"How Atheists Think"

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]"How Atheists Think" "On another thread, below, an Atheist takes issue with the parody on Atheist arguments. It's amazing how many Atheists are literalists despite their hatred of literalism. Nonetheless, I have responded with the following list regarding the Atheist thought process:

[i]1. Denial of intellectual responsibility for saying why t ...[text shortened]... heism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F (Tuesday, January 14, 2014)[/b]

What an odious post. I cannot ever recall seeing such an insulting characterisation of theists ever posted here, despite the inane meanderings of some of the more... challenged, let's say, posters. I had thought better of you GB, but it seems you're simply a troll in sheep's clothing.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I think atheism is a religious belief just like evilution.

Most atheists say they believe atheism is based on the facts. However, the logical fallacy with that is they do not know all the facts.

Well then, what do you think Atheism is based on?

You vacuous boob. Atheists don't "believe" atheism.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
You vacuous boob. Atheists don't "believe" atheism.

You are apparently ignorant of the definition of atheism. Here it is:

Atheism

1

archaic: ungodliness, wickedness


2.

a: a disbelief in the existence of deity

b: the doctrine that there is no deity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

Originally posted by RJHinds
You are apparently ignorant of the definition of atheism. Here it is:

Atheism

1

archaic: ungodliness, wickedness


2.

a: a disbelief in the existence of deity

b: the doctrine that there is no deity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

Um... I think you should ask somebody how to use a dictionary.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby

"How Atheists Think" "On another thread, below, an Atheist takes issue with the parody on Atheist arguments. It's amazing how many Atheists are literalists despite their hatred of literalism. Nonetheless, I have responded with the following list regarding the Atheist thought process:

[i]1. Denial of intellectual responsibility for saying why th ...[text shortened]... heism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F (Tuesday, January 14, 2014)[/b]

"Atheism Analyzed" [Blog site header to the original post: "How Atheists Think" Tuesday, January 14, 2014. On another thread, below, an Atheist takes issue with the parody on Atheist arguments. It's amazing how many Atheists are literalists despite their hatred of literalism. Nonetheless, I have responded with the following list regarding the Atheist thought process. Nonetheless, I have responded with the following list regarding the Atheist thought process..."]

"A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy.

*** If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?

*** If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic?

*** Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories."

http://atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F
_______________________________

Atheism Is a Religion. Friday, December 27, 2013 (same author)

"It has ordained ministers. Creeds. Churches. Megachurches with mottos. And prayer.

According to their creed and prayer, they worship their own minds. And that's how they achieve elitism.

And they pray for this:
"deliver us from denial of logic",

...which is an admirable pursuit except that Atheists (the capitalization is justified, just like Presbyterians) use non-aristotelian rationalization as their logic rather than grounded deductive testable logic. So when they say "logic", they mean something entirely foreign to the standards of objective deductive processes.

Their statement of faith is both non-coherent and ignorant of the actuality of the entities which they blindly worship:

“Nothing exists besides natural phenomena. Thought is merely a function of those natural phenomena. Death is complete, and irreversible. We have faith solely in humankind, nature, and the facts of science.”

The "facts of science" do not support that belief system, cannot support it, and will never support it. Science has nothing to test regarding non-physical phenomena, including thought - which is non-determinate; or beyond death; or whether non-scientific facts can exist. So this belief statement asserts a blind belief in something which is, at its base, logically absurd, and that directly contradicts their claim to logic (at least to the type of logic which is part of rationality and reason).

There will be Atheists who object to all this, but at the core, they really are all of similar beliefs: personal intellectual and moral superiority; Scientism; Rationalization; Denialism." (Posted by Stan)

http://atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F (header to the original post)

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
What an odious post. I cannot ever recall seeing such an insulting characterisation of theists ever posted here, despite the inane meanderings of some of the more... challenged, let's say, posters. I had thought better of you GB, but it seems you're simply a troll in sheep's clothing.

