'Splain this one Atheists...

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

So, you're "agnostic," which is a belief.

Betraying your ignorance, here. It is possible to say that a strong form of atheism, which asserts that there is definitely no god, could be regarded as a form of belief, although of a very different kind than a belief in a supernatural being.

Indeed. And religion does not require belief in a supernatural being, that's my point.

However, the majority of posters here would simply assert that they have no belief that a god exists, without committing themselves to a definite assertion of its absence, mainly because it is not a provable contention.

What they "assert" when challenged and what their routine contributions on the subject of religion and theism are mostly two entirely different things. As I've said before, it is commonplace mendacity for Atheists to deny that they have beliefs on the subject of religion or theism. They do it because if they do not, their statements about being pious "no belief" atheists are easily refuted, as I routinely do even when they deny that they have very firm and highly predictable religious beliefs about the existence of god(s) and the subjects of theism and religion in general.

This position, which can be loosely called agnosticism, cannot be logically regarded as a belief in any sense of the word;

Yes, it can.

literally, it is the absence of a belief.

That's not what "agnosticism" means nor is it what "atheist" actually means in practice, as opposed to semantic exactitude.

It is compatible with living one's life on the working assumption that there is no god,

Which does not lead to the conclusion that one does not have beliefs about god(s) that one holds dear and follows devotedly as a matter of conscience or ethics.

certainly not one of the personal gods of most religions, but it is not a belief in anything.

In theory, no, but in practice it's a dodge used by people who have very firm and usually loudly announced positions and opinions (beliefs) on the subjects of god(s), theism and religion.

Not being a stamp collector is not an example of a hobby.

Not being a stamp collector because one believes that collecting stamps is a waste of time is, however, a belief. Practiced devotedly as a matter of ethics or conscience, it can also be a religion.

I think your problem stems with conflating "belief" with "adopting a philosophical stance". The two are not synonymous.

No, I'm pointing out that when one adopts a philosophical stance and then acts like it's a religious belief, it becomes a religion.

[Seth]

But there are tenets of Atheism. One of them is "God does not exist."

The vast majority of atheists are agnostic about God's existence. I am one of them. When asked to respond to that you call us liars. Thanks.

So, you're "agnostic," which is a belief. Beliefs turn into religion under certain circumstances, as I've shown with the pertinent definitions.

Agnosticism is no more a belief than not collecting stamps is a hobby, and especially not so when one holds that one lacks a belief only for as long as no convincing evidence for accepting a belief has surfaced yet.

Utter nonsense. Agnosticism is the belief that we can never know for certain whether or not God exists. It's a belief because it is not subject to immediate rigorous proofs. Held strongly enough and practiced as a matter of ethics or conscience, agnosticism can be a religious belief just like any other.

You don't speak for the "vast majority" of atheists either, you speak for yourself and only yourself.

And on whose behalf do you speak when you call the vast majority of atheists liars? Anyway, let me rephrase then: The vast majority of people I have personally encountered or whose opinions I have read profess to withhold a belief in the existence of a god thingie until they are convinced otherwise.

What the profess when challenged and what they demonstrate through their writings, speech and actions are most often two entirely different things, one of them being obvious and identifiable religious practice.

All explicit atheists hold beliefs about theistic claims and many of them, and every single one I've ever met or corresponded with, hold a very specific set of beliefs and they hold those beliefs quite firmly and with conviction and as a matter of conscience or ethics, which is the definition of a religious belief.

Going by your definition of 'explicit atheist', I am one of them. My parents were practicing Catholics, and they raised me as such. The last three and a bit years of my secondary education was administered by a Catholic school, daily religious indoctrination and all. Somewhere along that line I grew a bit indifferent to theism and became a deist. That made sense to me. Though Catholic dogma and Catholic rituals became to me nothing more than some tribalistic mumbo jumbo gone global, there must be some ultimate cause for the existence of life, the universe and everything, right? Right. So what to make of that? What can we say about the ultimate cause apart from regarding it as not having been caused itself and being that ultimate cause of for the existence of life, the universe and everything? How could we know if that creator's motivation was sadistic, benevolent or indifferent in regard to its creation? To this day I have not discovered even a hint of how we could find out. So, yeah, as far as I am concerned an ultimate, uncaused cause may well exist, but at this stage we have no way of figuring out what, if anything, that cause wants us to do and not do.

