A question to atheists

Originally posted by Churlant
If you don't expand your focus to humanity as a whole, then I suppose it's no surprise you are skeptical.

-JC

Where pray, should I expand my focus? Should I expand it to war-torn Angola where every tenth person I saw on the sewage-infested streets had a limb torn off from anti-personnel mines? Ten million more still litter that land. Should I expand it to the rural hinterlands of eastern South Africa where the hospitals are so overcrowded with HIV/AIDS patients that people are simply sent home to die? Should I expand it to a rural village there, where just on Saturday, I saw a four year-old boy, covered in sores, whimpering in pain as he asked me whether I knew that they were burying his father who had died of AIDS? His mother had died a few month ago and he had been given a little sugar to ease his pain. I couldn't even give him the emotional support of holding him without causing him to cry out. Truly, where should I look?

Originally posted by Halitose
Where pray, should I expand my focus? Should I expand it to war-torn Angola where every tenth person I saw on the sewage-infested streets had a limb torn off from anti-personnel mines? Ten million more still litter that land. Should I expand it to the rural hinterlands of eastern South Africa where the hospitals are so overcrowded with HIV/AIDS patients tha ...[text shortened]... he emotional support of holding him without causing him to cry out. Truly, where should I look?

Obviously you should look elsewhere. Perhaps also at yourself.

-JC

Originally posted by Starrman
I thought I had. Okay, in an attempt to be consistent in answering your previous rebuttals of my original definition, how about this:

Weak atheism is not a claim about the nature of god, either positively or negatively in regards his existence. It is merely a point from which, since there is no evidence to warrant a consideration of the concept of god ...[text shortened]... claim that god could be possible, but there is not yet enough evidence to support a decision.

Firstly, thanks for going to the effort of retyping the definition.

Wouldn't you say the following statements are mutually exclusive:

"Weak atheism is not a claim about the nature of god, either positively or negatively in regards his existence."

"It is merely a point from which... one denies the existence of such a concept, until evidence is presented."

Originally posted by Churlant
Obviously you should look elsewhere. Perhaps also at yourself.

-JC

Any ideas? Technology? Basic human goodness? Scientific knowledge?

Originally posted by Halitose
Any ideas? Technology? Basic human goodness? Scientific knowledge?

Material wealth? Power? Pleasure? C'mon, help me out here.

Originally posted by Halitose
Material wealth? Power? Pleasure? C'mon, help me out here.

I'd rather save the back-and-forth for Freaky or Lucifer, to be honest. I believe your level of cynicism has left you entirely unreceptive to this topic of debate, and while I'm generally not one to skip a pointless argument, I confess to being out of the mood for this one.

Maybe you can catch me later?

-JC

Originally posted by Churlant
I'd rather save the back-and-forth for Freaky or Lucifer, to be honest. I believe your level of cynicism has left you entirely unreceptive to this topic of debate, and while I'm generally not one to skip a pointless argument, I confess to being out of the mood for this one.

Maybe you can catch me later?

-JC

Methinks my point may have been too subtle, but I'll leave you to the more compelling discussions.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Halitose
Should I expand it to war-torn Angola where every tenth person I saw on the sewage-infested streets had a limb torn off from anti-personnel mines?

Hotels spring from minefields; so the world turns.

http://www.unitedworld-usa.com/reports/angola/tourism.asp

Originally posted by Halitose
What the...!! "Dark" infers a relative absence of light. What do you mean by "dark place" not being defined by the absence of light? Do you not define temperature by the presence or absence of kinetic energy? How else would you define "dark"?

Without redefining atheism, could you provide a definition of atheism, where it is not a "~A" claim?

A dark place does not contain a substance called darkness. An athiest does not have a belief about the abscence of God. He merely lacks the a belief in God. Some athiest may believe in the abscence of God but that is not the definition of an athiest. It is not a ~A claim but rather the abscence of a claim.

Originally posted by twhitehead
A dark place does not contain a substance called darkness. An athiest does not have a belief about the abscence of God. He merely lacks the a belief in God. Some athiest may believe in the abscence of God but that is not the definition of an athiest. It is not a ~A claim but rather the abscence of a claim.

Isn't that really just semantics?
If I lack belief in God, it would seem to be pretty much the same as believing there is no God.

Originally posted by amannion
Isn't that really just semantics?
If I lack belief in God, it would seem to be pretty much the same as believing there is no God.

Semantics is quite important, really, considering it deals with the meaning of words, God being a word. I don't know if it's in this thread, but bbarr wrote a good post to the effect that an atheist simply does not subscribe to the view that the concept God is instantiated in the world--the signifier has no referent, like Martian or luminiferous ether.

Originally posted by amannion
Isn't that really just semantics?
If I lack belief in God, it would seem to be pretty much the same as believing there is no God.

Believing there is no god would require the support of evidence (since a claim has been made) and given that it would be as hard to prove god did not exist as it would to say he did exist, the position of Strong Atheism is as tenuous as that of Theism.

Weak Atheism is a much more defendable position, since it is the lack of any claim at all. It is semantics, but not, as you seem to be suggesting, any less important for that.

Originally posted by Halitose
Firstly, thanks for going to the effort of retyping the definition.

Wouldn't you say the following statements are mutually exclusive:

"Weak atheism is not a claim about the nature of god, either positively or negatively in regards his existence."

"It is merely a point from which... one denies the existence of such a concept, until evidence is presented."

Not at all, as my Pegasus example shows, there is no reason to believe in the concept of a thing's existence without evidence. Therefore a position of denial is taken in preference to accepting every imaginable concept in the universe, ever (which would be the alternative and clearly impossibly pointless).

Originally posted by Starrman
Therefore a position of denial is taken in preference to accepting every imaginable concept in the universe, ever (which would be the alternative and clearly impossibly pointless).

Well I believe in fairies 😏

Originally posted by Starrman
Believing there is no god would require the support of evidence (since a claim has been made) and given that it would be as hard to prove god did [b]not exist as it would to say he did exist, the position of Strong Atheism is as tenuous as that of Theism.

Weak Atheism is a much more defendable position, since it is the lack of any claim at all. It is semantics, but not, as you seem to be suggesting, any less important for that.[/b]

No, perhaps what I mean to say is that weak atheism as you suggest it seems to me to be a bit of cop out.

And I disagree that believing there is no god requires evidence - it's a belief. Beliefs do not require evidenciary support, making them logically tenuous perhaps, but no less powerful for that.