Location:table 42 in the restaurant at the end of the universe
Posted 01 March 2012 - 09:54 PM
The original question "Is there evidence for atheism?" is nonsense. If I ask "Is there evidence for republicanism?" or any other "ism", there are two ways to answer. One is to say "Yes, I am an x or y, so it exists" but we get the impression that you aren't asking whether it exists or not, though that is how you have worded it; what you really mean is, "is there evidence to support the belief in atheism?" and that is where the question falls down. Nobody believes in atheism. It isn't a something to be believed in. It is a position in relation to another question; whether or not there is evidence for somebody else's proposition of the existence of a god. Answering, "not as far as I can see", or "No," has acquired a special name because historically the position arose in a context of widespread official belief in gods. and people who said "No". were identified as a special group. If the word didn't already exist it is unlikely that anyone would bother to invent a special name for something so common and no longer any more worthy of comment than a preference for red or green.
What you should have asked if you really wanted to know why people reject gods was something like. "Why don't you believe in God?" then you could have rehearsed all the standard "proofs of the existence of God" starting with Thomas Aquinas and going on to the latest drivel from a southern baptist college. Every single one of these, of course, has already been demolished over and over and over.......ad infinitum. The proofs for god are a kind of zombie lie; no matter how often they are killed, they just get up again and keep on coming at you.
As for your response to people who refuse to play your silly game......see Hooter's comments above.
p.s. Please read what I have actually said.....your abusive remarks on my comments so far have been nonsense, partly because not once have you responded to the actual point made and partly because your desperation to fit in your collection of clever/silly aphorisms overwhelms your judgement. People only started to mock you after you abused them.
not once have you responded to the actual point made.
As clear as it could possibly be. As the summer sky.
That is right. You never answered my questions? I don't think you have a Dawkins quote on Atheism because he doesn't have the evidence for atheism which is our topic. I just want to know if you are like him. .
Sorry... not interested.. You shouldn't want to know anything about me, that's not your business. You got boundary issues bro, this is clearly off-topic.
To retain evidentialism in the absence of positive evidence for atheism, the Atheists appear to need a principle which states that, in the absence of good evidence for theism, atheism is thereby evidentially supported. No matter how they lack evidence they attack Theists for not having adequate evidence. This may seem like magic, but a major theme of Norwood Hanson’s 1967 essay ‘What I Don’t Believe’, is, “When there is no good reason for thinking a [positive existence] claim to be true, that in itself is good reason for thinking the claim to be false.” Michael Scriven proposed a similar principle. So following Thomas Morris, I’ll call this the Hanson-Scriven Thesis, or ‘HST’. HST is a version of the idea that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Hanson defends HST in some of the ways we’ve already rejected. However, his rhetorically most effective defense involves pointing to things for which we have no good evidence – the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster, Shangri-La, goblins – and which we also believe do not exist. His idea is that we believe these things don’t exist because we have no good evidence for them. However, he offers no argument for this latter claim. Presumably the examples are meant to just show that we reason in accordance with HST.
More recently the Atheists have employed Hanson-like examples to defend atheism. We now hear of Zeus, the Tooth Fairy and the Flying Spaghetti Monster; then there is Bertrand Russell’s example of a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, too small to be detected by our telescopes. In spite of our being unable to disprove the existence of such a teapot, this doesn’t mean we must take its existence seriously. On the contrary, the rational attitude to adopt is that the teapot doesn’t exist. Russell’s point, according to Dawkins, “is that the burden of proof rests with the believers, not the non-believers” (The God Delusion). By the way, with the space station, there is a flying teapot.
To evaluate this example-based defense of HST, I want to distinguish two broad types of evidence. Let us call evidence for a proposition P which is usually insufficient on its own to persuade a disbeliever that P is true, weak evidence. Weak evidence, however, can accumulate to make a compelling case, and it can also support different or even incompatible propositions (think of facts in a criminal case which are cited in arguments for incompatible conclusions). By contrast, strong evidence comprises sufficient or compelling grounds for rational belief, or at least, powerful considerations which competing theories cannot account for. It’s strong evidence we’re after when we ask, “What is your evidence for that?”
