How Non-Belief About Specialized Questions Is A Neutral Position,

[Warren Stupidity]

Illustrated with a Hypothetical Physics Example.

But does it work better to say atheism means “lack of belief in God, for anyone who understands the question of the existence of God”?

I still think this is too imprecise by a long shot. There could be two kinds of people who lack belief who I think it would be wrong to call atheists. 1. Those who perceive themselves to be too ill-informed or incompetent with reasoning about these issues to have a genuine opinion. 2. Those who perceive themselves to be well-informed and competent with reasoning about these issues and on that account hold a position that the evidence is genuinely indeterminate.

To illustrate, let me give an example from another field. Let’s say there’s an entrenched dispute in physics. There is a deeply troubling anomaly in a vital theory physicists are committed to. The problem of how to solve for this anomaly is mysterious and intractable to physicists for a long time. One solution that some physicists, who are both indisputably accomplished and indisputably still cutting edge in their thinking, argue for is what they call a “squinicle”. By positing a squinicle they can explain the anomalous phenomena best. But squinicles are not yet empirically verifiable. Let’s call these physicists Squiniclists. Other equally accomplished and equally cutting edge physicists are well-informed about the squinicle hypothesis and reject it. They’re called Asquiniclists for their rejection of the squiniclist hypothesis. (Of course physicists aren’t in the habit of naming their positions in the negative way like this, but it’s just to make the analogy work. I’m not describing the sociology of actual physics, just drawing analogies about how things would look were physics debates more analogous to debates over theism and atheism.)

Now let’s imagine three other groups of people. First let’s start with non-physicists. We are either uninformed about the squinicle debate or incompetent to expertly decide it. We perceive experts to disagree. We are adequately humble about the limits of our understanding. Someone asks us, “Do you believe in squinicles?” It seems clear to me we should say we have no opinion.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2014/10/not-all-who-lack-belief-in-gods-are-atheists/#ixzz3FqFturzA

[LostOne4Ever]

1. I wish the author would take a more definite definition of the word "disbelief"

He is constantly changing its meaning throughout the article. Though, to be fair, the average person does this also. At some points he is using it to mean not holding a position to be true, and at others he means holding the contra-position on an issue.

Sometimes they (falsely) imply that no atheists make stronger claims of disbelief than that even though some of us (like me) surely do claim to positively disbelieve in gods and some of us take that further and consider it a knowledge claim.

Atheism and theism, are beliefs, not knowledge claims.

The simplest example is babies. Many atheists claim that we are all born atheists because atheism is just the lack of belief in gods and babies aren’t born with god beliefs. It is puzzling why the appeal to babies is supposed to be evidence for anything.

Its not evidence of anything, rather it is an example of what we mean when we say we neither believe in god nor do we believe that there are no gods. Its not meant to be an argument for atheism in and of itself.

The problem is how irrationally difficult they deliberately make it for people to neutrally, conscientiously, and rationally analyze, and even foreswear, the religious identity they are raised with when they finally do become intellectually mature enough to start having propositional beliefs about supernatural matters. But it’s absurd to try to counter this with a claim that everyone is really an atheist until declaring otherwise or to misleadingly imply that without particular religious institutions foisting supernaturalism on people, by default they’d naturally wind up atheists. Atheistic naturalism, if indeed true–as I think it is–is a counter-intuitive, hard won philosophical discovery along many other surprising but compelling findings of science and philosophy. It’s hardly the human default.

How does this position make it difficult? I was born without believe and I either was taught it by my parents or developed it myself through the magical thinking of childhood. As my brain developed I began re-examining said belief and then realize its flaws.

Further, how is it absurd? The author is simply making a claim and then declaring it true with no evidence. Further, no one is making the claim we would ALL end up as atheists. If that were true, there would be no religion in the world today. I also think the author is misusing the word atheistic naturalism.

But I digress. Babies lack belief in gods but are not atheists. Neither are dolphins or bears or cockroaches. Neither are dogs atheists (they believe humans are gods), nor are cats atheists (they know themselves to be gods). But seriously, other animals aren’t “atheists”. Neither are rocks. Not even being able to understand the question of theism vs. atheism, means not having a position.

Babies are atheist as they don't believe in god(s). Simply claiming otherwise is not proof. Dog, cats, rocks, etc. can not be atheists as the suffix -ist refers to persons and none of those things are people. Rocks in particular are not cognizant meaning that to say they don't believe in god is vacuously true.

But what if our interlocutor presses us and says, “So what you’re saying is that you don’t believe in squinicles! Since you lack a belief in squinicles, then you are, by default, an asquiniclist!” We should resist this strenuously.

Appeal to ridicule and equivocation. The author is using ridicule as evidence that a position is wrong, as well as popular misconception to what the phrase "don't believe" means to make his point. To say that you (general you) don't believe does not mean you believe the contraposition, rather it means you don't hold a position to be true or proven.

The problem is further confounded in that the term atheist is unusual in and of itself. If we don't play cricket, we are not called acricketists. This is because its not the default position in our society to play cricket. However, belief in god(s) is the norm in our society, therefore those of us who don't believe end up getting labeled instead.

