Timeline for Is atheism just another form of dogma?
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| Jun 17, 2020 at 8:34 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Mar 24, 2020 at 20:07 | comment | added | Agi Hammerthief | Do not commit the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. Athiesm doesn't need to prove the non-existence of a god. It's not making any claims. Theism is claiming that there is a god (or many gods); its adherents are therefore responsible for proving the claim. | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 22:43 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @mbrig: oh, we're limiting this to the Christian God specifically? Yeah, then you run into Douglas Adams's Babelfish argument. I'm a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series with it's pantheon; he has some interesting ideas about Belief, especially in Small Gods. And yeah, weak gnostic only makes sense if you only mean "certain until disproven", or your threshold for feeling certain is much lower than absolute proof. (Which for many people is actually the case, I think. Humans can go around believing all sorts of things if they're not careful.) | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 22:29 | comment | added | mbrig | @PeterCordes when I've seen arguments in favor of "strong" agnostic athesim, they generally center on how the principals of religion/faith are incompatible with "burning moon letters" levels of evidence (very nice mental image, btw :) ). "If the Christian God exists as claimed then there will never be evidence" I think is the idea. It all gets into a lot of philosophy I've never much bothered with... I agree the axes are not fully independent, "weak" and "gnostic" e.g. seem almost totally incompatible. | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 22:02 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | ... I mean, I think the fundamental difference is faith. So I guess you could still consider it an atheistic position to think letters of fire on the moon were written by some powerful being, if you don't accept that as reason enough to worship (or fear) them. IMO, if there are any power beings out there who would like to be worshipped, they can come and ask nicely and I'll think about it, if they can provide evidence of having done good things. If they're literally omnipotent, then it's not like they don't have the time. I guess that's still atheist, even if I know they exist? | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 21:54 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @mbrig: interesting. I don't think those axes are truly orthogonal, though. How can you be a strong agnostic atheist? So what do you do if letters written in fire appear on the moon next year, followed by miracles and / or an apocalypse? You don't accept that as evidence of the existence of a god, because you're strongly committed to not changing your position? I think personally, I would think that there probably is some kind of god based on solid evidence, but I doubt I'd be keen to do much worshipping except in exchange for a known reward. Depends what you mean by god, I guess. ... | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 21:45 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @isherwood: I was commenting on the existence of the term, not the philosophical position. Indeed, it's frustrating that people spend their time arguing against positions that most atheists don't hold, partly because of a lack of good terminology. | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 21:41 | comment | added | mbrig | @PeterCordes One particular article I read broke it down along 3 different axes. Thiest/athiest (I believe/don't believe), gnostic/agnostic (it is possible to be certain or prove my viewpoint/it is not possible to be certain), strong/weak (this will never change in the future/this may change in the future). By this classification the majority of "scientific" athiests would be weak agnostic athiests, but apparently everyone uses these terms differently... | |
| Mar 26, 2018 at 18:21 | comment | added | isherwood | Not only does exist, but constitutes about 99% of atheists I've ever met (being and active part of the group). | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 18:06 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | Ah, apparently agnostic atheism does exist as a term to refer specifically to the non-dogmatic / non-believing of anything part of the spectrum. | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 17:53 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | So if you mean atheism as an active belief in the proposition that there is no god or gods, then yes this answer applies to that. It's unfortunate that there isn't more clear and widely understood terminology. Total lack of belief in anything religious goes beyond agnosticism; I don't think it describes what I'm talking about. | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 17:49 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | A belief in the non-existence of any god is similar to belief in a specific god or gods. There are no widely accepted proofs of the non-existence of any gods. But the term "atheist" includes the position that it doesn't make sense to believe either way. For example I think it's likely that there are no gods or other powerful celestial beings, but of course I have no evidence either way. And if there are some gods around, there's little reason to expect that any human religion got everything right, or that they deserve worship, or that they care about humans in the way Christianity says | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 9:42 | comment | added | Eric Duminil | Do you also claim it's impossible to have a moral compass without god? | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 9:39 | comment | added | Eric Duminil | I don't think you can extrapolate any of your claims to all atheists. Many atheists merely don't believe in god. They don't claim there's no god and surely don't try to prove its non-existence. | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 1:21 | history | edited | Geremia | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 24, 2018 at 23:31 | history | edited | Geremia | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 24, 2018 at 18:29 | history | answered | Geremia | CC BY-SA 3.0 |