What Is Atheism? (Page 2)

AchillesSinatra: It's not that difficult.

If you sincerely assent to the proposition "Gods do not exist" (i.e. you are expressing your belief "Gods do not exist" ) then you are an atheist.

If you sincerely assent to the proposition "God(s) does exist" (i.e. you are expressing your belief "God(s) does exist" ) then you are a theist.

(and if you reply "Gods? What are they?" you might be an Amazonian headhunter in whose tribe the concept has never arisen, or a child raised in a cupboard).

To assent to both would be to contradict oneself, thus irrational.

Degrees of confidence, faith, or whatever you want to call it are irrelevant. Neither is it incumbent upon yourself to prove it one way or another.

E.g. It's a belief of mine there is other life in the universe besides that on Earth. (It's also a belief of mine that no gods exist).

Am I certain of it? Of course not. But even if I was certain of it, it would be a belief nonetheless. It would be a belief that I have great confidence in.

Can I prove it? Of course not. But even if I could prove it, it would be a belief nonetheless. It would also be knowledge, which is standardly (with a few Gettier hiccups) taken to be justified true belief.

Corwin: Jebus... we should really take this to private message... you're drunk... I'm drunk... just like old times.

Let's start a PM thread... it's nice to talk to you again, Colin.

TheDoctor394: From what you've said, Corwin, I would think you are an agnostic.

And "Theos" is the Greek word (Θεός, which means God. A theist who believes in some kind of god.

Corwin: Hmmm... but I'm not sure if I believe in a God... I don't "not" believe in a God...
... I entertain the possibility of a God... I WANT there to be God... I'm just not there yet.

The concept is comforting.

Corwin: Put it this way..."No Atheist in a foxhole"... I have found that phrase insulting... which "God" will I succumb to in a situation like that? Which of the thousand?

I don't think religious people really understand what it means to "not" believe.

TheDoctor394: "I don't think religious people really understand what it means to "not" believe."

Being a Christian for much of my life, I do acknowledge I find it hard to imagine what it's like to not be a believer.

Corwin: ??
I never believed... even when I was a young child I thought that the whole Christianity thing was just a fairy-tale told to children so we wouldn't be afraid to die.

At the age of seven I was convinced of this... and the whole story of tooth fairies and Jesuses just confirmed this.

AchillesSinatra: "I never believed ..."

But only two posts ago you told us : "but I'm not sure if I believe in a God"

Corwin: I'm not sure... I'm still not sure.

Oh, Colin.

Corwin: You nut.

AchillesSinatra: On the Bayesian understanding of evidence and confirmation, beliefs come in degrees.

These degrees of beliefs are measured by actual or potential betting behavior. All that is required for rationality is that the canons of the probability calculus are obeyed.

So assuming the validity of Bayesianism for now.... (it is, needless to say, controversial)

Personally, I'd bet strongly against any gods existing, thus evincing a high degree of belief in the proposition "gods do not exist". E.g. I'd be happy to accept 1:10 odds (if I'm wrong I have to cough up ten times the stake). This clearly demarcates myself as an atheist.

How about you?

Zanjan: Corwin wrote: "I don't think religious people really understand what it means to "not" believe."

That's a wide brush. Countless individuals in every generation once didn't believe; then, later, they did. Check the stats of new declarations in every religion and listen to individual testimonies.

Accepting the existence of God and officially becoming a member of a religion are entirely different stages in the spiritual journey......also different subjects. As such, God instructs on the progression from sincere believer to true believer.

Zanjan: Corwin wrote: “if He made me, then He made me this way. What a cruel joke if I was condemned to eternal Hell-Fire just for being the way He made me.”

I can say I made this batter; is it a birthday cake yet? I made my gardening beds from scratch, using the best possible ingredients and appropriate fertilizers – what would happen if I now left them to sit, as is?

Therefore, one must ask them self - am I the complete package? Am I the same today as I was at 10 years old or, do I still have growth potential? Could I add something more to my character or weed out those habits I don’t like?

“I'm not sure if I believe in a God……..I’m just not there yet”

Since you haven’t arrived at certitude (actual knowledge), then you don’t believe. Your desire has nothing to do with it.

Some will call you an agnostic because that’s how they perceive you. An agnostic is confused about his own place and worth in the grand scheme of things. In other words, his GPS isn’t turned on so he’s wandering and waffling- doesn’t know where he is. I don’t view you as confused, albeit you've contradicted yourself more than once; it appears you’re standing on one side, the side without the “grass”.

“So.... what am I?”

