Agnosticism is Dishonesty

[TheFlyingBastard]

Your position is incoherent and irrational because it yields absurd results.

Of course. This is because you say so.

Enjoy your non-English experience. ^^

 

[borrofburi]

Therefore a Scientologist is an atheist.

You presume this is absurd, but I see no justification for such a presumption.

To not accept a belief is to reject it.

Therefore, atheism is the rejection of belief in god.

I disagree with the idea that you MUST accept or reject... Or maybe I don't. Either way, you're atheist unless you believe god exists, which I think, noen, makes you an atheist.

 

[Lurking_Logic]

What does "not accept" mean?

To not accept a belief is to reject it.

Then an Agnostic is also an Atheist?
Agnostics reject the belief in a god
therefore they are Atheists

Simple fact is to sustain Agnosticism you need something less rigid then an outright rejection of theistic ideas
Because at that point anyone that rejects the idea of God (For whatever reason) is an Atheist

In trying to attack atheism you are currently destroying agnosticism which tries to rest in the middleground of Atheism (Not believing) and Theism (Believing) by trying to straddle the two simultaneously as it were

 

[mirandansa]

Stuff

Sounds to me like you're playing an awful lot of unnecessary word games... I'm trying really hard not to compare you to the theists who tell me that if I call myself an atheist then I've defined myself as hating god (or some other such "I shall define your position for you" bullshit); the general concept is awfully similar: I say something, the other party proceeds to "define" (or corrupt) the label I used that was merely meant to quickly communicate some rather small detail,

"detail"? What detail does the label "atheist" reveal of one's theological view?

and then proceeds to use their twisted definition of that label to tell me things that I supposedly *must* believe as though the label defines beliefs rather than attempts to communicate beliefs.

Right, the person's actual view should determine the label (if at all necessary) for that person, not the other way around. And that's my point. I did away with my nominal adherence to "atheism" because i realised my actual view of reality could not be accurately described as "atheism" generically. And i think there are many people like me, who have some pantheistic or panentheistic or transtheistic insights about reality but don't realise how non-atheistic these are and then opt for "atheist" as their own theological descriptor.

I also think that the "atheist" movement has been overly criminalising theism with no due attention to the non-irrational non-supernatural non-anthropomorphising aspects of it. The movement is very successful in its rational criticism of the superstitious components of the Abrahamic religions, but not as much constructive and productive on the more philosophical field of theism. In fact, i'm now unconvinced that the movement deals with theism as a whole more than monotheistic religions. The more i listened to my fellow "atheists", the more i realised they would leave out non-problematic non-stupid non-lulz-giving stuffs of theism. And the more i realised that, the more i wondered why they were calling themselves "atheists", when their actual interest was apparently more in monotheistic religions than in theism per se.

I'm also a bit displeased that you told me I wasn't allowed to say that I lack a belief in a god or gods because it's somehow meaningless,

I said "god" is ambiguous when you or the context don't define it.

Imagine a Hindu philosopher comes across your statement "I don't believe god exists". Would the statement be clear enough for him to figure out what you don't believe exists? He might think of the possibility that you are aware of the notion of Brahman or the Divine Ground (which is fundamentally different from the Judeo-Christian notion of the supernatural personal god) and that you may have included it in "god" the existence of which you reject. But would that have been your actual intention?

Note also that there are less loaded words for your preferred definition of "god" such as "Creator" or "Almighty" or "deity" or "demiurge".

and to attack the definition of "atheist" based on problems with the definition of theism.

The problem is not so much with the definition of "theism" as with the morpheme "the(os)-" which "theism" and "atheism" share.

Moreover I think you're flat out wrong to say that "sentient powerful being" is purely monotheistic: bullshit, polytheists just believe in multiple powerful sentient beings.

Hold on, what's with the phrasal change? Why leave out the "extremely (powerful)" part as well as other attributes you included in your initial definition to which i was responding? This is what you said:

god as a generic term is defined as an extremely powerful magic sentient being, especially one that gives a fuck about who you fuck, and usually is credited with having created at least our planet, but more commonly "everything".

[Sun Sep 12, 2010 1:09 am]

Am i really to be accused of interpreting this to be the description of the monotheistic supreme creator? Had you said just "sentient powerful being", surely i wouldn't have classified it as monotheistic.

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

To not accept a belief is to reject it.
Therefore, atheism is the rejection of belief in god.

I disagree with the idea that you MUST accept or reject... Or maybe I don't. Either way, you're atheist unless you believe god exists, which I think, noen, makes you an atheist.

