Atheism is being twisted into this new nothing-ism by denying their actual position, which is the positive assertion that there is no deity. Now, they have discovered, they think, that the position of “having no position”, i.e. “no god theory”, relieves them of the burden of providing any logic or empirical evidence in support of their ideology.
The logic behind this “change of understanding” fails immediately upon inspection. Let’s look at the possibilities involved with the proposition that there is a deity:
1. A person hears the proposition and understands it. He accepts it. That is his god theory.Now we can say with a fair amount of certainty that numbers 3 through 7 do not have a thought or opinion regarding the proposition: they legitimately have no god theory. Do any of these apply to persons who designate themselves to be Atheist? Hardly. Yet the inclusion of those persons and things is requisite of the “new understanding of Atheism”, right down to the rocks, mud, slugs and black mold.
2. A person hears the proposition and understands it. He rejects it. That is his god theory.
3. A person hears the proposition and understands it but doesn't care so never engages it.
4. A person hears the proposition and understands it but completely forgets it. He has no god theory.
5. A person hears the proposition and doesn’t understand it. He neither accepts nor rejects it and remains bewildered by it. He has no god theory.
6. A person never hears the proposition. He has no god theory.
7. Rocks, mud, slugs and black mold as well as all other material existence neither accepts nor rejects it. They have no god theory.
In fact it is quite clear that actual Atheists are in the second category, and there only: they reject the proposition. Their rejection is active, not passive. It is positive, not nothing-ism. It is a position, not a failure to engage.
The purpose of this “change of understanding” or redefinition is obvious. Atheists, who demand physical evidence from Theists, are unable to provide either logic or physical evidence for their own position. This is untenable for a group which advertises its possession of logic and evidence, and projects their presumed ownership of logic and evidence to be solely theirs. The easy way out of this intellectual catastrophe is to deny that they have a position in the first place, and thus cannot be held to it.
This is intellectual dishonesty, at the most basic level of the Atheist existence: the declaration of their belief system. However, it is an indicator of more dishonesty to come as actual Atheism is revealed. Atheism is a system of skepticism which merely denies. Skepticism always endeavors to destroy knowledge and never, ever provides any knowledge itself. It quickly denies the existence of absolutes, which eliminates any possible truth. Without truth, there is no falseness (as well as no true knowledge). So it devolves to this: truth is whatever the Atheist says it is.
The malleability of truth under Atheism is one reason that Atheists cannot be deemed trustworthy: they can provide no absolute reason that they should be trusted, since under Atheism, truth is completely volatile.
This sort of internal conflict seems not to disturb the Atheist, and becomes transparently part of their thought process. This is indicated by their consistent failure to engage with actual arguments, rather preferring the use of skeptical denialism which they have come to believe is the process of logic. So coming full circle, it is not surprising that Atheists deny their own position in their process of intellectual avoidance.
Addendum: Added item 3 to the list above.
17 comments:
God told me to tell you to give all your money to the Church of Satan.
Burden of rebuttal time! Prove me wrong - GO!
I have made no truth claim regarding your assertion; therefore I have no need to support it.
What happened to the person who said:
"The person who hears a hypothesis either accepts or rejects it, unless he doesn't remember it or doesn't comprehend it. They want the Other to think that they have no intellectual responsibility for supporting their rejection with reasons and reasoning at a minimum"?
To re-cap, what choices do you have when you hear a hypothesis?
-accept
-reject
-"doesn't remember"
-doesn't comprehend
If it's the last two choices you can re-read what I wrote at 10:28PM. I assume you can comprehend simple sentences. This is YOUR standard. So now you got the burden of rebuttal. Prove me wrong!
Let me up the ante.
God is all-powerful therefore he is able to convince me that IS Him telling me to tell you to give all your money to the Church of Satan.
Burden of rebuttal time! Unless you accept this then it's time to support your rejection!
First, I reject it based on its obvious intent: intellectual fraud.
I reject it based on the obvious intent of its creation as an immature argumentation device and nothing more.
I reject it based on its triviality, which is your position here: trivial due its nature as an obvious Straw Man Fallacy cum false analogy, having been a false construction in order to make a false point which cannot be made in any straight forward manner.
I reject it based on its lack of logical support and its lack of empirical, material evidentiary support.
It does bring to mind a point which I left out: heard it, understand it, but don't care enough to engage it.
Well said, Stan.
I've ran into this more often than not. It's simply irresponsible so they can play dodge ball all day long with their belief and off the hook (presumably) in having to think and defend their position.
