Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

Did you know that confidence in their thoughts requires a functioning brain?
Did you know that trust in their own minds requires a functioning brain?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to express a lack belief?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to conclude atheism to be true?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to conclude their lack of belief to be true?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to have an opinion?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to have reality convictions?
Did you know that a functioning brain is required to have reality convictions based on evidence?



So according your interpretations and definitional construction someone following your arguments is forced to conclude neoatheists lack a functional brain, rational not withstanding.

What is the opposite of belief? I cant even imagine such a thing, care to teach us about it?

 

Good call!

 

vicious circle logic

vicious circle logic
Im not borg, I cant implant the knowledge in your brain.

Oh so it was merely rhetorical and you did not expect a response from me, got it.

What do you think it is then?

Sure 'they' do, it would be a theist that was a theist but was not sure God existed. There is nothing preventing that description now that they have abused the language to that point.

vicious circle logic I gave it to you , now several times. Look it up, according to you you are the teacher here.

 

You have access to the English language though, which can be used to transfer knowledge from one to another.

I'm not sure how you suggest vicious circle logic is applied. I have found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_circle_principle, which for starters states "Most modern mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics think that this particular definition is not circular in any problematic sense, and thus they reject the vicious circle principle". That should at least mean that your argument needs to be described in full, and certainly that the matter isn't proven.

Regardless, even if the principle holds, it doesn't apply to Flew's definition of atheism. The principle challenges "definition that depends on that object or property itself", and Flew's definition doesn't depend on itself, and includes no self-reference.

No, I would still like an answer to the question, do you suggest that discussions cannot come to useful conclusions or proofs unless they are "formal"? But then again, I've asked many questions in this thread and others that you've simply failed to answer, so I don't expect it in the sense that I think you'll manage to produce a good answer.

What do I think that what is? I think that Flew's definition of atheism is the logical negation of theism. That being said, I don't think there is a requirement for definitions to be logical negations of one another (or rather, if there is such a requirement, it is in itself a part of the definition, which means that it might not hold true if you consider a different definition).

Nothing has changed about the definitions of agnostics and theists, if this is a reference to your common objection that any feature of atheism should be mirrored in theism, then you still haven't understood how redefinitions work.

 

The opposite of belief is lack of belief.

 

Nonetheless that does not diminish its intended applications.

Ah, come on teach, lets teach me about part 2

Not at all, it means you need to look at part 2 which is how I am applying it.

Part 2 does.

Sure, Reality rocks! I am not into fiction.

What the hell lets redefine the whole damn lexicon for you! Now you want to redefine the prefix 'a' eh? So where does it end swensson?

Again, if the proposition atheism is not a negation of the proposition theism then 'what is it'?

part 2, teach me teacher

 

great rahl so what the hell IS the opposite of belief????????
Like I said I cant imagine what the opposite could possibly be, so you telling me its the opposite is 100% meaningless. Maybe the color purple, is that the opposite?

 

Not belief.

what you imagine has no bearing on reality. Atheism remains by definition not a religion. Atheism is not a belief. It is the opposite.

 

ok so you believe God does not exist, we sort of know that rahl

secular humanists are a bunch of atheists and they do not believe God exists either, but they severally and jointly are a religion.

 

Neither negatives nor non existence can be proven. This is basic logic 101.

 

Why make **** up? I have repeatedly told you I lack belief in a god or gods.

Correct. Secular humanism is a religion. A Th sim, by definition, is not.

 

YEs, so you do not believe in God, I get it, that does not exempt atheism from being a religion.

all that says is there is no deity, it does not say there is no religion.

Where did you dig that up from? Can you site it?

THINKING TOOLS: YOU CAN PROVE A NEGATIVE
Steven D. Hales

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously. A principle of folk logic is that one can’t prove a negative. Dr. Nelson L. Price, a Georgia minister, writes on his website that ‘one of the laws of logic is that you can’t prove a nega-tive.’ Julian Noble, a physicist at the University of Virginia, agrees, writing in his ‘Electric Blanket of Doom’ talk that ‘we can’t prove a negative proposition.’ University of California at Berkeley Professor of Epidemiology Patricia Buffler asserts that ‘The reality is that we can never prove the negative, we can never prove the lack of effect, we can never prove that something is safe.’ A quick search on Google or Lexis-Nexis will give a mountain of similar examples. But there is one big, fat problem with all this. Among professional logicians, guess how many think that you can’t prove a negative? That’s right: zero.

https://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf

all you are really doing here is establishing the extent of your knowledge base when compared to professionals.


and of course proving nonexistence is easy peasy, for instance, there are no orange polka dots in this post, since ou do not see any this proves the nonexistence of orange polka dots in this post.

 

correct. The definition of atheism and religion does.

Logic 101

 

Hate to tell ya but it shows, university professors, the logic 401 guys and I disagree.
What is your level of reading skill?
"Among professional logicians, guess how many think that you can’t prove a negative? That’s right: zero." Prof Steven D. Hales
is that 101 too?

That connection does not exist rahl.

 

Well, it depends on how you're applying it, but you haven't said how you're applying it, you've just said the title over and over. Again, you are either dodging the question, or failing to see how poorly you are explaining yourself.

Part 2 of what?

