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It is a simple question Helian, that's all. We are still at the stage of establishing what you are trying to say.

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I am asking about your definition. I have met plenty of atheists who believe. I have met plenty who think they can prove it. Do you avert your eyes before them? Are you suggesting these people don;t exist, or merely acknowledging your ignorance or shelter?

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So atheists are people who disagree without first figuring out what they are talking about?

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And your refusal to answer the question may lead to a misapprehension that you know you are wrong but won't admit it. One of those 'misapprehensions' you can avoid.

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Do you have a problem with it? Or were you just stating the obvious?

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How is it dishonest?

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What do you think your inability to answer demonstrates?

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I still have no idea what you are on about. If I don't know what your answer to the question is, how am I to know what interpretation you imagine I will take from your answer? How am I to know why you disagree with this imagined interpretation if you are afraid to make anything more than vague references to it? How am I supposed to understand your gobblydigook justification for not answering it?

How about we take this one step at a time? Step 1, you answer the question. Step 2, you let me reach my own conclusion regarding your answer. Step 3, you respond to the conclusion that I actually draw, rather than your imagination? That is how these things work. You have no need to fear this discourse, unless you fear the truth being exposed.

FD, they made Socrates drink hemlock for a lot less, you know...

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 27^th, 2011 at 9:14pm:

Ah but that's the point... It isn't understood... That's how the advocates for intelligent design hoodwink the credulous... And why theists feel compelled to assign the same attributes of "belief in non-existence" as with "belief in existence".

freediver wrote on Apr 27^th, 2011 at 9:32pm:

Theist:   “I believe that god exists”.
Atheist: "Can you prove it?".
Theist:  "No".
Atheist  “Then I don't believe you”.

On the theist is imposed the burden of proof.

Believing in the non-existence of god is only a loose way of speaking, such that the speaker really intends "I disbelieve you when you say that god exists (given you cannot prove it)".

freediver wrote on Apr 27^th, 2011 at 10:07pm:

It may be said that atheists are permanently in the state of absence-of-belief-in-god, so long as no one infers from that that they are actively “believing-in the non-existence of god”.

Soren wrote on Apr 27^th, 2011 at 10:25pm:

OK, close enough... But really, non-belief in the existence of god communicates the absence of belief (i.e. it is not intended to communicate a "believing-in").

In that context it is not a belief.

It is a belief in the sense of understanding, not as a belief-in or a faith.

What is important though is that this atheist understanding needs to be also quite elaborate and complex and all the rest of it because the vacuum left by the god concept and all its connotations and co-located ideas that go with it also need to be filled in by an atheist understanding (ethics, metaphysics, the nature of nature, man, etc)


God has been the cornerstone of a lot of thinking and sense-making and art and literature and custom for a very long time. We can't just be like Andy in Little Britain and just point to something completely unrelated an say 'I want tha' one' and call it the end of the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIJt9LYbtBs

Soren wrote on Apr 27^th, 2011 at 10:52pm:


Very fairly put Soren, we cannot just disregard the role that the invention of the god concept has had upon mankind, and our system of ethics does need to flesh out the reasoning for agreeing with moral imperatives that we were previously content to accept as unchallengeable because, "god said so".
That does not mean we should content ourselves with just sticking with the "god said so" argument, because we are too lazy to redefine things based upon social benefits, rather than spiritual benefits, which a quarter of the population no longer relate to at all.

I actually posted a link to a TED talk which elaborated on this very subject, last year, but I did not bookmark it, so I cannot guarantee I will find it, but if I do, I will repost the link.