Reviewing Atheist 'Lack Belief' in Deities theory. <<MOD WARNING ISSUED>>

Atheism is lack of belief, that is it, you can deduce nothing else from it.

 

both sides of the definition fail logic, so you must just like the way it sounds I supposed.

 

you misapplied demorgans.


I said: agnostic is ¬(T v A)
which is ¬T ^ ¬A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan's_laws

 

As usual you dodge the point, your persist in barking at the moon.

 

sorry, logically proving lackers wrong on both sides of the definition is not classified as dodging a point, its refuting and demolishing the point and your desperation is glowing in brightly in broad daylight.

 

?

The part that you quoted I didn't use deMorgan's laws at all. First I substitute ¬T for A, then I use complementation.

 

This is complete nonsense. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs all believe in one God, but have very different religions. And as I previously pointed out, many people who believe in God have no religion at all. And as koko pointed out, Jains and Buddhists don't believe in God but do have a religion. The two things are not equivalent in any way.

 

That makes no sense. If you acknowledge that agnostics have a claim that is independent of and separate from that of atheists, then you must acknowledge there are three camps, atheist, theist, and agnostic, whether you hold agnosticism to be irrational or not. A Christian can hold young earth creationists to be irrational, but he wouldn't deny their existence based on that belief.

 

then what complemented/substituted one but not the other? seriously?

 

Sure, you could do it either way around:

"¬T → A
T → ¬A"

Or, as we can write it A = ¬T.

"agnostic is ¬(T v A)"

agnostic = ¬(T v A)
agnostic = ¬(¬A v A)

The ¬ is the complement operator (the boolean algebra version of "not"). We find in [source] the following line (as complementation 2):

x v ¬x = 1

We apply that to the previous line
agnostic = ¬(A v ¬A)
agnostic = ¬(1)
agnostic = 0

It's a standard variable substitution. As long as they are the same, it does not matter which ones you substitute.

 

Your definition includes people who don't want to be included in your definition. So my redefinition of terms is equal in significance to yours. You fail to explain why if my definition is valid it should be any less binding than the one you want to use. You just don't want to use it. That's not an argument, that's just stubbornness.

You also have not responded to my suggestion that if atheism is not a truth proposition but merely a state of mind that we can also redefine theism as "holding a belief in God," and agnosticism as "holding a belief that God cannot be proven or disproven", and therefore all three positions are correct.

 

Well, this is it in a nutshell, isn't it? They redefine one term but not the other, so they no longer match up as A and not A.

 

you cant do that for that problem prior to demorgans, or at least expanding it.

I am not sure what you are trying to prove?

without working my way through the whole thing that would be
agnostic = ¬(1)
= ¬A v ¬¬A
= ¬A v A
= A

which is a fail.

Its a fail because if you changed it up and used a T then it would be =T

 

and that is what they have been doing all along and I have been bitching about, they drop the ^ for the agnostic condition with the belief it only applies to one side.

 

Reducing "¬(A v ¬A)" to 0 only shows that whether atheism or theism is true, agnosticism will always be false. You could reverse the connection from "or" to "and" and get the reverse result, that agnosticism will always be true, whether theism or atheism is correct. I don't think that provides any enlightenment. Unless you're willing to say that atheism can have a truth value, in which case it can be clearly differentiated from agnosticism, which you have shown must always be false.

 

I would agree. That post wasn't me showing what I believe, it was me showing what Kokomojojo's setup would lead to. I would say that his setup is incorrect, and that a correct one will resolve all of these issues.

 

All I'm trying to prove right now is that the setup that you have provided leads to weird conclusions, which you might not agree with. For instance that agnostics don't exist (or that they are uniformly wrong).

If you set it up using the b(A) notation, none of those issues appear.

Your algebra here is also incorrect. You say

= ¬A v A
= A

but that's not true.

 

The fact that some might not want to be included is neither here nor there. The same is true for, for instance the word "idiot". Nobody wants to be called an idiot, that doesn't mean that the definition changes to exclude them.

This is where the orange example comes in. You're quite allowed to use any definition you want, but you can't change a definition as you're going.

It's reasonable to talk about oranges as fruits. It is reasonable to talk about oranges as shades of colours. Either definition is perfectly fine.

It is however not reasonable to look at an argument made with one definition, and then scrutinise it using another definition (like using the argument "no paint is tasty" against the argument "oranges are tasty" when referring to fruit).

In this case, Kokomojojo addressed arguments in which "atheism" was explicitly defined according to the definitions I have suggested, but his arguments and criticisms were based on the other definition.

Not sure exactly where you're going with this. In principle yes, when you're putting together your own argument, you can define things however you want (although it is highly recommend that you explicitly state any non-standard definitions).

