I guess my question for all of the atheists who claim that they are merely stating that the theists have failed to provide adequate evidence of god (which, by itself runs counter to the whole faith thing, no?)...what do you believe?

Do you claim to have no belief with regards to god, other than that the theists have presented inadequate evidence? Not in the slightest? Not at all? Really?

Personally, I just can't imagine occupying such a space...given the multitude of assumptions we make on a daily basis, by which we live our lives, it seems (to me) to be an "unhuman" feat.

I didn't ignore it. I specifically said that the broadest, most inclusive and weak definitions of atheism were basically worthless.

I said that using the word in such a way that I (an anti-religion theist who disdains belief and faith in favor of direct experience) fall under the category of atheism... is ludicrous and counter-productive.

I understand that this thread is long, and my posts have been long... it is possible you simply did not read them. I referenced the wikipedia article so that people who continue to cling to one definition of atheism can see the many facets and ranges and come to understand that the way I am using these words is not only valid, but historically the most common.

While others like yourself seem to be insisting that we adopt your broad or implicit definitions of atheism, I have always acknowledged that you have a right to your usage. It has precedence and people do use the word in that way from time to time. I merely state that IMO it is a waste of time to open up the word so broadly that it looses any real meaning. This is a prevailing opinion among theologians and philosophers.

All of you "non-belief" folk can call yourselves atheists if you like... but you are still agnostics. And deciding to not believe something is still a decision made based on a belief.

You can not escape it. You believe something here. It may be that you only believe that you have not heard any convincing arguments in favor of theism. It may be that the concept of deities is not worth having a specific belief about. But you can not simply have no belief AND call yourself a member of an ISM. If you self-identify as an atheist... you believe something.

If not, you would be rather silly to form clubs, create camps, write and read books, attend lectures based on a mutual absence of belief. It is laughable. To publicly announce to all and sundry that you are an atheist (without god) and then spend time and energy to defend some wishy washy middle ground null belief... is beyond pointless.

You said earlier your answer to the fundamental question was "You Don't Know." That is not atheism. That is the definition of an agnostic. Why the push to turn your agnosticism into atheism?

Perhaps it is the other way around. Maybe you are an atheist but you want to have the rationally defensible stance of agnosticism because it is painfully clear that true atheism is just as indefensible as theism. Thus, this passionate push to have the word atheism stretched to include all of agnosticism.

What would you say if someone started a worldwide community with clubs, newsletters, texts, magazines and even summer camps around some other non-belief? How about "We have no particular belief in whether dragons exist -ism?"

I hope you realize that this makes no sense. My feeling... along with many other philosophers... is that atheism should be reserved for people who explicitly disbelieve in gods.

Again, you guys can use the term how you like.

Personally I believe the claims about a god made by the major mono-theistic religions are almost certainly false. As for the very broad concept of some kind of sentient something outside of our universe that initiated the state of affairs that we see around us, I really don't know... I hold no belief, for all I know we were farted out of the tail end of a hyperdimensional babel fish. Who knows? When it gets to more specific things, like a god who is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient and has an active interest in what we are doing I am inclined to again go to "almost certainly false" since the state of affairs on earth does not suggest that there is an omnibenevolent being keeping an eye on us.

You use the word "god" as if we should know what you mean. "God" is a meaningless word until you start giving it attributes (such as omnipotence, or that it is the creator). Some people think there is a god that has no role in our universe, some people think the polar opposite and think god is something that will punish you for thinking about bonking your next door neighbours wife.

If by god you mean just "some entity outside of our universe" then I think such a thing is quite likely, but that isn't "god" in the sense a lot of people use the word. It is a highly charged word with hundreds of different meanings to different people.

Yes...but this is essentially the antithesis of what I asked...

Even among theistic groups, we find widely varied definitions of god, so I see no reason to give it a rigid definition here.

I'm not interested in what you believe about other people's beliefs...only what you believe with regards to the vague abstraction that is the concept of "god".

I don't know what you mean by "god". I have told you where I stand on various attributes that I have heard given. I have no belief about "the vague abstraction that is "god"". I'm not just trying to dodge here, I genuinely don't know what you are asking me... I answered to the best of my ability.

And incidentally, you quote one part of what I said and call it the antithesis of what you asked... but that was just one part, I tried to cover every angle I could think of. You are asking me to cover angles that I am not aware of.

I'm not atheist. I'm more or less agnostic. My thing is, that I really don't think we have even the slightest understanding of what a god/gods are if they do exist and the whole idea of "worship" IMO seems like a negative way to go about practicing religion.