By your own description, I’d say you’re someone who takes sole, personal credit for what you’ve become - an atheist. You see, since God had nothing to do with it, then someone else is responsible. Surely you can identify the cause.

Corwin: Hmmm... not sure if anybody is "solely" responsible for "who" they become. There's the whole "nature vs. nurture" argument.
I had no say in my genetic makeup, nor did I choose my upbringing. The whole concept of "freedom of choice" could be something up for debate.

For instance, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family... a very loving environment, and I took those lessons of love and the whole "do unto others" thing to heart. This Jesus person seemed to me to have been a very righteous dude and a swell guy, and a great example to try to follow... I just never bought into the idea that He was some kind of supernatural deity.


This was never a "choice" that I "consciously" made, more like something I "gravitated" towards.
On the one hand I had my Bible, and on the other hand I had an enormous bookshelf full of encyclopedias that my parents provided for me. The bookshelf provided me with what I perceived as "fact", and the Bible seemed to me to be some kind of storybook of fables meant to instill "meaning" to our existence. It had never occurred to me for a second that I was supposed to take it all literally. The two were kind of "mutually exclusive", but not to say that either was any less important... they just served different purposes.

And the thing is, I thought that EVERYBODY understood this and felt the same way. It came as a bit of a shock to me when it finally dawned on me that there were people who really truly believed.

It was a discussion between my father and I in my 20s around the campfire with a bottle of 12 year old Scotch, and the topic of Religion came up. The conversation evolved into something like this...
Me: We're both adults here now. You don't have to pretend with me anymore.
Dad: What do you mean?
Me: Well, you don't "really" believe that you have an immortal soul, right? And that you're going to live forever in some kind of heaven?
Dad: Of course I do.
Me: No, no... I mean, yeah, "of course" you do, but I'm talking what you "really" believe. Like for "realsies".
Dad: Yes, I really believe.
Me: (still not getting it) No, no, no... I mean for REAL... like deep in your heart... in that place where those dark unpleasant harsh truths reside... those unpleasant truths that we don't like to face, but that we HAVE to face one day... we die, we get buried, we're worm food, and that's it... I mean, NOBODY "really" believes all that guff about everlasting life, right??
Dad: Yes, I do truly believe.
Me: ....... Seriously??

My father is an intelligent and educated man, and I had a tremendous amount of trouble wrapping my head around that. And the notion that there were billions of people around the world who also "actually" believed... to be honest, I found the idea a bit "disturbing".

Sure, I'd like to believe... sometimes I envy those who do... to be able to face trials in life with blinders on and simply grin with the belief that their lives are in the hands of some kind of supernatural higher power... but I simply am not capable of convincing myself of that.
Perhaps it's the way my brain is wired... who knows.
Some look at the universe and see "God"... I see tumbling dice.

And sometimes I wonder... I wonder how many who "think" they truly believe really do, or if they haven't locked up that unpleasant reality of their own mortality into a deep dark place inside them, merely brushed over with a delusion of belief... a happy ending that they have convinced themselves that they've convinced themselves of... but really haven't.
My wife's father had always claimed to be a believer... but when he was on his deathbed he was utterly TERRIFIED... if he truly believed he was going to a better place, why was he so frightened? I would call that "fear of the unknown"... if he truly believed, it wouldn't have been an "unknown" for him.

Your deathbed is one HELL of a place to all of a sudden realize that you've been harboring doubts your whole life. Whereas I have had my entire life to come to terms with the impending oblivion that I believe we all face in the end.

I've also seen people pass away with a smile, truly believing. To be honest... I wonder whether the capacity to believe or not might be a genetic trait that we are born with.
Because, like I said... I don't remember ever making a "choice" in the matter.

shadowline: I didn't hear Corwin acknowledge that he is an agnostic. He sounds honest enough to acknowledge that. Can he do so?

Zanjan: Corwin points out: "I had no say in my genetic makeup, nor did I choose my upbringing".

This is true for everybody. Yet nature finds a way - there are countless stories of those who've obviated their birth defects, or physical damage from accidents/disease and became very successful producers.
Just as many who, as adults, overcame the psychological damage inflicted on them by drunken/ dysfunctional/ neurotic parents, in turn becoming great contributors to society. Just one individual out of a whole family broke that behavioural pattern for their progeny.

"The whole concept of "freedom of choice" could be something up for debate."

You'd start that conversation by explaining the difference in response by individuals under the same conditions. Our environment deeply influences us but can't make us. Every soul is unique and each of us could change our environment, sooner or later.

There's many who, under the same conditions didn't have the constitution to rise above the vicissitudes of life, who fell prey to every extreme thrill and negative attitude out there. There are always people to help one though any situation because humans are a social creature, which must have other humans around them; no one is 100% deprived.

