Misused labels of Atheist and Atheism

  • Thread starter Thread starter Damian
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Damian

Guest
I keep running into conversations with people using the word “Atheism”. From an atheist, Atheism is an idea that doesn’t exist. Here’s how I and the other atheists use these words:

Atheist - Single position on a single question.
Question - “Are you convinced that the supernatural exists?”
Answer - “No, No I am not.”
The label “Atheist” is just that, someone who is not ,currently, convinced that the supernatural exists based on the bad reasons and bad evidence presented for why someone else does.
They are just unconvinced of your reasons for concluding this is true. It may actually be true, but they and you and everyone else, can not actually know this. But because you have been convinced this is true, does not mean those reasons that worked for you will work for someone else. You can’t get to a world view from not being convinced of something. There is no world view of I disbelieve X. You only have world views about what you do believe about reality, not what you don’t believe about reality.
Just like a jury member who is not convinced of the prosecution’s arguments for why the defendant is guilty.
Does the jury member have a world view now of “Not-Guilty-ism” because they were unconvinced? That does not exist. Same with the term “Atheism”. When jury member tells the prosecutor that they were not convinced of the arguments, can that prosecutor conclude anything about those jury member’s world view? politics? social clubs they attend? tenants? dogma? etc. that would guide their thought process to come to that conclusion? No, no they can not. That is why being an atheist does not have a world view of “atheism”, the same way “not guilty” does not have a world view of “not-guilty-ism”.

Why do I feel the need to point this out? - Many theist claim that they would not pursue someone who does not believe what they believe or if they found out later when dating them, that they would end all relationships with them. They would not date an atheist, they would work to destroy the relationship between their children and the atheist they are dating, etc. When pressed on why they would be bigoted this way, they state that they could not see a future with someone who does not value what they do about their religion. This is the problem that the pulpit lies to you about. Atheists are not, necessarily against your religion. Belief in the supernatural is irrelevant to finding value in the religion. That is why you probably have an atheist in your church right now. You don’t need to believe in the supernatural to respect and value the people, the culture, the political message, all the rest of it. Again, to be an atheist is to just not be convinced of the existence of the supernatural is part of reality. This can change in the future when the person is presented with enough data and reasons that changes their mind. Being an atheist is a tentative position, it is not an identity that we wrap our self worth around like people do with religion.
 
Last edited:
Further points that I ascribe to:
1 - The default position for everyone on any idea is to not believe it until they become convinced that is the case. So on the idea of the supernatural exists, everyone is at a default state of not believing this. To be an atheist is the default position we all start at for this idea.
2 - There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief. You can hold either position in varying degrees but you can not hold both positions on a single idea.
3 - Theistic positions and Atheistic positions are positions about what you believe about reality. They are the conclusions you have come to after first experiencing reality and/or applying your current understanding of logic to that data. Example: You experience event A and event B with the result of C. So, A + B = C to you as you understand it. “A” and “B” is just data of reality. The “+” and “=” is your application of logic. Your belief/conclusion about event A and B is C. C is your belief / your prediction of what will continue to happen in the future when Event A and Event B come back around.
4 - Beliefs are not a choice. They are the application of your current understanding of applying logic to the data you get from reality. Example: Sit in a chair and then choose to not believe you are sitting in a chair. You can’t. It’s not possible. The only way you can change your belief about your current position with the chair is to gain more new data about reality to that event and/or learn a new way of applying your logic to the current data. Until that happens, you are stuck at your current conclusion/belief that you are sitting in a chair. Beliefs are not a choice, they are the result/conclusion.
5 - People can come to different beliefs/conclusions about the same data. This is why we have the philosophical process of the scientific method. It is the best current process we have for filtering out our personal biasness and ignorance when we experience an event so that we can create a model that most accurately models reality regardless of how we wish it would otherwise be. It is open to revision as well. So if anyone can find a better process for analyzing an event, we will update the process. The process is not the equivalent of an unalterable religious tenant.
 
Knowledge vs Belief claims
Knowledge is a subset to beliefs. Beliefs are our conclusions about reality, our internal model of reality so that we can predict what will happen in the future based on what we know, have experienced, about reality.

Knowledge is the experience/facts of reality. Beliefs are what we do with those facts/experiences. Beliefs shape our choices and actions since they are our internal model of predicting future results of reality.

Gnosticism vs Agnosticism and Theistic vs atheistic
Gnostic claims are knowledge claims.
Theistic and Atheistic positions are belief claims.
You can belief something, to be convinced of, without actually having direct knowledge of it. Some claims are mundane, others require more substantial evidence.

Example: my neighbor claims to have rescued a puppy from the pound. I believe them, without actually seeing any evidence that they have a new dog.
Example: my neighbor claims to have an invisible pet dragon in their back yard. I don’t believe them without actually investigating that claim. My neighbor takes me to his back yard and I see the ground dug up, large claw marks on the trees, burnt grass, and chewed meat bones. I still don’t believe he has an invisible pet dragon.
 