For instance, "Raspberries are yellow, if I by raspberries mean bananas" is a correct statement (assuming that bananas are indeed yellow). It's slightly confusing, but not incorrect. We redefined "raspberries" to mean bananas.

As for the exact wording here, are you saying that you want to redefine theism to be the fact that you believe it, rather than the belief which you believe? I mean, you barely need to redefine it if all you want to do is say "I believe in god". For a theist, "I believe in god" is true, regardless of whether god actually exists. It is a statement about what that person believes, not about what actually exists. Exactly how it works depends a bit on the exact wording of the definition, but if you're consistent, the conclusions should remain correct.

 

agnostic is set up to be a contradiction so it does not make sense what you are trying to prove as you can see its set up to be a contradiction at a first glance because it is neither theist nor atheist.

 

How so? I don't see a contradiction in agnosticism. If it was, it would be incorrect or hypocritical to be an agnostic, and I don't think that's true.

If you set it up using b(A), then there are two beliefs, one that god exists and one that he does not, and agnostics simply lack both. Given that b() is not a logic operator, A and ¬A being complements does not mean that b(A) and b(¬A) need to be complements.

Agnosticism only becomes a contradiction if blur the lines between what people believe and what is actually true. God must either exist or not exist, so either the person saying "I believe there is a god" or the guy saying "I believe there is no god" will believe the correct thing, but that's not to say that agnostics are unreasonable in believing neither.

 

You ignored the first negation, in the very beginning and everything beyond that point is garbage.

yes that theists lack belief in the nonexistence of God.

It is a direct counter argument to your definition, and has the same effect of gobbling up everything that is not a declared atheist, 100% contradiction to yours, unless of course you think only yours is acceptable.

No the fruit is wrong, only the color is correct the result is a totally false description.

That one is ridiculous, while I have heard some great proofs on both sides neither can prove their side as a fact, and that is a fact. You cant 'reasonably' presume an incontrovertible answer exists, you can only deal with what is actually available and knowing if God does not exist or does exist as an irrefutable fact is nonsense on its face as is forcing everyone to accept it as a proper basis for logical discourse.

 

the whole idea behind logic is what the logic implies, the b is irrelevant since theist inherently implies belief and atheist inherently implies disbelief, adding b just muddies the water and is not a proper setup for what you are attempting to do with it.

 

I am an atheist, I lack belief.

 

What I stated is obvious, what you choose to respond with is not my problem.

An agnostic that holds any belief or position specifically regarding the actual existence of deities is either a theist or an atheist.

Any atheist or theist that makes any claim regarding knowledge of the existence of deities is an agnostic hence...

An agnostic atheist does not know if it is possible to demonstrate existence but, lacks belief.
An agnostic theist does not know if it is possible to demonstrate existence but, believes anyway (commonly known as faith).

Agnosticism and atheism/theism do not address the same question, agnosticism is NOT a middle ground upon which to attempt to hold a moral high ground, this is a well understood concept. That said, I could make an argument that theism/agnosticism are two sides of the same philosophical coin when they become fundamentalist in nature and fall back on ignorance as an argument.

I have observed fundamentalist 'New Agnostics' or 'alt-Agnostics' a couple of times in this forum and others and it is becoming a virulent strain of ignorance.

 

If others don't get to choose your definition, you don't get to choose other people's definitions. You have to maintain logical consistency here. You refuse to use the definition of atheist that atheists, theists, and agnostics have used for centuries, insisting on your own modern reinterpretation, but then you disallow agnostics to have their own definition, which would exclude atheists. So yes, the fact that some don't want to be included in your definition is most definitely here.

You keep coming back to this, but it still makes no sense. I have not changed my definition of atheist in 80 something pages, and I haven't tried to obscure the meaning of atheist by including people who aren't atheists, that's what you are doing by trying to rope in agnostics under the same umbrella.

I showed back on page whatever that your explicitly defined atheism means exactly the same as the other definition. There is no difference between the two definitions. To lack belief in X is to believe NOT X. An atheist still denies the existence of God, whether he's willing to admit it or not.

I'm suggesting that by redefining atheism such that it contains no truth value but merely indicates a state of mind that theism and agnosticism can be redefined in exactly the same way so that theists and agnostics no longer bear any burden of proof, either. Such a situation is of course ridiculous, because then no side is claiming to know the truth.

No, I don't want to redefine it that way, but if you're going to insist on the redefinition of atheism to have no truth value, then you should redefine theism in the same way so that A and not A remain valid. You're redefining atheism as "I don't believe in God" rather than "God does not exist," so why not redefine theism as "I believe in God" rather than "God exists"? Then neither side has a truth value and both sides can say they bear no burden of proof.

I tend to take other people's arguments to their ridiculous conclusions to try to point out their ridiculousness, but what too often happens is people agree with the ridiculous conclusions rather than reject their own argument.