Even the author, himself, acknowledges this earlier on when he mentioned that professionals calling themselves "asquinicilist" would be unusual. The norm, for the average person, would be not to have a position on squinicles. Thus no need for the term "asquinicilists." Then he turns around and says something sounds absurd and uses that as evidence to prove his point. Its a rather deceptive argument. Not to mention that the author is using the term a-squiniclists as if it was the same as anti-squinicilist or contra-squinicilist.

His argument is just one large strawman.

In this case, you lack a belief about squinicles. Does that make you default to being an asquiniclist? Can the asquiniclists claim all these undecided physicists in their camp? No, because in this case of “lacking a belief” you simply don’t have a side.

Again, equivocation. Belief means holding a position to be true. In both cases, not being able to determine a side, and not having a thought about a position results in a lack of belief, disbelief, nonbelief, or whatever term you want to use.

"Some people feel at least reasonably (maybe even very well) informed and competent to make decisions about gods, and yet think that the issue is simply unsettled. Or maybe even that it is incapable of being settled, either given the current state of knowledge or in principle. They also think that there is no reason to prefer non-belief over belief in such unresolvable philosophical issues. They neither have a hard rule against believing on insufficient evidence, nor a view that one should hold positions deliberately by faith. In their minds naturalism and supernaturalism are equally likely to be true or, if not exactly equally, comparably enough likely to be true that they have no firm opinion either way. Gods (or a God) are roughly as likely to exist as not exist. They simply don’t know. They neither opt to believe by faith, nor to make an epistemically principled refusal to believe in gods. They are what I would call neutral agnostics about gods."

Again, knowledge and belief are related but differing things. Belief is holding a position to be true. Knowledge is justified true belief. To be knowledge you have to be 1) correct in your position, and 2) Have evidence to justify your belief. The people the author is describing do not hold the position to be true. This makes them atheists as disbelief literally means not to hold a position as true.

But lets say that you want to use the more common usage of the term agnostic as someone who neither believes nor disbelieves. While this is indeed one of the definitions for an agnostic, it is also a completely contradictory definition.

When one does not believe that means that they do not hold the position to be true. This is "not true" or the dictionary definition of "false" (a lot of people misuse the term "false" to mean affirming the opposite position.) Conversely, when one does not disbelieve that means they don't hold the position to be not-true or by the rule of negation, you hold that position to be true. To put it in math terms

P=holding the position that at least one god exist to be true

If you don't believe, you have position -P, and if you don't disbelief you have position -(-P)=P

So saying that you neither believe or disbelieve you are saying

-P/\-(-P)
which is the same as

-P /\ P

Broken into truth values

-T /\ T
or

F/\T

Which is the definition of a contradiction, which means its never true. So the definition of a "neutral agnostic" being presented in the article here is contradictory and always wrong.

While I do think there are things such as agnostic theists, and agnostic atheists, I completely disagree with how he is defining all of those words as it is all based upon this contradiction.

I define the terms as such:

Theist- Believes in the existence of at least one god
Atheist- Does not believe in the existence of at least one god
little "g" gnostic- Believes that the existence or nonexistence of god is knowable
agnostic- does not believe that the existence or nonexistence of god is knowable.

So an agnostic atheist would be a person who neither believes in the existence of at least one god, nor do they believe it is possible to know if gods exist or not.

The problem with the article definition of these terms is 1) he is incorrect in his position on the meaning of the word atheist, 2) his definition of a neutral agnostic is contradictory 3) Correcting his definition of atheist, his definition of "agnostic" without the "neutral" party leaves the possibility for agnostic atheist to be vacuously true.

Ie He is saying that one does not believe in the existence of god but does not know if they don't believe

The way he is defining agnostic only works if you accept his definition of atheist...which I do not.

Right now I would identify my position as gnostic atheism, agnostic adeism. I find it quite open that I could be persuaded of either agnostic deism or gnostic deism in the course of philosophical argument. The likelihood that I would be convinced of personal gods is far slimmer.

Okay, now the author is just redefining words to suit his own purposes. Theism is belief in the existence of gods. Deism is the belief in an impersonal god who created the world but does not interfere with it. Deism is a subset of theism and not a distinct category in and of itself.



Nice article. A bit too lengthy though. I don't think you will get too many replies warren. While I disagree with the major premises of the article, it is nice to see an opinion on this issue based on some thought and arguments rather than the usual "I DEFINE THIS WORD THIS WAY SO I AM RIGHT" that we see in the other room.

Thanks!

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Yeah I just thought it was an interesting commentary on issues that comes up here

over and over again, and that are argued quite dishonestly by some people "over there". Not sure I agree with him, but I do think "my atheism" is much closer to a positive assertion that there are no gods than a simple lack of belief.

[Curmudgeoness]

3. I think that more atheists probably feel that way.

The reason I say that is, if we did not have a positive assertion that there is no god or gods, it would be hard to stand so firm on that. For myself, if it were just a lack of belief, I would not be so vocal....because Pascal's wager.