Allow me to answer in Noen's stead:
BUT THAT WOULD MAKE ROCKS ATHEIST AND THEREFORE IT IS RIDICULOUS BECAUSE I SAY SO! RAAAWR!

 

[DepricatedZero]

I disagree with the idea that you MUST accept or reject... Or maybe I don't. Either way, you're atheist unless you believe god exists, which I think, noen, makes you an atheist.

This is kind of the point to the whole thing my friend.

It's fine to say you don't accept or reject theism, but simply by not accepting theism you are an atheist. Moreover, since one of the definitions of reject is to not accept, it is literally impossible to both [not accept] and [not reject]. The stance of "I neither accept nor reject" is dishonest exactly because it is impossible to do both.

Noen's definition is correct. Her comprehension of it leaves something to be desired, but for some reason she has chosen to use something other than a dictionary to build her vocabulary from - which will naturally lead to problems like this. However, as I've pointed out previously, the definition of atheist by Oxford does include the word Reject. That said, we need to not conflate definitions, because rejection does not necessitate an active role.

There is some confusion, it seems, in the term reject. Rejection is not required to be active. If you were to ask a stone what it believed, it would not answer you. Because it is not actively choosing to accept theism, it is rejecting theism and therefore atheist.

Again, theism is a broad defining term that includes subsets such as polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism. Some of you seem to be thinking it applies exclusively to the Abrahamic War God YHWH, but it is all inclusive. Taoism, Buddhism, Scientology, etc are all theistic views. Yes, Scientology defines Xenu in a way which makes him a god by the dictionary definition.

But I'm repeating myself at this point. It is literally impossible to both not accept and not reject anything, and that is why trying to take the stance of doing so is dishonest.


--------
to lrkun: yes, if we define agnostic as simply the knowledge that something is not currently known, then it can be honest. It is the added assertion that not only is it not known but it cannot be known, that is dishonest. We don't know the limit of our knowledge, and there's certainly no reason to abandon pursuit of that knowledge by the belief that something cannot be known. The agnostic "cannot be known" is as vile and contemptible as the theistic "god did it."

 

[mirandansa]

To not accept a belief is to reject it.
Therefore, atheism is the rejection of belief in god.

I disagree with the idea that you MUST accept or reject... Or maybe I don't.

A belief is a cognitive item. "Whether X has belief Y" is preceded and conditioned by "whether X is capable of cognition". If X is not capable of cognition to begin with, you cannot reasonably exceed that sufficiently conclusive fact and put forth a more specific proposition like "X does not have belief Y".

A theist that cogitates is necessarily a non-rock that cogitates. So it is not the case, in the first place, that a rock is subject to the dichotomy of cognitively holding or not holding a belief more than the dichotomy of cogitating or not cogitating. The claim that "rocks are atheists" has no more propositional function than tautological statements like "if something is a rock, it is a non-non-rock". It's as absurd as stressing that a pencil has no morality or that a leaf has no Olympic stadium.


Now, the "accept or reject" thing. I suppose Noen is talking about the spontaneous cognitive operation upon receiving a body of information i.e. "a belief". Logic gates come into play. borrofburi, would you agree that a cognitively processed statement/idea stands either positively or negatively in the mind? You as a cogniser either hold or not hold view Y; you cannot not-hold and not-not-hold the same view at the same occasion of cognition. This is the condition of exclusive-or (XOR), and its logic gate is represented like this:

Since "theism" and "atheism" are at least semantically mutually exclusive, it's reasonable to assign them accordingly to the XOR paths above. If input/statement/idea/view Y doesn't reach either of the output paths in a person's mind, we cannot start talking about whether the person is a theist or an atheist with regard to Y insofar as we maintain the cognitive exclusiveness between "theism" and "atheism"; that is, the person just hasn't processed Y and has not yet established any cognitive relationship to Y, much like a rock in relation to Y. And this is also why it's absurd to say that babies are "atheists" when they haven't reached the point of accepting or rejecting a notion of god.

You seem to be saying that one can be an atheist without explicitly rejecting theism. But it turns out that the very rejection of theism is what atheists themselves consider the explicit and thus more revealingly genuine form of atheism. Then it follows that those who don't reject theism are not true atheists.

My guess is that the category of "implicit atheism" is a strategic invention from "atheists" who seek to win as many otherwise non-"atheist" people over to their side in the urgent climate of religious idiocy such as Creationism, Jesus Camp, Al-Qaeda, etc. It's a powerfully constructive message, especially in the United States, to say that one can virtuously turn away from the mythical "Almighty", and people have opted to carry it out under the banner of "atheism", a word with an overall stronger impact than "secularism", "skepticism", etc.

