I don't believe there is a god vs I believe there is no god

Precisely, a belief is something that can only be opposed to another belief and cannot be lacked.

 

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Supposition.
Fail.

 

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I lack belief in X.

IOW, if one doesn't know what something is, then one automatically lacks belief in it.

 

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I note your point on "less forcefully."

One important issue with "belief in God" is that the phrase can be understood in two ways, with two distinct verbs:

the first one is believe,
the second one is believe in.

These two verbs have different meanings.

"I believe I am sitting on a char right now, but I do not believe in a chair."
"Some people believe in peace, love and harmony, and some do not."

The verb believe in has ethical connotations, but believe does not.

In theistic discussions, they often get confused, though.

 

From the theistic perspective, a "real atheist" is someone who knows God personally, but rebells against Him anyway.

From the theistic perspective, a "real atheist" is the wolf in the clothing of a sheep.

As discussed in the thread I started and Dyw linked to earlier:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=106976

the dichotomy believing that not-p and not believing that p
might not apply in the case of statments about belief in God, as belief in God seems to be in its own category altogether.
Partly because of the confusion around the two verbs believe in and believe.
Partly because belief in God is inherently something that will require some action on God's part, given that it is about a relationship between two persons; while we do not reason the same way about matters of belief when it comes to ordinary persons, things and propositions.

So?


Although, frankly, I feel distraught replying to your posts and hoping for replies from you - because you have a tendency not to reply to queries addressed to you.

 

Is Sarah Palin your role model?

 

Also, let's not forget that "atheist" is a term primarily used by theists.
(For example, a Muslim will call a Christian an atheist!)

In one sense, people are doing themselves a disservice when they call themselves atheists, because that way, they are acknowledging that the relevant discourse and terminology are the ones put forward by theists.
Thus, by calling themselves "atheists", those people are submitting themselves to theists.

 

This line of reasoning above is an externalist meta-analysis of someone else's beliefs.

There may be a belief in something that causes the lack of belief in something else,
or there may not.
A lack of belief may simply be due to not having any experience nor any other reason to believe something.

An external observer cannot know what and why another person believes.
Even the person themselves may not be privy to their beliefs and reasons for them.

To go with theistic reasoning, it is only God who is able to know and who knows what in particular is the cause of what.

But it is not an "excuse".
By calling it an "excuse," you are injecting an ethical/psychological category into what we so far believe are merely matters of cognition.


"You don't know about X because you are too lazy to learn about it."
"You don't know about X because you prefer to be ignorant."
"You don't know about X because you don't want to learn about X."

are statements befitting only a cheap politician.

 

Yes.

And this is where theists have so much potential to cause confusion and suffering.

If they would simply say "For reasons I cannot explain" or "It's a mystery to me as well" or "God did it" or "I just do" - allright. I can accept that.


But once they go into rationalizations for belief in God, they are on thin ice, because any such rationalization is bound to be problematic.

Problematic because it is either internally inconsistent, or in discord with common sense, or because it even denies particular theistic tenets (sic!!).


Why don't theists simply say "I believe in God, but I don't know why"?

Theists giving, demanding and discussing rationalizations for belief in God eventually starts to look like they are trying to save face or have some ulterior motive.

 

You both know why you lack belief in God, so that doesn't apply.

jan.

 

Signal

So we should curtail our thinking to comply with what you can accept?

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Nonsense.

Maybe some do.
You don't know why you don't believe (or whatever mixed up state you're in), so you think everyone should be like you.

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Nope, giving rationalisations for God, is what the rational mind is for.
What else is there?

jan.

 

So what's your point?

jan.

 

That in order to be a "normal theist", one must not see the difference between the two verbs.

 

What is a ''normal theist''?

jan.

 

It appears to be someone who uses "belief in God" as a shield against other people and the troubles of the world, in a kind of "Big Brother mentality" (ie. "God is on my side and He will get you if you do anything to me that I don't like").

 

I am replying to this for the sake of the thread and others who read it, but it is not specifically a reply to Jan Ardena:

What Jan Ardena says here is a typical example of theistic manipulation and abusing the other person's efforts to respect others.

I don't know why I lack belief in God.
I try to be nice and respect everyone, including Jan Ardena.
Therefore, I feel the urge to believe him.
If I believe him, I end up in conflict with what I know (namely in this case, that I don't know why I lack belief in God) and what I don't know (namely in this case, that I know why I lack belief in God).
This weakens me.
Jan Ardena gains power over me.


IOW: Theists (some or all?) abuse other people's efforts to be respectful.

IOW: Same measures should be taken against theists as against narcissists, sociopaths and aggressive/controlling types.

Respecting a theist can come at the cost of one's sanity.

 

With regards to defining 'atheism', I think that the relevant meaning is ontological, as in - 'I believe in the existence of'.

It's true that there's another sense of 'believe in', one that's a lot closer to Hebrew old testament thinking in fact, where 'believe in' means 'have trust in', 'have confidence in', or even 'be loyal to' -- I might foolishly say 'I believe in the government to lead us through this crisis.' This usage of 'believe in' seems to be similar to the older Hebrew word translated as 'faith'.

And it's definitely true that theists usually emphasize faith over simple acknowledgement of something's existence. In mythology, the Devil, after all, believes that God exists in the ontological sense. But the Devil doesn't 'believe in' God in the sense of following God unquestioningly and having faith in God.

I think that the moral/emotional (and historically Semitic) sense of 'believe in' is a central topic of discussion in theist-theist discussions. They are always talking about 'faith' among themselves. But the more philosophical (and historically Greek) sense of 'believe in the existence of' is obviously going to be the one that dominates atheist-theist discussion, since that's where the disagreement is.

 

How about your cat? Doesn't your cat believe in equality, freedom or justice either? Quite a few human beings fall into that category if we are to judge by the way they treat others. The difference is that your cat is not to blame...

 

Oh dear:

Please decide what your position is.

 

It's possible to refer to things without knowing what they are, provided that we have some way of fixing the reference of our words and concepts to those things. We usually do that ostensibly, by pointing at something -- 'I don't have a clue what THAT thing is, but there it is'.

The mystical traditions of the world's religions often take that route, saying that the divine lies beyond all human description, theorizing and conception. But they can still refer to it because they feel that their religious experiences fix the reference. God/Brahman/whatever is the object of their experiences, even though they are totally incapable of describing what that object is in positive terms.

I'm kind of attracted to that kind of mystical religiosity and I'm not prepared to dismiss it. I kind of share it myself, in a very mild way. (I haven't experienced any dramatic epiphanies.)

But yeah, I am very sympathetic with your point.

The word 'God' has too many overlapping meanings for me to make much sense of it. It's kind of an historical grab-bag in which every transcendental idea's been tossed. You can root around in there and come up with almost anything.

There's that bombastic and egotisical character from Hebrew mythology. There's an equally bombastic and egotistical character from Islamic mythology. There's Vishnu and Shiva. There's the impersonal monism from some of the Upanishads. There's the Greek-inspired functional 'God of the philosophers' (first cause, final cause, creator, designer, source of being etc.), there's divine light, the Platonic forms, the Stoic world-soul and the Hegelan absolute...