Hi, avalanchethecat. I had hoped you especially would respond to the text by an atheist who changed his mind.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I believe all atheists think in a materialistic way and exclude miracles from God and the spiritual as fairy tales and imaginations from the brain.

Yes, those materialistic atheists sicken me. Complaining that the money spent on the ornate church building could have been used to help the poor. Mocking my "WWJD" bracelets and the fish sign on my Dodge half-ton cab Cummings Turbo Diesel 6 Liter 4x4 pickup truck. God free me from the persecution of those narrow-minded materialists.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"Atheism Analyzed" [Blog site header to the original post: "How Atheists Think" Tuesday, January 14, 2014. On another thread, below, an Atheist takes issue with the parody on Atheist arguments. It's amazing how many Atheists are literalists despite their hatred of literalism. Nonetheless, I have responded with the following list regarding th ...[text shortened]... ism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F (header to the original post)[/b]

"Sphexism, Physicalism, Syntactical Engines and Semantic Engines, Not to Mention Cognitive Zombies" Wednesday, January 1, 2014 [Blog site header to the original post...] "An interesting article over at Feser's place, with a different approach from the Chinese Room argument, and yet much the same. This time it is the robotic actions of the Sphex wasp as compared to the intellectually exploratory capacities of humans.

Now, Dennett, perceptive fellow that he is when he wants to be, argues in Chapter 2 of his book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting that any purely physical system is going to be essentially sphexish. The reason is that qua physical such a system can only ever be sensitive to syntactical properties, and syntactical properties can never add up to semantic properties. Now a non-sphexish creature would have to be sensitive to semantic properties. Hence a purely physical and thus purely syntactic system is inevitably going to be a sphexish system. Dennett thinks it can at least approximate non-sphexishness, however, because a sufficiently complex “syntactic engine” will in his view at least approximate a perfect “semantic engine.” And sphexishly dogmatic materialist that he is, Dennett insists that human beings are purely physical. Hence, though we seem non-sphexish, Dennett insists that we really are sphexish, but [being exquisitely complex syntactical engines] in so subtle a way that for practical purposes we can treat ourselves as if we were not.

But as Howard Robinson points out in the introduction to his edited volume Objections to Physicalism, Dennett’s position is a muddle. A purely syntactical engine will not even approximate a perfect semantic engine, because it will fail to be semantic at all. Syntax by itself doesn’t get you imperfect semantics; it gets you exactly zero semantics, just as the ketchup kids use for blood at Halloween time will never get you even imperfect real blood no matter how much of it you pour out. Dennett knows this, which is why (as Robinson notes) he has to resort to the essentially instrumentalist position that our sophistication as complex syntactic engines makes it useful for us to interpret ourselves as if we were semantic engines. But this too is a muddle, for interpretation is itself an act that presupposes real semantics rather than a mere ersatz. Dennett’s further reformulations of his position (e.g. in his paper “Real Patterns&rdquo😉 only ever paper over this fundamental incoherence rather than resolve it, but his dogmatic materialism makes him think there must be some way to make it something other than the reductio ad absurdum that it is. As is the usual case, the Materialist seeks only to justify his presuppositions, not to investigate and accept logically derived conclusions.

There is magic associated with "complexity" just as the magic which is designated to "deep time": these can turn X into Z, just because. This magical thinking is necessary to bend the mind away from noticing the actual non-material nature of human existence. It can be explained in terms of magical capabilities of complexity and deep time etc. even though there is no possible mechanical cause which is attached; just the magic. It is another symptom of the religiosity of Atheists as they protect their own theory of origins with unprovable, antirational dogma.

Says Feser: "It is not a kind of inductive inference to the effect that since we usually act unsphexish, we must really be unsphexish (as if further empirical evidence could in principle lead us to revise this “opinion” about ourselves). It is much simpler and more obvious and conclusive than that. It is that we have things sphexish creatures do not have: concepts. End of story. The reasoning isn’t: “We don’t act very sphexish; therefore we must have concepts.” It’s rather: “We have concepts; that’s why we don’t act very sphexish.”

