Is this an Accurate and Easily understood definition of Atheism?

[Tcg]

.
I recently heard this definition of atheism:

"Atheism is the condition of not believing that a God or deity exists."

I think it is clearer than the one I usually espouse which is that atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. The only issue I have with is its singular nature. Perhaps, Atheism is the condition of not believing that any gods or deities exist, would be better.

Is this a good definition?


Tcg

[Kylie]

...differentiate between an atheist who doesn't believe in God because they were never raised to be religious and has never put much thought into it and an atheist who has studied the issue for a long time and believes that they have proof that God can not exist.

That latter would be... a gnostic atheist, correct? One who 'knows' (by some proof) God doesn't not exist?

Given that the system I have proposed is not meant to be anything more than a subjective measure, it would be someone who holds that their reasoning counts as proof. It does not speak to whether anyone else would consider it proof.

Your twin axes put me in mind of a thread from many years ago which set out the meanings of 'strong' and 'weak', 'atheist' and 'theist', and 'gnostic' and 'agnostic'. That would place me as an agnostic strong atheist: not knowing with 100% certainty that any god or gods exist, but 'far along the scale' towards -100 on the axis of 'I believe a god or gods exist'.

My system would work well with another axis. (I use the term "my" here in the sense that it the one I have put forward, it certainly was not invented by me, and I claim no credit for it.)

A pair of axes labelled knowing/believing would therefore have me in the very high +90's for 'knowing' my position, and about -99 for 'believing in god'. That last percentage point has to be left for the possibility of a Type IV Kardashev civilisation, which would reasonably fit the definition of a 'god' as something immensely more powerful than any human (or group of humans) could imagine. At least for me. Such an entity would be very different from El-Shaddai, Vishnu, Anup, or any of the rich pantheon of Greek gods from Achlys to Zeus.

I'm very much the same. I don't claim to know that God doesn't exist, but I'm as close as I can be.

[oldbadger]

Equivocation, old Badge. There are two meanings - one who believes in all (or many) gods. Essentially a polytheists. It can also mean nature worshipper, or a devotee of Gaia which is or could be a non believer (in gods) who reveres nature.

I gather the JW's don';t have a heaven and hell doctrine; they have a perfect messiah - ruled earthly life for the Worthy.

It gets worse - some put prawns on pizza - not only disgusting, but unkosher.

It sounds as though it really is a synonym with 'apatheist' which means 'Don't care -ist', Which can cover a believer that doesn't care to a non -believer that doesn't care, so it isn't even a grab term within atheism but it is within irreligion, which puts us all in the same camp again, because, at the end of the day, what affects us is not some remote deist -god, but active, organized, evangelical, pushy, religion, in everyday life, and whether we want it or not.

I touched on Pantheism as a sort of non theist reverence for nature (on earth, as it is in heaven ) But one can either just adore and worship or be curious and want the answers. The 'God' of Einstein (so often misrepresented and quotemined by Believers) was the physical workings of the universe, which he believed (even had Faith in) were ordered, reliable and predictable. Which is why he wouldn't credit Quantum: "God does not play dice".

It was his fail, yet I suppose it had to be done to falsify quantum. But I have enough Faith in science to credit that there is an answer that makes scientific sense. Indeed, indeterminacy and the crazy idea that reality is what the observer sees, is not so much a straight line (through a slit) but expanding ripples which are all true, and the observer just sees one point of this at the time, so is observing reality, not creating it - as some Theist apologists had tried to argue, since it would suggest that the results of science are invented by the scientists.

Anyway, it comes down to whether you have a scientific or tree hugging reverence for nature (earth and cosmos) what kind of (atheist) pantheist you may be. Of course, you will have to live with the the burden of being misunderstood by those who assume you are either a polytheist or a Satanist. We unbelievers have our cross to bear, too. The band of atheist martyrs can always use a new member. Join now and get a reduction.

This is all too much...... prawns on pizza.... that's like showing dirty pictures, once seen they're kind of stuck there. I'm going to be thinking of prawn-pizza all day.

Right..... Pantheist has too many differing meanings and so needs (boring) explanation every time it is mentioned. Ignostic does also need explanation but that can be accomplished with 'Dunno Don't Care', thus allowing the conversation to get back to motorcycles, or model boats etc. In fact I am a secret 'all is one' deist but I can do what so many other folks do, I can hide in a closet...... That's it, a closet deist who wears a dunno-n-don't-care hat.... sorted.

Well...... communication is all, innit? A British Right-Winger's colour is blue, blue is for conservative Britain, but if that person would wrap themselves up in blue and go wandering around the US then their message would be all wrong, but if they wore a red tie in the US and the Brit press got the picture....... oh dear.......

