Where is the hope in atheism?

[bhsmte]

That depends. What do we mean by "I do not believe in God?"

Either:

A) I do not believe the proposition "there is a God."
B) I believe there is no God.

As has been pointed out many times here, the first does not necessarily entail the second. However, if you are attributing the concept of God to human invention, then you are at the second. You cannot simultaneously reject the claim that there is no God and hold that God is a human invention.



Because it's not true. I'm some sort of Christian agnostic, so I lack belief in the truth of Christianity but I do not automatically not believe in it. I'm pretty cool operating under the assumption that it might be true, even though I have no personal confirmation of that fact.

This is why agnosticism should not get subsumed into atheism.

Again, I think you are splitting serious hairs her, because you need to hang on to something, for some reason.

I don't believe in the concept of a God and I also believe there is not a personal God. I can say both of those statements, based on my current knowledge of the topic. If I don't believe something exists, how can I also not state; I believe there is no God?

I mean, to give you a hypothetical, if someone held a gun to my head and said if I get this question wrong, they pull the trigger, I would answer; number 2, there is no God, every day and twice on Sunday.

1. There is a God
2. There is no God

 

[Silmarien]

Again, I think you are splitting serious hairs her, because you need to hang on to something, for some reason.

What are you talking about? I'm trying to take the various definitions of "atheism" into account in a way that doesn't ignore agnostic theism. If this results in splitting hairs, take it up with the other atheists. They're the ones insisting on making these distinctions. The fact that I've given up trying to argue definitions with them doesn't make me the one hanging onto something.

I don't believe in the concept of a God and I also believe there is not a personal God. I can say both of those statements, based on my current knowledge of the topic. If I don't believe something exists, how can I also not state; I believe there is no God?

I mean, to give you a hypothetical, if someone held a gun to my head and said if I get this question wrong, they pull the trigger, I would answer; number 2, there is no God, every day and twice on Sunday.

1. There is a God
2. There is no God

Well, your argument isn't with me. It's with the atheists here who insist that they don't believe that there is no God and would refuse answer 1, answer 2, and the label agnostic.

 

[apogee]

haaa, you're right I see. Totally misread that.
My apologies.

No problem at all, it's not as if I haven't misread anything myself before now.

I agree that most theists would say that.
Most theists aren't fundamentalists. My beef is not with them either. My beef is with science deniers who feel like their faith based beliefs trump actual evidence.

I feel your pain, or at least my own pain. I'm not a huge fan of the GOP either.

 

[apogee]

In practice, at least where I live, this doesn’t hold true at all.

When I ask a theist (and in my case it’s almost always a Christian) the question, “Could you be wrong about your god existing?”, the answer is overwhelmingly “No, I know that God exists.”

I hear you. Although, potentially the way the question is framed may influence the answer. None of us respond well to having our foundational beliefs challenged.

i.e. are you sure your wife isn't cheating on you? Could you be wrong about your brother being a serial killer?

This can be the same for Atheists too (not necessarily the ones around these parts).

Or alternatively, it could just be a complete lack of self-awareness / understanding that they are actually just an app on Elon Musk's iPhone.

 

[Silmarien]

It is not "potentially imaginary".

The difference between an atheist and a theist, is that the theist DOES believe the claims of theism while atheists don't.

Which claims of theism? There are at least two major approaches in Western theology alone: classical theism and what we call theistic personalism. Classical theists tend to reject theistic personalism about as strongly as atheists do, and very few people outside of classical theism even know what it is, much less can decide whether to accept or reject it.

And then we can move into other traditions. For example, are you rejecting specific claims made by Hindu philosophers? Are you going to track down every branch of theism that has ever existed and look into their claims to know whether you should accept or reject them? Can you really claim to reject them if you do not know what they are?

This is one of the problems with saying atheism is the rejection of a claim. Better to simply admit that atheism is a separate claim concerning all of those other claims: that none of them hold weight because there is no God, or at least not sufficient reason to believe in him. Even that second one is a positive claim about the world, though, unless you are in possession of complete knowledge of every reason ever offered for the existence of God, with no prejudices of your own that might prevent you from viewing everything correctly. That would pretty much amount to omniscience.

We really are all in the same boat here. Or at least in separate boats in the same storm.