I predict that the trend will however change in the future, when people will be freer of religious problems and have more time to give further thought on theism and transtheism. More people, while retaining their good rationalist and empiricist perspectives, will start seeing through the inadequacy of the label "atheism" and go beyond this divisive tribalism on the god question. Japan is considered to be one of the most "atheistic" countries on this planet, and it's worth noting that the word for "atheism" in Japanese -- 無神論 -- has quite different a definition than what current Western "atheists" here and there have been maintaining for their own "atheism" from a strategical vantage point.

Either way, you're atheist unless you believe god exists, which I think, noen, makes you an atheist.

A Christian may believe both that a god exists and that gods don't exist. We cannot simplistically call them "a theist" on the account that they claim a god exists only within the context of Christianity. A Christian may be theistic or atheistic in their different cognitive operations on different theological subjects. To pigeon-hole people with either of the mutually exclusive labels "theist/atheist" is to frame their social relationships with an unnecessarily divisive mindset.

I don't "believe god exists", but i can no longer consider "atheism" as the generic descriptor for my mind, in light of those non-atheistic views i appreciate.

 

[borrofburi]

A Christian may believe both that a god exists and that gods don't exist. We cannot simplistically call them "a theist" on the account that they claim a god exists only within the context of Christianity.

Every single one of your posts reminds me of "Storm" by Tim Minchin.

 

[RichardMNixon]

To pigeon-hole people with either of the mutually exclusive labels "theist/atheist" is to frame their social relationships with an unnecessarily divisive mindset.

No, it is to offer a simple, quick description of your beliefs which is satisfactory to most people. If a street preacher asks me about Jesus, I can tell him I'm an atheist and he gets the gist. If you want to get into a length philosophical discussion on epistemology, I'm allowed to elaborate more than just shouting "I'm an atheist" over and over again. As far as I can tell, some of you objectors to the word seem to do so because it doesn't completely and fully describe me in three syllables. Why should it?

 

[lrkun]

To pigeon-hole people with either of the mutually exclusive labels "theist/atheist" is to frame their social relationships with an unnecessarily divisive mindset.

No, it is to offer a simple, quick description of your beliefs which is satisfactory to most people. If a street preacher asks me about Jesus, I can tell him I'm an atheist and he gets the gist. If you want to get into a length philosophical discussion on epistemology, I'm allowed to elaborate more than just shouting "I'm an atheist" over and over again. As far as I can tell, some of you objectors to the word seem to do so because it doesn't completely and fully describe me in three syllables. Why should it?

I can describe you as someone who lacks faith in (Insert something: a. god; b. unicorns; and c. others.)

You lack faith.

The problem is, the thread starter sticks to the idea that it does not describe a person, which it does. Like you said, it is to offer a simple, quick description of your beliefs which is satisfactory to most people. However, this applies in the case of your scenario, as a specific example in which I think is honest.


-oOo-
Just a follow-up to all who keeps on posting. So how is all of this related to agnosticism as being dishonesty? I think that main issue is being avoided. But, if you qualify it as a point of comparison or something to contrast or compare with agnosticim, it does the job.

 

[mirandansa]

If a street preacher asks me about Jesus, I can tell him I'm an atheist and he gets the gist.

He gets the gist because he knows the context.

As far as I can tell, some of you objectors to the word seem to do so because it doesn't completely and fully describe me in three syllables. Why should it?

I don't know about you. In my case, i reject some but not all forms of theism, so neither "atheist" nor "theist" generically describe my theological stance.

 

[borrofburi]

Near as I can tell:
Noen doesn't like being called an atheist despite not believing in any gods.
Mirandasa doesn't like being called a theist despite believing some theisms.

 

[mirandansa]

Near as I can tell:
Noen doesn't like being called an atheist despite not believing in any gods.
Mirandasa doesn't like being called a theist despite believing some theisms.

Because calling me a theist would be to miss my atheistic side.

And i agree with DepricatedZero that agnosticism is not the "golden mean" between theism and atheism.

The fact of the matter is: some people are just both theistic and atheistic. Why? Because "theism" and "atheism" describe a thought -- or a cognitive operation --, and a person is a field of multiple thoughts -- or a cognitive operator.

 

[RichardMNixon]

I think dishonest is a poor word choice but he has an interesting point in that agnosticism isn't necessarily a default either. Brain-in-a-vat scenarios aside, what evidence do you have that god can't be proven to exist? It's assumed true, but why should it be?