And finally, Now, you’ll recall from a recent post the notion of a cognitive zombie -- a creature physically and behaviorally identical to a normal human being, but devoid of concepts and thus devoid of the other aspects of rationality. You might think that a cognitive zombie would be sphexish, but that is a mistake. If it was sphexish, it wouldn’t be behaviorally identical to a normal human being, and thus by definition wouldn’t be a cognitive zombie. A true cognitive zombie would be something which would, like a sphexish creature, be devoid of concepts, but which, like a normal human being, would behave as if it had concepts.

The notion of sphexishness thus helps to clarify the notion of a cognitive zombie. If ya think I’m sphexy, then you don’t think I’m a cognitive zombie. A sphexy Rod Stewart on his best day wouldn’t pass for a cognitive zombie. A James Brown sphex machine wouldn’t pass either. People magazine’s Sphexiest Man Alive definitely wouldn’t be a cognitive zombie. The notion of a cognitive zombie is the notion of something as utterly devoid of concepts as the simplest of any of Dennett’s purely syntactical engines, but whose lack of concepts is nevertheless more perfectly undetectable than that of even the most complex and perfect of Dennett’s syntactical engines.

Is this notion even coherent? I think not, but that is a topic for another time." (Posted by Stan) http://atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com/search/label/Atheism%20%3D%20Religion%3F

Question: Are Dennett arguments in "Chapter 2 of his book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting" really the way highly intellectualized atheists think? If so, what would this forum be like if he was an RHP Member Contributor?

GB: Do you collect stamps?
If not; what would this forum be like if you did?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
GB: Do you collect stamps?
If not; what would this forum be like if you did?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
GB: Do you collect stamps?
If not; what would this forum be like if you did?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
"How non-stamp-collectors think."
Thread 157817

wolfgang59, until now I assumed your unquoted thread text was original material; a paraphrase?
________________________________

"How the stamp collecting analogy fails" Submitted by Robert Martin on Mon Aug 22nd, 3.46pm

"In my recent discussions with atheists in recent times many have responded that 'atheism is not a faith'. They are trying to suggest that atheism doesn't bring with it a kind of 'worldview' that the Christian faith brings with it. They then use the stamp collecting analogy to attempt to demonstrate that a negative or non-belief is not a belief system. Hence the analogy goes, 'not believing in a god as some kind of belief system is like not collecting stamps is a hobby.'

I think it's an interesting move, and it has prompted me to think carefully about this issue, yet I would like to suggest that the stamp collecting analogy fails. I suggest it fails because 'Not collecting stamps is a hobby'. I can, 'not collect' stamps and still be engaged in a hobby. I could collect cloth badges, model railways or pencils, and these are all alternative hobbies. Hence the analogy fails because 'not collecting stamps IS still a hobby'.

But more seriously the analogy fails because it isn't a proper analogy. The analogy is based on a truism and hence it only proves what is assumes. If you change the analogy by inserting other words, you realise this, e.g. 'is like not drinking water is drinking' or 'is like not eating sandwiches is lunch'. 'Hobbies' and 'stamp collecting' (and eating and drinking) are different to 'believing' and 'belief systems'. 'Belief' is a matter of a commitment to certain facts of the world which are often unprovable, whereas stamp collecting is a pastime and can be proved (as can drinking, or eating etc).

Hence, to summarise, Christians believe that there is a God, we can't prove it but we act on 'faith' that it is true. Atheists believe that there is no god, they can't prove it, but they act on 'faith' that it is true. Therefore atheism must be some kind of 'faith' commitment. This is different from stamp collecting because we can 'prove' that stamp collecting exists.

