Ask your difficult questions of an Atheist.

Why should religious people get too deeply into name calling and labeling ? Why not just accept the fact that some just don’t get it. Stop metaphorically beating at the front door and leaving us pamphlets of their one true God.

 

You need to study Philosophy at the University level to understand what he said.

Defining Atheism and the Burden of Proof

• Shoaib Ahmed Malik
• • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819118000074
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2018

Abstract

In this paper I demonstrate how certain contemporary atheists have problematically conflated atheism with agnosticism (knowingly or unknowingly). The first type of conflation is semantic fusion, where the lack of belief in God is combined with the outright denial of God, under the single label of ‘atheism’. The second is morphological fission which involves the separation of atheism into two subcategories where lack of belief in God is labelled as negative atheism and outright denial of God as positive atheism – and while here they are more explicitly demarcated, they are still positioned under the broad notion of atheism. I argue in this paper that atheism should be better used as the propositional denial of God and that uncertainty and unknowability about God should be reserved to characterize agnosticism. Conflating these positions under the single term ‘atheism’ mischaracterizes agnostics and inflates the territory of atheists. In clarifying these terms, I review how the nuances in the prefix a- in atheism have potentially contributed towards these misnomers. I also suggest the use of the categories ‘local atheism’ and ‘global atheism’ to clarify on whom the burden of proof lies within the discourse.

BINGO!
Neoatheists simply do not understand the subject matter they are trying to argue.

 

Unfortunately for you, leaving you pamphlets of their one true God is part of their religion.

“And he [Jesus] said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Mark 16:15

 

The question I wish to ask is this: How can the New Atheists employ evidentialist principles to argue that religious belief is irrational if they are unwilling to apply those same principles to atheism? If the New Atheists’ atheism is not evidence-based, as Hitchens implies in the above quotation, doesn’t evidentialism entail that atheism is itself irrational or epistemically unjustified? The answer is ‘Yes’; at least if evidentialism is interpreted in the standard way. So it appears that the New Atheists need some fix for evidentialism – a kind of ‘theoretical plug-in’ – which legitimizes their atheism in the absence of evidence. They also seem to be aware of this, since they offer several reasons why atheism requires no evidential support. Michael Antony is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel.

You can add this to the long list of other questions people have asked theneoatheists here, in this thread, that you FAILED to respond to much less 'answer'!

 

This is how I see it, too. Lack belief atheists are deliberately trying to blur the line between atheism and agnosticism to a) avoid the necessity to prove their case and b) rope in agnostics under the atheist umbrella when agnostics don't want to be there. They're also trying to have their cake and eat it, too, in that they are perfectly fine with "theism" meaning an affirmative declaration that there is a God but redefining atheism to mean a state of mind and not an affirmative declaration that there is not a God. But if you redefine atheism that way, you must also redefine theism the same way, that it's a state of mind and not an affirmative declaration. Doing that means both theism and atheism are true, that atheists "lack belief" and theists "believe". But that makes hash out of the idea that atheism is the counter-proposition to theism. Suddenly atheism and theism are not opposite propositions at all. You can't even argue the truth or falsity of the propositions. It would be like arguing whether happiness is true or false.

Is the rest of the paper available on-line? Or is it behind a paywall? One thing he missed is that the nuances in the prefix a- didn't contribute to the misnomer, it was deliberately obscured by Flew (or Flaw) in his original essay. In other words, it wasn't an accident, it was intentional.

I read something about local and global atheism and I recall the article's author saying that, too, is a shoddy attempt at avoiding having to prove one's case. I'll have to look for it again now.

 

Interesting way to attack it. My own view is that the theists offer plenty of evidence but the New Atheists reject all of the proffered evidence as non-existent or irrelevant. That being the case, we can reject new atheism with the same wave of the hand they use to reject evidence.

 

I hear you. Everyone wants to save someone. What they don’t realize is, they would be of greater value offering constructive advice on our short game in golf then saving “ our souls. ”

 

Exactly what “ evidence” are we talking about ?

