Atheist beliefs

[Nonpareil]

Perhaps a more productive poll would be "How many of the atheists here are strong materialists?" Since we're all guessing here, I mean. That would at least give us some concrete numbers, not just midnight potshots.

 

[The Atheist]

Right, but how can I judge what other atheists think when I don't even take on a position on such matters as an atheist myself?

Well, it could be that you know some atheists, talk about things immaterial occasionally and might have an opinion based on your knowldge of those people and what they've said/done.

I don't think that atheism has that much to do with taking up a position on the ultimate nature of reality. It is a rejection of theism due to lack of evidence,...

You're almost right, because atheism has nothing to do with evidence, but is simply a lack of theistic belief. Panspermians and David Icke display this nicely.

... not a rejection of theism because reality is or isn't ultimately material on some non-explorable philosophical level.

Which is precisely why I'm asking the question.

Of those who claim the atheism tag, how many have simply swapped one delusion for another?

If one does believe in the sky-daddy, but does believe "love" and "consciousness" (or telepathy. etc, ad nauseum...) are some special traits onferred upon human beings, I don't think there's much progress.

It's not just the poll, the OP makes little sense as well.

Buddhists are atheists? Really?

Eh? How could you not know that?

There are at least a couple on this board and I think Ryokan even has/had "Buddhist Atheist" as his custom title.

Funny how smart fellas like Joe below managed to make sense of it ok.

That'd be my guess, but I didn't vote in the poll because I really don't have anything to base it on. I might find out some more in a few weeks. . .

Do post details.

I've pulled all my hair out and killed three cats with frustration at not being able to get this bit of crucial information - what do "atheists" actually believe?

Instead of putting cutely agnostic messages on buses, we should first find out if rejection of theism is worth the custard. I might have to change the name to something more valuable and unobtainable by people who have merely rejected the god/s to have a different cuddly blanket to hold.

If you find some actual statistics, let me know!

He's asking a bald man what color hair he has. Very odd question. The man might have had hair at one point, and that hair had a color THEN. Or the person might be naturally bald, and so never had a hair color. But in neither instance is the color of the hair germane to the man's head.

I wouldn't normally bother, because I'll be arguing the poster not the point, but I've just seen you make an ass (that an ass like the fella in my avatar used, not an arse) of yourself in a couple of threads.

Shocking analogy. If you wanted a hair colour one, a better one would be a asking a blind man to say which percentage of people have which shade of hair.

See, that's an excellent analogy, because I'm blind as to the actual facts regarding the question.

Perhaps a more productive poll would be "How many of the atheists here are strong materialists?" Since we're all guessing here, I mean. That would at least give us some concrete numbers, not just midnight potshots.

Not really, because the numbers would be meaningless.

I'll give an another example of excellent analogy here for my pal above:

The equivalent would be asking people whether they believe in a corporeal or metaphysical resurrection inside a church.

We would concrete, useless, numbers.

Because no meaningful statistics exist, I'm trying to at least get a feel for what others find.

I know many people who self-identify as "atheist", but I live in a country with 50-58% people who do just that.

No statistics exist on what people in that group believe, but I know a few and find the level of mis-belief to be well over 90%. I'm not all that satisfied with anecdotal evidence, but if that's all we have, it's better than nothing.

 

[Beerina]

I usually take it to mean physical matter exists, nothing has a supernatural cause, objects continue to exist when you're not thinking about them, etc.

That would be a material atheist.

That would make me a strong material atheist. I assert God does not exist, and also that nothing supernatural exists (including consciousness, which must therefore arise out of normal physics somehow.)

I guess I would claim I'm a super-materialist strong atheist, since I also claim that, even if something people might call "supernatural" existed, it would nevertheless have its own (possibly radically) different physics that could, nevertheless, be analyzed with science.

"Supernatural" is just a label for "it happens by magic because we can't understand how it could happen". Thus, I claim, even if it existed, to call it "supernatural" would be an incorrect description. Conclusion, really, because "supernatural" also implies "we don't know, so we just throw up our hands and give up."



And the cherry on top is I cannot logically conceive of any way for anything to operate beside determinism and randomness. And randomness itself seems to choke on ultimately being a little magical random box that creates a truly random* occurrence. This seems suspiciously like a cryptic description of something supernatural.






* As opposed to classical randomness, AKA ignorance of the exact state. And yes, I'm aware my idea suggests there must, therefore, be something deterministic behind true quantum randomness, even if there's no theoretical way to test for it at the moment. For those who think about this way, way too much, if there is no way for Bell's experiment, now tested, to be explained while still maintaining Einstein's concept of locality and reality (i.e. actual things with measurable properties actually exist "out there") then this would be at a deeper reality, e.g. a virtual world that is, itself, deterministic.

 

[Gate2501]

Which is precisely why I'm asking the question.

Of those who claim the atheism tag, how many have simply swapped one delusion for another?

If one does believe in the sky-daddy, but does believe "love" and "consciousness" (or telepathy. etc, ad nauseum...) are some special traits onferred upon human beings, I don't think there's much progress.

Are you attempting to say that anyone who is not a materialist is delusional?

It is all just navel-gazing. You cannot make falsifiable, definitive statements about the ultimate nature of reality on some philosophical non-explorable level. I think that things like "consciousness" are just emergent properties of our physical brain, but that doesn't mean that I am am materialist.

