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

[TRANSPONDER]

Random thoughts about definitions of "atheism."

I'm thinking that many years ago when people used that word, they mostly thought of it as denying the reality or existence of whatever God they themselves believed in.

Now, from what I've seen in online atheist circles, one popular definition is "not having any belief in any god or gods," meaning that a person's beliefs do not include any belief in the reality or existence any being that they would call a god. In that way of thinking, people who do believe in the reality or existence of something that they would call a god are theists, and all other people are atheists. I'm not agreeing with that, I'm just saying that it looks to me like a popular way of thinking sometimes in online atheist circles.

I would say that pretty much has it right and I'd be happy if that was indeed the popular understanding of what Theist and atheist means.

Of course there are questions and quibbles about it, but so there are about Evolution or indeed Christian belief, but that doesn't mean that one can't start with a succinct, easy to understand and, broadly, correct definition.

[Longfellow]

I'm thinking that maybe the War of Definitions is between people who reject belief in the Gods of Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures but who don't want to be stigmatized as atheists, and people who want to incorporate them into their crusade against reactionary Christianity and its politics.

[Inquirer]

Is this then an appropriate definition of atheism so far as you regard yourself an atheist?

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is "an absence of belief in the existence of gods and an absence of belief in the non-existence of Gods"

Because if that definition is unpalatable (as I suspect it is to you) then surely this is the only alternative:

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is "an absence of belief in the existence of gods and a presence of belief in the non-existence of Gods"

I also respectfully request that you do not describe these questions as "wordplay" or "word games", because if you do opt to describe them as such then on what grounds is this not word games:

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

That's not long enough Inquirer...... if the definition is not at least a whole fat paragraph in length then what intellectual would take notice of it?

OK...... so if a person would reply to your question 'What is an atheist?' with 'A person who doesn't believe in any Gods'.... how would you respond to that person? I ask because that is how my wife would answer, and if you should challenge her over that she would smile because she probably hadn't eaten anybody for breakfast on that particular day.

How would I answer it? By pointing out that in the established philosophical literary tradition, it means "One who asserts 'There is no God'". Then point out that in pop-atheism books an alternative definition has caught on amongst the uncritical public "One who does not hold a belief in God" along with its consequential contradictions.

Atheism is defined by the pop-atheists in such a way that its characterized by an "absence of belief". So there are four possibilities when dealing with binary options like exist and not exist and holding and not-holding beliefs:

1. I do not hold a belief in X and I do not hold a belief in not-X.
2. I do not hold a belief in X and do hold a belief in not-X.
3. I do hold a belief in X and I do not hold a belief in not-X.
4. I do hold a belief in X and I do hold a belief in not-X.

This is the inherent ambiguity in this shallow atheism definition, it completely (and I dare say intentionally) avoids any mention of one's position with respect to belief in the negation of God's existence.

[Inquirer]

I encourage everyone to read and understand this:

Atheists vs Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[TRANSPONDER]

I'm thinking that maybe the War of Definitions is between people who reject belief in the Gods of Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures but who don't want to be stigmatized as atheists, and people who want to incorporate them into their crusade against reactionary Christianity and its politics.

I'd suspect that the 'war of the definitions' is entirely from the anti -atheist side, for whatever reason.

Is this then an appropriate definition of atheism so far as you regard yourself an atheist?

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is "an absence of belief in the existence of gods and an absence of belief in the non-existence of Gods"

Because if that definition is unpalatable (as I suspect it is to you) then surely this is the only alternative:

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is "an absence of belief in the existence of gods and a presence of belief in the non-existence of Gods"

I also respectfully request that you do not describe these questions as "wordplay" or "word games", because if you do opt to describe them as such then on what grounds is this not word games:

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

That's not long enough Inquirer...... if the definition is not at least a whole fat paragraph in length then what intellectual would take notice of it?

OK...... so if a person would reply to your question 'What is an atheist?' with 'A person who doesn't believe in any Gods'.... how would you respond to that person? I ask because that is how my wife would answer, and if you should challenge her over that she would smile because she probably hadn't eaten anybody for breakfast on that particular day.

