[Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?

True, you don't have that obligation, nor do you have an obligation to be right, or present a justifiable argument, I just figured it's something you'd want. There are legitimate concerns about your position that you are failing to address, and calling them rabbit holes or answering different questions does nothing to alleviate that. My arguments are not ripped apart by you merely saying that they are.

A switch is not broken just because it is in its switched off state. An electrician would laugh at you if you wanted a switch replaced simply because it happens to be in its off state.

They may be your response, but they are not direct answers to the question.

 

Nice dodge. Why am I not surprised you don't have the guts to answer directly.

 

[Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?

Apparently quite a bit. Not only do they have to disbelieve but they have to proselytize against believers. That is a lot of work just to be a non believer.

 

RE: [Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?
SUBREF: COMPANION ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY © 1995 Routledge
⁜→ Kokomojojo, et al,

This is an elementary question based on the selection between the binary condition {Deity or No Deity}. But this age-old question has evolved, relative to the Abrahamic Religions, to something more. Remembering: An atheist denies the existence of a deity; an agnostic professes ignorance about of the deity's existence. An atheist is one who lives without a belief in any deity. If the non-believer persists in this state, atheism truly becomes a way of life.

(COMMENTARY)

In the two-and-a-half decades since this was written and now, even the nature of reality has been put to the question. Is there an existence of the supernatural?

It becomes a paradox for those that study theology in that they cannot answer because there is only one possible choice. If there is only one answer with no possibility of a choice. Every challenge must end with the belief in a deity.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

"The Principles of Morals," morality is useful as well as beautiful and aligns agnosticism with ethics: it is immoral not just unscientific to believe that for which there is no evidence. T. H. Huxley

I abstain from taking either position because I do not believe or disbelieve things I do not or cannot know.

that was highly articulated in great detail here

not at all, I simply want to know how much belief I have to lack to be a neoatheist. Its their rulebook, their philosophy, their religion and they cant even answer the most simple most obvious question that I need answered to determine if I might be a neoathiest. Thats like major lame on steroids.

nice attampt at moving the goal posts to comparing weak atheism to theism, please stick to the topic.

but you just tried and failed

'again'

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The beauty of the switch example is that really dumb people can totally comprehend the meaning of the analogy.
When they turn a switch on and off they expect the condition to change state.

I just told you that the purpose of a switch is to change state of whatever is being switched.

Your broken switch does not change the condition state, the condition state remains belief in god, both theists and atheists believe in a god, in both the on and off position.

Talk about a theory drowning in bullshit that is a chart topper.

Welcome to the upside down world of neoatheism!

In the neoatheist world: "theism is atheism"! Intellectual Brilliance!

I assure you that I am not the one being laughed at, by anyone.

 

Hi, was that a link? I wanted to read more, that sounded interesting, but if that was intended to be a link it did not work?.

 

The question in the title asks about "atheist", a weak atheist is a type of atheist, so for someone to be an atheist, a weak atheist is a valid comparison.

So why aren't you getting it then?

And indeed, if you switch the "this person believes there is a god" switch from on to off, the person goes from a theist to a weak atheist. From believing that God exists to failing to believe that God exists. Change of the "switch" represents a change in reality.

Sure it does. The switch being on represents someone "accepting" the belief that God exists. Flipping the switch to the logical negation includes any other state. Flipping between them represents a change in the condition.

 

This is hilarious! More nails in the coffin!
You are switching the label for the same condition, 'not' the condition state.
Simply switching the label does not switch the condition state, you must switch the condition state before you can call it something different, and its complete and utter bullshit to try to pretend the same condition can negate itself in any sense.
Cognitive dissonance.

 

No, you are switching the truth of "this person believes God exists". If atheism is defined as someone "who does not believe God exists", then that gets switched when the "believe God exists" gets switched on and off, not when the "God exists" itself gets flipped (whether god exists is largely decoupled from whether people believe it). The belief switch gets switched on when a person accepts the proposition as true, and gets switched off when that is no longer the case, and that may happen without that person accepting the opposite as true (for instance if the person becomes unconvinced).

To get to "this person believes God does not exist", there is another switch, which gets switched on for strong atheists, but not necessarily for weak atheists, for instance agnostics.

I think I have been pretty clear about this from starting to talk about the switches:

 

There is no belief switch, the belief in your example remains the same. Only your label changed.

There is no belief switch, no condition change in your position.
There is no port in this storm for you sorry pal, especially now that you forced and continue to force me to beat this **** to death.
This has been explained to you:

To use a switch example there must be a stated condition with its corresponding negation.