This distinction is important because the “good reason” in HST must be understood as strong evidence if HST is to apply to the case of divine reality. That is because there is weak evidence for a divine reality – religious experience, the fine-tuning of physical laws and constants, the apparent contingency of the universe, etc. These and other points, although far from decisive, and although explicable in other ways, could conceivably be mentioned in a compelling argument for the existence of a divine being. Therefore, if HST is about the absence of weak evidence, one cannot infer from HST that no divine being exists. So for HST to stand a chance of applying in the atheist case, ‘good reason’ must be understood as something closer to strong evidence.
We can now see why HST is false. Consider the claim that earthworms have a primitive form of consciousness. There is little evidence for this, certainly no strong evidence. Nevertheless, many consciousness researchers believe it (with varying degrees of confidence). Or take the proposition that physical reality is much richer and more mysterious than our current physical theories represent. There is no strong evidence for this either, but it is believed by many (the astrophysicist Martin Rees, for one). Or consider string theory. Again, there is nothing that could properly be called strong evidence for it, yet many physicists believe it. Such examples could be multiplied. Yet if we were to take HST seriously, given that there’s no strong evidence for any of the above propositions, we would rationally have to conclude that the negations of the propositions are true: that earthworms are not conscious, that physics is not far from completion, and that string theory is false. But that is absurd! These negative conclusions can be believed – indeed, many people do believe them – but there is no reason to suppose that they must be believed.
It gets worse. For whenever the negations of propositions like those above can be rephrased as positive existence statements lacking strong evidence, HST will counsel us to believe contradictions. For example, the statement ‘earthworms are not conscious’ can be substituted with ‘the boundary between conscious and non-conscious creatures is above the level of earthworms’. Since there is no strong evidence for that, according to HST we should believe there is no such boundary – which means believing that earthworms are conscious! So, according to HST, to be rational we should believe that earthworms are both conscious and not. This is a reductio ad absurdum of HST.
It is now easy to see where Hanson and the Atheists go wrong with their example-based defense of HST: they select examples that conform with HST and ignore cases of the sort just offered that conflict with it. Not only does this generate the false impression that HST is true, it suggests that religious belief, because it lacks strong evidence, must be judged to be just as ridiculous as the Tooth Fairy or goblins. But given that there are numerous non-ridiculous beliefs that lack strong evidence, it remains open that belief in a divine reality is more like those than like the ridiculous beliefs. Certainly neither Hanson nor the Atheists have said anything to argue otherwise. Moreover, it is clear that they have no argument that religious belief is ‘ridiculous’: If they did, they would have no need to justify atheism without evidence – the argument would itself be the evidence. Here it may be objected that believers have no argument that religious belief is serious rather than silly either. That may be true, but it is irrelevant. My point is just that, in presenting ridiculous examples and ignoring non-ridiculous ones, Hanson and the Atheists create the misleading impression that the silliness of religious belief is a result of their reasoning rather than an unsupported presupposition.
Finally not one thing keeps the issue of strong evidence also being applies to Atheism’s need for evidence as well. There are two sides to the coin.
The original question "Is there evidence for atheism?" is nonsense. If I ask "Is there evidence for republicanism?" or any other "ism", there are two ways to answer. One is to say "Yes, I am an x or y, so it exists" but we get the impression that you aren't asking whether it exists or not, though that is how you have worded it; what you really mean is, "is there evidence to support the belief in atheism?" and that is where the question falls down. Nobody believes in atheism. It isn't a something to be believed in. It is a position in relation to another question; whether or not there is evidence for somebody else's proposition of the existence of a god. Answering, "not as far as I can see", or "No," has acquired a special name because historically the position arose in a context of widespread official belief in gods. and people who said "No". were identified as a special group. If the word didn't already exist it is unlikely that anyone would bother to invent a special name for something so common and no longer any more worthy of comment than a preference for red or green.
What you should have asked if you really wanted to know why people reject gods was something like. "Why don't you believe in God?" then you could have rehearsed all the standard "proofs of the existence of God" starting with Thomas Aquinas and going on to the latest drivel from a southern baptist college. Every single one of these, of course, has already been demolished over and over and over.......ad infinitum. The proofs for god are a kind of zombie lie; no matter how often they are killed, they just get up again and keep on coming at you.
As for your response to people who refuse to play your silly game......see Hooter's comments above.
p.s. Please read what I have actually said.....your abusive remarks on my comments so far have been nonsense, partly because not once have you responded to the actual point made and partly because your desperation to fit in your collection of clever/silly aphorisms overwhelms your judgement. People only started to mock you after you abused them.