How would I answer it? By pointing out that in the established philosophical literary tradition, it means "One who asserts 'There is no God'". Then point out that in pop-atheism books an alternative definition has caught on amongst the uncritical public "One who does not hold a belief in God" along with its consequential contradictions.

Atheism is defined by the pop-atheists in such a way that its characterized by an "absence of belief". So there are four possibilities when dealing with binary options like exist and not exist and holding and not-holding beliefs:

1. I do not hold a belief in X and I do not hold a belief in not-X.
2. I do not hold a belief in X and do hold a belief in not-X.
3. I do hold a belief in X and I do not hold a belief in not-X.
4. I do hold a belief in X and I do hold a belief in not-X.

This is the inherent ambiguity in this shallow atheism definition, it completely (and I dare say intentionally) avoids any mention of one's position with respect to belief in the negation of God's existence.

This is ..let me have a drink and pipe - up before i post... a convoluted twisting of the atheist 'not belief' (in any god -claim) into all manner of weird forms and then make out that the ambiguity (that you argue but wouldn't be there as soon as you applied it to actual belief -positions) is something that is going to unseat atheism and is why we don't apply these odd definitions.

We really do not need you wishing fantastical and incoherent belief - positions on us, when the actual one is very, very simple.

[historia]

I honestly do see what the point of your point here is.

The point I was making there is two-fold:

First, we don't typically draw a distinction between belief and knowledge when it comes to other controversial issues. We don't, for example, categorize people as "gnostic pro-choice" or "agnostic pro-choice" or as a "gnostic evolutionist" or an "agnostic evolutionist."

Second, I suspect that many, if not most, people haven't given much thought to issues of epistemology, so asking them to assess whether their beliefs on a controversial issue somehow constitute knowledge or not isn't going to tell us much about their position on that controversial issue. It just creates noise in our data.

For those reasons, it seems both unnecessary and problematic to try to categorize people's beliefs regarding the proposition of God's existence in terms of "knowledge."

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.

I think at best this is what it can accomplish. In that case, I think the scheme should drop the language of "knowledge" and replace it with adjectives that actually describe what it is measuring, like 'certain/uncertain' or 'strong/weak'.

And what is knowledge if not something that you are 100% certain about?

That's not how philosophers define knowledge.

It's also not how you seemed to be using the word earlier in the thread. You said previously:

You can't, after all, KNOW a fact if that fact isn't true . . . if someone claims to KNOW that God does exist, they are not speaking of knowledge, but rather just a very deeply held belief.

It seems then you agree with me that knowledge is not just feeling certain about a belief. Moreover, outside of a priori statements in mathematics and logic, we can never be 100% certain about our conclusions. To make that the bar for "knowledge" creates a whole other set of problems.

We can measure people's feelings of certainty on the question of God's existence -- as we can measure their feelings of certainty on any other issue -- but to label that "knowledge" is, by your own admission, problematic.

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.

I think that difference in frequency exists because many believers are using the word "know" in a different sense from the atheists, which is, again, why framing the positions in terms of "knowledge" is problematic and should be discarded.

I KNOW the Earth is roughly spherical because I have seen what I consider to be valid evidence from the real world and arguments which show that a roughly spherical earth is the best possible explanation.

A believer KNOWS that God exists because they have seen what they consider to be valid evidence from the real world and arguments which show that God existing is the best possible explanation

Right, so when people describe what they believe in, they tend to use the word "know" in this looser way, as indicating that the belief is reasonable or supported by arguments, evidence, or experience. Believers do this for God.

But when you ask non-believers whether they "know" God doesn't exist, they tend to switch to a much narrower sense of "knowledge" as meaning not possibly being wrong.

In his article What I Believe But Cannot Prove -- which is broadly relevant to our discussion of knowledge so worth reading in whole -- Sean Carroll makes this same point:

The young Wittgenstein would not admit to Bertrand Russell that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, because he couldn’t be absolutely sure (in the sense of logical proof) that his senses weren’t tricking him. But the later Wittgenstein understood that taking such a purist stance renders the notion of "to know" (or "to believe") completely useless. If logical proof were required, we would only believe logical truths — and even then the proofs might contain errors. But in the real world it makes perfect sense to believe much more than that. So we take "I believe x" to mean, not "I can prove x is the case," but "it would be unreasonable to doubt x."

