Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[The Grand Nudger]

I was an atheist before I knew how to spell the word evidence, and while I believed in a great many other things for which I had no evidence. It's a state, not an argument, lol.

[Angrboda]

Atheism no more requires any explanation for anything, than not believing in mermaids does

You say this, but then you go on to give an explanation.

there is no objective evidence they exist, and the claim they do has no explanatory whatsoever.

This is a perfectly good reason to not believe that unicorns exist. 

The epistemological basis is that we should only believe in things for which we have certain kinds of evidence -- objective evidence. This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

While many may embrace such a standard, it is not a pre-condition for disbelief, and thus it is an error to say atheism rests upon it.

You have made the classic mistake of assuming that a feature incidental to some atheists is an essential property of all atheists.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's an incidental feature of most believers as well. We're all contemporaries here - we've had the same base cultural indoctrination. They also tend to think that we should only believe in things we have evidence for...they just so happen to believe they have evidence for their gods - as our OP has gone on about at length. Personally, I suspect the state comes first, in either case. That we come up with reasons why we do or don't believe x after the fact - not that we do or don't believe based upon those reasons. In this, conversion and deconversion stories are misreports. It's our rational minds taking credit for a thing that they don't actually control nor do they have the ability to understand mechanistically. A consequence of it's instrumentality - it takes ownership of whatever we're doing, rightly or wrongly, as it does with so many other things we believe to be under it's control which are demonstrably not. We say that we will our hands away from the fire for reasons too...but we know that response bypasses the brain...with the brain playing catch up, creating both the pain experience -and- a misreport of directed action after the fact of motion initiation.

That's one of the central "illusions" in illusionism. Our minds tell us, and seem to us...to be in control of things they are not in control of. When we talk about our minds we include the attributes of this illusion, of this simulation, as a real attribute of mind - which might explain why we never seem to find the thing we're looking for. It's an observer, it's an advisor, maybe, it's a part of the control system - but not the control system itself - there is no such thing in us - no central control, we're distributed processors. In ast, they call that the attention model. The idea is that our subjective experience is a summary of what our nervous system is attending to with it's most robust (and extremely limited) resources. It can be flooded as a system - breaking the illusion. Artists might call it a flow state. Nueral connectivity drops as more and more bandwidth is allocated to fine motor control and pattern recognition at the expense of executive neural connectivity. Stress can do this too - as anyone whos ever blacked out during a speech or performance...and then went on to do the speech or performance all the same, can attest. Or, rather...can't attest to, because from their pov...they weren't even there..it wasn't them doing it - it just "came" to them that way.

[Ravenshire]

You say this, but then you go on to give an explanation.


This is a perfectly good reason to not believe that unicorns exist. 

The epistemological basis is that we should only believe in things for which we have certain kinds of evidence -- objective evidence. This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

'I do not believe that gods exist' is not the same statement as 'I believe that gods do not exist.'

Boru

Bel hasn't the mental capacity to understand that level of nuance.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'I do not believe that gods exist' is not the same statement as 'I believe that gods do not exist.'

Boru

Bel hasn't the mental capacity to understand that level of nuance.

Right enough. 'I do not believe that gods exist' is not even an epistemological position. Epistemology is concerned with the origins and limits of human knowledge. Not believing a thing has bugger all to do with knowledge.

(The second statement, however, is an epistemic one, but that's not what Bel was refering to.)

Boru

[Deesse23]

This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

Nobody gives a fuck what Bel thinks most Atheists do (believe), and why. Atheism is a lack of belief in deities, fucking period. Bel claiming he observes something about "most atheists on the internet" does not change this definition. He is trying to hide his dishonesty and lack of basic understanding of science and philosophy behind a curtain of verbosity. Hes a poser and bullshitter, a wannabe, a pretender, somebody who desperately wishes to be thought of as being smart way above the level of most, but unfortunately he opens his mouth from time to time.

Si tacuisses, philosophum mansisses

[The Grand Nudger]

The online part of that is doing most of the work - it's pretty well documented in both the believing and non believing camps online. Most people who do or don't believe aren't online believers or online atheists - they don't spend the time considering things like prime movers or the neurological basis of body control. Belief states are facts of identity, not the product of explicit and rational (or rationalizing) examinations.

The idea that this is a shared trait of the broader class(es) is basically just selection bias.

[Deesse23]

*Holds up a doll*

Hey Bel, where did Internet Atheist touch you?

[Belacqua]

You say this, but then you go on to give an explanation.


This is a perfectly good reason to not believe that unicorns exist. 

The epistemological basis is that we should only believe in things for which we have certain kinds of evidence -- objective evidence. This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

While many may embrace such a standard, it is not a pre-condition for disbelief, and thus it is an error to say atheism rests upon it.

You have made the classic mistake of assuming that a feature incidental to some atheists is an essential property of all atheists.

You're right, many embrace such a standard, but it is not a pre-condition for disbelief. That's why I said "most atheists on the Internet." But it would have been more accurate for me to say "most atheists I have encountered on the Internet." 

I am sure there are atheists who lack belief for other reasons. For example, the nuns were mean to them when they were children. Or they just don't care enough to think about the issue at all. My guess is that these people are less likely to be posting on Internet atheist sites. 

Assuming it's true that there is no objective evidence for a god, is this something that makes you think a lack of belief is reasonable? Or does the fact that there is no evidence for a god not factor into your decision? 

As you point out, atheists may have different kinds of reasons, and I was clear that, in my opinion, the lack of objective evidence is a good reason. If someone had a bad reason, or no reason at all, that's something they could talk about.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah, but anytime Someone™ does they're told, by you, this can't possibly be the explanation, or more passively a "good" one....so.....

Thing is I don't really know why I'm an atheist. I cant remember ever being anything but. Maybe early exposure to alternative superstitions and comparative religious studies factored in? Thing is that would be later, in my teens. I already came into that without a belief in gods despite believing in things like aliens and ghosts and magic and literal monsters - all things which I no longer believe in... At best, the intellectual or academic side of atheistic ideation was a later wrinkle confirming some preexisting state or belief or lack thereof. Like "oh, well it's a good thing I didn't believe in gods too..because that would seem really stupid now". : shrugs : At least my childish credulity had some limit. I actually learned most of these arguments and critical assessments here (and have had that experience change beliefs I did hold when I came). I didn't come into this with a bunch of "atheist knowledge", I came into it with a bunch of religious knowledge. I was more familiar with the hellenistic pantheon and ethics than dawkins and hitchens. More familiar with the mechanistic explanations of magical potency in various traditions than physics. I knew parkers astrology from front to back but couldn't tell you a single thing about astronomy. etc et etc.