Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

Im not the one who does not know the difference between a status and an action.

Neither am I the one who invented some sort of secret new logic, apparently kept hidden from the world, cough it up for us!

 

I never changed my position, I beat down every goal post move swensson made, so dont even think about accusing me once again for the merry go round swensson created, try to keep up a little better.

see above comment.
does not mean I changed my original position, I stand my ground on my position.

if and when swensson ever decides to refrain from equivocating everything, with 'I think" rather then 'I know', then arguing with what he thinks rather than what he can demonstrate this will change and no longer be an assinine discussion. Hell you contradicted him on a few points, but that doesnt count for anything when you got me to blame!

 

I added [emphasis] to show how each part of the definition is shown in logic, the emphasis I added made no material difference what so ever in the quote, and all you have done again is follow swenssons lead, good luck with that btw. Swenssons and your whining about it is purely yet another frivolous attempt at distracting us from the in your face obvious correlation.

All I have seen from neoatheists so far is the old lawyers motto, if you cant dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with a mountain of bullshit.

I posted my proofs, even engineers that explained how the logic was to be understood, swensson pretended their unequivocal language meant something entirely different and went along his merry way posting nonsense....and he cant even make it work in logic! which leads us here, X marks the spot.

You want my attention save the lip service and prove up your points.

What are you going to try and blame me for now? Its not my fault you bit of f more than you can chew

 

you have 2 choices and only 2 choices, yes or no, for responses.
each party is asked 2 questions, both questions must be answered for 2 input logic:
Do you believe?
Do you disbelieve?
This determines the condition of each input for each row. yes=1, no=0

Merely swapping the x and y showed how wacked out the logic is that you 2 are pedaling, were pedaling for you, still pedaling for swensson.

Why didnt you tell swensson that 1,1 is irrational instead of allowing him to hang that nonsense on theists since you and he claim you understand him?

 

Yes, it does. The quote makes no mention of Y, and only refers to X. Your notation introduces Y. That introduces something NOT in the quote you are adding notation to. That you are unable or refuse to see this amazes me.

? Distracting from what? Again, all you're doing is insisting on your chosen definition of a word. You have made no point for anyone to distract from.

What points? I haven't made any points other than to point out that you haven't made any points, and that you are just insisting on a definition, and one that isn't even the one you yourself quoted from a dictionary and added notation to in an attempt to change it.

Its hard to have any actual productive conversation when that's all you do.

Now you are just being a condescending ass again. So good for you. You still have made no point.

 

Nobody has disagreed with this. Though I do wonder what you are now meaning by the word "Disbelieve", since you've used it multiple ways before. Perhaps the problem is you are not being clear and keep contradicting yourself.

If Disbelief is merely the lack of belief, then you only need one variable (X), not two. If Disbelief means "believes there is no" then two variables is appropriate (X and Y).

Then the table shows the different possibilities for these variables, and you are attaching labels to each. That's all you've done, as far as anyone can see. And you haven't been consistent in it, by bringing up a dictionary definition that you then add to in your added notation to it that isn't included in that definition.

Seriously, you could have saved everyone time and avoided the whole spat you've been having by simply stating that when you say "atheist" you mean !X,Y, and acknowledging that others don't agree with you on this definition... because they don't.

Sensson sees "atheist" as only meaning !X, which means it includes both !X,Y and !X,!Y.

!X!Y you call "agnostic", so if Swensson agrees that is what "agnostic" means, then !X!Y is both agnostic, and a subcategory of "atheist", when using his definition of "atheist" (which you also used more than once in this thread).

Sensson stated he sees "theist" as simply Y, with no reference to X, so that definition includes Y,X and Y,!X. That applies regardless of Y,X being contradictory and irrational. People exist who hold contradictory and rrational views,and even if they didn't, the definition would still apply, but have nobody in the Y,X subcategory, and leave it an empty set.

You have bickered a lot and talked down to people a lot, but you have displayed zero indication that you understand the above, and you appear to be substituting some strawman thing to wail against.

 

seriously???? neither one of you have a clue why the "Y" is there? It doesnt mention or say anything about an "X" either but you allow that because swensson said so?

Tell us why on earth would anyone add a "Y"?

 

It explicitly mentions X, if X is "believes in God". It states that atheists are !X. No mention is made of your Y.

You tell us. You're the one adding it in your notation.