In summary, my belief in a personal god, one who observes me in particular among seven billion people on a mote in the dust that orbits one star among the approximately 7×1022 other stars we have calculated to exist in the bit of the universe we are aware of, and will punish me for my infractions and guide me via ten laws Moses has supposedly downloaded from the cloud, has vanished. I am similarly sceptical about all other beliefs concerning a personal, interfering and guiding God. All that remains is the possibility that some unfathomable creator exists, but because I can't really fathom its intentions, the existence of such an entity becomes a matter without consequence to the way I conduct myself.

And your beliefs, put into practice as a matter of ethics or conscience, equal religion.

Excuse me for going off at a tangent now: I attempt to live by the adage, somewhat inadequately I must admit, to "do to others what you wish others to do to you" and its inverse "don't do to others what you don't wish others to do to you". It sounds rather biblical in our societies, but the adage is common all over the planet. It is also not even religious in origin unless one believes in an interfering god in the first place, and if there is no such god it can only be the product of this human insight: "Behavior tends to be reciprocal. Unless I treat others as I wish to be treated myself, I cannot even hope to have a pleasant life." That is where morals come from. They are of human construction and ultimately motivated by selfishness. As long as we are selfish we will try to follow that supposedly religious adage.

And there's another admission of a set of beliefs/practices that amount to participation in religious activity.

[Ian]

By golly you're dumb.

[surreptitious57]

And your beliefs put into practice as a matter of ethics or conscience equal religion

Every thing I hold to be true has either evidence or proof to validate that truth
There is nothing that I hold to be true which has neither of these requirements
And so because I actually have no beliefs then I can not put them into practice

[Forty Two]

Every single person I have ever met or encountered on the Internet who claims to be an atheist is in demonstrable fact
religious Atheist with a firm and predictable dogmatic set of beliefs and practices with respect to their chosen religion

A religious atheist by your definition would be a gnostic atheist who is absolutely convinced that God does not exist
I however am an agnostic atheist because while I do not think he exists I can not prove it. So I have to allow for the
possibility that he might. Also I have no dogmatic set of beliefs or practices pertaining to my atheism because none
are required. For me it is just a non belief in the existence of God and nothing else. Furthermore my atheism is just
one aspect of my worldview. It is not the whole worldview as such and not even the most important part of it either

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

[Forty Two]

Great article that somewhat bears on this recurring conversation -- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvo ... solipsism/

[Seth]

By golly you're dumb.

Talking to yourself is a sign of mental illness.

[Seth]

And your beliefs put into practice as a matter of ethics or conscience equal religion

Every thing I hold to be true has either evidence or proof to validate that truth

So what? Your belief is that it has evidence or proof to validate that truth. Just because what you "hold to be true" happens to be true doesn't mean you don't hold a belief. Belief is not about the truth or falsity of the thing believed, it's about YOUR placing confidence in the truth or existence of the proposition even though you cannot subject it to immediate rigorous proofs. Now, maybe somebody, somewhere can do so...like some scientist at CERN being able to subject the belief that quarks exist to immediate rigorous proofs, but your belief in quarks is a belief because you are depending on the word of scientists who purport to have made such observations to be telling the truth, which unfortunately scientists do not always actually do.

Therefore, you hold beliefs galore about nearly everything. Gravity, light, sound, air...all of those may be true knowledge on your part, but anything you believe because someone else told you so, no matter who that might be, is a belief and nothing more.

There is nothing that I hold to be true which has neither of these requirements

So, you don't believe in love?

And so because I actually have no beliefs then I can not put them into practice

Yeah, sure.

[Ian]

By golly you're dumb.

Talking to yourself is a sign of mental illness.