If you can't deal with the topic, don't. I have made my position clear. Read #1 for a real view of Atheism . Your endless flaming is clear and you have offered nothing serious. Ho humm, Utter nonsense.
Location:table 42 in the restaurant at the end of the universe
Posted 02 March 2012 - 08:46 AM
Picture the scene; a warm summer evening in the Middle Ages. All the peasants are out on the village green, gathered in a circle and amusing themselves by taking it in turns to poke the village idiot with a stick, and falling over laughing at his incoherent outbursts of mangled mumbo jumbo. It's very like bear baiting but there isn't a bear handy so we used a troll instead.
Picture the scene; a warm summer evening in the Middle Ages. All the peasants are out on the village green, gathered in a circle and amusing themselves by taking it in turns to poke the village idiot with a stick, and falling over laughing at his incoherent outbursts of mangled mumbo jumbo. It's very like bear baiting but there isn't a bear handy so we used a troll instead.
I have surveyed several ways in which Atheists attempt to exempt themselves from the demands of evidentialism while criticizing religious belief for failing to satisfy those demands, and we have seen that they all fail. Therefore, on matters concerning evidence and justification, the Atheists have no good reason to treat their atheism differently from how they treat belief in the divine.
How could Atheists respond to this conclusion? One option is to accept that evidentialist principles apply to atheism too. Another is to reject evidentialism. Since we cannot examine these options here in any detail, let me describe how I view the situation. I believe that the dispute between believers, atheists and agnostics can be modeled on disagreements in the sciences, philosophy and other fields in which there is insufficient evidence to clearly favor any position. So far atheists have provided no evidence for Atheism, which supprises me. In many such disputes, all positions have a kind of intellectual legitimacy (which doesn’t eliminate the disagreements, of course). Think of the range of legitimate positions that can be taken on the question of string theory, or on whether earthworms are conscious. Saying what ‘intellectual legitimacy’ amounts to, and on what it depends, is a difficult task. It may fall short of epistemic justification, and instead involve a kind of instrumental or practical rationality. It may also depend on inquirers recognizing the distinct value of strong and compelling evidence, and accepting that such evidence must be the final arbiter on theoretical questions. However, the main point to be emphasized here is this: the various positions that can be taken on the existence of a divine being – theism, atheism, agnosticism, and variants – are in principle no less intellectually legitimate than positions in disputes in the sciences and other fields in which none of the positions enjoy strong evidential support.
So far the only Atheist conclusions are a shocking, “Nobody believes in atheism,” and “Sorry... not interested.. You shouldn't want to know anything about me...,” when asked about belief in Atheism. No evidence!
Atheism isn't making supernatural claims--everything is based on evidence and logic. Meanwhile, there's no evidence of gods, and the whole idea of gods makes zero sense given what we discovered about the nature of life and the universe.
The idea that some omnipotent entity requires me to worship it is quite laughable. If the Christian God existed, for example, why not let itself be known and have the whole planet worship it. Instead, this God prefers to have a minority of the planet worship it, while the majority of the planet mistakenly worships other gods or incorrect beliefs. Stupid plan.
You've really got to be a non-thinker to believe in gods. Because no rational person can possibly believe in such silliness.
supernatural simply means surpasses existing understanding. if someone from 20000 bc was in todays world they would consider your mobile phone to be "supernatural" when in fact to you it isnt.
the existance of a God as a supreme and within a higher plane of existence to what you or i are able to perceive whilst in corporeal form might seem to you to be supernatural but actually there exists no evidence whatsoever to disprove such existence. to think so is pure arrogance. the human race is not even able to explain how gravity works, we can observe its physics laws but we cannot prove or expalin why gravity does what it does. so if we cannot yet even fully explain or understand the basic laws of physics such as gravity, how can you possible be so arrogant to think that there is evidence to prove or disprove atheism?
That would be viewing "atheism" through finite logical chains.
