They are claiming something impossible is possible, it's not a well formed claim.

Towards any weaker claims, that there's some creator of some sort, that you might want to label God, I'm agnostic.

Towards weaker claims but with proposed knowledge of the creator that can't possibly be known, I'm as close to gnostic as you can get while still acknowledging the "possibility" that this might all somehow be correct. But that amounts to a general open-mindedness about possibly being wrong about anything, and I give the claim no more weight than invisible unicorns.