Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

First this is not a thread about theist rationalism, its about atheist, and discussing your bible opinions really dont belong here since this thread is geared toward philosophy not your biblical opinions and evangelizing although I cant help but notice that the neoatheists seem more than happy to divert anywhere other than their steadily and increasingly failing arguments for lack of belief and other false distinctions.

Second to believe a contradiction for 'any' reason is insanity, not faith.

So can the rest of us get back to our discussion about neoatheist rationale now?

 

However flews definition is contradictory as explained to you countless times.
The moment someone holding the lacker theory self defines as an atheist it is an expression of their 'conclusion' that 'they believe' no Gods exist, which IS a belief, which now moves the ball to the left of neutral since agnostic holds neither belief.

You cant label yourself an atheist which is the negation of theist, without inferring you do not believe in God, otherwise you would have used agnostic since agnostics hold neither belief and self define as holding neither belief ie same as the neutral.

You cant be 0 and 1 at the same time, and neither you can you be 0 and -1 at the same time which is what flew is trying to accomplish. FLew is effectively labeling 0 a -1, likewise with absence and without.

No part of your example corresponds to atheism.
without a God does not negate theism, from which the word atheism is derived, hence you fail to maintain symmetry as stanford explained and have committed a contextonomy fallacy.

Flew is using the context of the left to apply to the middle and the above graphic proves this is not true since the ball is at 0, not some corresponding negative number which would represent an atheist lean.

Without, absence, and lack do not express atheism in context with a negation of theism, ie as some form of negation of theism, therefore is not compatible to be discussed comparatively with theism as you are demanding.

Because flews definition is not any form of negation to theism, therefore not a valid proposition at all.

Not so, forward and backward are remain negations, just they are not the only 'legitimate' options. We just increase from a single column TT to a 2 column TT.

AGAIN: Absence, Without, Lack.....does not 'reject' anything.

Lack neither rejects/accepts the existence of God or the nonexistence of a God. Its junk logic to claim atheism.

 

So when the bible depicts God calling for child sacrifice or genital mutilation or the slaughter of innocent babies, that's not bad to you, or the bad is excusable to you because it's God commanding it?

And when God himself is written in the bible to be doing things like killing most of the human and animal population with the flood, or killing all the first born sons of egypt (including many babies), etc, behaviors that modern folks outside this religious context would consider bad, you consider it good or you consider it excusable because it is God?

And I ask again, if you heard a command from God, would you blindly and obediently obey no matter what the command was? Would you kill your children if he told you to? Would you poison your neighbours or fly a plane into a building? Or at some point would you say no?

And if you say God would never demand such a thing of you, then why not rewrite the bible to make that consistent and not depict him doing such things or giving such horrible commands to anyone?

Maybe God is the great being you say he is, wants us to be good and kind and moral, etc. And maybe the writers of the parts of the bible who depict him as a monstrous tyrant got it wrong. If so, then why not correct it now and delete those parts but keep the good parts?

 

So you are going to continue to post this
OFF TOPIC **** in this thread despite being POLITELY ASKED by the OP to take it to an appropriate thread??

Bible discussions have not one damn thing to do with this thread, there is absolutely no connection what so ever, except to completely derail it.

Looks like the 'real' trolls just stood up!

 

Desperate for attention are you?

This thread has been off topic for over 200 pages already.

Your OP point was that it is irrational to have faith that Gods don't exist to the same extent as theists have faith that they do. All the self-labeled atheists here agreed with you on that, just disagreeing on what "atheist" means.

Everything since has been you insisting on your preferred terminology, and you railing against fake arguments and claims that nobody here actually made or supported, while you thumped your chest telling yourself how very right you are and how very wrong those horrid "neo-atheists" all are. That Kokopuffery has all been off topic.

You are only upset about off topic discussion now because you aren't the centre of attention. How very sad for you.

 

Posting on this forum has rules apparently you think you are above the rules like everything else?

