starling

Random chance. I've measured it several times, and if there is a god then it is indistinguishable from random chance. I could care less about a god like that.

maddog

umm, last weak, this weak, and probably next weak too.

#1576

Lógos Sokratikós

The probability that there exists an extraterrestrial that:
- Looks exactly like humans;
- Looks exactly like caucasians;
- Has a body that works almost exactly the same as humans enough for them not to notice the difference;
- Has superpowers beyond most people's wildest dreams;
- Fancies to fly around in multicolred tights;
- Whose extraterrestrial family coat of arms is exactly the same as the Roman letter "S";
- Who is in love with a human female;
- And many other attributes...

... exactly as they are portrayed in human books (DC comic books to be exact), to exist in real life is as improbable as...

... a God that is portrayed in human books (the Bible, to be exact) to be self-centered, humanly loving, self-sacrificing, humanly irate (well, more than "*humanly* irate", rather "irate like dysfunctional non-assertive humans are"), etc.

So...
You can call me a weak atheist, strong atheist or anything you like, but I'd be less surprised that My Little Pony characters ever existed in real life.

Wiploc

That's possible.



Well, if he's really a weak atheist, if he really doesn't believe god exists, then he's really not a strong atheist. But I think most people believe the Easter bunny doesn't really exist. Almost everybody. If someone compares god to the Easter bunny, and doesn't believe in the non-existence of either god or the bunny, then, as you say, she really is a weak atheist, and she isn't being inconsistent.

But I don't think there are many people like that. I assume that almost everybody believes the bunny does not exist.




Right. Entirely possible. It is surely true of some two people. But do I think there are six weak atheists like that in our two threads? No, that would be strikingly weird.

crc

Dlugar

I'd be interested in hearing from our resident self-describing weak atheists, particularly those who chose "very improbable" in the poll: do you consider yourself a weak atheist with regard to the Easter Bunny? And if not, could you explain why?

RAFH

Not for me, unless, of course, you are talking about the god RAFH, which certainly exists and requires large donations of cash, beach front land, interesting ideas, valuable stones and metals, expensive cars and boats and especially airships. He just loves airships. Fast ones are preferable but any will do.

I wish to note that although I also use the RAFH nomenclature, I, personally am not the god RAFH, just his corporeal representative and tester. I receive and test the donations for quality and quantity. Those not befitting the god I donate to a charity. I manage those that are befitting of the god.

RAFH

Are you a lawyer or something? Maybe work in a government specifications office or the IRS?

Wiploc

:notworthy: Perfect Question.

crc

Dante Alighieri

I'm a weak atheist towards the idea of a generic god, or a divine of some type. It's fully possible, I think, that there could be a divine, but we lack the current knowledge to determine probability or improbability either way.

Such is not the case with specific gods. I'm definitely a strong atheist towards gods that result in logical contradictions, and I think that the Abrahamic conception is one such god.

Now, there exist divines by which we cannot find contradictions in their existence i.e. Apollo, but I find that the probability of that specific god to be quite low out of a potential infinitude of non-contradictory possibilities, that it is fully justified to believe in their non-existence: that is to be a strong atheist. We must also consider what observations we make in the world that seem to lower the probability of that god's existence.

Certainty is not necessarily required for knowledge, I think.

As to that whether the Easter Bunny exists, I'm a strong a-bunny-ist. That despite centuries of opportunity, investigation of the world, and lack of behavior expected from such (i.e. we would naturally find eggs ready on Easter, without having to do it ourselves), indicates that his existence is improbable. Since I don't think that certainty is required for knowledge, I think that the Easter Bunny does not exist - I believe in the non-existence of the Easter Bunny.

That's my (somewhat crude) take on it, but I have the nagging feeling of various flaws in its justification.

Steven Mading

That still doesn't fix the problem, because just as I am a strong atheist with respect to more than one hypothetical god, I am also a weak atheist with respect to more than one hypothetical god - and the problem is that your question requires me to pick one single answer to apply to all those multiple hypothesized gods when in reality my answer varies from one god to the next - some I find much less probable than others.

It's like you asking someone "how many wheels are on the vehicle you drove last week?" and someone replying, "but wait - I own many vehicles, how do I answer the question?", and then you respond by saying, "but I was only talking about the vehicle you actually drove, not the ones you didn't drive - for the vehicle you actually did drive last week, how many wheels did it have?", and now I respond "That's still not enough to narrow it down. I drove both a car and a motorcycle last week, but I didn't drive my three-wheeled ATV, so while that cuts out one answer, it still leaves more than one answer remaining. I still can't answer the question because there's still not one right answer that covers all of them."

"Weak atheist" can cover quite a wide range of positions, really. Anything less than certainty, actually, and that's a really wide field. Not all of the gods for which I am a weak atheist are on the same point in that scale.

In Richard Dawkins' recent book, he just didn't bother using ther terms weak and strong at all, and instead just gave a a certainty number scale from 1 to 7 and treated it as a continuous spectrum , and then placed himself at about a 6 with regards to his rejection of a generic non-yahweh intelligent designer god. I think that type of scale is more sensible because it completely avoids these stupid debates over what the subjective meaning of "believe X is true" really means in terms of your level of certainty, and makes things much less likely to be misunderstood and wrecked by the subjective nature of language.

Given that 1-7 scale, I'd say that only a 7 is strong atheism. Anything from 1-6 is weak atheism. For some gods my doubt rises as high as 7 because they are defined in an internally inconsistent way that disproves itself already before you even start looking at the evidence outside the definition itself. (i.e the omniscient god that allows free will for example, I'd rate as high as a 7.)