 

It’s not a philosophical debate. It’s a scientific discussion in the same light as alien abductions. Show the evidence. Evidence doesn’t come from fables written in ancient times when mankind thought everything from running water to fire was a gift from the gods, each one being responsible for a new revelation.

 

Miracles.

See? Hand waving. Just dismiss any evidence that doesn't suit your fancy and then demand evidence. It's intellectually dishonest.

 

Thank you for establishing that you can NOT substantiate your utterly BOGUS allegation.

 

No logic, no facts....just his ear to god's mouth...….

 

xwsmithx said: ↑
According to others, God did not create evil, he created free will, and man freely chose evil.

Good question...

 

WRONG!

Intellectual dishonesty is PRETENDING that "miracles" are "evidence".

The DEFINITION of a "miracle" EXCLUDES it from being evidence.

 

See? Hand waving. "If I don't like it, it's not evidence. Now show me some evidence."

 

No logic? I'm waiting for an answer to how there can be good or evil without God. Perhaps you can put your ear to logic's mouth and get an answer.

 

So as a teacher if I watch a kid getting beaten up by other kids even though I have the ability to stop it, I hope parents will just say it’s OK because they can’t explain the mind of the teacher
Starving a child to death is nothing but pure evil. You are assuming that the child will have a life of misery on earth but if the malevolent God decides to give rain, the child’s life might be wonderful and dying in the worst agony will be avoided.

 

If you cannot see the difference between good and evil without believing in an invisible man in the sky..then you have problems. You should not accuse anyone of not using logic when you cannot even differentiate between good and evil

 

I am sitting next to a pink unicorn and it is saying terrible things about you. Now you show me evidence that it is not true

 

xwsmithx said: ↑
No logic? I'm waiting for an answer to how there can be good or evil without God. Perhaps you can put your ear to logic's mouth and get an answer.

 

I'm saying according to others because being a rational atheist, I'm somewhat forced to consider the possibility that free will is an illusion.

There’s No Such Thing as Free Will
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

Free will is not an illusion after all
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17835-free-will-is-not-an-illusion-after-all/

In my own paper, I argued that free will does not create imperfection, it only reveals it. Kind of like tapping a stone wheel with a small hammer doesn't create the crack in it, it only reveals it.

 

Why do you insist on using human examples to measure God?

You still haven't explained how it's God responsibility for the child starving to death. How is God malevolent for not sending rain but not benevolent to everyone else? All those poor worms starving to death because they don't have a human child to feast upon. Maybe God is the god of worms and that's why he likes death so much.

Pfft. You shouldn't post if you cannot differentiate between opinion (what's good and what's evil) and logic (what is and what is not). I actually have a way to distinguish between good and evil absent God, it's called natural law, but it turns out my natural law resembles to a great extent Christian thinking. And lefties being the type to reject both Christianity and natural law are thrown back on positive law, which as I noted before cannot determine good and evil in any authoritative way because positive law has varied so much from century to century and culture to culture.

Like I care what your invisible friends say about me.

 

I use the human example to measure God the same way I measured the human example to measure Santa Claus when I was a believer.
Well I guess your rationale for a malevolent God is to compare humans to worms. Last I heard worms don’t believe in the invisible man in the sky either and by the way these worms do have children to feast upon. Your benevolent God made sure of that , I guess he loves worms more than children
You also sound quite foolish when you classify people who don’t believe in God as lefties .....Lefties go to church as well. Your stereotyping is one of the isms I use in my course
I can see the difference between good and evil. It is not difficult for me but obviously you need the supernatural to show you. I don’t. To me it would be letting an innocent baby starve when I had the ability to feed it. Like the guy you worship. If I ever do that I hope you will make up excuses for me also

 

What a MASSIVE load of bovine excrement!

Do you even know what the definition of a MIRACLE is because judging by the content of your post you don't appear to have even the remotest idea of what it means.

 

Conclusive evidence of a theist faking being an atheist/agnostic!

Society determines what is "good and evil" and passes laws accordingly.