Why Theists call atheism a Rejection of God

It's not actually the self-referential nature of religious claims that I have been talking about. It's simply the fact that the same sort of epistemology leads people to claim certainty about the truth of mutually exclusive propositions.

Aside from that, this isn't a science vs religion discussion I am having with you anyway, even though you seem to keep trying to make it one. Would you mind saving that for another thread?

I am interested in the idea of God, otherwise I wouldn't engage in discussion about it.

I am quite literally in awe of the wonder and mystery of reality. I can even say that I feel some sort of reverence toward it. In this way, if God is something naturalistic (even if it is way way beyond the scope of our current understanding), by being genuinely in touch with this mystery, and by trying to make sense of it, perhaps I am much closer to 'God' than any theist is.

But in less emotive terms, if God is indeed something naturalistic (or even something altogether incomprehensible, or just completely different than any traditional conception), then your statement is not a fact.

Do you see how your 'truism' drags with it a bunch of premises about what God is? You must demonstrate the truth of those premises before you can demonstrate the truth of your assertion.

 

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You still don't get it. Presentation is everything.

As they say in the fashion industry - ugly is ugly - regardless of the material.

 

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So there are two issues you seem to bring up here:
1. claims of certainty
and
2. claims about truth of mutually exclusive propositions.

As for claims of certainty, in my experience, the people who claim certainty fall into one of these categories:
1. Those who, after some probing discussion, say something to the effect of "But I am merely a seeker, just like you" revealing themselves to be effectively agnostics (MindOverMatter even admitted as much once).
2. Fundamentalists with whom no, or at least not much, discussion is possible.
3. Those who have many fancy philosophical and other explanations ready.
4. Politicians and rhetorics - people who will say all kinds of things, as long as it helps them to prevail in the conversation.

So claims of certainty aren't simply all what they seem to be at first glance.


As for mutually exclusive propositions: there, we need to look at the context in which propositions appear mutually exclusive. Usually, if we decontextualize enough, all kinds of things can seem mutually exclusive. Provided enough context, perceptions of mutual exclusivity turn out to be category errors.

In other words, if, for example, some people say that God's name is Allah, and some other people say God's name is Jehovah, these two propositions are not automatically mutually exclusive, as long as we consider their respective contexts.

Suppose someone advises an epistemology like this: "Men, look into your hearts and tell the name of the woman you love most."
And many names will be mentioned, referring to different women. The answers will (often) be mutually exclusive.
Does that make the epistemological principle employed to arrive at these propositions, false? No.

I just pointed out a similarity.

There are many issues that are appealing about discussing "God" - such persistence, consistency, intellectual challenge, ingenuity, opportunity to show one is well-read and well-versed in intellectual exchanges, ... - and they don't directly have anything to do with the "idea of God."

Perhaps you are not an atheist then, or at least not the standard "God does not exist / God is a delusion" kind of atheist.

In fact, some theists would say that you are in awe of God's impersonal energy. (And with some stretching, you could thus be said to be a theist.)

My truism holds for standard atheists, people who dismiss any and all notions of God as wrong, delusional, and don't in any way connect "God" to any feelings of awe that they experience.
You allow for the possibility of God, in some way, but the standard atheist does not.

 

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Oh, of course, atheists handle theists nicely, its only in the debates that the fangs come out.

 

Just because fundamentalists typically like to proselytize rather than engage in real discussion doesn't mean that they aren't entirely legitimate examples of people who, collectively, claim absolute certainty regarding mutually exclusive propositions...

...and thus, sometimes such claims are exactly what they seem to be.

That example is pretty much completely disconnected from the sort of thing I am talking about.

Fundamentalist Christianity, for example, is irreconcilable with fundamentalist Islam. Both camps will invoke all sorts of scriptural evidence to demonstrate exactly that. And the thing is, if you accept the truth of the premises upon which each position is built, then each position will make just as much sense as the other.

And you don't magically avoid this issue simply by being some sort of religious inclusivist or pluralist either, since such a position is still in direct conflict with the claims of the fundamentalists. In other words, there are those who firmly believe that anyone with an "all religions are essentially the same, so why can't we all just focus on the commonalities and get along with each other" type approach has essentially rejected God's actual message, which goes into great detail concerning precisely what you need to do in order to be in a position to receive the gift of salvation.

I don't understand that at all. Discussion about God is discussion about God. I have some interest in it. Are you somehow trying to tell me that maybe I really don't, or that my discussion of God isn't really about God?

I have explained this before. I tend to be atheistic with respect to the sort of God that people typically discuss around here. I am agnostic with respect to the existence of some great and mysterious unknown that may fit the bill somehow. But it doesn't really matter that much, because in the mind of your average theist, there's a very fine line (if there is even a line at all) between a 'standard' atheist (as you call them) and someone who is atheistic with respect to any conception of God that they feel has obviously been heavily anthropomorphized.

