This is what I mean about calling things separately. If you use them in the colloquial sense like here, it makes perfect sense. By the strict definitions, you can not be both agnostic and atheist, since an atheist believes we know that God does not exist, and an agnostic believes we can not know that God exists or does not exist.

Then weak atheism != atheism. We should be careful not to say "atheism" when we mean "weak atheism"

I don't need to make a distinction because the discussion up to now has been about faith in atheism which there is none involved in both implicit and explicit atheism.


Incorrect. Even by the strictest definitions you can be agnostic about some higher powers and atheist on others. Do not confine agnostic atheist to one concept of a higher power.

You said "Yes, it most certainly is." I just offered a possibility that it is not and to show your certainty is lacking.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Feb 19 2010, 8:30 pm by MasterJohnny.

What I don't understand, Johnny, is why you insist on simply contradicting what others say and then never offer an explanation. That doesn't help anyone, it just draws out the argument. You can say "I'm right and you're wrong" all day but it doesn't actually make you right, and it doesn't help the person you're arguing with understand your points.

I clearly wasn't talking about all these obscure circumstances that you're talking about. You may be a weak atheist, or hold certain other beliefs, but the context here is religion (and by extension atheism) in general, so when we use the word "atheist" we should be clear about whether we mean the actual definition of atheism, or whether we mean some other set of beliefs. If you have any interest in actually conveying your meaning to the other person, you will make the distinction because it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to understand what you mean when the words you use mean something else. I also would encourage you to read the paragraph I wrote about atheism and faith above, you may find it interesting or have some thoughts on the matter.

Let's examine this then: Say we have Gods A B and C. So if our fellow is agnostic about God's A and B, and atheist about C, what can we imply? Well, our fellow holds the belief that mankind can not know if Gods A and B exist, and the belief that God C does not exist. So what is it then, that makes Gods A and B distinct from C such that we can know C doesn't exist? There must be some manner of acquiring knowledge about C that doesn't work or exist for A and B. Then our fellow can be either right or wrong about God C. If he's right, then God C doesn't exist in the first place, and he's simply an agnostic because he believes we can not know if God A and B exist. By analogy, not believing in the pink elephant god doesn't really make me a "pink elephant god atheist." If our fellow is wrong, then it does appear that he is agnostic towards some Gods and atheistic towards others. So what do we call him? Well, if we're talking about all 3 Gods we should specify that he is agnostic towards A and B and atheistic towards C. If we're only talking about A, we should call him an agnostic, if we're only talking about C we should call him an atheist. In typical christian discussion where there is only THE God, obviously a person can't be both agnostic and atheist, by the following: If the person is both, he believes he can not know if god exists, and he believes that god does not exist. If we separate "belief" from "knowledge", then it appears this is technically possible since one could theoretically know something is false but believe it anyway, like in Orwell's 1984. But, for the normal person, he will see that he can not know that god does not exist from his belief that he can not know, or he will see that he can't believe he can not know because he knows God doesn't exist.

The point is, it's silly to consider an "agnostic atheist" unless we're considering multiple gods.

Change my underlined word to "strong Atheism", or "implicit Atheism", and you're wrong. Explicit Atheism is the belief in the non-existence of a higher power, plus the lack of belief in the existence of a higher power. You can't just say no to me just because you don't like what I'm saying.

The specific definition of Athiesm, implicit, involves having a belief. A specific definition of faith, is belief in anything. If you want to say that Atheism, in general, has nothing to do with belief, then you are wrong; certain definitions of Atheism involve faith directly. In order to be correct, you need to make the necessary distinction between certain definitions of words, if you do not, you're wrong.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 19 2010, 10:36 pm by Cervantes.

But atheism is not directed towards just the abrahamic concepts of a higher power. Atheism is directed towards all concepts. So you have to consider multiple gods.

I do not think that "belief in anything" definition is correct.
Belief does not have to involve faith.
"3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence"
from a real dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belief

There is most certainly a difference between just plain faith and faith in God, I have faith that the sun will come up again each day, I have faith that you will continue to argue your point after this post, all the dictionaries posted have "belief" as a synonym to faith, because that's all the word is when you use it alone, a belief, now, if you want to specify that it is faith in God or some other deity, then you can say it applies to religion.


