Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

If your name is flew, otherwise you are making **** up again.

"I want the word to be understood......" flews 'opinion' not definition!

Hey I want this 100 dollar bill to be understood as a million!

 

It is his preferred definition. And it isn't used by only him. Its used by many people.

You prefer a different definition. We get it. Get over it already.

 

its not a definition, its a political movement to increase the atheist count by subverting the well established definition of agnostic.

You are part of an atheist political movement nothing more, so of course you have a politicized opinion as your definition.

Which of course is why you cant logically defend it
.

 

Hahaha ok. So this is about numbers to you, and you want to declare that atheists are rare, even as the number of people who don't believe in Gods increases.

In that case, why don't you define atheist even more narrowly. Define it narrowly enough and you could even eliminate everyone from meeting the definition, and declare that atheists do not exist.

I have stated multiple times that I am fine with any definition, so long as the speaker is clearly defining the terms used.

Definitions are semantics, not logic. Words mean whatever people use and understand them to mean. That's how language works.

 

Im not a neoatheist you and swensson are, its your political movement not mine, which is why you cant logically defend it.

thats a crazy interpretation, I never said or implied any such thing.

depends where you go

and be a fool like flews neoatheists that define it so broadly it includes rocks, dirt, trees
um no thanks!

I quoted both the definition and usage, stop projecting your personal issues on to me please

No they arent, source?

No they dont, there are plenty of nutcases out there with wacky definitions that cannot be logically defended. we see it in the courts all the time.

No its not, but that does explain why you and swensson are havinv such difficulty with such simple concepts.

 

its either true or false, if not accepted as true the only other option you have is to accept it as false, agnostic meets the true/false requirement and is therefore bonafide, lack of belief is not a negation to belief, and does not meet the true false logical requirement. sorry

be·lief
noun: belief
1.
an acceptance that a statement is true

I have already covered that in a previous lesson you most likely slept through ;p



easy peasy!

of course both atheists and theists have claim to any middle ground with that wacky convention.

 

in that case under my counter definition its not a theist position either!

So then you admit the british dictionary assigning flews opinion to atheism is wrong?

a·the·ism

noun: atheism
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

 

I see that the Church of No God is still being dishonest about their religious belief...

 

It is either true or not true. You either believe or you don't believe. Even if you define believe as "acceptance it is true", that makes the negation "not acceptance it is true", not "refusal". You can't see the difference?

Of course it isn't the theist position that "God does not exist". Do you think anybody here has said otherwise?

So now you quote another dictionary definition that explicitly conflicts with your demand that atheists must "disbelieve". This definition perfectly matches Swensson's table, not yours. It includes both the atheist that disbelieves as well as the atheist that merely lacks belief.

 

This is projection. I never said I am a "neo-atheist". I never demanded any particular definition of any particular word be used. It is you who is making such demands, so it is you who is pushing an agenda. It is also you who has claimed to have proved something, though you have not.

I have not once in this thread claimed to have proved anything, and my only point made here is that you are failing to communicate (or are trolling) and that you keep contradicting yourself.

 

Language shifts and evolves as people use words in different ways. A given word can have many different definitions, as people use them to mean different things. This is not "logic". "Logically defending" words makes no sense.

Using the word "bow" to mean the act of leaning forward is no more or less logical than using the word "bow" to mean a weapon that shoots arrows. And neither is more logical than using the word "bow" to mean a dance you just invented.

Dictionaries are not authorities. They are descriptive of how language is used. They have no power over how language must be used.

So long as the speaker is clearly understood, by clearly defining her terms, she can use any vocalization to mean whatever she wants it to mean and be perfectly logical in doing so.

 

Every word exists because a person started using it. Every shift in meaning, like "thou", "awful", exists because one person started using it, and others tagged along.

Of course, I still maintain that there "atheist" and "agnostic" have different (albeit overlapping) meanings.

Nah, we're just not applying it willy nilly when there is no justification to apply it.

