Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?

[Alex K]

Ok having quickly read the post, I agree that we can do better than the purely neutral stance. I reject contradictory God concepts and find most others so unlikely that I am willing to say that they most likely don't exist. Those things seem pretty obvious to me.

[ignoramus]

So basically, that's a diplomatic way of saying what our gut tells us.

That it's all a nice fresh steaming pile of ......... Mash potatoes?

[vorlon13]

And what of the religious folks, specifically, the ones specifically religious in one specific faith, and yet those individuals haven't spent one millisecond pondering any of the other 78,000 nominally Christian faiths, let alone anything outside of that narrow (OK, bloated) subset ??

Who isn't expending the best they can do now ??

[Bob Kelso]

Today I’m going to argue that this definition is confused, and should be retired. It is too broad to be useful, and that we ought to reserve the word ‘atheist’ for active disbelief in the existence of gods.

That's all I needed to see before I closed the tab, I couldn't care less for definition gymnastics and philosophical masturbation.

[drfuzzy]

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The weekend has come and I will not reply for a bit while I attend to other priorities (like craft beer). Nevertheless, I remain interested in your opinions about the blog post. I encourage you to read the whole post; however, recognizing that all of you also have other priorities, I wish to point you to some of the points I found most interesting, to wit:

“If a mere ‘lack of belief in god’ is sufficient to be an atheist, then babies are atheists. You might say “yes, they are, or at least were before religion got its mitts on them!” But on this definition chimps are also atheists. As are dolphins, dogs, and doors. They all lack belief in a god.”

Here I think the author is saying that “atheism as simply lack of belief” is a trivial position. That is the essence of my signature line. That said, I think that most of the time those who insist on this definition do so to avoid the task of defending their actual conviction that god(s) do not exist. Next.

“The only time someone can be said to have a lack of belief regarding a god is before they’ve heard the claim for one. In some minimalist sense this person is an a-theist, but that’s an extremely weak point to hang one’s hat on. After hearing it, they can accept, reject or mull over the claim undecided. But lacking a belief about it is no longer open to them.”

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 Here I think the author is suggesting (as I believe) that those who maintain the “atheism as simply lack of belief” are disingenuous. If someone truly felt that he simply lacked belief, then he would not argue against the belief in God. It would be a non-issue to them.

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 As such, I believe that a non-believer who participates on AF is tacitly a gnostic atheist, even though he expresses otherwise.

“Rationality is the ability to recognise the strength and soundness (truth) of reasons, and to trade in them with other rational beings. If there is evidence for something being true, then it is rational for you to believe it. If there is no evidence for something being true (or evidence against it), then it is irrational to believe it. I imagine that most of the readers that have made it this far would want to say that belief in a god on the current evidence we have is irrational....on an [b]evidentialist epistemology[b] we are rationally required to believe that no such beings exist. And due to the weight of the evidence against them, we can be reasonably confident in saying that we know they don’t exist, too.” (emphasis mine)

Here I think the author makes a serious misstep by conflating rationality with a particular epistemological stance about what can or cannot be known and how. As I have argued elsewhere, much of what we believe follows from existential choices, which themselves are is not amenable to rational scrutiny, as to whether we will take the world as intelligible (or not) and that certain knowledge can (or cannot) be attained. My blog post summarizing this notion can be found here:

http://chadwooters.blogspot.com/2016/03/...f-man.html

But let’s suppose someone adheres to a particular epistemology that leads them to not believe in God. I say to each their own. At the same time I think it entirely appropriate to insist that he apply his epistemology consistently. I do not think that an “evidentialist epistemology” supplies any path that can logically justify opinions about value, morality, aesthetics, meaning or purpose.

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Not . . . quite, Chad.  IF I looked around at religion and found it harmless, then yes, it would be a complete non-issue. And indeed, religions that don't impact my daily life (Buddhism, for example, -- and I find quite a bit of wisdom in "Buddhist scriptures") are pretty irrelevant to me - I have seen no evil come from Buddhism.  (If there is a Buddhist here with a different take on the subject, I'd be interested in hearing it.) But the worst human monsters I have ever encountered in my life have stepped out of a christian church. Churches that once had me brainwashed into accepting the evil that was spewed from the pulpit. So it is personally healthy for me to find good ways to explain why I no longer hold those beliefs and find them damaging.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Actually no. I positively believe there are no gods, and I believe that's true for good reasons.


All of man's named gods are demonstrably false, either because they are attributed contradictory/illogical qualities or because they're said to do a thing we now know to be natural (lightning, for example) or to be in a place where we can go look and see they aren't there (Mt. Olympus, for example).


Furthermore, science has been investigating religious and supernatural experiences and claims for a long time, and what it consistently finds is that human religion is essentially a complex trick of the brain. Everything from visions down to believing our prayers are answered is based on one flaw or another in how humans think about and construct reality.



The vague "higher power" that deists and some agnostics try to use is so vague and meaningless as to betray the fact that it's an obvious contrivance designed to evade everything up to and including having to be defined at all.


So, even if we do discover something in the Universe that we decide to call "god," it will not be one of man's extant gods, and it will not be the vague, made-up "higher power" that's truthfully little more than an annoying linguistic device. If we find something and decide to call it god, it will redefine the term. As it stands now, the word "god" necessarily refers to either a fictional character or a vague concept defended by a net of logical fallacies, and those things do not physically exist.

[Anomalocaris]

As a believer I still like to follow the musings of the "opposition". Occasionally I find positions with which I agree. Even before reading this article, I adopted a signature mocking the idea that atheism is simply a lack of belief. I have posted this link as an invitation to discuss the points raised by the author who just so happens to be an atheist:

https://philosophersgroan.wordpress.com/...we-can-do/

Yes, that's the very best you can do. But as a theist You are doing much much worse.

[robvalue]

I go further, I find a lack of coherence in the concept itself. It's not even well defined enough for me to give a sensible opinion about. Everyone has their own idea what it's meant to be. And I reject each individual one I have so far heard as being (at best) an unecessary assumption and (at worst) nonsense garbage that isn't even meaningful/consistent.

It's not my fault if people can't put forward sensible claims.

This here is clearly trying to shoehorn all atheists into a position where you can shift the burden of proof onto them.

[downbeatplumb]

“If a mere ‘lack of belief in god’ is sufficient to be an atheist, then babies are atheists. You might say “yes, they are, or at least were before religion got its mitts on them!” But on this definition chimps are also atheists. As are dolphins, dogs, and doors. They all lack belief in a god.”

So Chad do you believe in Kaparot?

If you don't know what it is I am guessing the answer is no.

This would by default make you an akaparotist.

But if I were to tell you that it is a jewish practice of grabbing a chicken by its neck to transfer your sins to it, then you can make a more reasoned take on it. That's were I am with the concept of god. I have seen, I have laughed and I reject it.

[Mr.wizard]

Even if it's not "the best I can do", it's certainly enough.