I don't know about you. In my case, i reject some but not all forms of theism, so neither "atheist" nor "theist" generically describe my theological stance.

Then don't use them to describe yourself, but if other people consider "atheist" to satisfactorily describe themselves to 99% of the world's inquirers, then more power to them.

 

[Yfelsung]

Near as I can tell:
Noen doesn't like being called an atheist despite not believing in any gods.
Mirandasa doesn't like being called a theist despite believing some theisms.

This is EXACTLY what I've been saying about both.

Mirandasa renamed God to Divinity and changed it from an entity to a "feeling".

Noen doesn't want to be an atheist because they dislike people like Dawkins and Hitchens.

It's like we ALL have to like them to be atheists. I think Dawkins can be a tool, Hitchens and me disagree on most political things, Bill Mahr is funny, but also an idiot.

I like that they're trying to spread knowledge, but in the end they try too hard to be the spokepeople for atheists.

I use George Carlin as a reference for a cool atheist.

 

[DepricatedZero]

Because calling me a theist would be to miss my atheistic side.

See, I think this is also kind of off the mark.

I don't know what your theistic beliefs are, but lets interchange the words with more specific forms of theism/atheism.

"Calling me a Christian would be to miss my non-Kemetic side."

or

"Calling me a Pantheist would be to miss my non-Christian side."

There are many forms of theism, but the only form of atheism is the absence of theism. It isn't specifically the absence of belief in any one of Xenu, Jesus, Vishnu, Yoda, Tsathoggua, Athe, or the all-powerful Mirandansa. It is specifically the absence of belief in all of these things.

A Christian can be a non-Mirandansan, but that doesn't make them atheist - because they are still [with theistic belief].

I guess the point I'm trying to make is simply: any form of theism qualifies you(generic you here) as a theist - it's not necessarily bad, and there's a lot more to it than just being a theistic view. But at the same time, being a theist disqualifies you from an atheist. More on topic in the same vein, [not accepting any theism] makes you atheist. Agnosticism-in-place-of-atheism is thought evasion.

 

[mirandansa]

Mirandasa renamed God to Divinity

Not quite:
http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5670

I do say that God for me is represented by the quality of divinity, but i do not say it is how all other theists see God.

and changed it from an entity to a "feeling".

Not quite:
http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5670&start=40

True, i don't see God as a distinct existence, but neither do i intend to define it as a feeling itself. A feeling is a representation of God, not God per se.


[EDIT: minor typo]

 

[mirandansa]

Because calling me a theist would be to miss my atheistic side.

See, I think this is also kind of off the mark.

I don't know what your theistic beliefs are, but lets interchange the words with more specific forms of theism/atheism.

"Calling me a Christian would be to miss my non-Kemetic side."

or

"Calling me a Pantheist would be to miss my non-Christian side."

There are many forms of theism,

And your analogy is quite erroneous. Observe this...

Person A
YES: Christianity (non-Kemetic Theistic) -- THEIST
NO: Kemetism (non-Christian Theistic) -- ATHEIST
--> Calling A a Christian would not be to miss A's non-Kemetic side.
--> Calling A a theist would be to miss A's atheistic side.

Person B
NO: Christianity (Theistic) -- ATHEIST
YES: Pantheism (non-Christian Theistic) -- THEIST
--> Calling B a pantheist would not be to miss B's non-Christian side
--> Calling B an atheist would be to miss B's theistic side

but the only form of atheism is the absence of theism.

Right, semantics-wise, atheism contains no theism. In the same token, theism contains no atheism. But what components of atheism can theism actually lack? My next point...

Positive atheism goes further than just "lacking theism"; it explicitly argues against theism or even for the non-existence of god. Panatheism and antitheism, for instance, are as much belief-maintaining positions as theism can be.

There are more than one form of atheism, and they are not simply the absence of theism; they maintain beliefs & claims. And these beliefs & claims, theism lack.

It isn't specifically the absence of belief in any one of Xenu, Jesus, Vishnu, Yoda, Tsathoggua, Athe, or the all-powerful Mirandansa. It is specifically the absence of belief in all of these things.

You fail to see that atheism is a property of cognition and that different instances of cognition can varyingly exhibit atheism or theism or other theological stances from the same executive system. A person can exhibit different theological stances for different theological subjects. You apparently don't allow this possibility for the sake of atheism, and that smells tribalistic and dogmatic.

A Christian can be a non-Mirandansan, but that doesn't make them atheist - because they are still [with theistic belief].

Right, they as a person are not an atheist (and nor a theist); their instances of cognition about non-Christian gods are atheistic.