Again changing what you want to call it does NOT change the condition state.

For a switch example to be rationally sane, to prove negation, one is forced to use a switch theist=on, atheist=off, one switch, two positions, one conditional, one change of state.

You cant have one switch for weak atheist being off and another for theism being on and both believing in God as you described earlier.

The only way you can negate theism, belief, is disbelief, not something in between.

AGAIN, as I said before, since neoatheists choose to go analog now we have infinite levels of strength/weakness, hence once again you take us full circle back to the starting point: "How much lack of belief is required to legitimately/officially be classified as an atheist?"

To claim agnostics are atheists is a 100% bold faced lie.
Its claiming someone who did not vote, took a position, that is a LIE.

You have and your posts demonstrate you dont understand how they apply, but never fear I explained the proper application above. AGAIN

"How much lack of belief is required to legitimately/officially be classified as an atheist?"

 

furthermore, if your example in any way implies that the difference is no belief in God versus belief in God, for 'lack of belief' then you have demonstrated lack of belief is on/off same as belief/disbelief and you successfully wipe out lack of belief as a viable option because its identical to belief/disbelief.

Like theism, atheism is a choice, not genetic attribute built into our dna as you and your ilk would pretend is the case.

 

I'm not interested in wading through your post. If you want to answer me you can copy and paste the relevant part in your reply.

[QUOTE] not at all, I simply want to know how much belief I have to lack to be a neoatheist. Its their rulebook, their philosophy, their religion and they cant even answer the most simple most obvious question that I need answered to determine if I might be a neoathiest. Thats like major lame on steroids. [/QUOTE]
No, that's a stupid question. Do you believe in god or not?

 

No its not! That is what I am trying to figure out!

You want to help, anwser the question: "How much lack of belief is required to be legitimately classified as an atheist"?

What if my lack belief is because I have a lot of doubts?
What if I am sitting on the fence and it a toss up some days I lack more than others?
What if I only have just a few doubts, lack just a little, does that make me an atheist?

How can I decide if I should call myself an atheist when I dont have any kind of gauge, any way to measure it outside belief or disbelief in G/god?

Do you think its unreasonable to make an informed decision?
Do you want to be part of the solution? Answer the question: "How much lack of belief is required to be legitimately classified as an atheist"?

If you want to be part of the problem then by all means dance around in circles like the rest have done in pretense its not possible to 'gauge' qualifications, because if it is not possible to gauge then it goes without saying the neoatheist lackers have no standing what so ever.

 

No, it's ridiculous. YOU are not the arbiter or judge of "how atheist a person is". If a person says they don't believe in god and that they are an atheist, that is all you need to know.

 

Im not trying to be the judge of anything, I am trying to get them to tell me how it must be judged based on the atheology of their 'lacker' theories. They have failed to even attempt to respond much less answer the question. It forces me to conclude they want me to join nutterville.

Sure thats the contemporary and historically time tested true to nature 'honest' belief/disbelieve that has been the 'standard' for determining the difference between atheist and theist past present and will continue into the future.

The problem is that we are not talking about a clear concise position like the case you just stated, we are talking about the lacker case a position in which they lack enough of (something) to be a theist so they claim they are atheists.

 

Yes, because it's not only the proposition that is important, it is also whether you believe (accept) that it is true.

The condition that makes you a theist (or not a theist) is whether you accept that the proposition is true, and that condition changes, even if the topic of the belief in question does not.

It has been repeated to me, but you have yet to submit a reason for why it would be so. The fact that you cannot tell the difference between those two things does not bode well for your argument. The definition of a theist (as well as the definition of a weak atheist) depends directly not only on what the statement is, but whether you believe it. Thus, failing to believe the statement takes you from one to the other.

Agreed, and the condition related to weak definition of atheism is accepting that God's existence is true. Failure to accept it is enough, accepting the opposite is not necessary (although not unheard of).

Any negation can be visualised as a switch. The thing that makes you a theist is believing (accepting as true) the existence of God, so a switch that goes between theist and otherwise is governed by believing (or failing to believe) in the existence of God. The distinction between being on the fence and accepting the opposite is not a part of the definition, so it is not important for the purposes of flipping the switch.

That's not what I said. I said there is one switch for believing in the existence of God, and theist is what we call it when that switch is in its switched on state, and weak atheist is what we call it in its switched off state. I suppose you can if you want to include a different switch that captures the weak-atheist-ness (by being forces to be off when the theist one is on and vice versa), but it is not the core of the argument.