 

you forgot one, it also explicitly mentions disbelieves in God

 

And there you go equivocating "disbelief" again.

Seriously dude, at this point it could not be more clear that you are trolling and have no interest in actual conversation. So I'll leave you do your trolling. I made a good faith effort to communicate with you, and you're clearly not ineterested.

 

wtf are you talking about?
I equivocated nothing what so ever.

explain how you 'think' that is equivocation, since after all it was quoted right out of the dictionary

looks to me like you think that if swensson defines it as a turnip that is the definition I have some imagined obligation to address, rather than correct and if I correct it then I am an equivocating troll

More like SOP in these kinds of debates, I wasnt baffled by bullshit and just now realized that you trapped yourself and see the writing on the wall and are bailing out before I drop the big hammer.

Yep the Y is there because 2 inputs are required if you want to compare agnostic and neither of you figured that out even though I said it several times before.

No need to explain I just did

 

I cant imagine it could be the case, but in case there is anyone other than these 2 out here that arent aware of what just happened, and since I again have been forced into the school teacher role heres where the bear crapped in the woods.

First they conflate nouns with with verbs, substituting the action for the status to shift the meaning so they can compare apples to oranges while pretending they are in context.
Next they use their own interpretation which is not a negation to the dictionary definition.
Next they demonstrate no formal knowledge by making gross procedural errors in their truth tables.
They simply refuse to acknowledge the conjunction, or in this case the disjunction which is totally illegal and destroys the integrity of the truth table and logic itself.
Finally they call me a troll and berate me for simply telling them the truth by pointing out their grammar and logic failures.

Like I said, x' works fine if you do not include agnostic, when informed of this they failed to connect the dots, something that anyone who does understand setting up a TT would 'immediately' recognize, proof they do not know how to set up a TT. They did not.

Question: Do you believe in God?


Lets call this graphic FIGURE 1

You cannot use x' as a stand-alone minterm for conjunctions or disjunctions. Sorry.

If 2 inputs are used each row requires both inputs for a legitimate output. Agnostic absolutely cannot be identified with 1 input, thats ludicrous.

if green = blue(x) and yellow(y) to prove the point you cant simply pluck out y and end up with green, as a compatible not exact analogy.

if the ONLY thing you are comparing is atheist to theist, then if you are not x you are atheist and if you are x you are theist.

Now to compare atheist to theist AND agnostic identities we are forced to ask both questions, do you believe? do you disbelieve? Both questions require a yes or no response to be valid.

The agnostic answers NO to believe, and NO to disbelieve, taking neither side. That is the particular distinct exclusive condition that must be met to be an agnostic properly framed in terms of 'Believing/Disbelieving' to insure no logical errors as seen below:


this one FIGURE 2

and just have a little fun I made the TT upside down and backwards since it works out the same regardless.

Finally what swensson and jolly are trying to do is pluck one column entry out for atheist with complete disregard to the TT integrity to make the false claim that agnostic is a subset of atheist by using the single entry format of figure 1 in figure 2, which is inconceivably ridiculous, to make that claim, since by that crazy logic convention the same could be done using theist, pluck out their X, leaving Y' presto shazamo now agnostic is a subset of theist, more proof of their patent absurdity.

Then after explaining it umpteen times only to be assaulted with even crazier theories when I am honest with them and tell them they dont understand what they are doing they go into a rant and accuse me of trolling when in fact they are the trolls.

Im not the one who moved the goal posts all over the map, inventing new rabbit holes to avoid having my ship sunk, that all on swensson, SOP, just look at the 'lack of belief thread'.

I suppose I could be called a troll ONLY if letting them hang themselves 20 ways to sunday to PROVE my point beyond a shadow of any doubt is trolling. lol Its not like I didnt give them all the links to figure out their errors after all.

Now if swensson and jolly wants to continue to claim x' just keep in mind.....it is a contradiction to respond with 'no' to the question 'do you believe in God' without also responding with 'yes' to 'do you disbelieve in God' since its the same question one asked in the negative sense and the other asked in the positive sense, and they are direct negations of each other, therefore to answer no to do you believe in God without answering yes to do you disbelieve in God, is completely irrational since it is a direct contradiction and in defiance to logic.

NO I do not believe in God, carries PRECISELY the exact meaning as YES I disbelieve in God.

Well gentlemen its been a gas

 

The word "disbelieve" can mean several different things. You seem to have to force in that equivocation fallacy in order to make your logic work. Let's be more careful.