Materialism and Idealism are unfalsifiable philosophical positions, and collapse into one another regardless. Atheism has nothing to do with materialism, aside from the fact that some forms of idealism(god-minds and such) would be disqualified, possibly pushing one towards materialism if they want to adopt a personal philosophy. Even so, materialism/idealism is not an all-encompassing dichotomy.

 

[Cynic]

I expect The Atheist merely regards materialism as a default, where it may be equally unfalsifiable, but makes the least number of assumptions and therefore falls on the right side of Ockham's Razor. His stated premise seems to be gauge how far out into "weird ideas" atheists tend to be adopted, not that it necessarily has anything to do with atheism, per se. It's probably just too detail oriented to expect most people to give enough of a crap to form an opinion on the subject, let alone a particular on. It happens that I agree that materialism is the "proper" default.

 

[Gate2501]

I expect The Atheist merely regards materialism as a default, where it may be equally unfalsifiable, but makes the least number of assumptions and therefore falls on the right side of Ockham's Razor. His stated premise seems to be gauge how far out into "weird ideas" atheists tend to be adopted, not that it necessarily has anything to do with atheism, per se. It's probably just too detail oriented to expect most people to give enough of a crap to form an opinion on the subject, let alone a particular on. It happens that I agree that materialism is the "proper" default.

Oh, I agree with this. Materialism does not really extend ontology at all, and if a philosophical position can fall on the right side of Ockham's Razor, modern materialism would be one which does.

I just think that it is wrong to think that people who do not wish to make definitive declarations about an unfalsifiable philosophy have "swapped one delusion for another". It isn't like materialism is just a rejection of other wacky philosophies, it is a (less wacky) philosophy all its own.

I prefer to not navel-gaze at all if I can help it, unless just for fun.

 

[Eyeron]

Yeah, but shouldn't be defined on what materialism is? To me being materialistic is just wanting to have a lot of stuff like say having a lot of clothes or a lot cars. And to that end, I don't understand why atheism would lead to this kind of materialism.

And Christianity teaches against materialism as well. The parable of the rich guy having to give up everything in order to enter heaven illustrates this.

 

[I Ratant]

I don't know a sufficient number of atheists to be able to make a reasonable guess.

 

[Gate2501]

Yeah, but shouldn't be defined on what materialism is? To me being materialistic is just wanting to have a lot of stuff like say having a lot of clothes or a lot cars. And to that end, I don't understand why atheism would lead to this kind of materialism.

And Christianity teaches against materialism as well. The parable of the rich guy having to give up everything in order to enter heaven illustrates this.

Joke post?

Perhaps my humor detectors are on the fritz again.

 

[Eyeron]

No, not a joke post at all.

 

[Gate2501]

No, not a joke post at all.

He isn't talking about materialism as in Madonna's "Material Girl".

He is talking about the philosophical position: Materialism.

 

[Cynic]

Yeah, but shouldn't be defined on what materialism is? To me being materialistic is just wanting to have a lot of stuff like say having a lot of clothes or a lot cars. And to that end, I don't understand why atheism would lead to this kind of materialism.

And Christianity teaches against materialism as well. The parable of the rich guy having to give up everything in order to enter heaven illustrates this.

Since this wasn't a joke, it'll have to be pointed out that there is a difference between "materialism" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism and materialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_materialism .

 

[Eyeron]

Ah I see, thanks. I have heard of the philosophy of materialism as "nothing exists but matter" before but I'd never heard of its proper name.

In a way I can see it, but I don't think it's correct. Because it's energy that holds matter together. In humans a body cannot make a physical motion without an electrical impulse. When you get past the physical surface down to the nitty gritty, it's all protons, neutrons, and electrons held together in a energy matrix of some sort.

So perhaps it is more correct to say we're actually mostly energy.

 

[Gate2501]

Ah I see, thanks. I have heard of the philosophy of materialism as "nothing exists but matter" before but I'd never heard of its proper name.

In a way I can see it, but I don't think it's correct. Because it's energy that holds matter together. In humans a body cannot make a physical motion without an electrical impulse. When you get past the physical surface down to the nitty gritty, it's all protons, neutrons, and electrons held together in a energy matrix of some sort.

So perhaps it is more correct to say we're actually mostly energy.

Energy is included as a part of material reality under materialism.

 

[qayak]

Eh? How could you not know that?

There are at least a couple on this board and I think Ryokan even has/had "Buddhist Atheist" as his custom title.

Funny how smart fellas like Joe below managed to make sense of it ok.

You sample size is too small. Just because a couple of buddhists claim to be atheists doesn't mean they are, nor does it mean that all others are. Buddhists believe in a great many supernatural things and deities.

 

[Jeff Corey]

I agree with the previous posters that said that there is no way to answer the question. We do not have the evidence needed to answer it.
How could we? We can make some guesses based on the people we know who are atheists, not agnostics or sort of disbelievers, like Episcopalians. But do we know whether they are hard assed materialists? Not necessesarily.
And then how could we generalize to all those other people we don't know.
Planet X is looking better every day.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

What kind of poll is this? Should we be guessing based on our personal anecdotal experiences or trying to find the most evidence based data set?

 

[Cynic]

I used gut feeling. *shrug* No one's being graded on this.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Hey, I'm just asking for a clarification.

 

[sigmund]

Yeah, you left off the 'I have no idea option'.