Atheism boils down to deeper and deeper and ever deeper levels that contain pure truth of ever more transcendental nature the god of one is the insect of another and the insects worship the dirt, and the dirt doesn't even feel.
it is a butterflies wing, a a navi
A short abstract, Something to direct your thoughts at.(right now you see words because the computer is handling the integer addition arithmetic), but eventually when looking at pure plain text you won't have to imagine your intelligence will allow you to move the black and white like and create grid upon grid upond grid, and then you will be able to draw moving lines on top of moving lines and the lines will be as if alive and as butterflies. Any program say a program that analyzes a video or produces graphic editing, is merely performing addition and jump aheads to speed the calculation(buffer overflows at one level escape into the next and so on ad infinitum.).
Such abstracts allow for self-referential statements where one may be both atheist and not atheist and hold one position or the other from time to time.
Like the republicans brain's switching from acceptance in climate science, geology, astronomy, evolution in exchange for what their party tells them. While one can always label the extremists liberals and the moderates intermediates, that is not the case at all. The moderates are indiffirent, the liberals want to restore the solutions that worked in the past based on science, the republicans have heard the same logic again and again and know it leads to a dead end so they choose a more undefined state of mind.
In the end it keeps people like me bouncing around like some yo-yo, typing at random without control of the keys. When I compare what I've written with what I see I imagine there is patterns in the data that i certainly did not make, until one day one realizes the typing was also a pattern and then nothing remains sake a sensory experience which could quite literally mean anything.
Edited by steampoweredgod, 03 March 2012 - 10:20 AM.
Location:table 42 in the restaurant at the end of the universe
Posted 07 March 2012 - 08:37 PM
Keep insisting your definition is the true one. You mad?
Edwards, Paul (2005) [1967]. "Atheism". In Donald M. Borchert.The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). MacMillan Reference USA (Gale). p. 359. ISBN9780028657806. "On our definition, an 'atheist' is a person who rejects belief in God, regardless of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that 'God exists' expresses a false proposition. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion."(page 175 in 1967 edition)-
Nielsen, Kai (2011). "Atheism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2011-12-06. "Instead of saying that an atheist is someone who believes that it is false or probably false that there is a God, a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for the following reasons...: for an anthropomorphic God, the atheist rejects belief in God because it is false or probably false that there is a God; for a nonanthropomorphic God... because the concept of such a God is either meaningless, unintelligible, contradictory, incomprehensible, or incoherent; for the God portrayed by some modern or contemporary theologians or philosophers... because the concept of God in question is such that it merely masks an atheistic substance—e.g., “God” is just another name for love, or ... a symbolic term for moral ideals."-
-Encyclopedia Britannica
I'll let Hooter's post speak for itself.
As Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying, “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Does Atheism need evidence to keep from being dismissed?
The Claim Atheism Isn’t A Belief like Theism therefore needs no evidence, is a copout.
It is often said by atheists that atheism is not a positive position at all – a belief or worldview – but merely a disbelief in theism, a refusal to accept what the theist believes, and as such, there is no belief or position for there to be evidence for. Evidence is not needed for ‘non-positions’.
While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use. Flew, a lifelong Atheist, now dead, died a theist. So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats as I have argued. I also gave many sources to back me up.
Yet none of this really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help.
This string uses ‘atheism’ in its standard sense.
Does Atheism need evidence in order to keep from being dismissed?
why do you keep quoting this stuff? It does you no favours. The same demand for evidence has first to be applied to the proposition of god existing, and the proposition fails because of lack of evidence. That failure is itself all the evidence that the atheist requires.
Many Atheists ask for evidence for theism and then assume the answer is there is none. But is there any evidence for Atheism? It is important to know what we are talking about here. The word Atheism comes from the Greek.
The real definition of atheism: the belief that there is no God. The fake definition of atheism: the lack of belief in God. The second false definition would make a Dog an Atheist! The Greek roots of the word Atheist is as follows.
A = Without Theos = God Atheos = Without God Thus Atheism is the belief that there is no God.
Why is there something rather than nothing? The atheist says God is not the reason because there is no God. No God, not simply the lack of belief in God is the true answer. So, what good evidence is there for Atheism? Use any communication tools acceptable to LONGECITY to make your case.
this definition actually makes sense. I mean, why would there else be a difference between agnostic and atheist: agnostic: not sure wether there is a god or not (could be all kinds of probabilities that are perhaps between 10-90 up to 90-10 (as long as not 0-100 or 100-0)). atheist: believing there not to be a god.Apparently some agnostic people just like to call themselves atheist, because it's more 'in' or so, or perhaps they want to position themselves against some religious beliefs.
