Doubting Tom

I've had several discussions with theists (specifically, Christians) lately in which they said they have known atheists who claimed to be able to read palms and predict the future, who believed in a higher force, and what have you.

This is (was?) contrary to my definition of atheism, which has always been "a lack of belief in anything supernatural."

Is my definition too restrictive? Is that really a definition of "materialism," whereas "atheism" allows belief in non-godly supernatural things?

Are there any "atheists" on this forum who believe in anything supernatural?

Are there any people who stop short of belief in a single God (e.g., the Christian God), but believe in other things supernatural, and who still consider themselves to be "atheist" as opposed to, say, pagan or pantheist or panentheist; AND,
Is it legitimate for those people to call themselves atheist, or are they stretching the definition too much?

Philosoft

Strictly speaking, and I think there are many here who would agree, I prefer an inclusive definition. Thus, my concept of 'atheism' would be something like, "lacking belief in god or gods." There are other perfectly acceptable terms, like metaphysical naturalist to describe those who lack belief in all things supernatural as well.

Vorkosigan

Atheism is lacking belief in gods. Many systems of thought embrace supernatural stuff, but don't believe in gods. It is perfectly possible to accept ESP, or karma (as Buddhists do) and not believe in gods. At least in my humble opinion.

Vorkosigan

fando

Well, I find atheism to be a very strange term. Same with supernaturalism. Both don't have any objective basis in the hard sciences, so I think of them as colloquial terms used to classify a set of subjective ideas. The ideas might overlap, but that's subjective too.

If some were to claim that Invisible Pink Unicorns exist and label those that don't believe so are unpinkables, would an unpinkable consider the very term meaningful in any objective sense?

Vorkosigan

I see. So you would say that there is no relationship between methodological naturalism and strong atheism?

Vorkosigan

fando

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either term. I can construe what methodological naturalism means, but not strong atheism. I think if we were to take this further, I would have a problem with the definition of strong atheism, something which seems to be very subjective from previous threads related to that term.

I'm reading an article on Methodological Naturalism in the secweb library. I'll respond later once I figure this out.

Ok, after digesting that, I have an answer to what I think was your question: There's no way I can answer. I think both methodological naturalism and atheism are both colloquial terms to describe a subjective set of ideas. Methodological natrualism itself assumes the existence of the supernatural, something which I have a problem with. Maybe I misunderstand. I'll add that the idea of methodological naturalism itself seems to be an artificial construct, designed solely to refute the idea that science should adopt something called methodological supernaturalism. That's just funky.

Before this changes into a philosophy heavy topic, I'd like to note that an electron woudn't have any reason to proclaim itself as a proton. The definition of an electron is objective enough that we can distinguish one from the myriad of other particles in the zoo. However, a human proclaiming to be both atheist and astrologer is not, in my humble opinion, making any error in classification. That person might make semantical errors, but whether being both atheist and astrologer is consistent is a completely subjective thing.

lunachick

Hmmm, I may be asking to be flamed here, but I'm an atheist and I own two different Tarot decks, which I'm pretty good at reading. (I haven't picked them up in months, though - haven't felt like it). I'm very intuitive and have had, err, 'experiences'. But I don't believe in god. I believe in energy. (No, not a god-like energy).

Philosoft

fando,

Methodological naturalism is just what it sounds like. It is a method of treating the immediate as if the supernatural does not exist. To practice science is to simultaneously practice methodological naturalism. Science does not say, 'supernatural explanations are a priori false.' Rather, science basically says, 'allowing the possibility of a particular supernatural explanation also allows the possibility of a near infinite number of additional supernatural explanations, and since we can't study any of them, we must proceed without regard to them.'

Something like that.

lisarea

Personally, I believe that there are probably lots of things science has yet to articulate that are currently known only in supernatural terms. I don't believe, however, that things like intelligence and memory and such require sapience.

Anyway, I can certainly see that, if someone had fairly strong beliefs along these lines--essentially a faith that there was a non-sapient intelligence of design, they could maintain those and still be considered an atheist, in that the common definition of 'god' requires some sort of consciousness.

Sometimes I can't even tell if I'm making sense at all.

Sephiroth

While I believe supernatural stuff doesn't exist the term "atheism" deals only with god, not with supernatural beliefs as a whole.