Can you be an atheist?

[Wootah]

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?

[Difflugia]

Literally can't be an atheist it is the absence of a belief.

Is anything else defined by not having a property? Flaws, counter-examples, in this critique please?

A bald person lacks hair.
Someone that is impoverished lacks money.
Something that is aseptic lacks bacterial contamination.
Soft drinks lack alcohol, as opposed to hard drinks.
Something that is dry lacks moisture (or sweetness, perhaps).

It's like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it.

That's not an analogy, that's just being wrong. I'm sure we could find plenty of statements around here that are like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it, but not the definition of atheism.

[Difflugia]

Doppelganger.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, what lack defines a doppelgänger? My understanding of the word is that it signifies the presence of a similarity to someone else and in folklore, the similarity is supernatural.

[Wootah]

Doppelganger.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, what lack defines a doppelgänger? My understanding of the word is that it signifies the presence of a similarity to someone else and in folklore, the similarity is supernatural.

I went to a thread and copied that from another person but I wanted to include those options to allow discussion. On surface value I agree with you I can't see how it relates.

edit: Maybe it is defined by being a copy of something else and not a property of itself?

[TRANSPONDER]

Literally can't be an atheist it is the absence of a belief.

Is anything else defined by not having a property? Flaws, counter-examples, in this critique please?

A bald person lacks hair.
Someone that is impoverished lacks money.
Something that is aseptic lacks bacterial contamination.
Soft drinks lack alcohol, as opposed to hard drinks.
Something that is dry lacks moisture (or sweetness, perhaps).

It's like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it.

That's not an analogy, that's just being wrong. I'm sure we could find plenty of statements around here that are like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it, but not the definition of atheism.

s
Christians wouldn't like to be defined by not reverencing Muhammad as a prophet. So that is not the defining property. What the apple is defines it, not what it is not. Which bring us back to the OP. Can a lack of something (not a banana) define anything, like stew being bland because it has no seasoning in it? Yes, evidently a negative property can characterise the nature of the thing. But the stew is a stew, not a blandissement or what you'd have on the menu.

So maybe that says something about atheists. It does not define what we are, we are humans, and we are not just atheists and nothing else. Perhaps there's a fallacy of composition there,. Because we are atheist, everything about us must be atheist. But I'm frankly muddling myself now. I'll leave it to the experts to work it out with formulaic syllogisms.

[TRANSPONDER]

Doppelganger.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, what lack defines a doppelgänger? My understanding of the word is that it signifies the presence of a similarity to someone else and in folklore, the similarity is supernatural.

I went to a thread and copied that from another person but I wanted to include those options to allow discussion. On surface value I agree with you I can't see how it relates.

edit: Maybe it is defined by being a copy of something else and not a property of itself?

That's what I thought. A doppelganger would be able to be defined by a lack of dissimilarity. Though similarity would be the defining property that makes most sense to use, and the perfection of similarity would indeed be unnatural, either by unnatural science by making clones or by magical abilities as in supernatural. Which perhaps defines what we think of as the supernatural, not just what is unknown, but what is not thought possible in the world we know, like resurrection from death.

So does that clarify atheism? What we are is human, a lack of god - belief is a negative property that relates us to others like that, so, like a doppelganger (hypothetically a whole national demographic of them) Doppelgangers would be characterised as unlike the rest because of their lack of dissimilarity and would never get elected to public office. But with atheists ,it doesn't notice because we look like everyone else, as well as never getting elected.

I don't know.... Maybe I'm juggling with words to make atheism a valid property. I just know it works with other things.

[Wootah]

Literally can't be an atheist it is the absence of a belief.

Is anything else defined by not having a property? Flaws, counter-examples, in this critique please?

A bald person lacks hair.
Someone that is impoverished lacks money.
Something that is aseptic lacks bacterial contamination.
Soft drinks lack alcohol, as opposed to hard drinks.
Something that is dry lacks moisture (or sweetness, perhaps).

It's like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it.

That's not an analogy, that's just being wrong. I'm sure we could find plenty of statements around here that are like defining an apple by it not having a banana attached to it, but not the definition of atheism.

- A bald person lacks hair.
Do bald people actually define themselves that way? Do you look at a skinny person and define them as not fat?

Someone that is impoverished lacks money.
yeah

- Something that is aseptic lacks bacterial contamination.
yeah knowing if something lacks bacterial contamination is quite important

- Soft drinks lack alcohol, as opposed to hard drinks.
Nah.

- Something that is dry lacks moisture (or sweetness, perhaps).
yeah

Makes me think that there is a frequency component to the lack of a property that generates the word.

Good is defined as not bad? I think we eat an apple and know it is good from the taste, not from eating bad apples and then knowing what is good. Actually now I think we are getting somewhere as to the roots of the negative definition. It allows for bad to exist in a dualist nature. Thoughts?

[Tcg]

Good is defined as not bad?

That's close, but it has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. It is astonishingly straightforward.


Tcg

[brunumb]

Good is defined as not bad?

That's close, but it has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in god/gods. It is astonishingly straightforward.


Tcg

And I would add that lacking a belief in gods does not define me.

We seem to have stumbled down yet another semantic rabbit hole.

[Purple Knight]

- A bald person lacks hair.
Do bald people actually define themselves that way?

I don't care. I define them that way. They're bald whether they like it or not. If that makes them sad they can get the surgery or wear a wig. I really don't care about their feelings. They certainly don't seem to care about mine when they polish their shiny bolbs and try to get me with the glare when I'm driving.

I'm coining this term btw. The dome of a bald person's head is called a bolb.

bolb
/bowlb/
noun
noun: bolb

offensive•dated
the dome of a bald person's skull, especially when uncovered.
(slur) a bald person.
his shiny bolb.

[Difflugia]

- Soft drinks lack alcohol, as opposed to hard drinks.
Nah.

"Nah?" Look it up.