Yeh yardmeat came into the thread and spent 200 pages dodging his BLUNDER when I busted him!
In my threads I allow most arguments where there is a 'reasonable' connection. Thats why my threads are fun to post in.

FALSE, you are making **** up again to justify getting away with derailing my thread.

Why arent you honest, 'irrationally' disagreeing what atheist means.
Which is precisely why you can 'never' support your claims, they are nonsequitur nonsense.

And you refuse tosupport your claim:

THEY REMAIN UNANSWERED AND WILL NEVER BE ANSWERED BY YOU TO SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS. We all know your posting style. If you did like yardmeat it would be a miracle and might cause me to have to consider being a theist

BTW its a well known fact that trolls never support their claims on topic and in context.

That statement is the result of prejudice and envy.

 

People having different language preferences isn't dishonest.

You are dishonest when you pretend they say something they don't, by equivocating the different meanings even though you know perfectly well what they actually mean by the words. Note how Draper doesn't do that, nor does Flew, nor do your interlocutors here.

Maybe if you used more all caps, more colour text, more bold, more underline, and thumped your chest more people may support the claims you pretend they make... nah probably not.

You usually don't even tell me what claims you are pretending I make, so how am I supposed to support those claims?

You're a funny guy.

Anyway, if your next post isn't coherent, in good faith, and at least marginally interesting, I'll put you back on ignore as the others have.

 

Nah nothing works when trolls are busted.

Thanks for admitting you cant even follow a quote stream one post back, and you really expect readers want to dig through volumes upon volumes of demonstrated ignorance or expect me to want that kind of juvenile behavior in my thread? I think not, the thread will be far more cohesive without anyone who degenerates to that level of nonsense.

sure

Ill save you the trouble, just put me iggy and ****ing be done with it.
No one wants to read a thread where trolls incessantly dodge supporting their claims and when they do answer they post strawmen and put fabricated claims on me of course without using the quote function and you call that "good faith", no thank you.

and please dont become obsessed with me and post by proxy like yradmeat when someone quotes me. Thanks!

If you need me to define any of the words I used in this post feel free to ask, beyond that I expect you to put me on iggy, thank you.

 

Ok. But then you will whine as I talk to others who aren't you, as you did just above.

 

Silly wabbit, twix are for kids, thanks for admitting you have no intention of ignoring me, just more of the same smoke and mirrors from you.

 

How about this.
How about we establish a few facts?

First despite all the spam posts from our walking talking contradiction who is going to ignore me without ignoring me lets start here:

The word Atheism as defined in most dictionaries is equivocal.

Whats does equivocal mean?

1a : subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse an equivocal statement. b : uncertain as an indication or sign equivocal evidence. 2a : of uncertain nature or classification equivocal shapes. b : of uncertain disposition toward a person or thing : undecided an equivocal attitude.

Equivocal Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › equiv...

Because it equivocal its now the job of philosophy to sort it out as that is after all one of their primary functions and reason for existence.

That said, stanford and frankly most philosophy departments agree that atheism is best thought of as the negation of its root word theism.

Agree? Disagree?

 

It only appears to be a contradiction for now. What should I think about your saying that this is not the place for my Bible opinion. And then you make a snarky comment about my opinion. Then you beg my civility as if I had brought my monster truck into your sandbox when I had merely responded to another posters query.

 

Yeh you are in the wrong thread to argue theology and bible history and your opinions about your God.

Theology and bible history and believers opinions about God are NOT what this thread is about ok.

This thread is SECULAR, its about philosophy, logic, and reason in reference to atheism and agnostic.

While we are forced to bring God up to make points, the target of those points all refer to atheism and agnostic, not anyones faith or bliefs on the theist side.

The topic we have been on for several hundred pages is the contents of Antony Flews 'Presumption of Atheism', and agnostic. If you can add something in regard to philosophically proving flew and/or agnostic I am all ears.

If there is something in your bible that contributes to the "agnostic vs !theism" debate then I am also all ears.