I would say it's not a theist position under either yours or the dictionary definitions.

No, that still seems fully consistent with how I use it.
Believe A = have the belief A.

Atheism = not believe A = not have the belief A = lack the belief A. ≠ belief that not(A)

I agree that it is either true or false, but I do not agree that your only options are to accept it as true or accept it as false. You can also refrain from accepting either position (as one for instance would if one was unsure).

To "not accept it as true" means that someone is outside of the "accept it as true" box, it does not tell us whether you're in the "accept the it as false" box or in the "accept neither position" box.

 

As I have mentioned before, I disagree with your use of disbelief/disbelieve/disbelieving etc., since you use it as a equivocation between !X and Y. I have no particular interest in whether you use it as noun or verb, so far. To call it "my semantic" when in fact I've consistently criticised it doesn't feel right.

 

This is where a lot of people trip up, and I'm guessing Koko is tripping up here too, but he's not very coherent so it is difficult to tell.

 

nonsense, there is no neither box.

You agreed to:

if A then A, (theist)
if A' then A',(atheist)

You agreed to:

If A' and B', (agnostic)

yet you persist in blaming me for precisely what you are struggling to do and I am the cop and wont let you get away with it:

There is no neither box, there is true and false, if something is not true then its false, that is the most fundamental of all proofs, sorry but thats logic, and trust me, you nor the bird are brite enough to rewrite the rules of logic.

For whatever reason you are stuck in a self contradicting loop.

Nope, he is pretending the definition of agnostic should be atheist via the lacker theory and frankly failing miserably. Neither one of you can cite any academic reference on the planet that agrees with him, accept fellow atheists with the same objectives.

 

I'm not sensing any "objectives" or "agenda" from anyone who has posted in this long thread but yourself. In the past few pages we've just been trying to get you to be coherent and logically consistent. You choose to cite a definition from a dictionary and then immediately add notation to change what it says, etc.

And you define words thinking that is you making some sort of grand point, when all it is, is you defining words. You could have simply stated what you mean by a term, admitted others may mean something else by the term, and carried on to make an actual point that could be discussed. But instead you spin in circles of incoherency declaring others to be "wrong".

 

Its exceedingly clear, you nor swensson, nor cosmos has a clue these are logical proofs:

feel free to jump on falstad since you cant fake it there, and take your best shot at proving swenssons nonsense. Otherwise you are simply blowing hot air around. My version IS in falstad (swenssons idea) and my version is flawless and unassailable.

good luck Mr Phelps.

 

Sure there is, it's agnostics. Reality/logic doesn't demand that you must accept either proposition, it is possible to be undecided/unconvinced.

There one box for "accept something as true", there is another box for "accept something as false", and there is a box for being unconvinced, "neither accepting that it is true or that it is false". Being an atheist, "not accept something as true", means that you are outside the first box, without a demand of which of the other boxes you're in.

I agree that if something is not true, then it is false (for instance, God must either exist or not exist). However, it is possible to neither accept something as true, nor accept the thing as false, since it is possible to be undecided (accept neither).

In this case, I was very clear that the boxes I'm talking about is about whether you accept something as true, not about whether God actually exists, so there is a "neither" box (this happens to be the box that agnostics go on).

 

Weird thing here is that Koko has stated exactly this himself. But then also stated that if you don't believe then you must disbelieve. When I tried to clarify this with him, he spoke in circles, alternating between meanings of "disbelieve".

 

thats not a sensory thing, I am proving a point if thats ok with you?

You have either true or false to chose from for each input.

Those are results not boxes

good glad to hear that!

the result of 0,0 = agnostic, I agree. see the table above

not true, you are conflating my actual usage with your interpretation, two entirely different things.

 

It would be lovely if you actually made some kind of point, aside from just contradicting yourself over and over and insisting on your preferred definitions of words.

Sadly, that's not the case.