What you say as "an agnostic does NOT disbelieve in God", I would write as:

An agnostic does not believe that God does not exist.​

I assume you mean this interpretation of "disbelief", because the other possible interpretation would be "An agnostic does not not believe that God exists", which of course would lead to "An agnostic does believe that God exists", and I think we agree that would be wrong.
So, let's look closer at "An agnostic does not believe that God does not exist". Note that the bit marked in red corresponds exactly to Y, so the full statement becomes !Y, corresponding to the second 0 in the [0,0] notation.

Of course, as previous mentioned, the only thing required for atheism is to answer "no" to "do you believe that God exists", which corresponds to having a zero in the first position in [0,0]. As you can see, the statement you made above does not interfere with the definition of atheist (since one affects only the first entry, the other affects only the second entry).

The definition that we have been looking at throughout this thread (provided by you) makes no statement about how an atheist relates to "believe god does not exist" (i.e. Y), it is completely confined to how atheists relate to "believe god does exist" (i.e. X).

Sure you changed the quote, you added "[X=0,Y=0]", which is not part of the quote. The quote spells out the X=0 part, but makes no mention of any Y=0 part, you made that bit up. I don't mind the idea of adding clarifications in square brackets, but you keep failing to justify the addition of Y=0.

No, 1,1 details a case where both left and right are true. I would potentially agree that such a case is impossible (or maybe it just indicates that one goes left first and right later, the example is unclear), but regardless of what the interpretation of 1,1 is, the fact that it has a 1 in the "left" column means that left is true. The fact that you're concluding "not left" about a row that has a 1 in the "left" column indicates that you have mixed some stuff up (potentially by equivocation of the word "left").

Again, a mistake you've made here is to put titles/lables/words in the output column. Truth tables require that only 0s or 1s go there. In a truth table, each column needs to correspond to a question that has a 0 or 1 answer, not labels like "both".

It is not a mistake. It is a classification of a potentially impossible case (like determining whether a unicorn would be a mammal). It is not a problem, it just shows that the logic is robust, even if we tried to apply it to someone whose beliefs are contradictory.

I see no reason to include flip flops whatsoever. We are perfectly capable of simply picking out every single possible combination of inputs, as I did back here (source):

View attachment 152693

You have made a mistake in using "left" as some general description of the entire state.

Read the quote carefully:

"There is a key distinction. An atheist doesn't believe in a god or divine being"​

In addition, you may recall our definitions of X and Y:

X: believe that God or gods exist
Y: believe that God or gods do not exist​

The green bit corresponds exactly to X (and has a "not" in front of it, resulting in !X). Thus, not only is X mentioned, the definition corresponds exactly to the !X definition that we have been using all along.

There is no mention of belief in god(s) not existing, so you are not justified in including it.

Incorrect. The !X definition is the definition of atheist, you're not allowed to exempt agnostics from that logic. The definition does not include any clause saying "unless they're an agnostic".

You keep saying that it doesn't work when agnostics are considered, but it merely goes on the pile of things you're wrong about. It is not supported by the definition.

True, but this analogy, the definition we're interested in isn't "green", it's "a colour that doesn't have blue in it", and for that, you are perfectly able to pluck out any colour other than blue.

 

This is another instance with your equivocation of "disbelief". I have pointed this out before, but you keep shoving it in, probably because your logic doesn't work if you don't use it.


When you say

it is a contradiction to respond with 'no' to the question 'do you believe in God' without also responding with 'yes' to 'do you disbelieve in God'​

you use disbelief in the sense !X (shown in green in the table above). This is also the sense in which it is used in Flew's definition of atheists.
On the other hand, when you say

"an agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in God",​

you use the word disbelief in the other sense, "Y" (marked in red in the table above).

This is particularly apparent if we compare the tables where you labelled the "Y" column with "disbelief", with your most recent statement, because your recent statement is

it is a contradiction to respond with 'no' to the question 'do you believe in God' without also responding with 'yes' to 'do you disbelieve in God'​

whereas in those tables, agnostic indeed answer "no" to the question "do you believe in God" without responding with "yes" to "do you disbelieve in God", despite your claim that it is impossible. There is no contradiction in it.

 

Fun games of self contradiction.

