Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't atheism simply mean not believing in the existence of god.
In terms that definition, wouldn't the burden of proof be on those claiming there is a god?
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... "Oh, I'm not that type of atheist." ...
But there seems to be at least a stance among many atheists (particularly if not exclusively the "new atheist" crowd) for where "atheism" implies positive stuff, particularly reason. This is why this type of atheism has a freaking commercial dedicated to it:
*snip*
Reason, logic, knowledge. Those are definitely positive stances identified with their brand of atheism. And it's not that this brand of atheism just popped up right before this commercial was made, or even before Dawkins et al. made a move on the world.
What really goes with this atheism? Logical positivism, scientism, materialism, a post-enlightenment value of reason over action, just knowing things. These are very much positive identifiers, and they very much represent a group of people who adhere to the atheist label.
So while I think that honest atheists stand for a negative position (not believing in God, the rest is relative to the individual), I think that at least lately a large swath of the population has taken atheism to almost religious levels in terms of its unswerving faith to the positive identifiers mentioned above.
It's true that the outspoken, reason+logic based form of atheism is more common than it used to be, or at least more outspoken!And also notice the peculiar thing that happens when you start separating yourself from this crowd of atheists. "Oh, I'm not that type of atheist." Well, what does that mean? What other type is there? By definition you've moved into a type, a positive identifier, if nothing else than "I'm not that type of atheist." We have to be very careful, I guess, with how we even remove ourselves from the positive atheists to adhere to the honest definition you've espoused.
Non sequitur on whether they are negative or not. What do they actually claim? An ad with a few terms in it still doesn't mean they aren't negative atheists.
It's possible to be certain about a lack of currently available evidence
Again, even with the atheist everyone loves to bring up - Richard Dawkins - and Christians love to paint him as this ardent arch-atheist that we're all supposed to be in thrall to - he is still a NEGATIVE atheist. If you read TGD, that's his actual stance.
So no, I don't buy this idea that confident promotion, or a particular swing in atheism formulated in a particular way = an implied positive atheistic stance.
Positive atheism is still only referring to one's nonbelief in deities, and nothing else. One can push the fact of a current lack of evidence for a particular claim quite hard while still retaining the possibility that the situation might change in the future. I'm against alternative therapies being promoted in our healthcare system that don't have any clinical evidence validating them, for example. I'm very against them being used until that happens - but I'm not claiming that will never happen.
It's true that the outspoken, reason+logic based form of atheism is more common than it used to be, or at least more outspoken!
But I think there's something you're not considering here. I've clashed with a few people who want movement atheism to be about more than just atheism, and I've encountered atheists here and elsewhere who are very different from me politically, philosophically, and in how they construct their morality. Yet, despite all those differences (some of them quite acrimonious, particularly with the feminist atheist crowd O_O):
I've never once seen an atheist tell me or any other atheist in the vicinity that they're not an atheist.
And I hate to come across as singling you lot out, but......contrasting that with the number of times I was accused of not being Christian when I was a Christian, I don't think atheism has any kind of labelling crisis at all. Or at least, if it does, it is doing pretty well with it compared to other groups.
This is of course an advantage with taking a stance that is comparatively simple in form, rather than being an entire worldview.
The problem still seems to me to be that Christians expect there to be far more positive atheists than they actually are. I've not been an atheist for very long, but positive atheists seem to be pretty rare beasts indeed. It seems to me they may even be a minority now (assuming they ever were). To keep insisting and insisting that more positive atheists should exist when they don't is like insisiting that Christians should be predominantly Anabaptist. It simply isn't so - and I notice they keep insisting there be more of the type of atheist that are making the same sorts of claim as they are.
A christian can have all sorts of different world views and atheists can have many different world views. The atheist, just doesn't share the one world view that a christian does, that a God exists.
Nm, got it now.
My point in that post is that, yes, linguistically atheism means not believing in God, but based on the philosophical identifiers that are considered by many people (see the video) as intrinsic to "atheism", no, atheism doesn't just mean (for these people) "not believing in God."