 

Some things are unknown to us (and choosing true/false is not required). However, our beliefs are known to us, so for each belief (which are our inputs in the table), we do have to pick true or false (that's not whether the actual statement "God exists" is true, but whether "I believe God exists" is true).

Depends on what questions you are asking. When deciding whether someone is an atheist, it seems to me the only real result is "true" or "false". Results like "agnostic" don't seem to be direct answers to the question of whether someone is an atheist.

As you can see here, you're violating the Law of the excluded middle:

In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true.​

The propositions "believe in god" and "not believe in god" are negations (so the LEM demands that one of them is true), yet in your set up, for an agnostic, neither is true. The solution here is of course that "Not believe in God" is not a valid rephrasing of "Believe God does not exist" (i.e. you are incorrect to write them in the same column).

For instance, "a rock believes God exists" is false (since rocks are unable to have any beliefs), so "a rock does not believe God exists" must be true (due to LEM). Of course, "a rock believes that God does not exist" is of course also false, since that too would be a belief. Therefore, "not believe God exist" and "believe God does not exist" cannot be the same thing.

If we ignore the incorrect inclusion of "not believe in God", your table does contain the one piece of information that is required by definition to be an atheist:

(obviously, all the entries in the same cell mean the same thing, I just marked the ones that most immediately reflected the wording in the definition).

 

Of course it is, agnostics directly answer yes/no, tru,false to the same questions atheists and theists are asked, cant get any more direct than that.

Yes, if not the synonym then the antonym is true.

Oh? Well do tell us how you think a truth table should be constructed then? maybe's and sorta's, but not really, only on sunday if the sun is shining?

Yes just like believe,disbelieve||yes,no||accept,reject where a 0 is correctly interpreted as 'rejection of the premise' in this case the premise listed in the 'b' column, which incidentally you agreed on several occasions is correct. (agnostic) ....and that is is not a LEM violation to do so. I also agree it is not a violation to have 0,0 to reject both premises.

Its the same synonym/antonym combination written every way you moved and continue to move the goal posts of course which produces the same result every time.

Not by any means a LEM violation, and again if you claim otherwise you are simply playing word games to cause confusion instead of actually analyzing for context.

A theist does 'believe in God'.
An atheist does 'not believe in God'.
Agnostic rejects both premises

!accept and reject are precisely like the rest, synonyms and antonyms, if you do not accept the premise then you [have] reject[ed] the premise. (and vice versa)

sorry that just reality of how synonyms and antonyms work.

Besides, you already admitted your premise is a LEM violation.

...and you are trying to sell your LEM violation as a valid premise.

The TT's have proven both the lacker theory and agnostic-atheist to be invalid premises.

 

Which means anyone who is not a theist does not "believe in God". Somehow this is different from "not believe in God" to you? If not then you have agnostic violating the rule you state immediately after, that:

The only way out of that is as Swensson says, that you can be undecided and admit you dont know. In other words, the questions have to be "believe" and "believe against" rather than "believe" and "not believe".

You stated Agnostics don't believe. They therefore do "not believe". But they don't believe against. They don't believe there is no God.

You can then define "atheist" as your dictionary without your added notation did, simply anyone who does not believe, which thereby includes the above definition of agnostic. Or you can define "atheist" as that plus having to "believe there is no God", which you keep insisting on, which would separate atheist from agnostic.

Either is fine so long as you are clear about the definition being used and don't keep contradicting yourself or change a stated definition with notion while pretending you changed nothing.

And all of the above is the defining of words. We have yet to see you make any argument beyond that.

 

Except someone who also rejects disbelief in God.

false "do not know" is nonresponsive to a question referencing belief.
Agnostics that do not know reject both belief and !belief premises, they neither believe nor disbelieve (0,0), including by any semantic variant. swensson agreed to 0,0 many times. That is a direct and responsive answer that is logically sound. I know the popular 'do not know' to answer a belief questions is a fad that was started by people with limited understanding of grammar and logic.