So what would it take for me to believe in the invisible pet dragon? I don’t know since we have no evidence of this entity actually existing in reality. (Your deity should know what it would take to convince me and is either choosing to not present that information or can not. Either way, not my problem.) Probably the scientific experts in this field of biology and optics and their expertise to investigate this would be a good start. It’s like having a world where fire never existed and then someone claiming fire exists. How could you know what the markers are for fire in your reality if it has never existed before that point? You have no idea what a burn mark is on wood, how metal melts at high temperatures, how water boils, and so on. Once we can investigate what fire is, we can learn what those markers are when it interacts with our reality. What it can and can not do. We know how fire turns wood into charcoal, how it cooks meat, how it melts metal, etc. because we were able to find identifying factors that indicate a fire was here. So what are the supernatural markers in our reality that indicate the supernatural since we can not investigate the supernatural at all for us to determine if something is actually the cause of the supernatural or not? The claim that event A can only be from the supernatural is no different than an argument from ignorance since you can not demonstrate the difference between an event by unknown natural processes and the supernatural. We have a track record of every unknown event that was discovered how it worked, was 100% never supernatural. There is currently 0 data that has a demonstrated causal link to the supernatural.

The world view of Atheists differ from person to person because each of our world view is not shaped at all by our disbelief in the existence of the supernatural. Our world views are shaped by what we do believe about reality, not what we do not believe about reality because there is a theoretical infinite amount of ideas that we do not believe about reality. Once we become convinced of something to be part of reality, that is when we implement it into our world view so that our internal model of reality matches reality in the most accurate way possible.

Every world view that theists are, you have an atheist in that world view as well. There are culturally religious atheists. There are atheists who are republican, pro-gun, anti-abortion, liberal, nihilist, skeptics, etc. You probably have an atheist in your church right now. Just they value the organization of the church and its importance in our society and a relationship with you; the belief in the supernatural is irrelevant to that for them.

There are world views that tend to have more atheists in them, like skepticism or humanist, but you can still be religious and be part of these world views as well. Sir Francis Collins, head scientist of the human genome project is a christian and part of these world views as well. Yes you can have multiple world views because a single world view may not cover all aspects of your life. Just like Sir Collins applies skepticism in the lab and christianity outside of the lab.
 
An Atheist is someone who does not believe in God. This is what the church means when it references atheists in its documents. I am not convinced that the term is being misused…

I understand that it is reductionist, but aren’t most things? Such is the nature of language.
 
Last edited:
I agree with you here, an atheist is someone who does not believe the supernatural exists, this includes deities, spirits, chi energy, ghosts, demons, etc.
 
You can believe in some of those things while still being an atheist. Admittedly most don’t but you could believe in ghosts and still not believe in God.
 
Yeah he’s turned this into a career for him on these issues. It’s helping people bridge the divide between the groups. To let people know that you can be an atheist and a theist and actually have a loving relationship together.
 
Sure. But if they don’t believe in god they’re still also atheists. Skeptic might be a better fit for someone who doesn’t believe or lacks a belief in all the things you listed.
 
You can be a skeptic and a theist as well. Many apologists are skeptics for why they do not believe the claims of these other religions and do believe theirs.
 
Damian said:
The label “Atheist” is just that, someone who is not ,currently, convinced that the supernatural exists
Click to expand...
I think it goes further than that. An atheist is convinced that there is no God or that there are no gods.

Someone who is not convinced one way or the other is an agnostic, not an atheist. The term “agnostic” was coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to describe his own position, that it is impossible to know whether or not anything exists beyond the material world.
 
I cleared that up in the following posts:
Gnostism is claims of knowledge
Theistic claims are about beliefs
Knowledge is a subset to beliefs/conclusions. What we experience or discover about reality is Knowledge. What we do with that information to create an internal model of reality for predicting events in the future that guides our choices is our beliefs/conclusions about reality.

So you can be:
Gnostic Theist - someone who knows the supernatural exists and is believes this as well. Typical American Christian
Agnostic Theist - Someone who does not claim to know the supernatural exists but is convinced/believes that it does. The basic apologetic theist.
Gnostic Atheist - Someone who knows the supernatural does not exists and is not convinced the supernatural exists. Not sure what terms to use here.
Agnostic Atheist - Someone who does not know the supernatural exists and is not convinced the supernatural exists. Default position for everyone, typical atheist. Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan
 
Last edited:
You are using the terms “agnostic” and “atheist” is a novel way, apparently of your own devising. Those are not the accepted meanings of the words in standard English.
 
For me personally, I am an agnostic atheist. I do not know whether a god exists or not, but I do not believe that any do. So as Damian says, really - for me one is a position of knowledge, the other a position of belief.
 
Robert Flint : “The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one.[4]

If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist… if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist – an agnostic-atheist – an atheist because an agnostic… while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other…“
 
Where in the definition is it required to be convinced there is no god?

“a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods”

Lacking a belief in something doesn’t mean ou have to bbe convinced of the opposite.
 
Don’t care. Just letting you know how I understand these labels are used so that people understand what this looks like from an atheist’s point of view instead of what someone else tells you they are that is not an atheist. That’s the point. To communicate instead of having slapping matches over correct definitions of terms. What words would you use for what I am trying to communicate here then? What about my presentation is unclear or that you would use a different term for those ideas I am attempting to present?

Jury members do not know if the defendant actually committed the crime or not. That is a gnostic statement. They have to become convinced that the defendant most likely committed the crime over anyone else. That is a belief statement. So the jury member starts off as unknowing and disbelieving and either stays that way or goes to unknowing and but believes that to be the case.
 
Last edited:
Damian said:
To communicate instead of having slapping matches over correct definitions of terms.
Click to expand...
From what you say here, you seem to regard the correct definitions of terms as a matter of little or no importance. But if you are using terms that lack a clear definition, what kind of communication can you engage in?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top