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Athiests start religious wars, too!

Ziggurat said:
Uh... no. Since God's non-existence is not provable, an atheist does not know, he can only believe. And if he doesn't believe that God doesn't exist, he's not an atheist.
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Here's the thing. I am an example of someone that doesn't necessarily believe definitively that "God" or something vaguely resembling the concept of "God" does not exist. It's extremely doubtful, and there's no reason to believe that such a thing exists, but I can't completely rule it out without being omnipotent myself.

However, I do know that The Bible and the various traditions say many things which are not true, thus I am not a Christian nor a Jew. I am NOT agnostic as to the legitimacy of those religions. The same could be said of Scientology, Zeus worship, Roman Emperor worship, etc.

Neither am I a generic Deist, since I see no reason to "believe" something which I have no clue about and can't even define properly without resorting to unsubstantiated and rather vague cultural descriptions.

This is Agnostic Atheism. It's not that I believe that "God" doesn't exist, it's just that I have no beliefs about such a being, and I also assert that there is no one else on the planet that CAN know anything about such a being as it is often described; at least not in a way that the knowledge can be passed on in a respectable manner (evidence, in other words).

Without evidence, all assertions about any God or gods is mere speculation from the point of the unbiased and passive observer. Sure, it's fun to speculate, and you can come up with some real answers using reason and creativity. However, one cannot change reality by merely dreaming it, as far as I've ever been able to determine. To me, one of the steps in the journey to wisdom is to stop believing your own garbage... and every bit of other garbage put there by society and those around you, as well. I would say the only "belief" here is an ethical one; a "value" as it were.

Am I an Atheist? Well, it seems to be the best fit to me. Somewhere along the line, many have skewed the word to mean something other than what it means, but ultimately all it means is I reject religion... not "God" per se. I would require unmistakable first-hand knowledge or verifiable evidence to think differently, and would likely worry for my own sanity if I got such. Even then, existence doesn't necessarily suggest "worship" as the proper course of action.

Is there ever a time that this silly conversation won't keep coming up in this forum? NO. Unfortunately, there's too many people that misunderstand the terms. There's been quite a few multi-paged threads about this, and it comes up in about any thread where anyone mentions the term "Atheist." I'm thinking we should make a sticky thread on the matter to refer to or something.
 
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  • You cannot prove that pink unicorns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that leprechauns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that fairies do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.
The strategy of accusing the atheist of "believing" in something that cannot be proven is fatuous.
 
RandFan said:
  • You cannot prove that pink unicorns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that leprechauns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that fairies do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.
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Quite true.

The strategy of accusing the atheist of "believing" in something that cannot be proven is fatuous.
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Are you unwilling to say that you believe pink unicorns, etc. do not exist?

I'm quite willing to say that I believe they don't exist. I'm not sure why you think that's a problem. You seem to be reflexively rejecting the idea of believing something doesn't exist because you think it's part of an attack on atheism. But it isn't, at least not on my part.
 
RandFan said:
  • You cannot prove that pink unicorns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that leprechauns do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that fairies do not exist.
  • You cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.
The strategy of accusing the atheist of "believing" in something that cannot be proven is fatuous.
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Ah, but all these things exist on Planet X. You should come out here and visit sometime, it's quite magical.

:D

Give it up, man... you can't prove a negative. It has nothing to do with the argument here anyway, since the basic problem is that he doesn't understand the definition of Atheism.
 
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theprestige said:
I don't believe you.
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Is the important part here that you don't believe me, or that you don't believe in unicorns?

I would propose that the former is the more important; see my post above. Given the way you stated it, I think you'd probably agree.
 
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Ziggurat said:
If you believe Santa Clause does not exist, yes, that's a belief.

A lack of any belief in regards to God's existence would be agnosticism, not atheism.
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Ziggurat said:
Uh... no. Since God's non-existence is not provable, an atheist does not know, he can only believe. And if he doesn't believe that God doesn't exist, he's not an atheist.
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Of course, first we have to define what we mean by "Santa Clause" and "God".

For some definitions of "Santa Clause" and "God" it is possible to know that they don't exist. One of the most popular definitions of "God" (the Judeo-Christian God) is disprovable (to my satisfaction). I know that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.

Unless you want to argue that it isn't possible to know anything, including that 2 + 2 = 4. In that case, everything we "know" is really just a "belief".
 
MG1962 said:
So they were not true atheists?
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Whatever their problem it had nothing to do with atheism. Atheism doesn't have any dogma or presupposition. There is nothing that follows from atheism other than a lack of a belief in god. Anyone who makes an argument otherwise is arguing post hoc ergo proctor hoc. A fallacy.
 
RandFan said:
Whatever their problem it had nothing to do with atheism. Atheism doesn't have any dogma or presupposition. There is nothing that follows from atheism other than a lack of a belief in god. Anyone who makes an argument otherwise is arguing post hoc ergo proctor hoc. A fallacy.
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...Other than anti-theism, which is considered a subdivision of atheism. Atheists aren't always passive and rational... many are rather rebellious and antagonistic toward their former religions. Obviously, we don't all fit that stereotype, but it does exist.
 
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Manopolus said:
...Other than anti-theism, which is considered a subdivision of atheism. Atheists aren't always passive and rational... many are rather rebellious and antagonistic toward their former religions. Obviously, we don't all fit that stereotype, but it does exist.
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You are talking about the human condition and not atheism. That's the the crux of the problem. Atheism has nothing to do with anything other than a lack of belief in god. If we could just get that through people's thick skulls. The Bible tells followers to kill people. The Koran and Hadith also provides for killing. There's lots and lots of happy instructions to kill. Atheism? ... crickets. Nothing. There are no atheist books about killing believers. Nothing. Nada. Zip. If your co-worker is a jerk AND atheist, he's a jerk in spite of atheism and not because of it.
 
MG1962 said:
So this organisation was a fallacy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Godless
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You are NOT listening. There is NOTHING about atheism that calls for immoral behavior anymore than there is about blue eyes. If a group of people who all had blue eyes killed people would you honestly blame it on the color of their eyes?

Would you? Even if they said it was about blue eyes would you blame eye color?

Atheism has no more to do with immorality than the color of one's eyes. Got it?
 
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Puppycow said:
Unless you want to argue that it isn't possible to know anything, including that 2 + 2 = 4. In that case, everything we "know" is really just a "belief".
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I'm not arguing for absolute epistemological uncertainty. But I would argue that knowing is a subset of believing, so that we can both believe and know something. And it's useful to keep knowing as a subset of believing because sometimes when we think we know something, we're wrong, in which case we only believe it. With something like 2+2=4 is pretty easy to determine that we know it, but we can't do that with 100% certainty for everything we think we know. But we can say for certain what we believe.
 
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