But perhaps the question is: at what probability do we speak of 'belief'? is 'belief' 100 %? or is it 80+? perhaps we need a more mathematical terminology.
Atheism isn't making supernatural claims--everything is based on evidence and logic. Meanwhile, there's no evidence of gods, and the whole idea of gods makes zero sense given what we discovered about the nature of life and the universe.
The idea that some omnipotent entity requires me to worship it is quite laughable. If the Christian God existed, for example, why not let itself be known and have the whole planet worship it. Instead, this God prefers to have a minority of the planet worship it, while the majority of the planet mistakenly worships other gods or incorrect beliefs. Stupid plan.
You've really got to be a non-thinker to believe in gods. Because no rational person can possibly believe in such silliness.
supernatural simply means surpasses existing understanding. if someone from 20000 bc was in todays world they would consider your mobile phone to be "supernatural" when in fact to you it isnt.
the existance of a God as a supreme and within a higher plane of existence to what you or i are able to perceive whilst in corporeal form might seem to you to be supernatural but actually there exists no evidence whatsoever to disprove such existence. to think so is pure arrogance. the human race is not even able to explain how gravity works, we can observe its physics laws but we cannot prove or expalin why gravity does what it does. so if we cannot yet even fully explain or understand the basic laws of physics such as gravity, how can you possible be so arrogant to think that there is evidence to prove or disprove atheism?
Exactly. We don't know, we have no evidence so we cannot make any claim. Therefore atheism as the belief that there is no god is just as religious as the belief that there is one. Agnosticism seems more reasonable.
Many Atheists ask for evidence for theism and then assume the answer is there is none. But is there any evidence for Atheism? It is important to know what we are talking about here. The word Atheism comes from the Greek.
The real definition of atheism: the belief that there is no God. The fake definition of atheism: the lack of belief in God. The second false definition would make a Dog an Atheist! The Greek roots of the word Atheist is as follows.
A = Without Theos = God Atheos = Without God Thus Atheism is the belief that there is no God.
Why is there something rather than nothing? The atheist says God is not the reason because there is no God. No God, not simply the lack of belief in God is the true answer. So, what good evidence is there for Atheism? Use any communication tools acceptable to LONGECITY to make your case.
this definition actually makes sense. I mean, why would there else be a difference between agnostic and atheist: agnostic: not sure wether there is a god or not (could be all kinds of probabilities that are perhaps between 10-90 up to 90-10 (as long as not 0-100 or 100-0)). atheist: believing there not to be a god.Apparently some agnostic people just like to call themselves atheist, because it's more 'in' or so, or perhaps they want to position themselves against some religious beliefs.
But perhaps the question is: at what probability do we speak of 'belief'? is 'belief' 100 %? or is it 80+? perhaps we need a more mathematical terminology.
I agree with most of this. In my experience Atheists don’t want to have to answer any questions about evidence and just want Theists to have to answer an eternal “why,” with no real interest in an answer. It is a game I have tried to answer with little success.. I have made my points why their objections, which I have heard many times, fall short. Children play the “why” game because they know if you keep asking it, there is no answer.
Is Atheism a belief? Is it a faith? I think yes, but many will say no because they claim to believe in nothing! How sure do they believe in nothing? Can you apply math and probability to this? I have belief and so do you regarding different things. Nothing is for sure, so no one believes in anything for sure. There are no Theists or Atheists if we have to be 100%. Probability can help but how much do we have to have to have a name applied as a descriptor? Prolixity turns everything gray.
No matter what your belief, you should have some evidence for your faith. Atheists have a burden of proof, not a burden of how do you get out from answering any questions for evidence. Where is the evidence? Saying I believe something 80% is not evidence for the reasonability of that belief.
Keep insisting your definition is the true one. You mad?