Back to your questions on the alternative scheme:

The old scheme is simple: If you are willing to affirm the proposition that God exists then you are a 'theist'. If you are willing to affirm the proposition that God does not exist, then you are an 'atheist'. If you are unwilling to affirm either proposition then you are 'agnostic'.

I leave it to you to decide which propositions, if any, you are willing to affirm. But let me just note that one doesn't have to be 100% certain to affirm a proposition.

The trouble is there's a big difference between not believing in God and believing that God does not exist. Your system can not account for that.

Sure it does. On the old scheme, someone who believes the former is agnostic and someone who believes the later is an atheist.

There's a person who thinks that the issue of God's existence is inherently unknowable. They claim to KNOW that God's existence is always going to be unknowable. There's another person who, similarly, can't say if God exists or not, but they do NOT think that God's existence is inherently unknowable. How would your system describe the difference between these two people?

The old atheist / agnostic / theist scheme is (sensibly) just interested in belief, so categorizes people based on their willingness to affirm the proposition that God exists or the proposition that God does not exist.

It doesn't address this separate epistemological question, as that is a different issue. But if that is something you want to describe, historically people have used the terms "strong agnostic" and "weak agnostic" to differentiate these two positions.

[William]

[Replying to Kylie in post #352]

[William]

Is that you? I'm surprised, I thought you'd be more handsome...less tatty?

[Longfellow]

Some more random thoughts:

- It looks to me like sometimes people on all sides are attached to some definition of a word for psychological, social, political and religious reasons that make them impervious to all logic and reason, and love to denounce and scold other people for not agreeing with them, day after day, year after year. I'm thinking that will continue far into the future.

- Some of what I've seen in atheist forums and blogs looks to me like nothing but Christian-bashing, defining "atheist" in a way that makes it okay for people to insult and mock people for believing in God without evidence, while excusing themselves from providing any evidence for their premise that all God beliefs are false. Looking past that, I'm thinking that those forums and blogs might provide some relief and comfort sometimes for people who are adversely affected by prejudices and discrimination against atheists or feel targeted by them. Venting their anger against Christians and Christianity might be part of that sometimes, but I'm thinking that it's ultimately self-destructive, and actually part of the oppression against atheists and helping to perpetuate it.

- There was a time when I was confused about what to say if anyone asked me if I'm an atheist, but I gave up trying. Now if anyone wants to know, I just try to give them enough information about my views for them to decide for themselves if they want to call me an atheist or not. Also, when people call themselves or other people "atheists," I'm not imagining that it actually communicates anything about their views.

(later)

- Sorting people into groups and categories can have beneficial uses. It looks to me like belief labels are mostly only used in public discussions in harmful and destructive ways, and any useful purpose they can serve can be better served in other ways, so I mostly avoid using them, except in discussions of what to do about prejudices and discrimination against them. For that purpose there is no need to attach belief labels to people individually.

- I think people are hurting themselves when they apply belief or non-belief labels to themselves, confining themselves in thought-policing and behavior-policing boxes that limit their thinking and induce them to put on a false face and repress parts of their personalities.

[Tcg]

- Some of what I've seen in atheist forums and blogs looks to me like nothing but Christian-bashing, defining "atheist" in a way that makes it okay for people to insult and mock people for believing in God without evidence, while excusing themselves from providing any evidence for their premise that all God beliefs are false.

Again with the "Christian-bashing" accusations and the misunderstanding that atheism suggests that "all God beliefs are false." Totally wrong on both counts. Atheism is the lack of belief that gods exist. That's it. As I've pointed out previously, some atheists are Christain so how could it be a "Christian-bashing" stance? I'll answer as I don't expect to get one. It isn't.

Oh, and once again if you haven't noticed, Christians aren't the only theists around.


Tcg