Is atheism cac shyt?

[Reflected]

In the context of belief in a higher power, shouldn't the variable x be restricted to the set of gods, as in

Spoiler

∀x∈G, with G=[All gods imaginable],

.
Which would make the position of the atheist and the believer, whichever type the latter is, formally logically distinct from one another?

Reducing atheism to simple non-belief in at least one thing, in the context of faith, seems to me inaccurate and petty. It doesn't reflect that the atheist denies the entire set of gods possibilities.

There is a distinction between non-belief (lacktheist) and negation of p (God existing), the graphic provides that. But I don't see the issue with a simple negation to the proposition, if a Christian presents the proposition, "does God exist", they are typically referring to the abrahamic god, that is the most widely recognized concept of a god. When I was an atheist, and I took the hardstance (in some cases I still do), I would negate the proposition of the Abrahamic god existing, but not w/e concept of god that could possibly exist. I think that places an unfair burden on the atheist while providing the backdoor for any theist. I have come across "christians," I forget how to accurately place them, that believe the simple state of existence/being is God. And I have known, and still know, followers of the Norse gods, and when they define what each god means, there really isn't anything to argue with, as you find they are simply ascribing events that can occur to their gods. With that, if a christian presents their god, I know their god, at least when I converse with them, is tied to to their text. Their texts makes claims, etc., and from a bayes theorem approach I can introduce these claims and come to a conclusion on the likely possibility of such claims being true based on the information we have today. So from that approach I can come to a conclusion on that specific god and negate the proposition of that god being true, but that same approach can't apply to every possible concept of god at the same time.



This section basically sums up my approach, and what I will assume is the approach of a majority of atheists, and that's restricting to philosophers, not laymen:

Jeanine Diller (2016) points out that, just as most theists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists, most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God does not exist. Indeed, many atheists are only vaguely aware of the variety of concepts of God that there are. For example, there are the Gods of classical and neo-classical theism: the Anselmian God, for instance, or, more modestly, the all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good creator-God that receives so much attention in contemporary philosophy of religion.

Global atheism is a very difficult position to justify (Diller 2016: 11–16). Indeed, very few atheists have any good reason to believe that it is true since the vast majority of atheists have made no attempt to reflect on more than one or two of the many legitimate concepts of God that exist both inside and outside of various religious communities. Nor have they reflected on what criteria must be satisfied in order for a concept of God to count as “legitimate”, let alone on the possibility of legitimate God concepts that have not yet been conceived and on the implications of that possibility for the issue of whether or not global atheism is justified. Furthermore, the most ambitious atheistic arguments popular with philosophers, which attempt to show that the concept of God is incoherent or that God’s existence is logically incompatible either with the existence of certain sorts of evil or with the existence of certain sorts of non-belief [Schellenberg 2007]), certainly won’t suffice to justify global atheism; for even if they are sound, they assume that to be God a being must be omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, and as the character Cleanthes points out at the beginning of Part XI of Hume’s Dialogues (see also Nagasawa 2008), there are religiously adequate God-concepts that don’t require God to have those attributes.

Atheism and Agnosticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

 

[Burned Verses]

 

[MischievousMonkey]

There is a distinction between non-belief (lacktheist) and negation of p (God existing), the graphic provides that. But I don't see the issue with a simple negation to the proposition, if a Christian presents the proposition, "does God exist", they are typically referring to the abrahamic god, that is the most widely recognized concept of a god. When I was an atheist, and I took the hardstance (in some cases I still do), I would negate the proposition of the Abrahamic god existing, but not w/e concept of god that could possibly exist. I think that places an unfair burden on the atheist while providing the backdoor for any theist. I have come across "christians," I forget how to accurately place them, that believe the simple state of existence/being is God. And I have known, and still know, followers of the Norse gods, and when they define what each god means, there really isn't anything to argue with, as you find they are simply ascribing events that can occur to their gods. With that, if a christian presents their god, I know their god, at least when I converse with them, is tied to to their text. Their texts makes claims, etc., and from a bayes theorem approach I can introduce these claims and come to a conclusion on the likely possibility of such claims being true based on the information we have today. So from that approach I can come to a conclusion on that specific god and negate the proposition of that god being true, but that same approach can't apply to every possible concept of god at the same time.



This section basically sums up my approach, and what I will assume is the approach of a majority of atheists, and that's restricting to philosophers, not laymen:

Fair enough. I read the rest of the thread and saw the contexts in which you'd support the statement. The graph, imo, doesn't do justice to your nuance since it doesn't restrict its scope with the same conditions.

I tried to explain myself the best I could, sorry for the length:

Spoiler

My issue boils down to semantics about what's an atheist and what concept we refer to when invoking the question "does God exist?". If I understand you correctly, what you put as a definition for atheism implies that atheism exist only in relation to a specific cult(s), and not absolutely. Which would imply that a Christian is indeed an atheist, when it comes to Thor or Râ. I believe that it's not that representative of what people refer to when they mention atheism, and that atheism, in the context of faith, should be defined in absolute, and not reduced to a negation of a specific god. It should refer to any god. If not, everybody is an atheist, and the word has little semantic power (again, in the context of faith).

Granted that a Christian asking if God exists would implicitly refer to the abrahamic version; that's if you're talking to a Christian. What if you're talking to somebody who just believe that there's a higher power? What if you're talking to self-proclaimed atheist? Aren't atheists atheists no matter the theist they have in front of them?