Edwards, Paul (2005) [1967]. "Atheism". In Donald M. Borchert.The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). MacMillan Reference USA (Gale). p. 359. ISBN9780028657806. "On our definition, an 'atheist' is a person who rejects belief in God, regardless of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that 'God exists' expresses a false proposition. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion."(page 175 in 1967 edition)-
Nielsen, Kai (2011). "Atheism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2011-12-06. "Instead of saying that an atheist is someone who believes that it is false or probably false that there is a God, a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for the following reasons...: for an anthropomorphic God, the atheist rejects belief in God because it is false or probably false that there is a God; for a nonanthropomorphic God... because the concept of such a God is either meaningless, unintelligible, contradictory, incomprehensible, or incoherent; for the God portrayed by some modern or contemporary theologians or philosophers... because the concept of God in question is such that it merely masks an atheistic substance—e.g., “God” is just another name for love, or ... a symbolic term for moral ideals."-
-Encyclopedia Britannica
I'll let Hooter's post speak for itself.
As Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying, “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Does Atheism need evidence to keep from being dismissed?
The Claim Atheism Isn’t A Belief like Theism therefore needs no evidence, is a copout.
It is often said by atheists that atheism is not a positive position at all – a belief or worldview – but merely a disbelief in theism, a refusal to accept what the theist believes, and as such, there is no belief or position for there to be evidence for. Evidence is not needed for ‘non-positions’.
While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use. Flew, a lifelong Atheist, now dead, died a theist. So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats as I have argued. I also gave many sources to back me up.
Yet none of this really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help.
This string uses ‘atheism’ in its standard sense.
Does Atheism need evidence in order to keep from being dismissed?
why do you keep quoting this stuff? It does you no favours. The same demand for evidence has first to be applied to the proposition of god existing, and the proposition fails because of lack of evidence. That failure is itself all the evidence that the atheist requires.
You think the demand for evidence is applied to everyone?
Theism claims that there is a sentient lifeform that exists outside of the natural realm of time and space. This creature has not only spontaneously manifested the very laws of physics but dedicated the most important part of it to a zoo of evolved apes. Despite his pinpoint knowledge of psychology, his ability to read human thoughts and ability to know all history and future he seems somewhat comical in accessing it. He turns a blind all seeing eye to the horror of reality. He refuses to intervene.
We were apparently created as the favorite pet in an fractal cosmic zoo with a single constant and obsessive visitor. He grants us an arbitrarily finite time on a planet before having us either damned to hellfire or lifted to utopia. It's all based on circumstance, whether you get born in famine striken africa or hit by car. You could get crushed by an earthquake or disemboweled by the powerful winds that our atmosphere contains. Do you think people who die from lightning strikes probably deserved it? If god doesn't even intervene on a plantary level, what exactly is he doing?
So all reality was supposedly made by someone with precognitive abilities and ultimate foresight of all human endeavours? If god exists, he is a cruel dictator watching and observing suffering with a infinite eyes and infinite faces. Staring, never ending. With a thought he could erase us. Before you're born and after you die, you are always in the tyrants watchful eye. Without his hand we wouldn't even be capable of suffering. Did you ever suffer even for a moment before you came into existence? He created our ability to feel pain. Our ability to think.
If you displease god or accidentally choose the wrong religion (which one is the right one again?) your consciousness will be forced into an eternal existence of torture worse than anything possible on earth. If we shall assume your theory to be true, we are nothing except an awful game for a celestial malevolent bully. God says be good and obey his word. The key word here is obedience.
Freedom my friends, this is not! If god does not feel that he was praised and loved enough, he will place you in a jail made literally out of fire. Best of all this never ends! Roasted like a chicken. Thank you lord for the promise of ineffable pain with no parole or right for council. Shadowhawk you claim to be learned in 'all religions', but you missed a critical point of Buddhism. Nothingness is peace. Recurrence is suffering. God creates us from quiet serene nothingness and threatens us with unending suffering. If you think G-d loves you, you must have quite the divine case of battered wife syndrome.
You think the demand for evidence is applied to everyone?
Theism claims that there is a sentient lifeform that exists outside of the natural realm of time and space. This creature has not only spontaneously manifested the very laws of physics but dedicated the most important part of it to a zoo of evolved apes. Despite his pinpoint knowledge of psychology, his ability to read human thoughts and ability to know all history and future he seems somewhat comical in accessing it. He turns a blind all seeing eye to the horror of reality. He refuses to intervene.
We were apparently created as the favorite pet in an fractal cosmic zoo with a single constant and obsessive visitor. He grants us an arbitrarily finite time on a planet before having us either damned to hellfire or lifted to utopia. It's all based on circumstance, whether you get born in famine striken africa or hit by car. You could get crushed by an earthquake or disemboweled by the powerful winds that our atmosphere contains. Do you think people who die from lightning strikes probably deserved it? If god doesn't even intervene on a plantary level, what exactly is he doing?
