Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[andrewducker]

And there we get into the "strong" atheism versus "weak" atheism debate, which I've been in far too many times before. Where weak atheists have no-belief-in-God and strong atheists have belief-in-no-God.

And whichever one I use to mean "atheist" one of the other types will pop up and contradict me. So I prefer to use agnostic, so that I am describing my state of knowledge (unknown) rather than the universe.

And I don't just find it unreasonable to believe in the supernatural - I find it unreasonable to believe in anything that lacks proof. Which includes, say, various conspiracy theories.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"strong" and "weak" are both bad, misleading terms, because in both cases they concede the framing of the argument to imply that there is a *reason* to "assert nonexistence*, or a functional difference between nonbelief and assertion that other people are wrong to believe.

And, reall,y I'm not saying you can't call this position agnostic. I'm simply saying, I'd call it atheistic:
Since you don't actively believe that one or more of the postulated supernatural things are affirmatively true, you're not a theist. To not be a theist is to be an atheist. Full stop.

[andrewducker]

If atheist, to you, means "One who does not positively believe in God." then what's your word for "One who positively believes God does not exist."?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"a meaningless distinction that falsely claims a difference between unbelief and nonbelief"

But as long as you're incorrectly conceding the rhetorical possibility of "believe in a negative", I'd call that an atheist.

"What do you call someone who likes football?"
"A fan"
"But what if they like football AND really like Man U"
"They're a fan."
"But those things are different!"

[andrewducker]

You may find it meaningless - I find it incredibly important.

I cannot disprove the existence of God, and I would find it insulting and inapprorpriate for someone to think I was insisting that God definitely did not exist. And so I do not use the word atheist about myself, because that it how people seem to use it.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, I wonder why you would find it insulting / inappropriate to insist that God did not exist?

I can understand why it would not be scientifically verifiable, but in a world where it's acceptable to claim existence of a being based on the evidence of select texts, I don't see why it should be insulting to strongly argue that God definitely doesn't exist.

That is to say, I cannot prove my assertion that God doesn't exist, but I am more than happy to go toe to toe with those who are willing to insist that he does and to argue with equal fervour.

[andrewducker]

I would find it insulting to _my_ intelligence, not to the other people. I would not want to be associated with that view, and I correct people who say that I believe it.

I'm happy to argue that there's no reason to think God exists, and that assertions that he does are without grounds. Just not to assert that God is impossible.