The way that's it's explained, generally, is that there's a heirarchal design in everything. God then angels then us so on an so forth. This seems more like a humans outlook and design on how things work. Everything we do is designed like this. Parents are the gods. Your boss is the god. The president is the god. We are gods.

Spiritually I accept that it is beyond my current comprehension and accept the possibility that there is a "higher power" for lack of better terminology.

Scientifically it sounds very silly, and no perfect system would work in such a low grade humanistic way, such a crap design.

No my brother I don't feel the scientific method is flawless nor would any scientist but I will assert its constantly the best method we have to understand the physical universe and reality, utilizing redundancy and peer review to come up with the most accurate information we can at this time. Of coarse its not flawless if it was theories would never be overturned and conclusions would never contradict each other over time. What is so wonderful about science is that it allows this all to happen and keeps biased opinions out.
I certainly don't think for something to exist it must be observable by my eye's. Dark matter is impossible to be seen as many other things such as gluons or other sub atomic particles but they can all be detected and measured once we figured out how to do so. There are many many things that can't be seen but can be studied or detected. if god exists there is no reason why the same shouldn't apply to it.

As far as if I think all there is to this thing we call reality is what we see again no way Jose but what I don't do is assert a god inti the gaps of our current understanding. I'm just much more strict about taking on a belief than maybe yourself or others after years of being duped by new age ideas and judeo christian dogmas. If its real I'd like to see some evidence for it that's all. If we dont understand something as a species I'm not ready to call in god from the bench.

In the interest of not rehashing the "what is the definition of Atheism" debate until the cows come home, I will direct you to this post https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=382354#post382354

There are links there and significant evidence to show that in basic English usage, in philosophy, and in theology Atheism is typically used in the narrow and explicit sense that I have been talking about.

Now... on to the definition of deity.

We have come back around it seems to the question of what is meant by the word god. You will note that typically we talk about (a)theism in reference to belief in G*d or gods. Those are two different categories of deity. Typically when used with a capital letter, it signifies a monotheistic or at least omnipotent deity... also generally associated with a modern religion, but can be used in non-religious ways by Deists, Pantheists, Panentheists etc. With a lower case g it can refer to any being that is more powerful than humans and has enjoyed worship or inspired fear.

I posted this link before, but it is probably worth posting again as people seem to have reverted back to talking about G*d in solely Abrahamic religious terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God

This is just a basic primer, and mostly deals with religious conceptions... but it includes Extra-Terrestrials and a decent variety of atypical theistic belief. It is worth going on and reading up on the various other branches of theism as well. Not believing something that you have not given serious consideration is not an example of critical thinking IMO.

I, for instance, used to consider myself something of a transtheist... until my experiences forced me to modify that stance.

Anyway, have at it. I hope this clarifies to some extent what is meant by the term god. As well as what it truly means to be an atheist.

According to you

(I know, round and round we go)

According to 9 of the 10 dictionaries I linked to. According to the strong definition of atheism. According to the narrow definition. According to the explicit definition as well as 4 or 5 others.

Also, according to theology, philosophy, tradition, history and the majority of books on the subject.

Again, though... feel free to use your weak atheism in conjunction with a 2 axis model. You are certainly not alone in this.

I smoked some changa...then went on a walk and this occured to me.

Finding God is very much like falling in love. It could be argued that there is no proof that love is anything other than electrochemical reactions in the brain. This is true of course to some extent however if a person subscribes soley to the belief that love is strictly a biological neurological pheneomena and nothing more then it might make it difficult for that person to experience the full potential of a meaningful relationship.

The existence of love as a real and powerful phenomena cannot be proven scientifically. The only source of information that people who have never experienced true love have about love being a tangible phenomena is from other people who claim to be in love.

The same could be said for mercy, kindness and forgiveness. Without these things life would be an unbearable agony, yet these things do not seem to serve any purpose in the animal kingdom nor are they deemed needed for survival in any scientifically explainable way.

How is science going to rationally explain the existence of mercy, love, patients and understanding? Is science going to teach a human the true meaning of compassion or empathy? Does science even recognize compassion as anything besides just being the result of various nuero-peptides and chemicals bouncing around in the brain, or the result of conditioning etc?

Any model of conceptualization that fails to accurately explain the human experience is not an adiquate model to depend on 100% for an accurate interpertation of reality...

I've got a weekend full of studying ahead so I don't have a whole lot of time to make an elaborate reply. I just want to touch up on two things.