 

[Moral Orel]

Yes, like the claim that I see all the time that someone knows that a god exists, which runs counter to your suggestion that "most theists would not be making claims like this".

Just think of how many times you've seen a Christian on these boards say something to the effect of, "You'll see when you meet God face to face". I've never seen an atheist here say, "I wish you could feel the disappointment of finding out you're wrong when you die, but you won't exist anymore". Plus how many Christians around here have co-opted the word "Truth".

I'm apparently not seeing what you're seeing. In terms of putting words (or beliefs) in other people's mouths, over the 14 years I've been here I've seen it happen much, much more often from theists.

To be fair, anytime a non-believer starts talking about some mainstream Christian belief and the Christian they're talking to says, "That's not what my Christianity looks like", the non-believer is sort of stating what someone else believes. And that does happen a lot. I've done it. And I've learned to always start with questions instead of assuming premises even when they're really, really common.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

"There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place; and I tried to trace such a journey in a story I once wrote. It is, however, a relief to turn from that topic to another story that I never wrote. Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. It is only too probable that I shall never write it, so I will use it symbolically here; for it was a symbol of the same truth. I conceived it as a romance of those vast valleys with sloping sides, like those along which the ancient White Horses of Wessex are scrawled along the flanks of the hills. It concerned some boy whose farm or cottage stood on such a slope, and who went on his travels to find something, such as the effigy and grave of some giant; and when he was far enough from home he looked back and saw that his own farm and kitchen-garden, shining flat on the hill-side like the colours and quarterings of a shield, were but parts of some such gigantic figure, on which he had always lived, but which was too large and too close to be seen. That, I think, is a true picture of the progress of any really independent intelligence today; and that is the point of this book.

The point of this book, in other words, is that the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it. They are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term. They are doubtful in their very doubts. Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling. Thus they make current and anti-clerical cant as a sort of small-talk. They will complain of parsons dressing like parsons; as if we should be any more free if all the police who shadowed or collared us were plain clothes detectives. Or they will complain that a sermon cannot be interrupted, and call a pulpit a coward's castle; though they do not call an editor's office a coward's castle. It would be unjust both to journalists and priests; but it would be much truer of journalist. The clergyman appears in person and could easily be kicked as he came out of church; the journalist conceals even his name so that nobody can kick him. They write wild and pointless articles and letters in the press about why the churches are empty, without even going there to find out if they are empty, or which of them are empty. Their suggestions are
more vapid and vacant than the most insipid curate in a three-act farce, and move us to comfort him after the manner of the curate in the Bab Ballads; 'Your mind is not so blank as that of Hopley Porter.' So we may
truly say to the very feeblest cleric: 'Your mind is not so blank as that of Indignant Layman or Plain Man or Man in the Street, or any of your critics in the newspapers; for they have not the most shadowy notion of what they want themselves. Let alone of what you ought to give them.' They will suddenly turn round and revile the Church for not having prevented the War, which they themselves did not want to prevent; and which nobody had ever professed to be able to prevent, except some of that very school of progressive and cosmopolitan sceptics who are the chief enemies of the Church. It was the anti-clerical and agnostic world that was always prophesying the advent of universal peace; it is that world that was, or should have been, abashed and confounded by the advent of universal war. As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War--they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do. But that marks their mood about the whole religious tradition they are in a state of reaction against it. It is well with the boy when he lives on his father's land; and well with him again when he is far enough from it to look back on it and see it as a whole. But these people have got into an intermediate
state, have fallen into an intervening valley from which they can see neither the heights beyond them nor the heights behind. They cannot get out of the penumbra of Christian controversy. They cannot be Christians and they can not leave off being Anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith.

Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. He does
not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would judge Confucianism. He cannot by an effort of fancy set the Catholic Church thousands of miles away in strange skies of morning and judge it as impartially as a Chinese pagoda. It is said that the great St. Francis Xavier, who very nearly succeeded in setting up the Church there as a tower overtopping all pagodas, failed partly because his followers were accused by their fellow missionaries of representing the Twelve Apostles with the garb or attributes of Chinamen. But it would be far better to see them as Chinamen, and judge them fairly as Chinamen, than to see them as featureless idols merely made to be battered by iconoclasts; or rather as cockshies to be pelted by empty-handed cockneys. It would be better to see the whole thing as a remote Asiatic cult; the mitres of its bishops as the towering head dresses of mysterious bonzes; its pastoral staffs as the sticks twisted like serpents carried in some Asiatic procession; to see the prayer book as fantastic as the prayer-wheel and the Cross as crooked as the Swastika. Then at least we should not lose our temper as some of the sceptical critics seem to lose their temper, not to mention their wits. Their anti-clericalism has become an atmosphere, an atmosphere of negation and hostility from which they cannot escape. Compared with that, it would be better to see the whole thing as something belonging to another continent, or to another planet. It would be more philosophical to stare indifferently at bonzes than to be perpetually and pointlessly grumbling at bishops. It would be better to walk past a church as if it were a
pagoda than to stand permanently in the porch, impotent either to go inside and help or to go outside and forget. For those in whom a mere reaction has thus become an obsession, I do seriously recommend the imaginative effort of conceiving the Twelve Apostles as Chinamen. In other words, I recommend these critics to try to do as much justice to Christian saints as if they were Pagan sages." - GK Chesterton.


While Chesterton is a little partisan perhaps, he makes a valid point. Our Western Civilisation is so suffused with things derived from Christianity, that our agnostics today stand perpetually somewhat beholden to it, in some sense. There is little perspective, I think. Just my two cents on the Atheists position vis-a-vis their intellectual heritage, and why we end up in these interminable discussions.

 

[apogee]

Just think of how many times you've seen a Christian on these boards say something to the effect of, "You'll see when you meet God face to face". I've never seen an atheist here say, "I wish you could feel the disappointment of finding out you're wrong when you die, but you won't exist anymore". Plus how many Christians around here have co-opted the word "Truth".

Stand back - I'm going to attempt to do the utterly impossible now. i.e. try to provide a possible justification / mitigation for any, and every apparently outrageous statement, that any self-professing Christian has ever said to any self-professing non-Christian, or vice-versa. - deep breath

Has anyone here ever been involved in a disagreement, where either party thought they were wrong?

To me the above statement is nothing more, or less than "you are wrong, I am right", which granted isn't so much an argument, as a parting shot when all argumentation / energy has been exhausted and all that remains is the pre-existing conviction, that despite all the heat and the noise of the argument, they are still wrong and you are still right.

Unless of course there never was an argument and the person expressing the opinion just expressed it voluntarily. - I'm guessing you are capable of forming your own opinions so are more than able to defend against such trespasses, though granted others may not be so well equipped, and will simply adapt their beliefs to whatever strongly held opinions they encounter (moment to moment).

 

[bhsmte]

Stand back - I'm going to attempt to do the utterly impossible now. i.e. try to provide a possible justification / mitigation for any, and every apparently outrageous statement, that any self-professing Christian has ever said to any self-professing non-Christian, or vice-versa. - deep breath

Has anyone here ever been involved in a disagreement, were either party thought they were wrong?

To me the above statement is nothing more, or less than "you are wrong, I am right", which granted isn't so much an argument, as a parting shot when all argumentation / energy has been exhausted and all that remains is the pre-existing conviction, that despite all the heat and the noise of the argument, they are still wrong and you are still right.

Well, each argument should stand on its own merits. Clearly, many people have above normal personal bias, and this doesnt allow them to acknowledge another persons point, even if they back it up with a somewhat logical explanation.

Pearsonal beliefs are important to people, as they are a unique indentifier of who they are and the road they have traveled to get there. If those beliefs ever change and or are completely let go by anyone, they will do it when it is there idea, not when they are told by someone they are wrong and even if the counter argument is well explained.

People will arrive at a variety of different beliefs, based on their specific unique circumstances, nothing unusual about that. At some point though, you can only keep saying the same things so many times and at some point, it would appear you just agree to disagree and move on.

 

[apogee]

Well, each argument should stand on its own merits. Clearly, many people have above normal personal bias, and this doesnt allow them to acknowledge another persons point, even if they back it up with a somewhat logical explanation.

Pearsonal beliefs are important to people, as they are a unique indentifier of who they are and the road they have traveled to get there. If those beliefs ever change and or are completely let go by anyone, they will do it when it is there idea, not when they are told by someone they are wrong and even if the counter argument is well explained.

