Who come first the theist or the atheist

Oh yeah!

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As a self-declared atheist, you, of course, know what theism is all about!

 

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It does, if the evolutionist view is something to the effect of "Early hominids were not intelligent enough to correctly explain natural events, so they resorted to superstition and were subject to errors, which later developed into what became known as 'religion.'"

Popular evolutionist explanations of religion/theism make that kind of claim, and it does imply strong atheism.

Any line of reasoning that argues that religion is man-made, implies strong atheism.

 

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On another thread maybe? Surely not here. And surely not from the author of post #2 who withdrew under fire after being exposed for equivocation?

 

I am an agnostic. God is possible.

 

But, is "he" probable?

 

Lol, yet inconclusive . . .

 

Possibly; depends on the definition of god, and whether the theory is in variance to empirical data. Obviously, for any god theory to have legs, it needs to be flowing alongside scientific discovery, not ignoring said discoveries and logic.

 

You mean early humans. Was it a matter of intelligence that they lacked the tools to understand nature? Or was is simply a lack of knowledge? And, lacking knowledge, what else beside superstition was available to explain cataclysms, crop failures, disease, etc., without the storehouse of knowledge available today to explain natural phenomona?

By popular do you mean that which arises from professional, academic, and peer-reviewed expertise? And when you say evolutionist, are you imposing a philosophy or cult upon the person whose personal industry has afforded her a nominal education? And is it the evolutionary biologist who studies culture, or, is that more likely relegated to experts such as Boas, and, if such anthropologists and historians independently concluded, under professional, academic and peer reviewed processes, that superstition did likely replace the lack of science in ancient cultures, would said experts, including Boas, then be categorized as evolutionists?

Any line of reasoning that argues against professional, academic and peer-reviewed teachings without a scintilla of proof implies strong denialism, a syndrome already evident in the bald claims denying that primitive superstition permeates ancient mythology and religion.

 

Superstition is the default.

 

Religion has served its purpose as a social sealant for a while now. In a modern world do we really need religions' outmoded ethical structures? Some religions are changing/evolving. Some religions are spontaneously coalescing/rising out of existing theory. All are unable to prove their "truths".

 

Apparently more and more people are abandoning the ship of religion as society matures and deeper understanding of nature is readily accessible.

As they don't need it, I don't either. It doesn't matter to me what the rest of people believe, they can take it or leave it. But: when religion invades society and ties it up and holds it hostage--through superstition, fear and irrational behavior--then I begin to feel an almost missionary zeal to convert these superstitious lambs back to the flock of reason.

 

Is ignorance of beings that do not exist truly ignorance?

 

Hah!

Under the schema implied, the defeat of ignorance through knowledge would be accomplished by acquiring as much superstition as possible.

(Can we get wellwisher in on this? I think you've uncovered a case for cultural entropy reversal-something.)

 

It's not just "the theists in the room" that have made that perfectly reasonable point. I did as well, repeatedly.

So how do you explain Socrates' own paraphrase of the charge leveled against him:

'Atheism' was basically a political charge in Socrates' time and place. It was something like a charge of disloyalty or treason. It took the shape of allegations that somebody failed to properly respect the polis' patron deities. As Socrates says, failure to "acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges" and teaching that disloyalty so as to "corrupt the youth". The prosecutor emphatically agrees with that paraphrase.

The relevance to this thread's 'who came first' argument is that the idea of the Greek gods already existed in Socrates' time. The idea of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Poseidon and all the rest of them had already existed for many centuries and was already part of Greek tradition. There was an impressive temple dedicated to Athena up on the Athenian acropolis during Socrates' trial.

It's true that Socrates, as was his philosophical fashion, kind of played with the definition of 'atheist', stretching the boundaries of the word and questioning exactly what it included. He even ended up referring to the idea of monotheism, which was gradually spreading among philosophers, even suggesting that perhaps the so-called 'atheist' was the most devout of them all. But that doesn't imply that the word 'atheism' was somehow prior to the idea of gods or didn't even refer to them.

Socrates put on a strange and rather 'deconstructive' self-defense and as we know, it didn't succeed. Trying to deconstruct the charge of 'atheism' so as to create doubt that it was even meaningful didn't really enable him to escape conviction on the underlying political charge. The court was probably determined to find him guilty before proceedings even began and it was something of a show-trial.

I suppose that the best way to look at it is to say that as religious ideas elaborated over time, linguistic and conceptual resources expanded as well, so as to better express the new ideas. That's probably how it works in all areas of human life.

What great victory do you think that the "theists" will have won if we accept that theism is logically if not temporally prior to strong-atheism? I'm not clear what you think that you are battling against.

Suppose that a brand-new mistake is made in a non-religious subject, any mistake, it doesn't matter. Somebody explaining why it is a mistake will follow the mistake's having been made. Acknowledging the mistake's temporal priority doesn't imply that the mistake is somehow more credible or more true. There needn't be any suggestion that the mistake was divinely revealed or that people are born with the mistake embossed on their hearts. Humanity's intellectual growth often comes through criticism, and if necessary the rejection, of earlier mistakes.

I think that you're over-reacting to a common-sense idea that's basically unobjectionable.

If you want to bash the theists, they certainly provide you with plenty of opportunity. There have been lots of things said, including right here in this thread, that probably do deserve disagreement and counter-argument from atheists.

But probably not this one.

 

Man, the ignorance in this thread is almost overwhelming. Time for me to hold some heads under the putrescent waters of knowledge...again...

@LG --

That would work if theism had ever produced any sort of knowledge, ever, but it hasn't. Nice try though, I like the backhanded and veiled nature of the insult, very clever.

