Wootah wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:03 pm
Tcg wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:14 pm
Wootah wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:01 pm
We are either simply part of the world existing for a brief time, in a massive universe, with death waiting and no purpose and meaninglessness and not in control of anything or we can create something and be something. This is atheism on one end and creation on the other.
Nope. Atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods.
It's why I don't believe there are atheists. No one can truly hold that view and I certainly don't think any atheists on this site really drink that cup to the full. I tried. Once. A long time ago.
Wrong again. I am an atheist and there are a whole bunch of us.
Tcg
All right clearly this is too far from me. So some corrections, please.
1. Everything is defined by its properties.
2. Atheism is defined as not having a property (a lack of belief in god/gods).
3. Atheism isn't possible.
Literally can't be an atheist it is the absence of a belief. It's like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it.
Is anything else defined by not having a property? Flaws, counter-examples, in this critique please?
I went searching on the internet and found a past version of me here. I posted this back in 2012 lol:
https://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?t=9013
So a hole might be a counter-example?
Atheist.
Bachelor.
Counter-example.
Doppelganger.
Ex-Catholic.
Foreigner.
darkness is the absence of light
cold is the absence of heat
happiness is the absence of misery
I'll circle back to these counter examples later after thinking about them.
So, Can you be an atheist?
I like that. That's one of the neatest syllogistic arguments I've seen. I have an idea where it's wrong, but lets run with it and see. As in the Christian student and the atheist professor polemical parable, Dark is not a thing that exists, nor is cold. They are merely an absence of light (which is a thing) and also heat (which is a thing, made of vibrating particles, or rather the vibration of different kinds of particles. The Vibration/energy being the Property). Thus evil did not exist and was not created by God, but was an absence of good, which was created by God, being his personality property.
I may have to see how the refutation was worded, but an equivalence occurs to me with weather. Say there is no such thing as good weather as it is merely an absence of bad weather. There is no dry season, merely the season not being wet. It seems to me that the absence of a thing can also define the Property of it. Weather that has the property of not being wet, a substance that has the property of low temperature because it lacks heat, a person or group that is what we call 'evil' because it lacks the wish or ability to do the good.
So I'd argue that atheists, being people, have a property of not believing in any god - claim. It is a real thing defined by a lack, as being healthy is a lack of being ill. It is a property of the being.
Bottom line, we are people who do not credit any god - claim, we are real, and our disbelief is real, we are called atheists (non -theists will do,we are not dogmatic, except about foisting the name "Brights" on us) there may not be a Thing,'atheism' but there are persons with a real negative property of not crediting any god - claim.
What was it popped into my head just now...damn' old age...no memory....Ah! I remember! A group of pensioners did a climb of mount Everest. When they got to the top one asked "What did we come up here for?" No! it was... yes! It was an Axiom on my former board that atheism really wasn't an actual Thing and only existed because theism did. See the stamp -collector analogy. There are many non - stamp collectors, but the term is not needed because nobody is telling them they are evil and will burn in Hell because they don't collect stamps. If theism vanished or had never been, there would not be any atheists. We only have pacifists, because we have war, and only Vegans because we eat animal products. Yes, a lack of an in - yore- face Ism is also a property of humans, whether it exists or is just lacking.