Can someone really claim to be impartial with an attitude such as that? I think the answer is obvious.
Morgan,
Thanks.
I think I'll be referring to this article instead of rewriting the same stuff every day for the new Atheist who shows up. Every newbie comes in denying both his actual belief and the necessity to prove his position.
Well, I've put it to Twitter and as usual, the typical response of 'Sorry, the burden of proof is on you' and 'The article makes no sense' was the only response I received.
I've offered the critic to comment here, but I'll be surprised if his argument develops further. Let's keep an open mind though. :)
"The change of the definition of “Atheism” from a positive assertion into a nothing-ism is all the rage amongst Atheists these days."
rage???
stan, please dont do that while i am eating... you are going to make me choke. it's simply too funny! :-)
you are right though, there are changes of definitions for Atheism, just like so many other words, due to the context.
"Under this “new understanding” of Atheism (one completely outside the old fashioned dictionary definition and common understanding), the Atheist takes no position whatsoever and thus cannot be held to any commitment, having denied that he has one."
you are correct, the definition of atheism that applies to me is not the old fashioned dictionary definition. take the one from Webster for example:
Definition of ATHEISM
1
archaic: ungodliness, wickedness
2
a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity
or http://dictionary.reference.com:
1
the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
in both cases, my belief is #2. in some cases, for Zeus let's say, I will also accept the belief tthat there is no God because God is Zeus in that example. no general rule...
but then you say that the Atheist takes no position. that is not correct. we all take tons of positions. i am to be held to my commitment to these positions, especially when i consider to have a high degree of certainty.
'gods can exist' is one of these positions.
'gods don't exist' is not one of these positions.
'gods must exist' is one of yours?
nowwww. some of mines:
Electromagnetism Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CIeaHs-R90
Theory of Relativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30KfPtHec4s
Atomic Theory
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/assignment-discovery-shorts-development-of-atom-theory.html
Big Bang Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=uabNtlLfYyU&NR=1
String Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE7xRgfPjAI
Germ Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyodvwxe4mE
Theory of Evolution
But eh, why bother putting a link, even if it's to be funny like a few up here... you deny that one. Actually, I could use a sub-set...
Phylogeny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91UAzMNUDLU
eternal,
Surely you recognize that disbelief does not come with no responsibility for having reasons for disbelieving? In other words, if you take a position, even that of disbelief, you must have reasons for taking it. To take a position, even of disbelief, without any reason for taking it is irrational.
Disbelief for no reason is devoid of reasoning, logic and empirical evidence. So disbelief with no reason is not a believable position, and in fact lends credibility to the idea that Atheists are not honest in presenting their beliefs, and thus are not trustworthy.
So if you have no reason for your "disbelief", what is the reason that you do not have a reason?
Perhaps you see the conundrum you create by insisting on your subterfuge. Or perhaps not.
eternal,
Perhaps I should pare it down to this:
1. If you have no reason for your "disbelief", then your disbelief is irrational.
2. If you do have a reason for your "disbelief", then you have a "god theory", and the conditions in the article apply.
You disbelieve that God has told me to give all of your money to the Church of Satan.
You use subterfuge in the way of pretending that you "don't care enough" to consider what God has said but you are just trying to avoid your burden of rebuttal. You are dishonest. You disbelieve what God has told me based on no reasoning, no logic and no empirical evidence.
You know that this is irrational according to what you want the atheists to provide.
Perhaps you can see how incredibly stupid your "burden of rebuttal" is but I think you are too emotionally involved to see how hopelessly irrational you are.
You would lose any debate that you tried your tricks in. You can't allow debate, Christians would rather censor a person then allow an alternative viewpoint. This is their and your nature. Don't try to deny it. You have already proved it.
I personally don't see anything wrong with no belief as a position. Agnosticism is legitimate if you genuinely don't believe there's sufficient evidence either way. this doesn't seem to fit with any of your "no god theory"
Definitions are tricky. Definition is established by usage. While your definition is the most widely accepted, "lack of belief" also seems to have some acceptance. Can't say I'm *fond* of this as a definition since it confuses things but a lot of people will accept that as the meaning.
I do however agree with you that this is intellectual dishonesty. This group is highly critical of beliefs in deities, but not so much about a belief there's no deity. Clearly they have a bias towards there being no god. An agnostic has no justification to be skeptical of the belief. Only of the evidence.
"You disbelieve what God has told me based on no reasoning, no logic and no empirical evidence."