 

Yep! you are both far better at it than I could have guessed

Dis- is a negative prefix. It means not or none.
When we add dis- to the beginning of a word, we give it the opposite meaning.May 15, 2014
https://www.ecenglish.com › learnenglish › lessons › dis-p...

a rational person claiming to an atheist by answering no to believe is forced to answer yes to disbelieve. Answering no to both is agnostic.

Antonym

1. a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g. bad and good ).
Definitions from Oxford Languages


Negation

Opposite
1. the contradiction or denial of something.
From Oxford Languages

thats for atheist...duh...

I am still waiting for you to quote flews exact words you claim to rely upon, think you can do that this time?

Fantastic job proving neoatheism is irrational!

This thread has been reduced to teaching my oponents the english language!

 

It is telling that he calls us "opponents", when I don't see how we are. He has made no point to oppose. But he wants a fight so bad that he uses two different meanings of a word, or contradicts himself, refuses to coherently explain which, uses a dictionary definition that says something other than what he wants it to mean, adds notation changing it while denying doing so, and then gaslights us pretending we don't understand English, the use of [ ] for notation, etc. All the while pretending to be frustrated with us and talking down to us.

Quite the display of either trolling or complete narcissism, as zero attempt is made to understand what we write, and there is zero self-awareness of his failure to communicate (if that's what it is and it isn't trolling).

 

grammar and logic clearly is not a strong point of my 'opponents' in this debate since it has devolved to a level of teaching them english.

OPPONENT | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › opponent
opponent noun [C] (OPPOSING POSITION) ... a person who disagrees with something and speaks against it or tries to change it: Opponents of the ...

Readers check it out there dont even know it when a point has been made!

Proving both of my 'opponents' wrong in every post I make is opposition and false accusations against me wont make up for my 'opponents' grammatic and logical failures, but Im sure it makes them feel better to vent their frustrations, none of which I am responsible.

For most people a simple concession is a far better approach in debate than your arguing a lost cause by faking it only to get busted time and time again.

 

Yes. And you have communicated so badly, that it isn't even clear to anyone but yourself what you think we are disagreeing over. You have made that little of a point.
You scream at Swensson here that he is wrong wrong wrong, but you don't make any effort to understand what he is saying, much less to show that you disagree.

If this was a debate, we wouldn't have started yet. We haven't gotten passed the definition of terms. And you've made no claim other than to contradict yourself on even that.

So as I said, you're either trolling or you lack self-awareness to a staggering degree.

You have proved nothing wrong about anything. It isn't even clear what you think you've proved, other than that we are "wrong".

 

Insisting that one must either believe or disbelieve because the two are antonyms, and then claiming agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve, is a direct self-contradiction. I'm happy with either statement, each using different meaning of "disbelieve", but you can't have both being true without the meaning of that word changing. And you've made no effort to explain it regardless of how charitable we attempt to be to you.

The only "opponents" here appear to be you and yourself.

 

you stating your interpretation of my usage, which I proved is UNequivocally the opposite by lowering myself to teach grammar so my 'opponents' can hopefully get it right enough to be capable of engaging me on the subject matter.

you never stated how you think it is a contradiction, just jumping on your soapbox and bellowing does not make it so, sorry.

swensson keeps relying on flew but has avoided quoting him, Cant imagine why.

 

saying that you can't be !A and !B, but also that Bob is !A and !B, is a direct contradiction that can't be made more clear. If you really can't see that, I have no idea what could be said to you to clear it up for you.

 

you need to try and keep up. that was with regard and in reference to 'atheist', not agnostic.

'rationally' an atheist cant say no they do not believe without also saying yes they do not believe. To do so is wholly irrational.

swensson put up !X pretending Y was not an equally required affirmation, it is if we intend to have a rational outcome. syn/ant

 

Its hard to "Keep up" with somebody who directly contradicts himself and then accuses you of being an "opponent" when you point out his own self-contradiction.

I leave it to the audience to decide who here needs help with logic and English.

 

There is no contradiction there, even swensson agrees with agnostic = 0,0, I posted the unequivocal definition for you, so now you are arguing against swensson too, and he thinks you understand him, guess not.

Proof doesnt work you know when dealing with someone who is not able to recognize it.

you really need to read more carefully, and posting the punch line without posting there rest is known as quote mining.

That should have been easily deduced as applying to theist and atheist, not agnostic.

Since deduction seems to be at a premium in this debate, that means theist would be required to have reversed inputs from atheist.