Delicate Offers a Truce

[SofaKingHigh]

Huge cuntbag.

[The Grand Nudger]

41 pages responding to a troll. Come on guys and girls, let's just let this thread die now.

-and still a long way to go to approach a record.  This is what we do for fun around here, face it. 

[ignoramus]

Why do these idiots waste countless hours on an atheist forum?
Are they just testing the robustness of their belief?
Why can't they bounce it off other theists?

[robvalue]

Insecurity.

In the incredibly unlikely even that this isn't a troll, it's clearly someone who feels the need to aggressively "defend" their beliefs by trying to humiliate anyone who disagrees with them. It's just that they are so embarrassed by their own beliefs, they won't even actually state what they are.

More likely, this is a troll who gets some kind of weird pleasure out of seeing how much attention they can get while talking utter rubbish. I would guess, someone who can only get attention by acting out.

[Delicate]

See my above response. Hope it helps.

Indeed it helps, thank you.

It seems you are operating under the impression that atheism is the position or claim that gods do not exist.
However, the more general case of atheism is the not acceptance of the claim that any particular god exists... especially, applied to all gods ever claimed to exist by any man.
In simpler terms, atheism is "not believing in the existence of gods", as opposed to your definition of "believing in the non-existence of gods". The difference can be subtle, but it paves the road for what comes next.

I don't feel like hunting for the links either, so I'll just lay the most salient considerations out here based on how you've laid your position out.

1. I don't believe atheism is the default position, while theism needs to be proved because I take atheism and theism to be epistemically on par. One makes a claim, another makes a contradicting claim. If one doesn't make either claim (that God exists, or that God doesn't exist) they can rightly be thought of as agnostic. This triad is a perfectly adequate, well-established, and widely-accepted survey of the various positions and I haven't seen enough reason to change it.

Atheism as the claim that gods do not exist is indeed not the default position.
But atheism as the non-claim of existence of any god would be an adequate default position.

(A)gnosticism is applied as a concept of knowledge over the particular subject of the divine. A sort of measure of how sure people are about the existence or non-existence of gods. It complements the (a)theist view as this one relates to belief. People will often bring forth a 2D chart to illustrate this, but, essentially, you can have 4 quadrants: atheist agnostic, atheist gnostic, theist gnostic and theist agnostic.
The most common are "atheist agnostic" and "theist gnostic". The theist gnostic who thinks that the atheist is also gnostic will tend to, like yourself, think that agnostic is an independent category... alas, humans are not that easy to catalog.... on both these axis (knowledge vs belief) there is a continuum of positions.

Like I said, the norm among atheists is the "agnostic atheist", which possibly coincides with what you describe as simply "agnostic". No claim of knowledge is made concerning the actual non-existence of any god (for it is the intellectually honest position), but, for all intents and purposes, life is carried out as if no god exists (for there is no hint that any god has any influence over life - or anything).

2. Like I pointed out in (1), I think atheism makes a claim because atheism and theism are on par with each other epistemically. The only way you could say atheism makes no claims is if atheism were in fact a default position. 

But why think so? In fact, if not believing in x is a default position, then isn't "not believing that atheism is the default position" itself a default position? I think more work needs to be done here to explain why you believe in this kind of default position and why it's needed. 

There's more to say on this, of course, but I want to keep the post concise and focused.

Allow me to unravel that "not believing that atheism is the default position" to "not believing that 'not believing in the existence of gods' is the default position".
Now that's it's properly explicit, using the correct definition of atheism, perhaps you can agree this sentence makes no sense?

The default position is that which makes no claims, except those that are borne of immediate experience... like gravity - things fall.
Hence, the lack of claim for any god would be the default position. Such lack can be defined as atheism, but, under a hypothetical society that has never known of such a claim, the concept of atheism would be as foreign as the concept of "afaerism" or "aunicornism" are to us.

A good way to cash out the difference between your view and mine is that mine sits neatly into the established model of knowledge and belief in epistemology.

All this talk about accepting and rejecting beliefs, nonbeliefs, etc, is only made by atheist internet warriors.

So my question is simple: why not go with the norms established in epistemology?

[abaris]

A good way to cash out the difference between your view and mine is that mine sits neatly into the established model of knowledge and belief in epistemology.

Well, it doesn't sit well with knowledge. If my knowledge and belief were based on Harry Potter, I wouldn't know much about the real world, or would I?

That's obviously what you try to sell here. And that's not what gets you the least bit of credit here or outside of your little circle of like minded individuals.

[ignoramus]

Go with the norms ... They've done the heavy thinking for us ... Good one!

I can see the attraction for some, I suppose.

[robvalue]

Was I too harsh? I don't know.

I feel sometimes people need to hear these things for their own good.

[downbeatplumb]

If anything, that theory would suggest that it was in part due to the protection of the church that the opportunity for scientific enlightenment was made possible, as rather than squandering their talents in political conflicts, the brightest were left to themselves in monasteries to discover intellectual progress, where it was almost exclusively made in Europe, along with the preservation of ancient works, much of which would have been permanently lost without the Muslims. Hence, it's also interesting to note that it was religion, in the case of Islam, that initiated a rekindling of Greek science and philosophy which in turn led to solidify the rise of Arab civilization during the period in the West known as the dark ages. So, apparently, if you're going to blame religion in the one instance, you'd better be prepared to credit it in the other.

Yes, I know that, even though this wasn't addressed at me. But isn't it the case that the Dark Ages were, in effect, extremely religious? It seems to me like to take religion out of the equation like that is a little going too far. I rather regret more the fall of the Greek civilization, than the Roman one, by the way. And you can't expect me to credit religion simply for being the only game in town in Europe for such a long time. The Dark Ages were hell on earth for most people for a reason, and that reason is very intimately connected with religion - or at least that's my impression, based on what I learned and read. Am I wrong?

No you aren't wrong and religion was only one piece of the puzzle. Another being the fact that rome had very good foot soldiers and everyone else was on horses relied heavily on barbarian cavalry and mercenaries. That in the old expansionist days of the empire well armoured legionaries fought tribes that liked to battle nude. Then the weather changed and politics changed. Religion was part of the mosaic of the times but it was a factor.

[Delicate]

A good way to cash out the difference between your view and mine is that mine sits neatly into the established model of knowledge and belief in epistemology.

Well, it doesn't sit well with knowledge. If my knowledge and belief were based on Harry Potter, I wouldn't know much about the real world, or would I?

That's obviously what you try to sell here. And that's not what gets you the least bit of credit here or outside of your little circle of like minded individuals.

You can't know anything about reality based on HP.

That possibility is ruled out by definition on a basic epistemic framework.

But hey, I'm noticing a correlation between how confused one is and how eager they are to attribute malice.

So that's nice to learn.