You are new here and think you know everything it appears. Here's your presuppositional error: Only Materialists are held to the evidentiary standards requiring empirical evidence. And logic is not based on Materialist presuppositions.
I presented logic, you just don't recognize it, or as a fundamentalist denialist, you merely deny it without engaging it.
I think it is quite obviously the latter, because your claim of no logic is obviously in error; it is most likely that you cannot defeat the logic by using actual logic yourself, and further that you don't actually know the fundamental principles of Logical Analysis, thinking rather that your own thought process is logical in whatever it produces, regardless of principled analytical attacks on it.
In other words, you cannot defeat an actual position by creating a false position and attacking that instead of the actual position. So your claim is rejected and defeated based on actual principles of logical analysis.
luckyaa,
"An agnostic has no justification to be skeptical of the belief. Only of the evidence."
Yes, with the caveat that a specific evidentiary theory must be adopted and adhered to honestly. With both Atheists and at least some agnostics, the use of sliding skepticism renders their view of knowledge non-coherent.
Logic? Did you notice your repeated use of word "obvious" and "trivial"? Your refusal to examine Satanist's position was based on your gut not your head. And to say you can dismiss the position because it's based on very little logic or evidence is exactly what atheists say about our position! Satanist's argument is stupid but it shows that I've been wrong about the burden of proof. I should ask God to reveal Himself to others not ask other to prove He doesn't exist. I feel so stupid now. I would never accept "prove it isn't gold" at a jewellery store, no, they should prove it's gold. 'Prove me wrong' is not a standard that makes sense in any of our daily dealings. It's schoolyard stuff. You are losing me, Stan. I don't think all atheists are making a positive claim anymore. I really don't know where this'll go. It's too early in the morning.
I lack an opinion one way or another about the game of hockey. It is for precisely this reason that you will not find me on the websites of hockey fans proclaiming that the game SUCKS and that hockey fans are LOSERS.
If atheists really did have an analogous lack of belief concerning God, they simply wouldn't be on the websites of theists spewing their atheist disingenuity. This much should be manifestly obvious to those in possession of basic rationality.
The correct question when faced with the "I simply lack belief in the existence of God" canard is "Do you also lack belief in the non-existence of God?" An answer of "yes" raises the question of why the atheist is being so militant. An answer of "no" refutes the atheist's original claim. But best of luck getting a yes or no answer.
”Logic? Did you notice your repeated use of word "obvious" and "trivial"? Your refusal to examine Satanist's position was based on your gut not your head.
Theists and logicians are in no way limited to the evidentiary theory limitations of Atheists/Materialists. The concept of rational acceptability / deniability of a proposition is not accepted by Atheists/Materialists, but is a perfectly acceptable rational technique for determining acceptable knowledge based on probability, given facts surrounding and supporting the proposition being made. For example, there is no reason to give a probability > 0 to the contention that God is delivering a message of confiscation via a Satanist. So it is rationally deniable.
This option is not available to any AtheoMaterialist, who demands Material evidence in the form of scientifically validated proof, which is the basic demand they make on Theists. And that is what the Satanist is demanding of me, in response to my demand that the Atheist ideologists adhere to their own principles. Their principles are irrational (Category Error), but they will not admit that; so when I insist that they adhere to their own rules, they get sniffy and try to derail the conversation with easily denied Straw Men.
The conversation here is (a) that
Atheist evidentiary demands are logic errors and therefore irrational, and (b) that they cannot adhere to their own standards.
Can “lacking a belief” after having heard a proposition mean anything other than rejecting the proposition – for whatever reason – and if so, what would that be? Not accepting a proposition must have a reason at its base, be it insufficient evidence, insufficient logic, confusion, not caring, forgetting, etc. Everything else in the AtheoMaterialist world has a reason, even if the reason has to be assigned arbitrarily. There is no exception for this: it is cause and effect.
If they don’t have a reason/cause for not accepting – or rejecting – the proposition, then that is not “reasonable”. It is irrational.
”'Prove me wrong' is not a standard that makes sense in any of our daily dealings. It's schoolyard stuff.”
No one has said that. What is being said is, “prove you are right, since your ideology advertises having the corner on logic and evidence”. If the Atheist position is correctly asserted to be "no position", then what is the support for the assertion that it is correct?
Atheism cannot provide either logic or material empirical evidence in support of its ideology. Therefore the Atheist must deny his actual ideology. That's all that this is about.
So this is an entirely different thing: if they are selling gold, they should prove it is gold.
They choose not to prove it.
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