Well, see that's the trick. By defining theist in terms of belief in the existence of God, anyone who fails to do that falls in the negation of theism. Given that the definition of theism requires you to accept God's existence, it's not a matter of how on the fence you are, unless you actually accept it as true, you fall outside the definition of theist and therefore inside the definition of weak atheism.

The versions I have suggested still uses on/off logic, rather than strengths of belief (weak and strong atheism being descriptions of the range of implications, not the levels of strengths of beliefs).

If you think that what we're claiming failure to vote is a stance for a party, then you have misunderstood the argument. We're suggesting that the label "atheist" does not correspond to taking a stance that there is no god. The fact that you're retaining the idea that atheism still corresponds to taking a position means that you're still using the old definition at the same time as using the new one, which is the fallacy of equivocation.

 

My bad, typo. Weak atheism, or Flew's definition is the "this person believes there is a god" being in its off position.

There is a switch for "this person believes in god" and a switch for "this person believes there is no god". Theism is the former being switched on, weak atheism is the former being switched off, strong atheism is the latter being switched on.

Flew's argument (paraphrased for this context) is that a- denotes a negation, i.e. a switch. Therefore, if you find a word like "theist" on one side of a switch, it is appropriate to call the other side "atheist".

If you want to, you could make a "weak atheism" switch, it would be off whenever the "this person believes there is a god" is on and on whenever "this person believes there is a god" is off.

My point remains even if you don't answer them. The condition that makes you a theist is to accept God's existence as true. The delimiter that makes someone a theist is accepting it is true (not thinking there is a 50% likelihood or anything like that). For the rest, "this person believes there is a god" is false, and that makes them weak atheists, even if they don't believe there is no god (which would in addition make them strong atheists).

 

ok so then you agree.
If one accepts the proposition "God exists", they believe the proposition is true and if one rejects the proposition "God exists" they believe the proposition is false, they disbelieve.

Lack, weak, weaker, weakest, along with strong, stronger and strongest are all flushed down the tubes since the measuring stick is 'accept/reject', and there is nothing in between to legitimately wear the label atheist.

 

In a vacuum, I would say agree to some of those, but given recent discussions, I don't think we agree any more on what disbelieve means than what atheism or lack of belief means. For instance in the dictionary entry "to not believe someone or something" (source), the "not" goes outside the "believe" so I would still argue that it is a failure to believe, as distinct from the action of believing the opposite (i.e. believing that the proposition is false). I'm not expecting you to agree at this point, I'm just saying going the detour via the word "disbelieve" that we also don't agree on is not doing us any favours.

That's why I tend to spell it out. If one accepts the proposition "God exists", they believe the proposition is true, we call those theists. There is a sharp cutoff, for every person, "they believe 'God exists'" is either true or false, and it is true only for those who have accepted that God exists. The ones for whom it is true are theists, the ones for whom it is false are weak atheists (and that includes anyone who is not convinced that God exists, like agnostics). In addition, one can believe that "no God exists" and those who do that, we call strong atheists.

The measuring stick for theism is 'accept'. Anything that falls outside of that, including "haven't decided" falls in the other pot.

I'm not sure what you mean by "reject". Either, to you, "reject" means "accepting the opposite", at which point it is not the alternative to "accept" (since someone like an agnostic could do neither), or "reject" means simply fail to believe, at which point, your statement

'if one rejects the proposition "God exists" they believe the proposition is false'​

isn't true. I don't really care which one we pick, but like with the word "disbelieve", I tend to avoid using it in order to avoid confusion and equivocation.

 

So rejecting a proposition because you believe its not true, does not mean you believe its not true. seriously?

Thats what you just stated, typo?

 

its not lack of belief, its lack of faith. perhaps too nuanced for some, but nonetheless in this context a significant difference.

But I do agree that some atheists can proselytize with the best of em and that takes just as much work.

 

well we have people posting in every thread how lack of belief is the only acceptable definition of atheism, lack of faith in what?

 

RE: [Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?
⁜→ Kokomojojo, et al,

Well, I have a paperless copy of the COMPANION ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY © 1995 Routledge. But in your question, I was nudged to find you something.

(ANSWER)

And guess what... I found a 2003 version [LINK]. You can get a .pdf copy from the Z-Library System. I recommend you go to [LINK] and take a look at what you see that is interesting to you.


Most Respectfully,
R

 

Thanks!