fast

He is a weak atheist, and he can say that he is strong atheist. Cute. True, but cute.

funinspace

This whole "issue" is why I use the phrase "functional atheist; theoretical agnostic" in my profile. I think it sums up my view without allot of added confusion or misunderstanding...

Steven Mading

The following statement was quite false, and if it was true I wouldn't need to argue with you at all so it should have been blatantly obvious to you that it was a falsehood by just the mere fact that I'm having this argument with you:
I am aware that that YOU think this is true. At no point did I agree with you that this was true, and my posts have been quite clear that I am in disagreement over this. I do not agree because it describes a logical impossibilty - people who have to disbelieve in gods they've never even heard of. Since an active disbelief requires that you at least know what it is you're disbelieving, this is impossible. That is why I do not believe you are correct when you say strong atheists have to have disbelief in all gods. Disbelief in all gods *one has actually heard of* would be a far more usable definition.

The rest of your post was predicated upon your false statement that I agree with your defintion, so I see no reason to respond to it in detail, but I will mention this one thing: You have changed your definition of weak atheist. Under your NEW definition I could be called a weak atheist. But under your old definition it would not have been true. (Old = weak atheist lacks belief god does exist and also does not have the belief god does not exist, New = weak atheist lacks belief in all gods and also does not have the belief there are no gods,) That change from singular to plural makes a gigantic difference, whether you realize it or not.

fast

You have been told, repeatedly told, what a strong atheist is. You do not have to agree. You do not have to accept it. But, whether you believe it, or whether you don't, you are aware of what the truth is.

This reminds me of a conversation with someone that believed the world was flat. I told him, and I was adamant, that the world was not flat, so he was aware of what I thought, and what I thought was true, but just because he wasn't aware that what I thought was true, that didn't change the fact that he was aware of what was true. He just didn't know it.

Steve, you are operating under a false premise. Since when does belief require knowledge?

If one knows P, then one believes P, but just because someone believes P, that doesn't mean that one knows P; therefore, knowledge is a subset of belief; moreover, belief is the superset to knowledge.

As one poster once said, "belief has no bounds." So, it is not the case that disbelief requires that we know ....

There are plenty of people around here that hold an actual belief that there are no Gods. They are strong atheists. As soon as someone comes up with yet another idiosyncratic definition of what they think God is, the strong atheist is right there to let them know what they think.

The whole idea here is that there’s a blanket denial of any God supposedly born of the supernatural realm. The typical strong atheist isn’t going to believe in the Christian God anymore than he is going to believe in the shopping cart God, so just because he’s never heard one discuss the shopping cart God, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t already disbelieve it. He believes it because he already disbelieves that there cannot even be a God, whether it be a Christian or shopping Cart God.

Take care,

fast

Steven Mading

That statement is obviously self-contradictory. It is impossible to disbelieve in something that one is "aware" is the truth - it's definitionally impossible given what "believe" means. When you claimed I was "aware" you are correct, you were lying about me. I don't tolerate that.

That's nonsense. You're trying to simultaneously claim he knew and didn't know what you were saying was the truth.


Can you tell the difference between "knowing what X is" from "knowing that X is existant"? Belief that X doesn't exist requires that one know what the placeholder X means, not that one have knowlege of X's existence itself.

You have now spoken falsehoods about what I said, twice. I won't read your post any further. Correct this problem first.

fast

My sincerest apologies.

It is not my intention to lie about you, and I too wouldn't like it very much if one were lying about me. It is not my intention to speak falsehoods about what you said, and I too wouldn't like it very much if one were speaking falsehoods about me.

If I tell you that 5+5 is 10, but you think it’s 8, then you are aware of the correct answer even if you don’t know what the correct answer is. To know, you must believe, for to know is to have a true justified belief, so it’s not the case that you know what the answer is, but the requirement of knowing the answer isn’t the same for being aware of what the answer might be.

I was not trying to say to you that he knew that what I thought was true. He wasn’t aware that what (emphasis on what) I thought was true.

I hope you aren’t getting upset, and I certainly don’t want to get you upset. If I am still upsetting you (if I’m upsetting you), please let me know and I’ll refrain. I don’t like to get people upset.

Steven Mading

I understand that concept, but that concept is not what is expressed by the language you are using. Consider these two statements:
"You are aware of an answer. This answer happens to be correct."
"You are aware of the correct answer."
They really don't mean the same thing. "You are aware of the correct answer" means not only that you are aware that that answer exists, but also that you are aware that it is the correct one.

To make an analogy: Imagine someone who is color blind and is being shown two balls, one red, one green, but that person only sees two balls of the same color. The phrase "he is aware of the green ball" would be highly misleading.


So the false and arrogant claim that I already am aware of your "correct" answer being a correct answer regardless of what I might have to say to the contrary might not be what you were intending to say, it's what you ended up saying - perhaps by accident.


Now, back to the point, I do not think your defintion of strong atheist is workable because it requires that a person must be aware of all gods one could possibly propose in order to be a strong atheist. Therefore I don't think that's what people mean when they call themselves strong atheists. Usually when they do this, it's followed by a qualification of just what they mean by gods - and that qualification always ends up narrowing down the field to only being a subset of all gods one could propose.

fast

I really don't understand why you think that is a requirement.

A person can believe that there are no Gods. One does not need to "be aware of all [the G]ods one could possibly propose" in order to hold such a belief. Such a belief does not require such awareness.

People need not even know God exists in order to believe. In fact, it happens a lot.

Brother Daniel

(I haven't read the thread. I apologise if I'm just repeating something that someone else has already said.)

I'm a weak atheist in a way that is not included in the poll options.

I'm indistinguishable from a strong atheist, with regard to the God of any theological system you care to name. (Unless "God" is watered down to mean "the Universe", but I digress.)

Outside of the context of a specific theological system, the word "God" is (IMO) meaningless.

A general assertion that "no God exists" makes no sense apart from the assumption that the word "God" is meaningful. And I disagree with that assumption. So (IMO) strong atheism concedes too much to theism.

And that's why I'm not a strong atheist. Strong atheism doesn't go far enough.

Steven Mading

You're still not getting it. Let me try again.
Are you willing to go out on a limb and say "I believe there is no such thing as a Fleeminhager" when I haven't even told you what the definition of "Fleeminhager" is yet, and it's a word I just made up now?

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say you can't believe X doesn't exist without knowing what X you're even talking about in the first place. To say one disblieves in all gods requires that one know of every possible thing people put forth as gods. How do you believe something you never even heard of doesn't exist? If you've never even heard of it, it's not even a conscious thought at all to disblieve in it. It's not a belief, nor a disbelief - it's just a lack of belief because not only is it not a belief, it's not even a thought yet. Therefore "strong atheism" is a moniker that can really only apply to the subset of gods you've actually heard of and contemplated, not "all gods".