I'm only resorting to that because you guys are ignoring the fact that Atheism is the faith that faith in God is misplaced. And it applies to the vast majority of Atheists, so trying to basically bluff me out and act like because of some insignificant number of Atheists who don't believe Evolution to be a law, and not a theory, makes my point completely void is just an attempt at nullifying a valid argument.



Agnosticism, in its modern concept, is without faith, Agnosticism is the word in which there is a lack of belief in a higher power and does not involve faith. If you choose to deem this concept of higher power not possible, it is not because you know it, it is because you deem, or believe or have faith that the concept is impossible.


Honestly, I think this hits the entire base of this argument, which I touched on earlier, but didn't put enough emphasis on:

This entire discussion has happened because of a misunderstanding in how either side interpreted the word "faith", and I guess its connotation really does change based on your beliefs, so I can't really blame people for misunderstanding, however, to clarify, I see the word faith as a simple belief, faith in God is a whole different thing.


This just sounds like an odd twisting of the English language to me, because the two do not coincide, if you are "without knowledge" then you cannot be Atheist, and have the knowledge that god(s) don't exist. It's paradoxical.


This is most certainly the next point that would cause argument, what is religion? Wikipedia says "A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe" Now, I would argue that Atheists believe that the universe was not created by a supreme being, and that the majority believe in the Big Bang theory and Evolution, making it a religion.

However, your metaphor doesn't work for the situation. If you don't belong to a political party, you would be the equivalent of an Agnostic, if you don't belong to one particular political party, and believe it is wrong, then I would say you are basically the opposing party, the equivalent of an Atheist, and of course, if you belong to that party, you are a theist.


Yes, and it also allows the one person who made it to have complete control over the definition, and insert their opinions however they like, while an open site, like Dictionary.com allows you to be more objective by seeing the definition as it is in the eyes of several people. This is the same argument that teacher's use to explain why Wikipedia is a bad source, and there are all sorts of flaws in it.


An implicit atheist simply sounds like a person who just lacks information, and so I guess you could call them an Atheist, however, pretty much any Atheist has been presented with the concept of God, and has rejected it, making nearly all of them explicit Atheists, heck, even figuring out whether your implicit or explicit pretty much causes you to become explicit.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 20 2010, 2:25 pm by Dapperdan.

This point holds validity in some cases, not so much in others.
Strictly speaking, the most fundamental measure of the meaning of a word is that which people refer to when it is used or interpret it as. Practically speaking, it may be best to enforce a classic meaning where misuse grows frequent.
Whether that's the case here, I'm not about to argue; just throwing thoughts out.
I know not about Dapperdan's claim, but the reason I stated what I did is because of the way the debate has been by others recognized as being a difference between what people consider to be atheism, agnosticism, faith, etc.; yet I still see arguments or points coming from you which have already been dealt with or seem to ignore the fact that the viewpoint you are opposing is one which is based on different definitions of words.
My point dealt entirely with the definition of "atheism"; namely, the fact that you and Hercanic (and possibly one or two or more others, I lose track easily) disagree on whether "atheism" implies a lack of belief or a belief against religion. Whether or not "faith" is synonymous with "belief" has nothing to do with what I said in that quote. If one wishes to assert that the two words do hold a shared meaning, then feel free to replace any, all or none of my uses of the word "belief" with "faith" as necessary to avoid semantic conflict.
You have already conceded that one who does not believe God/gods to be non-existent, but who merely has not decided to believe that they necessarily are, is not involving faith in his religious beliefs yet.
This neutral belief, which you refer to as "agnostic", is how Hercanic has expressly defined "atheist".
Therefore, as I already pointing out in your first quoting of me, your disagreement is not on whether atheists hold faith or not, but rather which definition of atheist is valid. Therefore, argue about the definition, not the implications of it.
It does not matter how many or how few atheists do not believe in evolution or the big bang. What matters is that it is possible to be, whether by your or Hercanic's definition, atheist and not believe in them. Ergo, atheism is not itself fundamentally related to big bang or evolution. Ergo, it is incorrect to state that atheism is a religion on basis of its relation to them.
To do so would be analogous to claiming that because the vast majority of humans are shorter than 6'6" (or all humans right now are shorter than 9'), that being shorter than 6'6" (or 9') is part of being human.

And the point is that Hercanic is simply wrong, in both modern and the original definition of the word Atheist, a neutral belief is clearly defined as Agnostic, and just because Hercanic likes the sound of Atheist better, or whatever reason makes him prefer calling it Atheist, does not change the word's meaning.