As for science it is lovely when it refers to what we know, but sadly it is as much of an impost as religion when people try to sell us junk under its name. It's like Christianity, T. Let me explain:-
A church comes under fire because some leader gets caught on a sex holiday, or whatever. So the church says 'He was never a true follower of our way' .... we are pure. And every time a bad thing comes to light the church explains, 'We are pure, no true follower could do that to pizza' ....or whatever......
And that is what 'science' can do! People can sell science because science is right, but when that particular science goes wrong we hear the call........ science is pure, science cannot be wrong. etc etc...... and babies get born distorted, and rockets blow up, and tragedies can happen, but science goes forward, clean as the driven snow.

I watch out for people claiming either.

[historia]

I fear you are trying to make this much more complicated than it needs to be. This is not meant to be a system that perfectly describes all nuances of a person's position regarding God.

Nor am I expecting it to, so this concern is misplaced.

It's simply meant to ascertain two things. Do they have a belief in God or not? And do they view their position to be subjectively true or objectively true?

But therein lies the problem, I think.

Two people with the exact same opinion regarding God's existence could answer the second question quite differently depending on what they mean by "know" or "objective truth" or how much they've even thought about such things -- and thus end up with different labels, even though they have the same opinion regarding God's existence.

We don't do this with other controversial topics. We don't ask people what they believe about abortion, for example, and then ask them to separately provide an epistemological appraisal of their opinion. So why do that here?

Again, this is not meantr to be anything more than a way for people to communicate their own subjective ideas about it.

Okay, but let me just point out, again, that every single person I've ever seen use this scheme identifies themselves as an "agnostic atheist." No one seems to identify with any other label.

I suspect that's the case because trying to delineate between belief and knowledge here is not useful. That's just not how most people communicate their own subjective ideas on this (and most other) controversial questions.

I think the older scheme of atheist / agnostic / theist is more widely used, more accurately describes people's positions, and gets us away from sticky epistemological issues by correctly framing the positions simply in terms of belief.

However, your proposed system doesn't differentiate between a person who doesn't believe in God because they were never raised to be religious and has never put much thought into it and a person who has studied the issue for a long time and believes that they have proof that God can not exist.

I've altered your comment here slightly to divest it of your own labels.

The old atheist / agnostic / theist scheme identifies the first person as an agnostic and the second as an atheist, so it clearly does differentiate between the two.

And with two axes, four positions does seem to come most naturally. If the two axes were up/down and left/right, then there are four different positions possible: up-left, up-right, down-left, and down-right.

Yes, that's how graphs with two axes work. The problem here is that we both agreed that your proposed scheme is really only measuring belief, so the 'knowledge' axis isn't measuring anything meaningful.

And the system I proposed is adaptable as well. We can say that the atheist/theist axis is divided up, and people can describe how far towards either side they are on a scale of 0-100. So zero would be completely between the two, 100 theist would be completely believes that God exists, 100 atheist completely lacks belief in God. That allows for a great deal of specificity in the description while still keeping it relatively simple.

But this actually works better on single-axis schemes (e.g., mine or Dawkins), not one with two axes (the one you are proposing).

[Kylie]

It's simply meant to ascertain two things. Do they have a belief in God or not? And do they view their position to be subjectively true or objectively true?

But therein lies the problem, I think.

Two people with the exact same opinion regarding God's existence could answer the second question quite differently depending on what they mean by "know" or "objective truth" or how much they've even thought about such things -- and thus end up with different labels, even though they have the same opinion regarding God's existence.

We don't do this with other controversial topics. We don't ask people what they believe about abortion, for example, and then ask them to separately provide an epistemological appraisal of their opinion. So why do that here?

The topic here is a person's self identified position on the existence of God.

Again, this is not meantr to be anything more than a way for people to communicate their own subjective ideas about it.

Okay, but let me just point out, again, that every single person I've ever seen use this scheme identifies themselves as an "agnostic atheist." No one seems to identify with any other label.

I suspect that's the case because trying to delineate between belief and knowledge here is not useful. That's just not how most people communicate their own subjective ideas on this (and most other) controversial questions.

I tend to think it's more to do with the fact that it's generally atheists who propose this system. Perhaps I should start a thread with this as a poll and see what the results are...?

I think the older scheme of atheist / agnostic / theist is more widely used, more accurately describes people's positions, and gets us away from sticky epistemological issues by correctly framing the positions simply in terms of belief.

However, your proposed system doesn't differentiate between a person who doesn't believe in God because they were never raised to be religious and has never put much thought into it and a person who has studied the issue for a long time and believes that they have proof that God can not exist.

I've altered your comment here slightly to divest it of your own labels.

The old atheist / agnostic / theist scheme identifies the first person as an agnostic and the second as an atheist, so it clearly does differentiate between the two.

However, I use the term atheist to identify myself because I lack a belief in God. Yet I do not claim to know that I am right. So which am I by your system, an atheist or an agnostic? Agnostic in this system (to me at least) suggests that I'm on the fence and saying that I'm not sure if God exists or not. But the fact is that I'm as sure that there is no Go as I'm sure that there isn't an elephant in my front yard. I mean, yes, it's POSSIBLE, but extremely unlikely and there's no evidence at all to support it.