People will arrive at a variety of different beliefs, based on their specific unique circumstances, nothing unusual about that. At some point though, you can only keep saying the same things so many times and at some point, it would appear you just agree to disagree and move on.

I don't disagree with this post. I completely affirm it.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Which claims of theism?

Claims of supernatural things. Be it gods, angels, spirits, "miracles",.....
If nothing supernatural is being believed (=accepted as true), then how can you be a theist?

There are at least two major approaches in Western theology alone: classical theism and what we call theistic personalism. Classical theists tend to reject theistic personalism about as strongly as atheists do, and very few people outside of classical theism even know what it is, much less can decide whether to accept or reject it.

Do any of the two approaches include a disbelief in anything supernatural (like gods, spirits, angels, miracles,...)? No? Didn't think so.

And then we can move into other traditions. For example, are you rejecting specific claims made by Hindu philosophers?

Yes. Their hindu specific claims, at the very least. You reject those also, being a christian and all. I'll go ahead and assume that you don't consider cows "sacred" and that you don't believe in Shiva and whatnot.

Are you going to track down every branch of theism that has ever existed and look into their claims to know whether you should accept or reject them?

Don't need to. Lowest common denominator and all...
It doesn't matter to me if you call your god "allah" or "jawhe".
The nature of the claims is the same.

Can you really claim to reject them if you do not know what they are?

I know what they are.

This is one of the problems with saying atheism is the rejection of a claim. Better to simply admit that atheism is a separate claim concerning all of those other claims: that none of them hold weight because there is no God, or at least not sufficient reason to believe in him.

This is where you stop making sense.
Before a person can say that he does not have sufficient reason to believe in a god... someone else first needs to claim a god!

Do you wake up in the morning saying "I don't believe in gooblydockdiedo?"
Off course you don't. Someone FIRST needs to tell you about gooblydockdiedo, claim such a thing exists and define what they mean by it. Only then can you then say that you don't have sufficient reason to believe the claim about gooblydockdiedo

By very definition, saying "I don't believe X", implies that someone FIRST claims X.

Even that second one is a positive claim about the world, though, unless you are in possession of complete knowledge of every reason ever offered for the existence of God, with no prejudices of your own that might prevent you from viewing everything correctly. That would pretty much amount to omniscience.

No. It just means that the evidence being presented to me by the person who's making the initial positive claim is insufficient.

We really are all in the same boat here. Or at least in separate boats in the same storm.

We most definatly are not.
A burden of proof is not "in both camps". It is only in one camp. The camp that makes the positive claim. In this case, that camp is theism.

And as an atheist, I say that theists fail to meet their burden of proof.
As such, as an atheist, I don't have a burden of proof concerning the claims of theism.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Has anyone here ever been involved in a disagreement, where either party thought they were wrong?

No.

However, consider this....

How about being involved in a disagreement, where either party acknowledged that they COULD be wrong?

Usually when talking to theists, especially fundamentalists, this acknowledgement is not present. It's rather rare to see a theist acknowledge that what they believe to be true (about their religion) COULD be wrong. The more fundamentalistic they are, the worse this gets.

To the point even where they'll say things like "if science disagrees with my religion, then science is wrong".

 

[apogee]

To the point even where they'll say things like "if science disagrees with my religion, then science is wrong".

Objectively speaking, science IS wrong about well... EVERYTHING... It deals with models of reality... not reality itself. But ah whatever, just feel free to reject what they say. I'm not going to defend fundamentalism of any persuasion.

 

[DogmaHunter]

No problem at all, it's not as if I haven't misread anything myself before now.




I feel your pain, or at least my own pain. I'm not a huge fan of the GOP either.

GOP?

Not sure what you are refering to there.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Objectively speaking, science IS wrong about well... EVERYTHING... It deals with models of reality... not reality itself. But ah whatever, just feel free to reject what they say. I'm not going to defend fundamentalism of any persuasion.

...as a proponent of BioLogos, I'd have to side with the atheists on this, because I know what they're going to say......................and they'd be close to being right. Not exactly, but close.