So all reality was supposedly made by someone with precognitive abilities and ultimate foresight of all human endeavours? If god exists, he is a cruel dictator watching and observing suffering with a infinite eyes and infinite faces. Staring, never ending. With a thought he could erase us. Before you're born and after you die, you are always in the tyrants watchful eye. Without his hand we wouldn't even be capable of suffering. Did you ever suffer even for a moment before you came into existence? He created our ability to feel pain. Our ability to think.
If you displease god or accidentally choose the wrong religion (which one is the right one again?) your consciousness will be forced into an eternal existence of torture worse than anything possible on earth. If we shall assume your theory to be true, we are nothing except an awful game for a celestial malevolent bully. God says be good and obey his word. The key word here is obedience.
Freedom my friends, this is not! If god does not feel that he was praised and loved enough, he will place you in a jail made literally out of fire. Best of all this never ends! Roasted like a chicken. Thank you lord for the promise of ineffable pain with no parole or right for council. Shadowhawk you claim to be learned in 'all religions', but you missed a critical point of Buddhism. Nothingness is peace. Recurrence is suffering. God creates us from quiet serene nothingness and threatens us with unending suffering. If you think G-d loves you, you must have quite the divine case of battered wife syndrome.
You have no evidence...fine. Typical attack on theism when the question is evidence for Atheism.
You have no evidence...fine. Typical attack on theism when the question is evidence for Atheism.
That is all 'evidence' for theism. Even if it were true, it would be highly unpleasant.
Atheism is saying 'that is so unlikely it's more reasonable to assume it's false.' Much like ghosts, fairies, goblins, etc. There's a reason its called faith. It's simply believing for the sake of believing. Look at the dictionary definition if you need a reality check. If you're saying there's no contrary evidence, why stop there? Why not believe in zeus, poseidon, reptilian overlords, aliens, or wizards?
You have no evidence...fine. Typical attack on theism when the question is evidence for Atheism.
That is all 'evidence' for theism. Even if it were true, it would be highly unpleasant.
Atheism is saying 'that is so unlikely it's more reasonable to assume it's false.' Much like ghosts, fairies, goblins, etc. There's a reason its called faith. It's simply believing for the sake of believing. Look at the dictionary definition if you need a reality check. If you're saying there's no contrary evidence, why stop there? Why not believe in zeus, poseidon, reptilian overlords, aliens, or wizards?
You have no evidence...fine. Typical attack on theism when the question is evidence for Atheism.
That is all 'evidence' for theism. Even if it were true, it would be highly unpleasant.
Atheism is saying 'that is so unlikely it's more reasonable to assume it's false.' Much like ghosts, fairies, goblins, etc. There's a reason its called faith. It's simply believing for the sake of believing. Look at the dictionary definition if you need a reality check. If you're saying there's no contrary evidence, why stop there? Why not believe in zeus, poseidon, reptilian overlords, aliens, or wizards?
OFF TOPIC!
Sorry, i just wanted to get in there first.
You are correct. Not evidence and a logical fallacy on top of it.
I'd pay good money to be as naive and gullible as you.
If I had a dollar for every time hawkypoo dodged things I've written, I'd be a freakin' millionaire. Lmao. At this point he just kinda entertains me with his aversion to facts, lolz. I'm not going to feed the troll anymore though :P
There is evidence for atheism in the same way that there's evidence against unicorns existing (a-unicornism). There's no proof that unicorns don't exist and there's no proof that gods don't exist, however it's nonsense to say that there's no evidence. Unicorns and gods belong in the same category in this sense.
Exactly. We don't know, we have no evidence so we cannot make any claim. Therefore atheism as the belief that there is no god is just as religious as the belief that there is one. Agnosticism seems more reasonable.
There's no evidence for the existence of gods despite people looking for them for millennia. This counts as evidence against the existence of gods. I'm atheist-agnostic myself meaning that I believe that there is no god since the available evidence points against it (the atheist part), but of course it is possible that some kind of gods exist despite the lack of evidence for them (the agnostic part). In other words, I see the existence of gods highly improbable, therefore atheist-agnostic.
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