Otherwise simply tag whoever and whatever member you want to argue your biblical history with in an appropriate thread and have at it.

Besides I have no interest in bible studies or bible history, and if I did I would not post or argue here. Im sorry if that offends you. I hope you understand.

~OP

 

Why do you think that the bible advises Christians to turn the other cheek and to love their neighbour as themselves but god punishes his enemies and takes out vengeance on them?

 

I think it's an ingroup/outgroup thing. It also says not to enslave your neighbours, but two tribes over is ok.

 

As a kid I was always taught it’s because only god has the ability to know what is in a person’s heart so only he can be a true judge. So that is why it was ok to kill all the men and bring home the women as wives.

 

So you are going to continue to post this
OFF TOPIC **** in this thread despite being POLITELY ASKED by the OP to CEASE AND DESIST and take it to an appropriate thread??


RULE 5 VIOLATION:

TROLLING OR DERAILING A DISCUSSION
If you don't want to discuss the topic, stay out of the thread. Posts that are, in the judgment of moderators or administrators, intended to disrupt a discussion rather than actually contribute to it will be considered trolling.

Bible discussions have not one damn thing to do with this thread, there is absolutely no connection what so ever, except to TROLL and completely derail it.

Looks like the 'real' trolls just stood up!

 

Because God knew they had some justifiable reason that the rest of us can't see?

 

So you are going to continue to post this
OFF TOPIC **** in this thread despite being POLITELY ASKED by the OP to CEASE AND DESIST and take it to an appropriate thread??

RULE 5 VIOLATION:

TROLLING OR DERAILING A DISCUSSION
If you don't want to discuss the topic, stay out of the thread. Posts that are, in the judgment of moderators or administrators, intended to disrupt a discussion rather than actually contribute to it will be considered trolling.

Bible discussions have not one damn thing to do with this thread, there is absolutely no connection what so ever, except to TROLL and completely derail it.

Looks like the 'real' trolls just stood up!

 

So you are going to continue to post this
OFF TOPIC **** in this thread despite being POLITELY ASKED by the OP to CEASE AND DESIST and take it to an appropriate thread??


RULE 5 VIOLATION:

TROLLING OR DERAILING A DISCUSSION
If you don't want to discuss the topic, stay out of the thread. Posts that are, in the judgment of moderators or administrators, intended to disrupt a discussion rather than actually contribute to it will be considered trolling.

Bible discussions have not one damn thing to do with this thread, there is absolutely no connection what so ever, except to TROLL and completely derail it.

Looks like the 'real' trolls just stood up!

 

I don't think I'd want to. The actual truth value of the proposition "God exists" is not what makes one a theist, what makes someone a theist is holding the belief that God exists, regardless of whether "God exists" is actually true.

A belief is a psychological state. If there isn't a psyche believing it, then it isn't really a belief to begin with.

A person can believe that "God exists" is true, but a person could also believe that "the colour of the sky" is blue. The fact that "blue" is a colour rather than a truth value isn't really a problem for the concept of belief.

Why would it be philosophy?

Words existed long before Stanford or Plato or Thales did. There are entire languages which no educated philosophers speak or have ever spoken, yet they have no problem generating definitions.

Shakespeare and Dickens coined many words (some failed to gain traction and are incomprehensible today, others made it into popular usage, and are now accepted parts of English), and they were not philosophers in any useful sense.

Stanford certainly doesn't claim to be declaring definitions generally either, they point out that they're only talking about definitions for a narrow scholarly and philosophical purpose. As a contrast, they mention "political" purposes, so we can be pretty sure they don't mean a context so broad as to cover all of politics (through political philosophy etc.)

It wasn't my sentence, no change took place in my post.

Kokomojojo: 'Therefore koko cannot be classified as an atheist because: Agnostic is the psychological state of lacking the belief that God does not exist.' (source)
Swensson: '"Agnostic is the psychological state of lacking the belief that God does not exist" seems simply incorrect.' (source)​

I didn't drop anything, it's a direct copy/paste.