Well, people can say anything they like.

I think you'd have serious trouble locating anyone who would dismiss any and all notions of God, therefore your truism still doesn't hold. And I'm quite certain at this point that the reason that you don't realize this is because your scope for formulating conceptions of God is limited by how you'd like your existence to be contextualized.

 

Few thoughtful Atheists say gods do not exist, that would imply that the Atheist is certain a god does not exist. There are no certainties, only probabilities and saying a god probably does not exist is not saying god does not or could not exist. Would that more theists were as thoughtful.

 

In one category out of four, and you insist on focusing on that one.

Do you know why?

It exemplifies what I am talking about.

Sure.

I don't believe in religious inclusivism or in focusing on commonalities. I have stated as much before. In fact, I have often criticized the view that "all paths leads to the top of the mountain."

There are sometimes secondary interests involved when people discuss a topic.

As I already noted earlier, I am talking about the atheist in abstracto, while you are focusing on a particular John Doe (or more of them) who considers himself an atheist.

The atheist in abstracto is a type, and what I have said so far, applies to that type.
But it might not apply to specific people who call themselves atheists.

Do you really believe that?

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Catholics.

 

Simply because they serve as a good example of the sort of thing I am talking about.

It seems to me then that you are referencing a group of people that probably don't even exist.

Further, if you are able to escape from the confines of formulating conceptions of God within the traditional parameters, it's easy to imagine scenarios in which any atheist might come to a knowledge of something that, philosophically speaking, might qualify as God, even if it is inadvertently.

 

And you are referencing to a group of people who are not exactly what they say they are.

A John Doe might, but not an atheist.

 

True for a strong athiest, but not true for agnostic atheists, weak atheists, apatheists and spinozists.

 

I don't think so. Atheism is, generally speaking, a stance one takes with respect to the proposed existence of deities such as those characterized by common religious teachings. Therefore an atheist can still be an atheist (according to common usage of the term) while also being agnostic with respect to any number of other possibilities that might account for and contextualize our existence in some other way. Perhaps not everyone would use the term 'God' to describe any of these other possibilities, but doing so certainly wouldn't be without precedent among philosophers who don't place artificial limits on the potential evolution of our ideas concerning exactly what God may be.

If we don't embrace the legitimacy of the subtleties involved here, then even a naturalistic pantheist (or monist physicalist pantheist), who might think of the physical universe itself as God, is a theist. But that wouldn't be an accurate characterization, even if such a person did in fact use the term 'God', because naturalistic pantheists are essentially atheists.

In my opinion, the reason we have this problem is because theists are typically trying to dictate both how God should be conceptualized and how any disagreement about that should be contextualized.

 

One does not have conversations with people labeled as thinking:

--"I have evidence the world is flat (like-a you head)".
--"I have faith that the Earth is the center of the universe, as the evidence points to".
--"The sun is warm and bright, therefore it is a god".

Again, I repeat...there are no labels for these people, as Science made them go away ...permanently.
You can label and categorize me as one who has confidence in the evidence, that Science will eventually remove all improperly labeled subject matter.

 

All kinds of less than strong atheism lead to strong atheism.

 

In that case, you are arguing for an anything-goes theism.

Certainly you can see the problem with all anything-goes approaches, can't you?

Or do you think that when it comes to "God," anything-goes is not a problematic approach?


It's not so much that I am in favor of standard theism; I disapprove of anything-goes approaches.

 

I just can't figure out how you get from A to B sometimes. Perhaps it's just that you have a lot of things going on in your mind that I don't understand, which influence the way you interpret things. That's true of everyone of course, but some of the connections you make based on what I say leave me sitting here rather confused.

I'm not arguing for any sort of theism at all. I am simply trying to get you to recognize that your comment about atheists is based on questionable (to say the least) premises about what God is, and that because those premises are questionable, your statement can not be established here as a fact.

That's all.

 

Atheism does not discount the possibility of a god, nor do atheists is general. Their best answer on this subject is that there simply isn't any reason to believe there is one. Atheists are free-thinkers, not dogmatic zombies bound to a certain ideal. We weren't raised this way by our parents or preached to by some questionable fringe group outside of a supermarket.

Of course atheism does reject the gods of humanity, as the evidence points to each and every one of them being the product of their time and environment. Perhaps some theists confuse this certainty with the certainty that a god figure is not possible, but that's not how it is intended.

 

Everyone operates out of some premises about God. Otherwise, it is not possible to have an exchange.

You think atheists should have the say on what God is?
And that what atheists say God is, is to be considered more credible than what atheists say?


You're still conflating the atheist in abstracto with the John Doe who considers himself an atheist.

 

Oh. And atheists are better theists than theists, right.

 

How do you mean that?