First. Without a doubt those people calling themselves atheists and forming clubs are probably of the strong kind as it would be stupid to spend time on something that's not in your beliefs. That being said, people fit into categories, not adopt them. Because one does not acknowledge themselves publicly as an atheist does not mean they aren't. This is the same principle you pointed out to me where I thought I was an atheist but turned out to be a pantheist. just because I didn't realize the existence of pantheism and declare myself by that title does not mean that I wasn't included in that category by the nature of my beliefs/non beliefs.

Second. Being agnostic does not exclude one from atheism. Agnostic is to atheism as square is to rectangle. So regardless of what philosophers generally refer to when they use the term atheism, there is a distinction between weak and strong atheism and neither one is more or less atheist than the other. Just different.

That's how I see it. That keeps getting said, in one form or another, over and over in this thread... and then the opposing view gets said in response. I don't think we are going to reach any kind of agreement on this. I still don't even really think it matters too much, like you say, people fit into categories. What name we give the category isn't as important as what it points to, and asserting that someone isn't an atheist they are an agnostic has absolutely no impact on what they believe. It is just an issue of the definitions of these words.

HF - Could you share some writings/talks/debates or something involving an atheist (atheist by your definition, not mine) explaining their position, or backing up your view of atheism? I have done a fair bit of reading on this subject, and watched probably dozens (at least 20 or 30) long debates involving atheists, theists and philosophers and I can't think of anyone who uses your definition of atheist except for theists... and usually they are using it to try to shift the burden of proof and assert that the atheist has to disprove god, when the atheist (or agnostic or whatever) is not asserting that there are no gods, just that the claims people make are not justified or backed by evidence.

All of the above are useful skills for humans to come together in groups to further their survival (in numbers). Eventually science may be able to teach a human the true meaning of compassion or empathy, such as when it will occur, in response to what stimuli, and for what purpose. It would likely be the result of chemicals in the brain.

I'm no expert, but I do believe socio/psychopaths have measurable differences in their brain than that of an average brain. Socio/psychopaths tend to lack these or experience these feelings differently.


Science may be trying to be a 100% accurate model, but it is accepted that we are not at that stage of discovery yet.

Science admits it does not know everything and so it creates a method for building and expanding upon learned knowledge. With that said, it is an ongoing process of rigorous testing to verify observations and measurements.

-



I don't know what term I qualify under, but I do believe science is our best means of understanding this world and at this point I've seen the fruits of the labor (hello to most everything I use and can predict in this world) and have no reason to doubt it.

I have always considered my agnostic in the sense that I don't believe that information is available to me, yet (impossible = hasn't happened yet).

I am intrigued by many ideas such as what has been described here as Pantheism/Panan/Deism and growing up I always found religious texts to relate more to the Human story than that of anything greater than us.

Since coming into contact with DMT I have opened myself to the idea that religious texts may hold more truth than I gave them credit for. That said I still have a strong belief that the stories held within the texts I've read are largely expressed in "story" form describing the Human story.

After reading all of this I have no idea if I fall into a specific category here, and realize it doesn't matter, but still would call myself an Agnostic. I don't have an inclination towards any specific line of thought on this subject other than, how would I know that?

If anybody sees this as false, I'm open to hearing your opinions.

Of course it doesn't matter. We all end up at the same fate regardless of who's right. The purpose of life is to argue with one another about stuff that has no right answer so that we can occupy our time in this pointless existence

I love how people who aren't scientists, attempt to discredit what the scientific method has accomplished by pointing out that right now, science can't explain things. The scientific method makes more sense than pretending the world is made of magic.

Give me a break.

You answered your own question. In order for you to a have a point to be made you are asserting that love IS something more than a neurological happening of the subjective observer. Your going into the waters of love being a force or energy as has become popular in our current times. But because something is popular doesn't make it true or real.

So let's just say for the sake of argument love is a force, a force science can not at this time explain. That still in no way gives any evidence of a god. It just means we don't understand the force of love. Like I stated you can't just plug "since science can't explain it there must be a god" into the gaps of understanding. Its not a legitimate argument for your case. Its called an "argument from ignorance" and it doesn't hold up. Its a feeble attempt to shift the burden of proof to the non believer.

Isn't religion a model of conceptualization?

It certainly is and quite an incomplete one based on zero evidence.

The notion of god (and life) is a mystery...

mys·ter·y/ˈmist(ə)rē/
Noun:
Something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain.

By definition, wouldn't this be agnosticism?


(I don't object to the concept of a deity, but I'm baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.)