Is there such thing as a "abrahamic atheist", for example, somebody that would negate the proposition "the abrahamic God exists", but would be agnostic when it comes to some or all other concepts of God? Isn't that just an agnostic? You often have agnostics that'll say "I don't believe in the god of x cult, but maybe there's some higher power out there". Even theists will say something similar "I don't believe in the god of x cult, but there's for sure some higher power out there".

The problem I see is that imo, there's a fallacy of ambiguity within the definition of atheism, operating through the word "God". What does "God" refer to? Since atheists don't exist only in relation to one specific cult, Christianity or other, it should refer to any god.
Plus, even if you reduce the function of the word God in the question so that it only covers the abrahamic version, you'd still have to deal with its multiple, maybe infinite, interpretations, which could arguably be considered as different instances.

I'm not even sure a Christian asking whether God exists typically refer to the abrahamic version. He might be calling on a much purer concept of God in that instance, because if you were to say "yes, God exists but he is not perfectly good", you'd both be in agreement on the existence of the same entity but in divergence about its characteristics.

I fully agree with Diller's thesis on "global atheism" in the passage you quoted, but one issue I see is that I'm not sure how sensical it is to draw a distinction between "standard atheism" and a global one, for some of the reasons I mentioned. An atheist doesn't typically care about the potentially infinite number of God-concepts out there and asserts that none of them are true.
I wouldn't say the burden on that position is "unfair" since I don't really view the discussion in adversarial terms... To me, if a position is so categorical that it's almost impossible to defend with just formal logic, it just is what it is.

 

[Sccit]

YES

AND SO IS CHRISTIANITY

 

[H.I.M.]

Unequivocally, yes.

It's nothing more than vain, narcissistic self-worship and/or Man/Woman worship, dressed up and guised in religious scientism.

And It's very literally a French derived word and belief system.

It has no place in any historical record of any traditional, ancient or contemporary afro-asiatic culture(s).

 

[Reflected]

Fair enough. I read the rest of the thread and saw the contexts in which you'd support the statement. The graph, imo, doesn't do justice to your nuance since it doesn't restrict its scope with the same conditions.

I tried to explain myself the best I could, sorry for the length:

Spoiler

My issue boils down to semantics about what's an atheist and what concept we refer to when invoking the question "does God exist?". If I understand you correctly, what you put as a definition for atheism implies that atheism exist only in relation to a specific cult(s), and not absolutely. Which would imply that a Christian is indeed an atheist, when it comes to Thor or Râ. I believe that it's not that representative of what people refer to when they mention atheism, and that atheism, in the context of faith, should be defined in absolute, and not reduced to a negation of a specific god. It should refer to any god. If not, everybody is an atheist, and the word has little semantic power (again, in the context of faith).

Granted that a Christian asking if God exists would implicitly refer to the abrahamic version; that's if you're talking to a Christian. What if you're talking to somebody who just believe that there's a higher power? What if you're talking to self-proclaimed atheist? Aren't atheists atheists no matter the theist they have in front of them?

Is there such thing as a "abrahamic atheist", for example, somebody that would negate the proposition "the abrahamic God exists", but would be agnostic when it comes to some or all other concepts of God? Isn't that just an agnostic? You often have agnostics that'll say "I don't believe in the god of x cult, but maybe there's some higher power out there". Even theists will say something similar "I don't believe in the god of x cult, but there's for sure some higher power out there".

The problem I see is that imo, there's a fallacy of ambiguity within the definition of atheism, operating through the word "God". What does "God" refer to? Since atheists don't exist only in relation to one specific cult, Christianity or other, it should refer to any god.
Plus, even if you reduce the function of the word God in the question so that it only covers the abrahamic version, you'd still have to deal with its multiple, maybe infinite, interpretations, which could arguably be considered as different instances.

I'm not even sure a Christian asking whether God exists typically refer to the abrahamic version. He might be calling on a much purer concept of God in that instance, because if you were to say "yes, God exists but he is not perfectly good", you'd both be in agreement on the existence of the same entity but in divergence about its characteristics.

I fully agree with Diller's thesis on "global atheism" in the passage you quoted, but one issue I see is that I'm not sure how sensical it is to draw a distinction between "standard atheism" and a global one, for some of the reasons I mentioned. An atheist doesn't typically care about the potentially infinite number of God-concepts out there and asserts that none of them are true.
I wouldn't say the burden on that position is "unfair" since I don't really view the discussion in adversarial terms... To me, if a position is so categorical that it's almost impossible to defend with just formal logic, it just is what it is.

I understand exactly what you are getting at, there is a bit of a mess with how atheism in represented in the general public, this is largely due to atheism being more of a political movement in countries that suffer from oppressive religious based policies as opposed to being tied to the literature or the formal approach of atheism. Ironically, that graphic I posted was created to correct atheists on the position of atheism and to get them to recognize that claiming to a lack of belief while also rejecting agnosticism, would require them to bare a burden of proof. In the debate community we were in, there were too many atheists that wanted to simply hold to a lack of belief while also denying god on the basis of that lack of belief, and still somehow shrugging the burden.

So those that didn't want the burden were in opposition of those that were happy to meet the claim and it become a giant mess, if you are familiar with Matt Dillahunty, it even reached his platform and if you call in with that topic, he will kick you off the lines.


But getting back to the original topic, I don't have a problem with your position or the other position that was argued in this thread, I think we were all arguing from different contexts. If I'm arguing in good faith, I have no problem acknowledging your issue with how I presented atheism, I simply sought to present what I think is its strongest form, it runs into the least problems in my experience, but I recognize that isn't the prevailing position on atheism colloquially, not even close. But I do think that when most people reference a god, they are speaking of an entity with the three commonly associated attributes, such as omnipotence.