But it does matter, saying it doesn't matter is like saying that because not all dogs have fur on them, you can't say dogs are furry. It's an overwhelming statistic, and those who don't believe in Evolution are extreme outliers.


Except that I've admitted to there being exceptions, that's why I have not said "all Atheists believe in xxx" I've said "most".

And now that I think about this, both sides are arguing with the same concept, one side considers faith related to religion, because most of the time it does, I consider Atheism to be related to belief in Evolution/Big Bang theory, however, unlike the other side, I've admitted the existence of exceptions to the rule.

I'm done with this argument, it's simply going in circles, and is only existent because of a misinterpretation of the connotation behind a word. It's an argument based on connotation, which is honestly and opinion.

By that reasoning, if I shave a dog, then it is no longer a dog because it no longer carries the correlation-made-fundamental-association furriness.
It's continuing because, again as I pointed out, you were making points based on treating others' statements as if they use the same definition of a word as you do when it is very clear that they do not, and when you apparently even recognize this, instead of arguing that definition itself.
Well, that and your bizarre "It correlates, therefore it is part of" argument. Or your decision not to correct me on that interpretation of your statements, as the case may be.

Ugh.. This is circular reasoning(Why I decided I should probably give up on this..), since I have already said:

If there is an overwhelming majority of something with a certain characteristic, typically people define that thing by that characteristic. In a children's book, it might say "Dogs have fur" because it is generally correct, so dogs are remembered to have fur. We teach kids this way because it is simple, and it's easier to define something by its majority, and remember it for that, and later learn the exceptions, than to decide not to define it at all in the first place, since there are a miniscule number of exceptions.

Real-world example: When refurbishing a computer, it is common practice to test the basic components of the system(motherboard, CPU, power supply) by turning it on with no RAM inserted and seeing it it returns a beep code, if it does not, and it has an internal speaker, then one of those components is usually broken.
Now, from experience, I've found that it is typically the power supply that is the problem in cases like this, followed by the motherboard, and then the CPU. When I open up a computer, and it gives me no beep code, I usually change out the power supply first, to see if that's the problem, and in most cases I hit the problem much faster.
By your logic, it is perfectly reasonable to test the CPU first, just because it has no beep code doesn't mean it's a power supply issue! Just because this is true, does not mean you shouldn't test the power supply first, it simply wastes time.


I don't know if you just gave up on that idea half way through, or what, but the end part doesn't make sense to me, but by my interpretation of it, you're saying I was not arguing the definition, when I have done that now, although admittedly I assumed at first that people knew the base definition of faith, not just connotation's spin on it.

Hm. I probably rewrote part of the paragraph to change my phrasing and got distracted partway through or something. That often happens.
Correct.
Again, I was referring to the conflict in usage of the words "atheist" and "agnostic", not "faith".
My logic says nothing about probability, only about not stereotyping.
A more appropriate analogy would be that you're saying that because power supplies are the most common cause (most atheists/problems are evolutionists/power supplies), when a beep code does not occur it is a power supply problem (atheism is evolutionism/problems are power supplies).
By that reasoning, my examples would hold true and shaved dogs or people who grow to taller than 6'6" are no longer considered dogs or humans by a typical person. Show a typical person a bald used-to-be-dog and ask them if it's a dog.
It is my sincere belief that the majority of people will disagree with your logical implication that not having fur makes a not dog.
Ergo, if my belief is true, people do not define by a correlation, ergo, atheists are only likely to be but atheism holds no intrinsic association with evolutionism.

This is the third time I have said this, and you clearly seem to be missing it:

A stereotype is almost always statistically true, they don't come about for no reason at all. Your entire argument is based on the idea that I am making blanket statements that provide no room for exceptions, but I am not, there are always exceptions, however, there is no reason to take the extra energy to come up with a definition that includes those exceptions when it takes less time to simply use a general term, and then remember the exceptions for the rare chances that they occur.

