Are Atheists using Intellectually Dishonest Arguments?

[Edwardo Piet]

Glad someone brought this up.  For those who don't know, sensus divinitatis is basically an argument born out of desperation, beginning with that particularly deluded mystic, John Calvin.

Calvin claimed that no one really disbelieves in God, as SD is a spiritual sense, just as sight and hearing are physical senses - we can all sense God, much in the way we can all sense rocks, trees, the postman, etc.  For Calvin, claiming disbelief is as wrong as a sighted person claiming they can't see the rocks and trees all around him.  But SD is unlike the physical senses in that it cannot be damaged - it is simply not possible to be spiritually 'blind' or ''deaf', so ALL claims of disbelief are either irrational or dishonest.

Special plead, much?

Boru

I've heard quite a few people on YouTube say similar things. "There's no such thing as atheists". I mean, really. I can smell the desperation through my screen.

Wait what? Does this mean I have an imaginary friend and I don't even know it?!

I bet his name is Dave. It's bound to be Dave.

[Neo-Scholastic]

[Edwardo Piet]

The old version of agnosticism is basically agnostic atheism, yeah. Nowadays it means people who are "unsure".

Most people are agnostic atheists, but I do maintain that often they do also believe there is no god, although not always. They just don't believe with complete certainty.

Basically, if you believe the likelihood of God's existence is any less than 50%, then you at least to some extent have reasons to believe that there isn't a god... and you're not just like some baby who hasn't developed any beliefs either way yet.

I believe that there almost certainly is no God. So I do largely believe that there is no God. I'm not a strong atheist though because I don't believe God is impossible. Although some gods or versions of God are indeed impossible, not all of them are. But even the ones that are possible, I believe are so unlikely to exist that it would be silly for me to claim that I don't hold any sort of positive belief that God and gods don't exist. I do. I don't hold any positive knowledge that they don't exist. Throughout our daily lives we have many beliefs that we are very certain about but not completely certain about, and that we don't know to be true.

The most vitally important distinction here is the difference between belief and knowledge.

[Succubus]

<snipped quote mining>

With regard to the god 'As Described In The Bible' I'm a gnostic atheist. I know that god doesn’t exist because it cannot exist. Now Odin on the other hand...

[Neo-Scholastic]

I clicked the link hoping to find an article which would make some significant points and perhaps challenge me to become more intellectually honest. I was sorely disappointed.

Keneinan’s blog post is clearly a list of generalizations, one that IMHO does indeed apply to a majority of the most active atheist AF members. As such she is not attempting to “refute” the so-called arguments. Her intended audience appears not to be persuadable atheists; but rather, believers. It provides believers with warning signs for when an atheist is not interested in a serious discussion but rather intent on scoring rhetorical points.

the atheist is simply attempting to conflate God with a god in order to set up a strawman and/or trying to annoy you by belittling God—while ignoring the basic conceptual distinction that all European languages mark by differentiating the word “God” from the word “god” by capitalization.

Who gives a shit? Some people have the bizarre habit of capitalizing a pronoun when "God" is the antecedent. This practice has no precedent outside of circles of believers and in no fucking way marks a logical distinction.

Well, I do. Capitalization often indicates a distinct connotation and there are different reasons for capitalizing various words. Zeus is capitalized because it is a proper name. God is not a proper name; but rather, a title like His Majesty. Similarly, capitalization is used to distinguish between different connotations of the same concept. “The Truth” has a different connotation (that of a transcendent value) from any particular mundane truth. Childishly insisting that a word with multiple connotations has one and only one connotation (and the most unfavorable one at that) is just acting like an annoying twat.

…They [the vast majority of believers] worship the tribal god of the Israelites, and they will tell you as much if you inquire about the nature of their god. It seems quite unfair to atheists to have them respond to god-claims that resemble paganism with counterarguments that refute an eternal, cosmic being.

And what is it called when a theist is clearly talking about Classical Monotheism and the atheist keeps referring to ‘skydaddy’ and ‘Jeebus’? It’s called being a dick.

[RoadRunner79]

I clicked the link hoping to find an article which would make some significant points and perhaps challenge me to become more intellectually honest. I was sorely disappointed.

Keneinan’s blog post is clearly a list of generalizations, one that IMHO does indeed apply to a majority of the most active atheist AF members. As such she is not attempting to “refute” the so-called arguments. Her intended audience appears not to be persuadable atheists; but rather, believers. It provides believers with warning signs for when an atheist is not interested in a serious discussion but rather intent on scoring rhetorical points.

I think that this assessment is important in how one is reading the article and deserves to be emphasized. And if some or all don't apply to any particular person, then good.

[Edwardo Piet]

And what is it called when a theist is clearly talking about Classical Monotheism and the atheist keeps referring to ‘skydaddy’ and ‘Jeebus’? It’s called being a dick.

Not really. Changing the name of someone else's imaginary friend doesn't make a person a dick.

[Neo-Scholastic]

And what is it called when a theist is clearly talking about Classical Monotheism and the atheist keeps referring to ‘skydaddy’ and ‘Jeebus’? It’s called being a dick.

Not really. Changing the name of someone else's imaginary friend doesn't make a person a dick.

Thanks for proving my point.

@Vulcanlogic - See, this is the level of discourse the blogger is talking about.

[Mister Agenda]

Unanimously, huh? Let's see the comprehensive survey that can't find a single varying source...and how about a definition not made by a theist, any of those? Atheists were saying they just don't believe in any gods over 150 years ago, but what do we know about what we believe and don't believe?

[Whateverist]

…They [the vast majority of believers] worship the tribal god of the Israelites, and they will tell you as much if you inquire about the nature of their god. It seems quite unfair to atheists to have them respond to god-claims that resemble paganism with counterarguments that refute an eternal, cosmic being.

And what is it called when a theist is clearly talking about Classical Monotheism and the atheist keeps referring to ‘skydaddy’ and ‘Jeebus’? It’s called being a dick.

But some of us are on a home-boy level with the God whose favor you work so hard to curry. Believe me Jeebus is down with it and winces when you take offense. Wait a minute .. what's that? Jeebus says quit being a pompous ass.