That's not what I said. I suggest you can say things about reality without the discussion being formal, like "bananas ain't blue". That's no more fiction than "bananas are not blue", just less formal, no meaning was lost. You deliberately answered a question other than what I was asking, and as a result, you ended up avoiding my argument rather than meeting it.

For starters, words are not required to mean that which its constituents mean, like "awful" doesn't mean full of awe even though that's what the bits mean. You're making yourself guilty of the etymological fallacy.

Secondly, and perhaps more to the point, the prefix a- as a negation can be applied in different ways. If theism is the belief that a god exist, the a- prefix can denote a person who fails to affirm that god exist, regardless of whether she does so because she believes in an alternative idea (like there is no god) or fails to affirm either belief.

In fact, this seems to me more consistent with the normal use of the prefix a-. Amoral someone who lacks moral intuition/conviction in either direction, not necessarily someone who has an opposite moral sense (like where unjustified murder is good). Atypical denotes failure to conform to the typical, not having the opposite, for instance, a banana with an atypical colour is one which has any colour other than typical ones, not one that has the opposite colour.

Atheism is, in Flew's definition, "not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist". It is not fundamentally the belief in a proposition. There are beliefs which follow logically from the definition, like "this person has not found theistic claims convincing", or "this person does not believe there is a god", but Flew's atheism is not defined in terms of beliefs in those propositions.

 

Ok so then its a careless if not intellectually disingenuous characterization, and in reality is a nontheist, not an atheist.


Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and nonreligious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in a God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of God and differs from an antithetical, explicit atheism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheism

 

atypical is irregular or nonconformace to some norm not 'lacking typical'
Definition of atypical
1 : not typical : irregular, unusual

the root is not typical, the negation of typical not the lack of typical, the usage is irregular, unusual

amoral is 'having', or 'showing' not lacking.

Definition of amoral
1a : having or showing no concern about whether behavior is morally right or wrong

a-
variant of an-1 before a consonant, meaning “not,” “without”: amoral; atonal; achromatic.



You are without a doubt the king of shoehorning hammering round definitions into square holes.

 

and if thats not clear enough, typical describes the 'regular', atypical describes the 'irregular', precisely the opposite.

typical describes the 'usual', atypical describes the 'unusual', precisely the opposite

So lets see how we can **** that up now

In todays world specific meaning violates modern grammar rules, the 'thou shalt substitute euphemisms and metaphors whenever possible' unless all else fails usage laws.

 

I what sense is it disingenuous? The definition has been clearly stated. See, the definition you quote here uses the idea of absence of belief, how come you agree with this one, but fail to understand the same terms previously?

Nothing you say here challenges my statement. A thing becomes atypical simply by virtue of not being typical, the law of excluded middle applies, there is no equivalent of your understanding of an agnostic, which would be neither typical or atypical.

"Having no concern..." seems to me to be the same as not having it. If I have no bananas, then I do not have bananas. I do not have the opposite of bananas, whatever that would be. Just like having no belief in A, is the same as not having a belief in A, but not the same as believing the opposite of A.

 

Dood you can apply your personal diluted interpretations till hell freezes over, you have been given the conventional understanding and usage in practice as spelled out crystal clear from the dictionary, and it is what I said it is whether you like it or not.

...and the answer to your unresolved question is that your versions always manage to come up with philosophically unacceptable fringe usage, just like flew. Now your questions are resolved.

Feel free to write your own dictionary, it will be great for starting camp fires.

 

Negative prefixes

Negative statements are the opposite of affirmative statements. In English, one way to make negative statements is by adding negative prefixes to nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Here are some English negative prefixes: a–, dis–, il–, im–, in-, ir–, non–, un–.

For example, the prefix un- can be attached to the adjective happy to create the negative adjective unhappy. Or you can use the negative adverb not. Note that there is no difference in meaning between these two forms.
affirmative..............................................negative
..........................negative prefix...............not
Tom is happy....Tom is unhappy......Tom is not happy.

Words that take a– as a negative prefix always begin with a consonant.
affirmative...negative
political.......apolitical
sexual.........asexual
theist...........atheist

Words that take dis– as a negative prefix may begin wit
https://www.lawlessenglish.com/learn-english/grammar/negative-prefixes/

which of course takes us full circle right back to the syllogistic proofs I posted earlier, If someone lacks belief how many Gods do they believe in.....zero, all the neoatheist word salads are semantic.

It again goes without saying, theists believe in the existence of God, and the 'opposite' is disbelieving in the existence of God, atheists disbelieve the existence of God precisely the 'opposite' position of the theists, if you want to stick to convention, neoatheists notwithstanding of course.

Antonyms for belief:

disbelief, discredit, doubt, nonbelief, unbelief
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/belief

antonym is the opposite meaning of a word.

and then there are the neoatheists LMAO

 

Well why don’t you supply your image of god. Or even your definition. Bet you wouldn’t.

 

So we can assume you always refer to neoathiests because you cannot actually deal with actual atheists. Got it and thanks.

 

Nice try. So you cannot actually prove unicorns do not exist. And pretty interesting you can only deal with IPU which was not actually the challenge. I accept your surrender and acknowledgement that unicorns and god have exactly the same justification.

 

Disbelief.