Truth follows conjunction elimination (if I wear a hat and I wear a coat, then it is true that I wear a hat).
It would however be incorrect to shoehorn that onto definitions (it would not be correct to say "a square is defined as anything that has four sides and all sides being the same length, so a square is defined as anything having four sides").

"A square has four sides" is true, but it is not the definition of a square. It is true that every square has four sides, but it is not sufficient to prove that a shape has four sides to call it a square.
Similarly, an agnostic has the psychological state of lacking the belief that God does not exist, but it is not the definition of an agnostic, noting that someone lacks the belief that God does not exist is not sufficient to show that someone is an agnostic.

We went down this path, and then you chickened out. We may as well skip to the bit you chickened out on last turn around, instead of going in another loop.

Show me how you construct your conjunction. What are the conjuncts, and what is the resulting conjunction? Hint, you won't be able to make a conjunction that is true without the conjuncts being true.

Yeah, I'm not claiming agnostics do not exist. I don't see why any syllogism I have written would mean agnostics don't exist.

Sure, it's the same one I have given over and over.

In order to be an atheist in Flew's definition, you need to be a person who lacks belief that God exists. A rock is not a person, so does not fulfil the definition of an atheist.

A new-born baby is a person, and doesn't have any beliefs, so no belief that God exists, and therefore fulfils Flew's definition of an atheist. No problem.

Swensson: "people who actively believe there is no God" (source)
Kokomojojo: "they most likely are agnostic" (source)​

In what sense would a person who actively believes there is no God be agnostic?

I don't see that this resolves the question. They can prefer one definition all they want (and I'm sure they do), they still have not made any claim that other people can't use other definitions. I prefer apples to oranges, and I can give a handful of reasons why one might do so, but I don't mean to imply that oranges are outlawed.

Their conclusions have been that Flew's definition is legitimate, but that they prefer people using another, and I don't particularly mind their reasoning or conclusion. The idea that Flew is incorrect or illogical is neither part of their reasoning nor their conclusions, nor has it been successfully argued by you.

Well, it causes you to draw unreasonable conclusions. The conclusions that Flew or Jolly penguin or I draw don't run into the problems yours do.

Haven't seen any distinction between usage, word or definition for our purposes. The Stanford article argues the definition is legitimate, and that's more than enough for us.

I don't think I have stated that. The Stanford article only says that it is legitimate, and that it derives its legitimacy from the usage. Neither the Stanford article or I have claimed that "any other reason" is needed.

Sure, I'm just saying that you can't claim Stanford's authority for things the authors didn't write. I'm happy for you to try to build a logic on top of what the Stanford article has said, but if something is neither found in the article, then you're back to having to show your workings, and so far, there are jumps in your logic that seem incorrect to me.

Not sure what you mean. I understand that the Stanford authors prefer one definition, but I see no reason to infer that they say other definitions are disallowed.

Yeah, so you're back on square one of not having shown anything.

[To be continued]

 

[continuing]

Source?

Because according to Flew's definition, describing yourself as a atheist only expresses that they are not a theist. In what you call "lacker theory", there is no link between atheism and the act of believing that no Gods exist.

The assertion that atheism is the conclusion that God exists is a Kokomojojo addition, it is not present in Flew's logic. All of the logical errors you manage to derive after that are errors due to your additions, not due to Flew.

I agree that drawing the conclusion that no Gods exist would be a belief, and would indeed "move the ball to the left". Of course, on Flew's definition, that has nothing to do with atheism though, since on that definition, an atheist is someone who is simply not a theist.

You have indeed identified lots of logical mistakes that one can make, but so far, you have only linked them to statements that Flew's atheists don't generally make.

Sure you can. In Flew's definition, all that is required is that you are someone who is not a theist.

Source?