This 'analogy' may appear to offer explanatory power, but in the end, I think, it fails. Can any atheists further explain the stamp collecting analogy, or am I missing something?"

http://citybibleforum.org/city/melbourne/blog/how-stamp-collecting-analogy-fails

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Originally posted by wolfgang59
[b]GB: Do you collect stamps?
If not; what would this forum be like if you did?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
"How non-stamp-collectors think."
Thread 157817

wolfgang59, until now I assumed your unquoted thread was original material; a paraphrase?
______________________ ...[text shortened]... something?"

http://citybibleforum.org/city/melbourne/blog/how-stamp-collecting-analogy-fails[/b]

No, atheist [in genera] LACK a belief that gods exist. [you know this by now]
Not [in general] Believe that gods don't exist....
In addition to other mistakes your latest copy and paste guru makes.

Not collecting stamps is NOT a hobby. [wow is that stupid]

I don't even know where to begin on this persons confusion as to what
constitutes an analogy and/or a truism... And wont because they are not
here, you [GB] are.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No, atheist [in genera] LACK a belief that gods exist. [you know this by now]
Not [in general] Believe that gods don't exist....
In addition to other mistakes your latest copy and paste guru makes.

Not collecting stamps is NOT a hobby. [wow is that stupid]

I don't even know where to begin on this persons confusion as to what
constitutes an analogy and/or a truism... And wont because they are not
here, you [GB] are.

"Hence, to summarise, Christians believe that there is a God, we can't prove it but we act on 'faith' that it is true. Atheists believe that there is no god, they can't prove it, but they act on 'faith' that it is true. Therefore atheism must be some kind of 'faith' commitment. This is different from stamp collecting because we can 'prove' that stamp collecting exists." Martin

..... makes sense to me.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"Hence, to summarise, Christians believe that there is a God, we can't prove it but we act on 'faith' that it is true. Atheists believe that there is no god, they can't prove it, but they act on 'faith' that it is true. Therefore atheism must be some kind of 'faith' commitment. This is different from stamp collecting because we can 'prove' that stamp collecting exists." Martin

..... makes sense to me.

Christians believe that there is a God, we can't prove it but we act on 'faith' that it is true.

Yay... you got something right... about your own side.

Atheists believe that there is no god, they can't prove it, but they act on 'faith' that it is true.

"Atheists believe that there is no god, ..."

WRONG. In general atheists LACK a belief in gods, NOT believe in a lack of gods.

You are wrong to use god singular, because atheism is a lack of belief in any and all gods not
just the Christian god.
You are wrong to state that atheism is/requires belief that gods don't exist instead of simply
lacking a belief that they do exist.
Some atheists believe gods don't exist, but it is by no means universal, or probably even the
majority position.

"....they can't prove it, ...."

WRONG. [dependent on quite what you mean by prove and which god concepts you are talking about]

"... but they act on 'faith' that it is true."

WRONG. Faith is the belief in a proposition for which you have no evidence or reason sufficient
to justify that belief. OR Belief in a proposition contradicted by the evidence.

Atheists in general LACK a belief that gods exist and thus do not hold a belief on the god question
and thus do not have faith.

Also, atheism is the default position on the god question when you don't have any evidence as
in general you shouldn't ever believe anything you don't have evidence and reason sufficient to justify.

If you don't have evidence and reason enough to answer a question the correct answer is "I don't Know"
and to lack a belief either way. Which is the position of atheism.

makes sense to me

Then you have really not thought about this very hard. Or are incapable of doing so.

Originally posted by googlefudge

Christians believe that there is a God, we can't prove it but we act on 'faith' that it is true.

Yay... you got something right... about your own side.

Atheists believe that there is no god, they can't prove it, but they act on 'faith' that it is true.

"Atheists believe that there is no god, ..."

WRONG. In ...[text shortened]... [/quote]

Then you have really not thought about this very hard. Or are incapable of doing so.

Thank you for your patience. I'm gradually gaining an understanding of the content and inner workings of an atheist's mind.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Thank you for your patience. I'm gradually gaining an understanding of the content and inner workings of an atheist's mind.

I severely doubt that.

And I expect you to prove me right very soon by getting it wrong yet again.