hackenslash wrote:I note that Seth is using the proper noun formulation. He's correct that I certainly have an opinion on the existence of that preposterous entity, though I wouldn't call it a belief, largely because I have no use for the term 'belief', it being almost as nebulous as 'god'. I'd call it a fact that that entity doesn't exist, based on the ridiculous attributes given him by his fuckwit fan club.
An absolutely perfect iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy. Thank you Hack for giving me such a perfectly and clearly formed target to demolish. The Atheist's Fallacy, wherein the existence and/or nature of (a) god (or) gods is denied (or indeed affirmed) is based only or primarily on the descriptions and/or attributes ascribed to said deity(s) by believers. This is of course an informal logical fallacy because the existence of and/or nature of any deity(s) does not depend upon and is not affected or created by the perceptions, descriptions or beliefs of those who believe said deity(s) exist. Quite simply, you state a fallacy because those in the "fuckwit fan club" may in fact be interpreting what they see, hear, taste or feel incorrectly and thus, while the deity does in fact exist, their claim of attributes may be partially or completely mistaken.
I refer you to the fable of the blind men and the elephant for an analogy.
My atheism itself certainly isn't a belief, though. It's a privative, denoting the absence of something.
Nonsense.
I simply don't accept a specific class of truth claim with regard to a specific class of entity.
Right. You "don't accept" such truth claims because you have evaluated them and concluded that they are lacking in the degree of proofs that you find necessary to convince you of the truth of the proposition. That's a belief. It's "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof." In your case you are expressing confidence in the proposition that truth claims about the existence of God are false. And since you have no way of subjecting that conclusion to immediate rigorous proof, it constitutes a belief that God does not exist. It is simply not true that you hold "no belief" or that your position on the existence of God is "absent." It's not. It's perfectly obvious from the paragraph immediately preceding the subject sentence that you hold a very firm and certain active and positive belief that God does not exist, and you said it yourself when you wrote, "I'd call it a fact that that entity doesn't exist, based on the ridiculous attributes given him by his fuckwit fan club."
Just because you are uncomfortable with the concept of belief doesn't mean that you don't hold beliefs or that you can evade the obvious fact that you hold textbook definition beliefs about the existence of God.
For most conceptions, I'd describe the situation as non-cognitivist, as it's a rare conception that has been even remotely defined, lat alone sufficiently to draw any conclusions.
Except that you cognate on the issue rather frequently and with great vigor, and you issue undeniable expressions of your beliefs on a regular basis, as you did again above.
Finally, if you're going to be silly enough to commit an argumentum ad lexicum, a particularly special combination of logical fallacies, you should work out what all the words in your cited definition actually mean, to whit:
Um, Mr. Dictionary Man, it's not "to whit", it's "
to wit" as in "to say or to witness (speak)." Pot, kettle, black.
Seth wrote:This is where you are wrong. Disbelief is confidence in the truth of the proposition that deities do not exist, which existence is not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.
Disbelief: "the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true" (ibid)
Unbelief: "the state or quality of not believing; incredulity or skepticism, especially in matters of doctrine or religious faith" (ibid)
I understand this may be too subtle a distinction for you to comprehend, but still...
Note what your cited definition actually says about disbelief, which directly contradicts you. The prefix' dis' is, like 'a', a privative prefix, which means that it denotes absence.
That's not what Merriam-Webster says. The quote is directly from the source and connotes an active decision (refusal) or a functional problem (inability), whereas "unbelief" is the privitave form of "belief."
Privitave
[priv-uh-tiv]
Word Origin
adjective
1.
causing, or tending to cause, deprivation.
2.
consisting in or characterized by the taking away, loss, or lack of something.
3.
Grammar. indicating negation or absence.
noun
4.
Grammar. a privative element, as a- in asymmetric.
5.
something that is deprived.
As for your alleged subtle distinction, what seems entirely lost on you is that the only distinction between those is the words used. Semantically they are exactly equivalent. The both denote not believing.
Wrong. They are two different words with two different meanings and are not semantically exactly equivalent. That much is proven by the fact that the two words are separately defined and have differing attributes, according to the authors of the dictionary.
Still talking through your arse.
Still trying to pettifog your way out of the inevitable fact that your position on the existence of God is a belief, and that you're a person of the Atheist religion, I see.
Fail.
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