There's clearly a choice to permit *particular* others to assist; also to find the courage to help one's self. We know that no human can fix another human; so, if a fix occurs, that's entirely within the purview of the Divine. One would first have to impress Him with their own effort.

Zanjan: Corwin wrote: " but when he was on his deathbed he was utterly TERRIFIED... if he truly believed he was going to a better place, why was he so frightened?"

You've assumed he believed that the next place would be *better*. Maybe he only believed in the immortality of the soul. Regardless of position, it's not possible to know in advance what God's judgment of you will be; ipso facto, it's always going to be a surprise.

The terror would stem from his own failure to correct his wrongs when he had the means to do it. He'd thought it wasn't a big deal but now he's accountable for that. Those on their deathbed have one foot on earth and one foot in the hereafter - they can see what you can't.

Thus, says scripture, that at one's passing, God will make known to him all things. To imagine the response to that information would be the same for everyone is just wishful thinking. Many are those who've swung in the opposite direction at the last minute.

Both my father-in-laws neglected God all their lives and had no religion; they held many resentments and had their share of short-comings. We had no way of knowing what they believed about God because they never discussed that. We only know they weren't against Him because they permitted their wives to be religious and bring up their kids in a religion they wanted no part of, themselves.

Yet close to death, they made peace with their Maker. After their death, they both gave a sign to their loved ones that was, in fact, the case.

Zanjan: Suffice to say that God made you; ergo, if you get badly banged up, He can also repair you.

AchillesSinatra: so can Muttley

chronology: The best example of an atheist was Christopher Hitchens. 'The Hitch ' could not understand why any rational person can believe in God's of any kind. The uneducated dregs of all societies will always be ridiculed by bullies frightening them with horror stories of Hell, he observed, but why anyone with one brain cell to keep another company would fall victim to such trash was beyond him.

shadowline: "Beyond him" seems like a good way to express it. There was something to understand there, and Hitchens was simply unable to understand it. The first thing he might have noted was that most of his fellow human beings do believe in a deity of some kind. Most do find the idea that they themselves are nothing more than material entities who exist because of natural processes to be as lacking in credibility as Hitchens found gods to be.

The English writer A. N. Wilson is an interesting example of a thinking person who abandoned his religion, and then slowly realized that a materialist view of human life and nature was less believable than the religion was.

chronology: I think the Hitch in his last year's actually came to think there was some kind of God or after life. But he always spoke of the possibility with considered disdain. The prospect of living in a absolute totalitarian state like 'heaven ' where there is zero freedom of speech and thought, no sexual enjoyment of any kind, absolutely no privacy even in your private thoughts. For the Hitch this was all to disgusting to even consider.

Zanjan: It would seem Hitch had formulated his own idea of "God", and found it distasteful. For all of his education, he could just as easily have formulated a better one - if one thinks God is just an idea - but he chose not to.

He attempted to convince us that this worldly existence, with all its accidents, losses, pain, toil, pressures, disappointments, sickness, endless bills and taxes, wars etc., is preferable to the alternative - a life-long purpose. Not everyone likes the same perfume.

chronology: Zan, I don't wish to be unkind, but nothing you have said about 'The Hitch' is accurate at all. The Hitch simply studied the Gospels and took in what he read there. 'Heaven' is a place of Zero privacy, God does know every thought in the mind of every human and Angel in Heaven, every move made by every being in the Universe is known to God. God sees you in the bathroom and knows every single thought that has ever gone through you mind since you were born. The Hitch found this appalling like living in a 1984 super Police State.

Verses in the Bible all confirm this. Zan don't ask me to show you them, am sure Blackie will pick you up and carry you to the high chair and spoon feed the facts to you then wipe your mouth after your meal. Personally am too old to be 'mammieing' people like that.

Blackie will probably add that God cannot stop being 'All Knowing' and 'Omnipotent' that is just His Nature. But The Hitch could never forgive God for this. He found 'Heaven' disgusting, like living in a Fish tank.

Zanjan: Scriptures can't be assessed properly by ordinary humans. We can grasp only according to individual capacity, at various degrees of depth. As it's said, it takes one to know one - low character base can never hope to glean the brilliance of Revelation or comprehend the merits of those who rank above them.

Unbelievers weigh the Book(s) of God by their own standards without recognizing the power of the Creative Word or the supernatural. How can such a person present as an authority on them???? An authority is one who has mastered the field.

God never said He sees you in the bathroom. He said He's closer to us than our life vein. He said we must love Him in order for His love to reach us. This is true even between humans.