@Jan --

Atheism is the only possible default, you either believe in god or you don't. The lack of an affirmative belief in one or more gods, even if it is only due to ignorance, is covered by the definition of atheism under "one who doesn't believe in a god or gods", and yes, I can easily provide numerous links to that definition from reputable sources upon request, however that shouldn't be necessary because that definition of atheism is common knowledge, even among apologists such as yourself.

We have already established that the concept of god, and therefore belief in a god(you can't have the latter without the former already being in place), is a learned concept. We have also established that no newborn infant has had the opportunity to learn of the concept of god and therefore doesn't believe and that this lack of belief is covered under the definition of atheism. Therefore the only logical conclusion we can come to, knowing these facts, is that all human infants are atheists by default when they were born(I could go up to toddler years and prove that they are atheists, until they develop their theory of mind, but that's irrelevant to the overall topic here, which is whether or not atheism predates theism).

Given the above, that all humans are born without believing in a god that they are physically incapable of believing in, we can conclude that since humans predate theism that their default atheism at birth predates theism as well, though it obviously wasn't called that(which is what Wynn is desperately struggling to cling to, though he's already lost the debate). Therefore atheism predates theism though the word obviously doesn't.

As I've already explained, ignorance of god is a lack of belief in god and is therefore, by definition, atheism.

Dear, sweet, evil Jesus.

And you theists were saying that we were the one's speculating. Which orifice did you pull this one out of? I know it may seem right to you, but I've already shown that it's wrong so I'll say no more about it.

@wynn --

In order for the rest of that post to be valid you must first demonstrate that this premise is, in fact, correct. Until you do so your post is nothing more that pure assertion on your part. Of course, I could just quote the definition of atheism from a dictionary to prove you wrong, but I'd rather see you try to squirm your way out of this predicament that you created.

You really like making baseless claims, don't you? I scanned the thread again and found no one who engaged in an equivocation fallacy. Perhaps you'd like to support these claims, or you could withdraw them when it turns out that you can't support them...

This comment displays a great need for a quick idiocy fumigation.

You are aware, Wynn, that most atheists(at least in the US where the majority of internet usage occurs) were, at one point, theists, right? You couldn't have missed the fact that the majority of the atheists on the internet were religious individuals before they lost their faith, even you can't claim ignorance of that. So it seems that your implication that atheists, for some reason, can't understand theism is bullshit on it's face.

As for atheists not knowing about religion, even those that weren't theists at some point in their lives generally score much higher on every form of religious knowledge test than do theists. In general you can count on atheists to know more about a religion and it's history than most of it's adherents.

Again, you seem to be butting your head up against reality in your attempt to belittle others here. But you might want to get a helmet because reality has a tendency not to budge when you hit it with your beliefs.

 

The idea of somebody actually saying (or even thinking to themselves) that they are a weak-atheist is kind of problematic. Saying (or thinking) anything about anything kind of suggests that the speaker has some opinion or view about it, and isn't just devoid of any opinion or view. As soon as somebody hears about the possibility of god(s) existing, and then thinks "that's not something I believe in", he or she may have just slipped over into something like a tentative strong-atheism.

Maybe a weak-atheist could consistently say that he/she doesn't have any opinions about god(s) one way or another. I'm not sure about how to analyze the logic of doing that and I still sense that there may be philosophical problems with it.

Strong-atheists sometimes seem to want to expand the meaning of 'atheist' to include those not having any beliefs at all (weak-atheism). Then they suggest that everyone without beliefs (a baby or whatever) somehow implicitly sides with those who explicitly reject, criticize and deny the beliefs. That's a stretch.

I'm inclined to agree with you on that. The idea of weak atheism is a little problematic in my opinion, but nevertheless it does express a useful distinction and is widely used by atheists. I use it myself.

 

Oh for the love of the Almighty Atheismo!

@Yazata --

Wynn's argument that weak atheism is something that can only be used by people who don't identify as atheists is deep fried bullshit and chips, on a good day.

It's trivial to prove that one can lack a belief in a deity and still hold opinions about it, it's also trivial to show that there are atheists(the majority of them) who do just that. I'm one of them.

I can't be called a strong atheist because I don't claim that there is no god, I recognize that to be a claim that is just as unreasonable as claiming that there is a god, both are logically untenable(though the former is slightly more tenable than the latter, but only slightly and only due to the fact that we can prove that certain gods don't exist). What Wynn is unable or unwilling to realize is that there is as vast a gulf between strong atheism and weak atheism as there is between weak and strong theism. Her absolutist approach is flawed because it ignores vast stretches of possibilities between the two and posits only those two as possibilities, in other words it's a false dichotomy, a logical fallacy.

One needn't form no opinions about god or the possibility of it's existence in order to be considered a weak atheist as that term covers every brand of atheism except for strong atheism(and is one of the reasons that strong atheists are a tiny minority). I, myself, leave open the possibility that one or more gods exist, however I find the likelihood of such beings existing to be vanishingly small(but greater than zero), this is especially true given the complete lack of evidence for the existence of such beings.

Given that I do not outright deny that there could be a god I do not qualify as a strong atheist, I'm a weak atheist. However taking that title has literally zero effect on why I accepted that title in the first place.

 

Then I guess you had better start searching for an alternative default for atheism than new born babies ... unless you can explain how they are born into any other state apart from ignorance

 

Given the problems that surround supporting absolute negatives (as you indicated above) many atheists would agree that your statement is ignorance.

But that aside, it doesn't really take anything away from the fact that babies are born ignorant of all forms of art, science and philosophy ..... I'm not sure where one would go from there to bolster the position of the uneducated however ...

:shrug: