Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

Yes the switch is binary. There are several power tools that have a forward-off-reverse switch configuration as demonstrated.

When its believe its neither disbelieve nor off
When its disbelieve its neither believe nor off
When its off its neither disbelieve nor believe

which demonstrates each position as unique to itself, where it is impossible to have any 2 positions active or in operation at the same time. Same goes for atheism agnostic and theism.

A car transmission works the same way, its forward reverse or neither.

Swensson on the other hand demands that it is necessary to consider orange paint as an edible fruit, simply because paint is or can also defined by the word orange after all, which he then uses to attempt to create a short circuit between off and disbelief, causing the disbelief light to be lit when the switch is in either position, disbelief/off, in which of course demonstrates there is no longer an off due to the short, and therefore Swenssons argument is frivolous.

Stanford U went into great detail as to why it has to be as shown in the switch example, starting with the core point why lack of belief 'cannot' be used as a definition for philosophical purposes which is to sort through all the garbage usages of lay people an get to the bottom line as a court would.

If atheism is defined properly as an absence, without, or lack of belief then no negation can possibly exist for theism, and they go on to point out in no uncertain crystal clear unequivocal terms that theism must be considered as a proposition (not a jingo, or some laymans slang) and atheism consequently must be the negation of theism for the purposes of definition when considering atheism v theism.

Swensson in essence is saying "I know we are talking about orange in the context of eating fruit, but since an orange can also be legitimately defined as paint lets also discuss eating orange paint context"

Now that all said I gave everyone the precise negation of lack of belief in something as follows:

Lack of belief in the existence of God
versus
Lack of belief in the nonexistence of God

Which is prima facia why lack of belief must necessarily be kicked to the curb as it forms a massive monumental violation of LEM....and as usual Swensson agreed with the leading premises but then when the point is proven injects the usual improper usage/context garbage in attempts to cover up the fact that his hero 'flew' failed logic 101.

Then of course there is this gem.

Its legtimate to state by definition forward is not reverse, up is not down, left is not right because its impossible for anything to be its contradiction at the same time.

the definition of religion is polysemous, and its root means to securely bind ones self to some concept construct or thing or object of thought which is perfectly clear in the definition of religion:

re·li·gion
/rəˈlijən/

noun: religion

1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

• a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.
  "consumerism is the new religion"

and since rahl spams every thread with his bogus interpretation of religion the rest of us can clearly see that his use of 'by definition' referring to religion is nothing more than political spin since 'a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.' is a perfect match to the atheist lack of belief jingo perfectly.

So perfect in fact that the supreme court has determined that atheist secular humanists are religious.

 

proven this false already. Atheism, by definition, is not a belief or religion. It is the opposite.

 

I thought you didn't want to discuss this any more.

I'm well aware of how your logic works and how it maps to the electronics (and it didn't change my understanding of your position either way), my objection is of course how you placed down your labels, "atheism" in particular. Your electronics example does not demonstrate why "atheism" corresponds to a certain LED. Under Flew's definition, the equivalent of atheism would be "the 'theism' LED is not on". That idea is not sidestepped by you introducing another guide to understand the rest of the logic.

Electronics has a well understood way of showing negations, and it's not the diagram of a three-way switch:

an inverter or NOT gate is a logic gate which implements logical negation (source)​

The wiki page also shows the truth table, and as you can see, the component that corresponds to negations do not allow for any setup in which both a signal and its negation are false (showing that if an agnostic is outside both theism and atheism, then theism and atheism are cannot be negations of one another).

Now, my point here is not to drag up the conversation again, although I'm happy to do so, I'm merely pointing out that you have failed to home in on our actual disagreement. No number of restatements or visuals or analogue examples will help you if you've fundamentally misunderstood what I'm objecting to.

To lack is the negation of to have, so having a belief (theism) is a negation to lacking a belief (Flew's atheism), there is no problem for the negation to exist. The Stanford author indeed made it clear that he considers theism a proposition, but deliberately points out that there are different interpretations of what atheism means in that context.

No, in particular, the reason I propose that you should use the fruit definition because you are quoting and discussing people who are using it as a fruit. If you go and make your own argument, you can use whichever definition you will, but if you're addressing existing arguments, you should use the same ones, or commit a fallacy.

Again, what makes you think those are negations? They fail the law of the excluded middle since it is possibly for both to be true, as in the case of an agnostic. This is another point that gfm7175 grasped easily.

If your premises don't lead undoubtedly to your conclusions, then chances are what you're providing isn't actually a sound line of logic. If you can't explain your steps, not only do we have no reason to believe they're true, you lose credibility since you don't seem to know your own thought process.

 

Im still waiting for you to state why you think they are not, there is only 1 word you need to look up

Thats why 'lack of belief' fails

false

and his response does not mean what you think it means.

Only with people that need lessons in logic

not with you, you keep rehashing and pounding the same drum even thought stanford university has thrown it out for the very same reasons I have thrown it out, and you dont get it, nothing anyone here can do about that.

 

Well, the fact that they do not conform to the law of the excluded middle is in itself a good reason. But as a self-proclaimed agnostic, do you think that something is believable without you yourself having a good justification, regardless of what you think of others' objections?

Lack of belief as I understand it, as most modern atheists understand it, as gfm7175 understands it, does just fine. Lack of belief as you have constructed it is what fails. You can lack belief in god, and you can lack belief that there are no gods, but Flew defines theism in terms of having or lacking belief in god. The fact that you can construct a concept of "lacking belief in the nonexistence of gods" is not really anyone's problem other than yours.

I'd be very happy to continue to talk to him. I even asked for clarification on what he meant, and we seem to consistently have understood each other. We have some disagreements, but we seem to agree on how to think about absences.

I mean, we disagree on what the Stanford paper actually means, but like with the rest of your logic, you spend more time avoiding talking about it than actually explaining yourself would take (unless you don't know what you're talking about, in which case all of your statements fall into place). The only rejection the Stanford author shows is the "umbrella" term of Bullivant, not Flew's interpretation altogether. That distinction becomes particularly clear given that he calls Flew's interpretation legitimate. That seems to explicitly show that you're wrong in rejecting it.

 

It does not matter how many ways you want to slice dice and disect it, stanford is crystal clear, flews wacky doodle theories went straight in to their file 13, right along with the rest of the parroted neoatheist theories.

STANFORD:
"Therefore, in philosophy, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods)."

Nope no lack of belief there!

As far as stanford is concerned you are limited to:

God does not exist
There are no gods,

to legitimately hold the label of atheist, where it is 'philosophically defensible'.

All else is garbage, Absence, Without, Lack of belief, and Agnostic for/as a definition with respect to Atheist =

So stop pretending it can be or is anything else

All else is your wacky interpretation to spin what they said to match your lob theories.

 

38 pages now and atheism remains, by definition, not a religion. It continues to mean the lack of belief in a god or gods.

 

You're taking the Stanford author's quote out of context, the full quote is:

"If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists (more on this below). The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods)." (source)​

The important point that your entire conclusion exists in a conditional context. The Stanford article only offers your conclusion if we make certain assumptions (detailed in the first sentence of the quote). It does not state that that if clause (and the resulting conclusions) are always true, only that they follow from a certain context.

I'd say the author is in that phrase slightly unclear on exactly how far the conditional stretches. Luckily, he writes explicitly later:

"While identifying atheism with the metaphysical claim that there is no God (or that there are no gods) is particularly useful for doing philosophy, it is important to recognize that the term “atheism” is polysemous—i.e., it has more than one related meaning—even within philosophy." (source)​

Your interpretation of the first quote is that there is only one valid definition, and here he says that there is more than one definition. Thus, either he contradicts himself, or you have misinterpreted him. You have said on several occasions that the author has used no uncertain terms, but it seems to me not only did you misinterpret it, you failed to realise it (or even, you failed to realise that you were at risk of doing so).

 

FALSE
You continue to fail to understand the argument as predicted, the swensson word salad quagmire.

My interpretation is that the only valid root definition of atheism is a proper negation to theism as I have said countless times in countless ways.

Stanford explains this in detail and you handwave away anything that disagrees with your word salad.

You conveniently omitted:


The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. [neoatheist lack of belief atheology is not a negation to theism] Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods). <--my position as stated countless times.

This definition has the added virtue of making atheism a direct answer to one of the most important metaphysical questions in philosophy of religion, namely, “Is there a God?”

There are only two possible direct answers to this question: “yes”, which is theism, and “no”, which is atheism.

Answers like “I don’t know”, “no one knows”, “I don’t care”, “an affirmative answer has never been established”, or “the question is meaningless” [lack of belief] are not direct answers to this question.

i.e., it has more than one related meaning—even within philosophy.

For example, many writers at least implicitly identify atheism with a positive metaphysical theory like naturalism or even materialism. Given this sense of the word, the meaning of “atheism” is not straightforwardly derived from the meaning of “theism”. While this might seem etymologically bizarre, perhaps a case can be made for the claim that something like (metaphysical) naturalism was originally labeled “atheism” only because of the cultural dominance of non-naturalist forms of theism, not because the view being labeled was nothing more than the denial of theism. On this view, there would have been atheists even if no theists ever existed [<--flews lacker of belief stupidity] —they just wouldn’t have been called “atheists”. (Baggini [2003] suggests this line of thought, though his “official” definition is the standard metaphysical one.)

Although this definition of “atheism” is a legitimate one, it is often accompanied by fallacious inferences from the (alleged) falsity or probable falsity of atheism (= naturalism) to the truth or probable truth of theism.

lack of belief can only be negated by lack of disbelief, in which case the situation is precisely reversed, as I have demonstrated, the meaning of that exercise zinged right over your head, as proven by your response, the takeaway point, that you should have gleened from that exercise is that there would have been theists even if no atheists ever existed [<--flews lacker of belief stupidity reversed]

LoB is bassackwards and logically unintelligible as a root definition for theism.

 

this was a typo oversight and was intended to read as: LoB is bassackwards and logically unintelligible as a root or core definition for [A]theism.

Polysemous does not give anyone the license to slip any variant you want in as a core definition.

If its still not clear to you, as stanford explains, LoB falls under

LoB falls square under "absence" and/or "without" and it expresses your belief with is not a direct answer to the proposition 'Does God exist" which requires a yes or no response.

Generally core or root definitions when sorted out using philosophy have strict rules that must be followed with the aim of preserving the strongest position that can be defended using logic and reason. The first entry in a dictionary is not required to stick to this standard, in fact the first entry in most dictionaries is how a word is used with regard to its popularity contest on any given day.

 

I'm not failing to understand it, I understand the logic just fine, and I am well aware of its merits. The issue I have with your logic is that you leave out the bit before it which declares that your logic isn't always true:

"If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists (more on this below)." (source)​

This shows that your logic in its entirety is subject to the condition of choosing a particular definition. The Stanford author acknowledges that the logic you have presented is true if that condition is satisfied, but he (nor Flew nor I) do not state that that is always true.

If we were to interpret the statement as you have written it, that atheism must be understood that way, then there is only one meaning of atheism. This contradicts the Stanford author's other suggestions on how to interpret atheism, as well as his repeated opinion that there is more than one meaning. In other words, either you have misinterpreted the sentence, or the Stanford author contradicts himself (my money is on the former).

This seems to me to be another example that contradicts your interpretation of the previous "atheism must be understood as" quote. If one interprets it your way, the Stanford author would not allow this naturalism-style definition, but here, the author clearly finds it legitimate. Again, the only problematic bit is your interpretation of the previous quote and your ignorance of the conditional clause before it.

The situation of having something is precisely reversed by lacking it. The negation of having an apple is the negation of lacking it. This is indeed the reason why Flew suggested his definition.

I agree, you can't slip any definition in (for instance, calling theism the lack of atheism as a definition is unwarranted), but the Stanford author shows a few legitimate definitions, and Flew's is one of them.

The fact that you keep banging on about the "atheism must be understood" quote shows that you haven't understood my criticism, because I do not think that it is wrong, I simply think that it is only valid in the conditional case that the Stanford author specified. Showing me the quote over and over out of context only tells me that you haven't quite understood what I'm trying to say.

What rules do you propose those are, and where would you find them? It seems to me, it is perfectly possible to use any definitions as long as you're clear about it. That's how we can talk about both fruit and colour oranges, without having to subjectively establish some strongest position. Philosophy wouldn't fail to talk about colours just because someone found an argument about fruit that is really strong.

 

FALSE
Thats a prime example of rahleology.

You dont need to tell me about my logic when your approach is backwards and a strawman argument. Lack is polysemous. Its clear you will never as in NEVER admit it, but that does not stop me from pointing it out.

I have already stated several times the points you ignore and handwave away , no need to continue beating the 10x dead horse, same as what took place in the LoB xsmith discussion. Your responses are political strawmen proposed as philosophy, its not.

 

Atheism is a religious belief, shrouded in equivocation.

/shakeshead/

 

So do you believe or disbelieve in unicorns?

 

Well, show me how it's not then. I've shown my reasoning.

I agree that there is no point in beating a dead horse, which it why it surprises me that you suggest doing that instead of addressing my actual arguments. I have shown you that I think the reasoning you refer to is conditional on a choice that is not necessary, and I have shown how the Stanford article is consistent with that and inconsistent with yours.

I have handwaved your logic because largely, I don't disagree with that logic. I just think it applies in particular cases. In the case that you've mentioned, I have no problem with your logic. However, where we differ is in that I think the logic only applies in a particular case, and you have yet to show anything else.

 

The obsession by some atheists to deny the religio/philosophical basis for their beliefs is arbitrary and contrived. It is not a logical argument, to declare, 'Atheism is not a religio/philosophical belief!', it is an attempt to categorize 'atheism', as an elevated human opinion, that is above human reasoning.

It is 'special snowflake-ism!', where the smug True Believers in atheism pretend THEIR beliefs are 'science!', and not merely a religious/philosophical belief, like everyone else's.

It stems from the madness and folly of progressive Indoctrination. Old time atheists knew their beliefs were just that: beliefs. But decades of confirmation bias, constant propaganda, and progressive Indoctrination has dulled the reasoning abilities, and produced hordes of brain dead bobbleheads, who can't reason themselves out of a wet paper bag..