In most practical discussions, the main contention is between those who have been convinced by a theist claim and everyone else. If someone tries to put "God hates ****" in school books, the main argument against it is "you haven't been able to show that God exists and holds these views", and that position can be held by both agnostics and strong atheists. There are many occasions where you would want to refer to atheists in Flew's sense, when referring to agnostics would miss the point.

Nope, Flew is labelling 0 as "something other than a 1", and also labelling -1 as "something other than a 1", both of which are correct.

Sounds like you've set up an ambiguous example again then.

Negations do not allow for middle grounds (Law of Excluded Middle), the existence of agnostics show that theists and atheists in your understanding are not proper negations.

In Flew's understanding though, the Law of the Excluded Middle holds, and atheists and theists are proper negations of each other.

Yep. The Stanford article never claims that is disallowed or illogical though, they just say it is a reason for preferring it, which is not enough to be a problem for Flew.

I've asked you to spell this out before, but you tend to chicken out on that.

Nope, Flew doesn't say anything about "the left" in your example. He only says that the negation of being on the right is to be not on the right. All the talk about "the left" in your example is you applying an incorrect context.

Of course, if you had shown how you set up your ball example (which concept corresponds to which parts of the picture), this would have been clear already.

Source? By definition, the negation of P is true whenever P is false, i.e. it is impossible for two negations to be simultaneously false (Law of Excluded Middle).

What makes you think the two things are negations when they do not follow the definition of negations, nor follow the logical laws that apply to negations?

I agree with what I think you're trying to say, but I disagree with what you're managing to say.

I'd say the word as defined in most dictionaries is polysemous, it has multiple related meanings.

To me, equivocal sounds like it happens inside a context.

For instance, the word "orange" has two meanings, and is therefore polysemous. However, in practice, context often makes it clear which interpretation is intended, so in some sense, you're never actually subject to both interpretations. Not because two interpretations don't exist, but because you'd never confuse them. There is little room for misleading or confusion.

In particular, the fallacy of equivocation is using definitions interchangeably. If as in the orange example, it is almost always clear which definition you're talking about, no equivocation occurs.

So, I think I know what you're getting at. I'd say polysemous, but I'm not married to it, unless you intend to daisy chain on some other logic that I don't think is applicable.

Disagree. Why would this fall on philosophy?

If I have used "orange" in an ambiguous manner, the solution is not to email Stanford University and ask them to sort it out, the solution is for me to say "oh, I meant orange the fruit", and perhaps "I'll try to be more clear in the future".

You keep saying it is philosophy's job, but I have yet to see you give a good reason, or really any at all.

 

seriously?

Philosophy of language investigates the nature of human language, its origins and use, the relationship between meaning and truth, and how language relates to human thought and understanding, as well as to reality itself.Jun 16, 2022

Philosophy of Language - Research Guides
https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu › c.php


If not philosophy who?

Either way its good to at least see an on topic post after drowning in neoatheist spam.

 

Ok if someone walks up to me and says they are a "theist", I immediately know they are not anything else. They believe in the supernatural typically some G/god.

If someone walks up to me and says they are an "atheist" it does not tell me they are not a theist. I could assume that they have no theist beliefs but we both know better, thats not necessarily the case, as proven by the bird who believes in the supernatural things like ghosts, spirits etc, which is all part of the divine domain of theism.

Sure its polysemous, does not change the fact it is also equivocal by design in the dictionary definitions since its not possible to conclude which variant, one variant (your favorite) does not assure me they have no level of theism.

If context is required and I have to ask what the hell they mean by that, then the word is clearly equivocal. Theist tells me one thing, no context investigation is required to fully understand what their position is.

 

elementary first order logic.

If left is true then neutral is false
If left is true then right is false

If neutral is true then left is false
If neutral is true then right is false

If right is true then left is false
If right true is true then neutral is false

very simple first order logic actually
No contradiction, the logic and the observed condition in reality match
No middle violation between any of the 3 conditions.
Its not possible to rationally have any of the 2 conditions at the same time.

we can look at the rest later.

Thanks for posting on topic and so far no strawmen