Calling out Weak Atheists

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
But that chance is less than half, so the Weak Atheist must deny the claim "The ball is red", for that belief would not be justified. Correct?

Denying a claim is not claiming the opposite. Denying the claim that the ball is red is not denying that the ball is red.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
But that chance is less than half, so the Weak Atheist must deny the claim "The ball is red", for that belief would not be justified. Correct?

That is correct. I could not justifiably make the claim that "the ball is red." But I could quite correctly make the claim "the ball has a 1/3 chance of being red."

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
In the absence of evidence, if I play 'true' for some possibility, I may be almost definitely wrong, but the Weak Atheist is committed to playing 'false' for every possibility and is certainly wrong.

And the weak atheist is also certainly right. Indeed, the weak atheist is twice as right as he is wrong.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Denying a claim is not claiming the opposite.

This is most certainly untrue! That's exactly what it means to deny a claim. A claim has exactly one of two truth values. To deny that it's either is to assert that it's the other.

It is also a well known rule of logic that Not-(A) = Not-A for any proposition A.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
But that chance is less than half, so the Weak Atheist must deny the claim "The ball is red", for that belief would not be justified. Correct?

To deny that claim is to assert "The ball is not red." Correct?

1 edit. Very tricky.

No, you are not correct. AThousandYoung is correct is observing that observing that a claim is not justified does not imply the acceptance of the opposite. In the example of the balls, all that can be said is that you cannot know what color the ball is. That is not the same as saying "the ball is not red."

You are using exactly the same tactic that theists use all the time in this type of debate.

Originally posted by rwingett


In the example of the balls, all that can be said is that you cannot know what color the ball is.

Do you finally admit that Weak Atheism is nothing more than agnosticism?

And you and he are both wrong about what it means to deny a claim. It most certainly is the same thing as asserting the claim's negation. Even your Freethinking friend Bbarr will tell you this. Would you care to wager on it?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
And the weak atheist is also certainly right. Indeed, the weak atheist is twice as right as he is wrong.

But the Weak Atheist is the only player who is guaranteed to have at least one incorrect belief. The mystic who always picks red will only have an incorrect belief 2/3 of the time.

Further, the Weak Atheist is guaranteed to hold an inconsistent belief system: The ball is red, green, or blue AND The ball is not red AND the ball is not green AND the ball is not blue.

The mystic never has an inconsistent belief system: The ball is red, green or blue AND the ball is red AND the ball is not green AND the ball is not blue.

What advantage does the Weak Atheist have in this game? The only one I see is that when the Mystic is wrong, he holds two incorrect beliefs, while the most incorrect beliefs the Weak Atheist can have is one. Do you see any others? I propose that his disadvantages outweigh his advantages. Consistency should be a primary concern in one's belief system.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
This is most certainly untrue! That's exactly what it means to deny a claim. A claim has exactly one of two truth values. To deny that it's either is to assert that it's the other.

It is also a well known rule of logic that Not-(A) = Not-A for any proposition A.

If a weak atheist is one who claims that

Existential claims should be denied until such time as they can be demonstrated to be more likely true than false.

And to deny a claim is to claim the opposite, then I am not a weak atheist.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
But the Weak Atheist is the only player who is guaranteed to have at least one incorrect belief. The mystic who always picks red will only have an incorrect belief 2/3 of the time.

Further, the Weak Atheist is guaranteed to hold ...[text shortened]... Consistency should be a primary concern in one's belief system.

The mystic is probably wrong. Yet the mystic says he is not probably wrong but is definitely right. Isn't this inconsistent also?

The miscommunication here I believe lies in the tenet of weak atheism you have presented (which you probably got from rwingett or sometone) and the definition of "to deny". I think that that verb is being assigned different definitions by you (and supposedly the philosophical community or whatever you are claiming) and by the person who offered that tenet of weak atheism.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
If a weak atheist is one who claims that

[b]Existential claims should be denied until such time as they can be demonstrated to be more likely true than false.

And to deny a claim is to claim the opposite, then I am not a weak atheist.
[/b]

Good.

What do you think it means to deny a claim, if not to assert the claim's negation?

Suppose there is a claim C.
Put these two things in symbolic propositional form: the denial of C, and the assertion of C's negation.

The denial of C would be NOT (C).
The assertion of C's negation would be (NOT C).
These have equivalent truth tables.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung

The miscommunication here I believe lies in the tenet of weak atheism you have presented (which you probably got from rwingett or sometone) and the definition of "to deny". I think that that verb is being assigned different defi ...[text shortened]... laiming) and by the person who offered that tenet of weak atheism.

What's really going on is that the Weak Atheist equivocates on "to deny." We have already seen an example in this thread, where RWingett claims both that "The ball is not red" is a justified belief and also that you really cannot say whether the ball is red. The Weak Atheist is attempting to get the best of both worlds, of Strong Atheism and agnosticism.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The mystic is probably wrong. Yet the mystic says he is not probably wrong but is definitely right. Isn't this inconsistent also?

No. Show me the contradictions of his beliefs. That is, construct a logical expression that characterizes the union of his beliefs that is tautologically false, as I have done for the Weak Atheist's union of beliefs. The mystic may be probably wrong, but he doesn't believe that he is probably wrong.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Good.

What do you think it means to deny a claim, if not to assert the claim's negation?

Suppose there is a claim C.
Put these two things in symoblic propositional form: the denial of C, and the assertion of C's negation.

The denial of C would be NOT (C).
The assertion of C's negation would (NOT C).
These have equivalent truth tables.

"To deny" can mean whatever the speaker intends it to mean. There's no inherent definition to any word.

If I were to be presented with a claim, and there was no reason to think it's probably true, then I'd look at the claim. If there are at least two possible claims that are inconsistent with the claim and with one another, and each has no evidence for or against just as the original has none, then the likelihood that the original claim is true is less than half, and so I will say the original claim is probably wrong.

If there are not two or more possible claims that are inconsistent with the original claims and which are not probably wrong, then I would simply accept that I didn't know.

So, basically, I'd try to figure out the odds of any claim being true as best I could, and accept that those were the odds. I wouldn't assert that anything existed or did not exist except in terms of probabilities unless maybe I were being lazy or something.

The way you've defined a weak atheist and the way you've described the mystic show both to be inferior philosophies. One should not assert definite knowledge when one knows only probabilities.

What is "belief" anyway? If I remember correctly, Bbarr said to believe X means to hold that X is more likely true than false.