Well, I don't think you can really say it's a case of just one worldview less - the Christian worldview is a total one, it is envisaged as covering every aspect of their life.
Atheism is the exact opposite. It's basically little more than a "nah" to all of that.
I just think it's something many of them aren't going to be as used to processing, given that the stances are so different.
Luckily, for us "plain" atheists, it just requires a short sentence to replace that what we mean to express when saying "I´m an atheist.": "I don´t believe in God(s)". (ok, five words instead of three, but avoiding the usual misunderstandings is worth the additional time and effort).Nm, got it now.
My point in that post is that, yes, linguistically atheism means not believing in God, but based on the philosophical identifiers that are considered by many people (see the video) as intrinsic to "atheism", no, atheism doesn't just mean (for these people) "not believing in God."
Non sequitur on whether they are negative or not. What do they actually claim? An ad with a few terms in it still doesn't mean they aren't negative atheists.
It's possible to be certain about a lack of currently available evidence
Again, even with the atheist everyone loves to bring up - Richard Dawkins - and Christians love to paint him as this ardent arch-atheist that we're all supposed to be in thrall to - he is still a NEGATIVE atheist. If you read TGD, that's his actual stance.
But I think there's something you're not considering here. I've clashed with a few people who want movement atheism to be about more than just atheism, and I've encountered atheists here and elsewhere who are very different from me politically, philosophically, and in how they construct their morality. Yet, despite all those differences (some of them quite acrimonious, particularly with the feminist atheist crowd O_O):
I've never once seen an atheist tell me or any other atheist in the vicinity that they're not an atheist.
And I hate to come across as singling you lot out, but......contrasting that with the number of times I was accused of not being Christian when I was a Christian, I don't think atheism has any kind of labelling crisis at all. Or at least, if it does, it is doing pretty well with it compared to other groups.
The problem still seems to me to be that Christians expect there to be far more positive atheists than they actually are. I've not been an atheist for very long, but positive atheists seem to be pretty rare beasts indeed. It seems to me they may even be a minority now (assuming they ever were). To keep insisting and insisting that more positive atheists should exist when they don't is like insisiting that Christians should be predominantly Anabaptist. It simply isn't so - and I notice they keep insisting there be more of the type of atheist that are making the same sorts of claim as they are.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't atheism simply mean not believing in the existence of god.
In terms that definition, wouldn't the burden of proof be on those claiming there is a god?
Oh Jeeze. You do realize that's a Scientology commercial that was sloppily edited by someone to attach an atheist label at the end, don't you?In general this is definitely true. Atheism stands for a negative position, and a negative position has nothing positive about it that people could agree on. "Hey, everyone knows all atheists not only don't believe in God, but also believe in donuts." What?
But there seems to be at least a stance among many atheists (particularly if not exclusively the "new atheist" crowd) for where "atheism" implies positive stuff, particularly reason. This is why this type of atheism has a freaking commercial dedicated to it:
Atheist Superbowl Commercial - 720p Best Commercial on the PLANET - YouTube
Calling it faith is disingenuous. They're values that are held -- valuing evidence, reason, etc. Moreover, that certain trends exist among people who reject certain things does not make atheism itself a positive claim. It just simply identifies like interests that led them to that non-subscription.So while I think that honest atheists stand for a negative position (not believing in God, the rest is relative to the individual), I think that at least lately a large swath of the population has taken atheism to almost religious levels in terms of its unswerving faith to the positive identifiers mentioned above.
Oh Jeeze. You do realize that's a Scientology commercial that was sloppily edited by someone to attach an atheist label at the end, don't you?
*snip*
Calling it faith is disingenuous. They're values that are held -- valuing evidence, reason, etc. Moreover, that certain trends exist among people who reject certain things does not make atheism itself a positive claim. It just simply identifies like interests that led them to that non-subscription.