 

[apogee]

...as a proponent of BioLogos, I'd have to side with the atheists on this, because I know what they're going to say......................and they'd be close to being right. Not exactly, but close.

I'm not going to disagree with you, although consider an extremely high resolution copy of the mona lisa and then examine the both using a tunnelling electron microscope, and you will approximate to my viewpoint on this

 

[Silmarien]

Claims of supernatural things. Be it gods, angels, spirits, "miracles",.....
If nothing supernatural is being believed (=accepted as true), then how can you be a theist?

Pretty easily. I actually don't believe in the supernatural, but I would define that somewhat differently than you probably would.

Could you not do this thing where you cut posts up sentence by sentence? Paragraph by paragraph is fine, but unless you actually have substantial commentary to make regarding something very specific, sentence by sentence just says, "I do not want to have a conversation." Usually it results in raising objections that would have been answered if you bothered to first read the whole post in context. Or, you know, asked for clarification.

Do any of the two approaches include a disbelief in anything supernatural (like gods, spirits, angels, miracles,...)? No? Didn't think so.

Define supernatural. Define God.

Yes. Their hindu specific claims, at the very least. You reject those also, being a christian and all. I'll go ahead and assume that you don't consider cows "sacred" and that you don't believe in Shiva and whatnot.

A couple of posts ago I told you I did not have religious beliefs. This makes me by definition not a Christian. Christianized, yes, and at the end of the day I will usually side with Aquinas, but I actually do have a lot more in common with the philosophical traditions of Hinduism than with the popular modern conception of Christianity. I don't accept the mythology of Hinduism, so no to Shiva and Krishna, but I do lean on the Upanishads a fair amount.

It seems like you focus mainly on the mythological aspects of theism and then define your position in contrast to that. If you automatically assume that everyone is talking about Zeus tossing down lightning bolts, I imagine it all would look a little crazy.

We most definatly are not.
A burden of proof is not "in both camps". It is only in one camp. The camp that makes the positive claim. In this case, that camp is theism.

This is not true. If you insist the other side has a burden of proof, then you have a burden of proof concerning your positive claim that your opponent has the burden of proof. You've failed to meet this spectacularly. But I was not even talking about this mysterious "burden of proof" of yours at all, but about the epistemological issues at hand. Everyone has a network of preexisting beliefs through which they judge claims--there is no neutral position.

Anyway, it's not like there aren't problems with the intelligibility of reality if you assume that theism or something like it is not true. Why does the universe appear to function according to regular laws? Because SCIENCE. Well, science observes but doesn't really explain why it's the case that the world works this way instead of a different way. Why does causality seem to hold? If I toss a rock at a window, why doesn't it sometimes turn into a bouquet of flowers? DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. Alright atheists, some of you are really echoing the religious fundamentalists now, but hey, I suppose I already knew that.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm not going to disagree with you, although consider an extremely high resolution copy of the mona lisa and then examine the both using a tunnelling electron microscope, and you will approximate to my viewpoint on this

The problem with that is that if our "imaginary model" of the atom, in association with other scientific ideas, procedures and connective tissues within those ideas (i.e. math) enable us to actually alter the state of the atom in a process of fission or fusion, then our otherwise "imaginary model" actually has some "real" impact on how we handle and grapple the essence of the world around us. We're not just dreaming with science; we're doing! And I think there is a biblical motif that explains "why" we are able to do this, even if it's taken eons to get to this point in the 19th through the 21st centuries.

 

[apogee]

The problem with that is that if our "imaginary model" of the atom, in association with other scientific ideas, procedures and connective tissues within those ideas (i.e. math) enable us to actually alter the state of the atom in a process of fission or fusion, then our otherwise "imaginary model" actually has some "real" impact on how we handle and grapple the essence of the world around us. We're not just dreaming with science; we're doing! And I think there is a biblical motif that explains "why" we are able to do this, even if it's taken eons to get to this point in the 19th through the 21st centuries.

No, I accept that, but it still doesn't prevent the model, from being a model.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

No, I accept that, but it still doesn't prevent the model, from being a model.

Sure, but I'm afraid that when skeptics, atheists, and other outside onlookers hear us "saying" that these models in science are "only models," they're not hearing what we're saying. Unless, of course, some Christians actually DO think that the models have little real efficacy in technological human "doing."