Another example, when I was learning C++, I was given an assignment to write a program that would take a number, apply a formula to it, then take that answer and apply the same formula to it, and eventually the number would reach one. The final product of the program program returned how many times it had to be rerun through the formula. It was a fairly simple program that was intended to test our knowledge of loops, and while most students simply wrote the minimum needed to get the A, I decided to do a bit more.
My program was written with the intention of stopping any possible error in the program, even if the users intentionally tried to give bad input. The rest of the programs if you entered 'my name is bob' as the input, which was supposed to be a number, they would have an error and the program would either crash or glitch up. These programs, however, were written in five minutes. In my case, although my program did eventually do exactly what I intended, it was literally fool-proof, it was the result of three hours of work, taking a string as input instead of simply an integer, and writing my own function to convert that string to a base 10 number, while checking for errors such as entering non-numerical values.
Yes, my program was "better", however, it took more than 30x as much time to write, so would you actually consider it "better"? Ninety-nine percent of the time, a user would enter a correct value into the program, and if they entered an incorrect one, it was most likely intentional, so I spent an extra three hours on my program so I could avoid someone getting a few lulz from breaking it intentionally.

My point is that it is simply not worth the extra effort to make a completely perfect definition, when more than 99% of the time one that takes 30x less effort to make will apply correctly to the situation. If you get nothing from this, just take this main point: If there is an overwhelming statistical majority in favor of a stereotype, then that stereotype is nearly always used to define its object. Do you require more metaphors to grasp this concept?

Your metaphor is flawed in that it is a matter of practice, not of theory - which is what definition is.
There are, in fact, situations where checking of input for validity is important, and the amount of work spent on doing that scales very little with the size of the rest of the program; where the value of doing so scales proportionately or more.
Both of yours were flawed.
I have given you two long ago; neither of them have you directly contested. If you want to rely on metaphors, when someone else has already provided them, you must first disprove theirs.

But since I'm bored, have a third one:
The majority of uses of pi require no more precision than 2 decimals.
Therefore, let's define pi as 3.14!
... except that is false. We have to use a different "definition" when we need more precision.
Therefore the "3.14" definition is false. Therefore it is wholly inaccurate to say that pi is 3.14.

I'm done responding to you, once again, you have ignored the statement I've said three times, now four:

Please learn to read and understand posts in the future, instead of completely ignoring points.

Most of the time 3.14 is accurate enough for pi, when it is not, it is an exception, and so it is fine to say that pi is 3.14, and although it is truly a bit more, it is widely accepted as 3.14.

Using this definition of faith off MW, atheism is clearly a faith.

Pi is, in general cases, equivalent to 3.14.
That does not make it 3.14; it is inaccurate to say that it is 3.14.
Similarly: "dogs are usually furry" makes "dogs are furry" a convenient means of recognizing something in practice; "dogs are furry" would be incorrect, however, as a definition.
Cool, I've edited this post so many times that now the voice in my head reading my words sounds tired instead of frustrated.

Post has been edited 18 time(s), last time on Feb 22 2010, 6:02 pm by EzDay281.

Lol don't let masterjohnny catch you saying that. His blood pressure might cause his face to explode.

There is a proof. Each atheist has a rational ideas against certain higher powers presented to them.
Atheism has no faith because in atheism one does not blindly believe.

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/faith.htm
I posted the link before but nobody is reading it.
http://www.atheistrev.com/2008/01/atheism-does-not-require-faith.html
a new one I kinda like but not really.

I think most people do not really know what atheism is.
(I don't think you can get one source from an atheism site that says atheism has faith)

Mostly for Falk: http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/atheismreligion.html

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 23 2010, 8:51 am by MasterJohnny.

MasterJohnny, all of your links are using the definition of faith with the derogatory connotation that atheists have spun onto it, when it is simply a word that is synonymous to belief. My religion specifically considers faith to be "things which are hoped for and not seen", it does not have to do with God necessarily. And these "contradictions" that the writers of your first article so cleverly brings up are simply literal interpretations of what humans have tried to say to depict God's power, I'd say that our language really doesn't have words to describe it. Your links also seem to think religion and organized religion are the same thing, they are not.

To EzDay, as much as I could continue to argue the point of whether something can be generally defined or not, that is not necessary for my original point, that atheists have faith in another creation method. And when you try to pull the "nuh uh!! Some of them don't!!1!" argument, you are essentially trying to bluff me out, because you, and every other person on this forum who voted Atheist probably has some idea of how the universe was created, one which they have faith in, because if they had concrete evidence of it, that idea would have won long ago. And if you don't believe in an alternative method, then what do they think? Do they simply ignore the creation idea altogether?

There is no proof that God exists. Unless you provide solid proof, all your argument is invalid.

I think you're confusing the idea of considering something highly unlikely and the idea of considering something being 'proven'.