Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?

[robvalue]

The rainbow stops being beautiful as soon as I start thinking God farted it out.

[Amine]

I refuse to participate in this conversation unless we switch from talking about atheism to aunicornism. Gets rid of some of the baggage.

[Mr.wizard]

[LadyForCamus]

[LadyForCamus]

Talk about being disingenuous, Chad. I don't believe this has anything to do with definition semantics to you. You want to re-define atheism as "belief that there are no gods"? Fine. I'll re-define my lack of a belief in gods as aflibbitism, and call my self an a-flibbitist. Regardless of the author's point, your personal issue here is clearly with the position, not the definition.

You are trying to project some existential decision-making responsibility onto people who are in no way obligated to bare such a burden. I know as much because you've mentioned it before in other threads. Everyone has to choose one way or the other, right? Wrong. I'm sorry if you are tired of shouldering the burden of proof, but such is the consequence of believing in something for bad reasons.

[Strongbad]

"Is lack of belief the best you can do?"
 
As I see it, the definition of atheism as a “lack of belief in god” is not the best or most correct definition there is.  I don’t “lack belief in god”; I actively “disbelieve the claim made by others that their god “exists”.  Saying that we “lack belief in god” implies that “god” exists, but that we do not (or that we “refuse”) to “believe in it”.  This whole “lack of belief” notion that Chad likes to deride is nothing more than a slick attempt to hide the fact that there are only claims, and nothing more.
 
The answer to your question is "no".

[pocaracas]

Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?

Yep.... it is the most intellectually honest position.
And yes, I read the tripe on that link...

1. It is possible to prove a negative by demonstrating a logical contradiction

BUZZZZZ wrong! It's not possible to show that an ill-defined non-material thing does not exist.... heck, it's not even possible to show that it does exist.... why are we discussing it?

2. a ‘lack of belief’ isn’t a belief;

Don't care if it is!
I want to believe in as many true things as possible and as little false things as possible. That's it.
In order to believe in something, I require something tangible, in order to avoid believing in false things. Nothing tangible exists for any divinity, hence that proposition is not believed in.

3. that ‘-theism’ (belief) and ‘-gnosticism’ (knowledge) are independent,

ah, yes, they are not entirely independent... hence why knowledge can be simplistically defined as "justified true belief".
But clearly they are not one and the same... gnosticism would require theism. If you know it, you believe in it.
Some people are in that gulf where they believe but are intellectually honest to claim they do not know. That is possible, too.

But what about the contrary?
If you don't believe in it, do you also not know it?
Can you know it's false, hence not believe in it? If it's unfalsifiable, like we said in 1., how can anyone truly know it to be false? I think the people who describe themselves as gnostic atheists are only so towards a limited set of the divine... perhaps to those divinities which are the most described in the literature, those who are clearly products of human design.

4. While it is true that ‘believing X’ and ‘believing not-X’ aren’t the only options, I disagree that the middling position of ‘not believing X’ is a useful definition of atheism.

Well duh. It's one definition of atheism... there are others, but this is the most basic one.
HAHA, but he goes on to the "then dogs are atheists, too" idiocy. This definition applies to thinking rational humans. It's implied when the definition says "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings. "

I wonder.... what political system do dogs follow? Communism? Fascism? Libertarian?
Excuse me for not taking this guy seriously...

5. Etymology of the word....

Oh fuck... don't waste my time!

[IATIA]

It is all 'god of the gaps'.  I do not believe a god of any sort is even possible.  There are too many logical inconsistencies for the existence of any god.  Certainly anything described in any scripture, book, myth, legend, whatever, assuming any truths within, is nothing more than the ramblings of gullible peoples believing that the MAN in charge is a god.  There is nothing even close in any of those writings to describing a god that could create this universe.  The pettiness is abundant in all the books and would be beneath anything that could create a universe.

Believing in the gods portrayed in the babble-book, crayon, etc,. is totally irrational.  Believing in a deistic god is not so much irrational as it is illogical.

"Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?"  Nope.  I completely deny any possibility that any such being exists.

[robvalue]

I act as if there is no such thing, whatever the fuck it's even meant to be, until such time as evidence suggests otherwise.

Same as everything else that has no evidence to support it.

If I worried about everything that could somehow be true, I'd never do anything but worry.

[LadyForCamus]

There's something wrong with our epistemology if we can't deny the existence of gods along the same grounds that we deny the existence of unicorns and leprechauns. Justified true belief leaves too many lacunae.

Here enters Chad yelling: "category error! Category error, damnit!" Because...God is super duper special or something?