No, negative atheism is "just atheism," not atheism that identifies with certain positive characteristics, such as reason, logic, knowledge, whatever. That is clearly what is taking place with the video: not just "negative atheism" and "oh yeah, we also correlate nicely with these qualities." No correlation; inextricable connection. That's the newer religious atheism of today. Which doesn't at all negate the negative atheism of honest folks like yourself.
He says he's a negative atheist. A huge part of my point has to consider what people say about themselves and how they actually act in terms of using identifiers. Again, the implicit claim is that, "come over to atheism, where we have reason, logic, knowledge, no superstition, etc."
At the very least you can't claim that no strands of people who identify as atheist aren't using positive identifiers. I know of no study that would confirm this, so we're left with anecdotes, but I know plenty of examples of people who put positive identifiers mentioned above with their atheism that thinking of a "just atheist" dude has been extremely difficult, given the corruption of the term with not merely correlated qualities, but positive identifiers.
Again, your atheism doesn't play that way, and that's for the best, but it's out there. And it's religious, even militant, even Stalinesque at times.
Of course nobody has said that: the essential criterion for atheism is not believing in God. I'm claiming that there are other things that go with atheism that people like you hold as extrinsic or even correlated with atheism, but that many other atheists hold as intrinsic and defining of atheism. And what would a non-atheist atheist look like? So long as you're swinging some type of rationality that works against theism, you're fulfilling the rationality (or knowledge, or logic) standard.
Of course many Christians would be far more likely to claim to see positive atheism where there isn't any. Biblically they've appealed to atheism as a conscious rejection of a conceptualization of God (of course, the case exegetically really isn't this, given that "belief" in God isn't a rootedly cognitive sort of deal), and that's pretty dang positive sort of identifier: God-hatin'.
But to me, positive atheism has been around for a while, but has especially been more prevalent in the last few years, presumably since the post-911 literary outpouring by people like Dawkins, Harris, etc., and which is seen most clearly in its marketing campaign (for heaven's sake) with a collection of glittery, cool-sounding identifiers.
I curious if people are also upset about the growth of positive a-Santaism. After all, the only rational position is weak a-Santaism since we can never prove a negative. Everything else is a statement of faith which puts the burden on the person claiming Santa isn't real. I'll await long discussions about the correct way to not believe in Santa and where that places the burden of proof - at least assuming that all this nitpicking about weak and strong atheism isn't selectively applying an unreasonably strict standard towards non-belief in god that's not used for anything else.
You've just gone and completely redefined what both positive and negative atheism are. Why should I accept this?
Only to those who, apparently like you, conflate usage of a particular set of ideas in accompanient to atheism as an implied claim that they are necessarily part of being an atheist.
You will not prove this to anyone using innuendo. You will need actual direct evidence of this - a good way to demonstrate this would be showing these particular atheists engaging in no-true-atheist fallacies.
The huge irony of this is if you changed "atheist" to "skeptic" I'd probably be in agreement with you.
Drop this kind of rhetoric, it really isn't helping you.
Holding a few extra values and making a commercial isn't Stalinesque. That's small beer to a decent sized church, for one. Let's leave the Stalinesque in Stalinist Russia, hm?
Not at all. Only if I'm claiming that people who aren't purporting to be rational atheists aren't really atheists.
It is like how some Christians feel that Catholicism is the better way to be a Christian, and they may hold forth on the characteristics of their church they most relate to or think are overall beneficial. But that does not mean they are claiming that Catholicism is the one true belief, and all other denominations are false. To imply that they are is little more than putting words in their mouth.
No, not buying this. You've completely ignored my point and example that there is a way to be forthright about a stance even given that it is currently unconvincing. We do it all the time. You're ignored it in lieu of suddenly redefining both negative and positive atheism on a whim.
If you want me to buy it, then as I've said - give me examples of the new atheists saying the only way to "faith" is through new atheism. Give me some "no true atheists" being played.
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