Assertion and dogmatic declaration, not logic, is the god of the neoatheist.

 

I stated the case with all its conditions in the first few responses to you, you just chose to ignore it.

Then you should not have been trying to cram flews square peg in a round hole.

You have shown no such thing, you spent umpteen pages trying to argue flew was a legitimate condition that could be equally used as an argument for the conditions I described, which once again and always will be false. Lack is polysemous! God = 'no' is not. God = no, directly negates God = yes, absence, without, lack of belief do not negate God = yes. Stanford offered an unequivocal explanation.

 

Did you notice you provided no evidence of any sort to back up your bug-eyed lunatic hate rant? Be assured that everyone else did.

We get it. You really hate liberals, and now your life is an endless quest to justify that hated. Do you understand how that's not normal? Don't worry, we can help. Let's discuss it and get to the root of your problem.

When did your pathological hatred of liberals first manifest? Did the liberals beat you up on the playground or steal your supposed girl? Were you jealous over how liberals were having all the fun? Were you butthurt over the way that liberals kept humiliating you with facts and logic?

Talk it out. Remember, we're here for you.

 

The conditions include making an assumption on the definition of atheism, and as the Stanford article points out, making that assumption is not necessary. The article (as well as Flew and many others) offer the Flew definition as one legitimate alternative.

I object to the assumptions that I don't think are true, I'm not raising objections to stuff I agree with just for the hell of it.

Not really. I argue that the atheists whom you quote had already laid out some conditions, and you were committing a fallacy by substituting your own conditions when they made their argument under a different set of conditions.

A problem might arise from your sloppy writing. The relation between theism and god is not an equal sign (as evidenced by the fact that theism might exist even if god does not, as well as the fact that they're, you know, different things).

Your counter example repeatedly relies on the phrasing of theism as a lack of atheism, a phrasing which isn't true on Flew's view. A definition sets out the ground rules for the logic, and that logic does not include the idea that you must redefine theism in the same way as you redefined atheism.

For instance, asexuality is defined as the absence of sexuality. That does not require you to find an alternative interpretation of asexuality and to define sexuality as the absence of asexuality.

 

It is impossible, anymore, to 'reason' with the neoatheist. They either mock, heckle, or rage, and rational, civil discourse is impossible.

The projection of your own hatred is just another indicator of the success of progressive Indoctrination.

Neoatheists are made, not born. Relentless propaganda, state mandated belief, censorship, and confirmation bias replace reason, facts, and science.

To any objective, rational being, the BELIEF in any perception of the universe is a religio/philosophical opinion. Only the modern, brain dead progressive indoctrinees elevate THEIR beliefs as 'settled science!', and pretend that atheistic naturalism is a proven fact, and everyone else is an idiot.

The evidence of this thread, and countless others, illustrate the madness and folly of neoatheists, distorting reason, language, and civility for jihadist zeal in their religious beliefs.

Neoatheists are not merely unbelievers in God, they are militant ideologues, intolerant of different views, and hurl bigotry and hostility toward any who dare to express an opinion that does not fit neatly into their worldview.

Hostility, ad hominem, and rage define the progressive indoctrinees of atheistic naturalism, not science and reason, and certainly not freedom of conscience. Almost every response from these militant jihadists illustrates their intolerance, bigotry, and hatred toward any form of theism, but especially Christianity, which triggers them into mindless rage.

 

Atheism by definition is not a religion, or religious belief. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods.

 

No, this is your strawman. Atheism by definition is not a religious or philosophical belief. It is the lack of belief in a god or gods.

 

So look like you admit your diarrhea you spew out here are direct from wacktydoodle total nutterville.

In a recent case (Gray v Mulberry) in seeking to determine whether a belief is a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, an individual needs to demonstrate that:

• it is a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information; [Ok so its bullshit on its face....steeeerike 1]
• the belief is genuinely held; [Awe too bad its not a belief at all! ....steeeerike 2]
• the belief concerns a “weighty” and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour; [WOW back to not a belief, another one flushed down the crapper.........steeeerike 3]
• it is “worthy of respect in a democratic society”; and [it has to be a belief.........steeeerike 4]
• it is held with “sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance”. [Oh man most people hold lack of belief as a joke, too bad.........steeeerike 5]
  https://www.boltburdon.co.uk/blogs/employment-philosophical-belief-gray-mulberry/

WOW you blew it on every count rahl, seems all the critical thinkers in the academic world and courts on the planet agrees that lack of belief is a wasteland for the simple minded, well except you of course. If you have any questions about philosophical beliefs or discrimination at work, please contact...

clearly all you have is bullshit since you dont have any beliefs.

 

Meanwhile, atheism remains by definition, not a belief or religion. Just like not playing baseball isn’t a sport.

 

and meanwhile all you have is cute jingos and bullshit! LOL