And with two axes, four positions does seem to come most naturally. If the two axes were up/down and left/right, then there are four different positions possible: up-left, up-right, down-left, and down-right.

Yes, that's how graphs with two axes work. The problem here is that we both agreed that your proposed scheme is really only measuring belief, so the 'knowledge' axis isn't measuring anything meaningful.

At worst, it's measuring how strongly that belief is held. There are, after all, many people who believe that they KNOW that their position is true. Most are believers (in my experience), but I've seen some atheists who KNOW that God doesn't exist.

And the system I proposed is adaptable as well. We can say that the atheist/theist axis is divided up, and people can describe how far towards either side they are on a scale of 0-100. So zero would be completely between the two, 100 theist would be completely believes that God exists, 100 atheist completely lacks belief in God. That allows for a great deal of specificity in the description while still keeping it relatively simple.

But this actually works better on single-axis schemes (e.g., mine or Dawkins), not one with two axes (the one you are proposing).

The first axis measures the position from atheist to theist. The second axis measures the holder's certainty that the belief is true.

[William]

[Replying to Kylie in post #324]

The topic here is a person's self identified position on the existence of God.

Is it?

In that case;



Think of the two axis and add at least one other to account for that imaginary number...



And what can Theisms or Atheisms say about that since I am in a person's [mine] self identified position?

[Kylie]

[Replying to Kylie in post #324]

The topic here is a person's self identified position on the existence of God.

Is it?

In that case;



Think of the two axis and add at least one other to account for that imaginary number...



And what can Theisms or Atheisms say about that since I am in a person's [mine] self identified position?

Simple...

Question 1: When it comes to belief that God exists, do you have such a belief or do you lack that belief?

[Longfellow]

.
I recently heard this definition of atheism:

"Atheism is the condition of not believing that a God or deity exists."

I think it is clearer than the one I usually espouse which is that atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. The only issue I have with is its singular nature. Perhaps, Atheism is the condition of not believing that any gods or deities exist, would be better.

Is this a good definition?


Tcg

Good for what purpose? For example, that might be a good definition in a conversation between people with disparaging stereotypes of atheists, where everyone is thinking of it that way. It might be a very bad definition for friendly conversations with most of the atheists that I've met in Internet discussions.

Also, it depends on the topic of conversation. For example, is it about how atheists define atheism? If so, different ones define it different ways. Is it about how a person is recognized as an atheist in an atheist forum? It looks to me like that would be by continually denouncing Christians and Christianity, and raking up muck about them, and/or liking and approving Christian-bashing posts, without promoting some other religion that has gods in it.

[Tcg]

.
I recently heard this definition of atheism:

"Atheism is the condition of not believing that a God or deity exists."

I think it is clearer than the one I usually espouse which is that atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. The only issue I have with is its singular nature. Perhaps, Atheism is the condition of not believing that any gods or deities exist, would be better.

Is this a good definition?


Tcg

Good for what purpose? For example, that might be a good definition in a conversation between people with disparaging stereotypes of atheists, where everyone is thinking of it that way. It might be a very bad definition for friendly conversations with most of the atheists that I've met in Internet discussions.

Also, it depends on the topic of conversation. For example, is it about how atheists define atheism? If so, different ones define it different ways. Is it about how a person is recognized as an atheist in an atheist forum? It looks to me like that would be by continually denouncing Christians and Christianity, and raking up muck about them, and/or liking and approving Christian-bashing posts, without promoting some other religion that has gods in it.

Well, the thread title may answer the question of, "Good for what purpose?" Good in that it is accurate and easily understood.


Tcg

[Longfellow]

Some random thoughts after sampling the posts in this thread:
- It looks to me like the label "atheism" has become a popular way of camouflaging online Christian-bashing playgrounds.
- One popular definition of atheism in those echo chambers is "not having a belief in any god or gods," which is different from "not believing in any god or gods." That way people can denounce and disparage Christians for believing in God without evidence while excusing themselves from providing any evidence for their anti-Christian views.
- There are other people besides people lashing out at Christians and Christianity who call themselves "atheists," but there's no way to know what they mean by that without asking them, because it means different things to different ones.
- In a conversation about atheists between people who don't identify as atheists, the best definition would depend on the purpose of the conversation. I'm having trouble trying to think of an example of a beneficial purpose for a conversation about atheists between people who don't identify as atheists.

[Tcg]

That way people can denounce Christians for believing in God without evidence while excusing themselves from providing any evidence for their anti-Christian views.

Anti-Christian views? Some atheists may be anti-Christian, but not all are. That doesn't make it a component of atheism. Besides the issue is gods or not, not Christianity or not. A great many theists also don't accept Christianity. Heck, I've known atheists who are Christians. The question is about atheism, not anti-Christianism.


Tcg