[rainbow]

Every single person I have ever met or encountered on the Internet who claims to be an atheist is in demonstrable fact
religious Atheist with a firm and predictable dogmatic set of beliefs and practices with respect to their chosen religion

A religious atheist by your definition would be a gnostic atheist who is absolutely convinced that God does not exist
I however am an agnostic atheist because while I do not think he exists I can not prove it. So I have to allow for the
possibility that he might.

That means you are not a True Atheist.

Therefore the possibility exists that stamps might collect themselves.

[Sean Hayden]

-meh, I think it's silly to pretend you can't demonstrate gods don't exist. For all gods but ifowiejofjoajodifioaisd it's trivial, and as for aiodfjoaisdjfoijfio who cares, it's just a sometimes interesting possibility.

[cronus]

You can't rule out the existence of a particular God but you can minimise the risk of a particular God by killing all those who believe in it...

[surreptitious57]

Everything I hold to be true has either evidence or proof to validate that truth

Your belief is that it has evidence or proof to validate that truth

No because belief is an article of faith that requires no evidence of proof whatsoever. You appear to be unaware of the
fact scientists have their work peer reviewed and so it is not just a question of blindly accepting whatever they say. But
science is an eternally self correcting discipline and nothing is ever taken to be objectively true anyway. For that is only
true of an axiomatically deductive system such as mathematics and science is inductive not deductive. Trying to equate
so called belief in science with the genuine belief of theists is therefore not a convincing argument up on your part even
though you believe it to be. As you are stretching the definition of belief beyond reason simply to make a semantic point

[Seth]

Everything I hold to be true has either evidence or proof to validate that truth

Your belief is that it has evidence or proof to validate that truth

No because belief is an article of faith that requires no evidence of proof whatsoever.

You're making up definitions to suit your argument again because you want to deny that you hold beliefs. I've posted the relevant definition several times and it does not require "an article of faith that requires no evidence or proof whatsoever." "Faith" may require that, but belief does not. Please refer to the previous definition for further information.

You appear to be unaware of the fact scientists have their work peer reviewed and so it is not just a question of blindly accepting whatever they say.

I'm perfectly aware of it and never suggested anything of the kind. I merely maintain that YOUR belief in THEIR "peer review" is, in fact, a belief. You are demonstrating confidence in the truth of the proposition that peer-reviewed scientific claims are the truth. However, since YOU cannot subject those claims to immediate rigorous proof, you are taking "scientists" at their word, which very obviously is a belief, particularly given the number of times scientists have made peer-reviewed claims that have later been found to be wrong.

But science is an eternally self correcting discipline and nothing is ever taken to be objectively true anyway. For that is only
true of an axiomatically deductive system such as mathematics and science is inductive not deductive.

And that ever-changing, ever-advancing and not-ever-taken-to-be-objectively-true body of scientific induction itself constitutes a belief system with extremely rigorous rules and practices that makes it every bit as much a religion as any other. You just said yourself that nothing is certain in science, and therefore everything is a belief. Ipse dixit quod erat demonstrandum!

Trying to equate so called belief in science with the genuine belief of theists is therefore not a convincing argument up on your part even
though you believe it to be. As you are stretching the definition of belief beyond reason simply to make a semantic point

No, I'm applying textbook dictionary definitions and rigid reason and logic to the religion of science. As for "equating" the two, I have not yet done so except to note that religion is as religion does. I have not so far assigned any logical, rational, ethical or moral value to any belief/practice religious system, I merely note that the facts demonstrate that science (and atheism along with it) is a field of religious belief and practice.

[Seth]

You can't rule out the existence of a particular God but you can minimise the risk of a particular God by killing all those who believe in it...

This falsely presumes that the body of worshipers creates the god and that eliminating the worshipers eliminates the threat from the associated god. But the evidence indicates that it's the other way around: the god comes first, people worship him/her/it, and if someone fucks with the faithful, that god protects his/her/its followers and does some really nasty things to their enemies. You know, smiting and turning to pillars of salt, parting of seas, plagues of locusts, etc..

Therefore, Pascal might have had it right and it might be a good idea not to deliberately piss of ANY god, just in case.