Reviewing Atheist 'Lack Belief' in Deities theory. <<MOD WARNING ISSUED>>

Fakers fake as fakers do. Apparently being called a 'lacker' is meant to offend me? I'd be more concerned about being mentally ill to be honest.

 

Another short response from me, which I may expand on later...

True, if you could get rid of the ambiguity in the English language, a lot of problems would resolve themselves, but I find the claim that "I lack belief" to be a whole Everglades swamp of ambiguity, that someone saying he lacks belief to be not saying anything that a rock couldn't say. But then if I concretize the statement to, "I believe not," I get an argument. As Koko pointed out on the same page, a rock lacks belief in a turtle and it lacks belief in no turtle. A rock can have no beliefs about anything, so equating yourself to a rock doesn't exactly bode well for your argument.

 

That is a total surrender if I ever read one.

Thanks

 

How are you suggesting these sets of sentences relate to one another? Are you saying each follows from the line before it? Or that each line is a negation of the line before it? Or what?

Dictionaries are not always perfect, but the vast majority of the time, they're pretty good. Certainly they're more believable than just some guy on an internet forum.

 

I think I already made a comment on this list. I don't understand what you're trying to get across here. Sometimes you do negations, sometimes you do not, and it's unclear what you're doing.

My disagreement (if I understand your argument correctly) lies between

koko does not believe a turtle is in the lake
koko believes there is no turtle in the lake

You have gone from not b(A) to b(not A), which you already know I disagree with.

If those two statements were the same, then they would always have the same truth value. However, if you applied it to a rock, which believes nothing, then "a rock believes there is a turtle" is false. However, "a rock does not believe there is a turtle" always has the opposite truth value to "a rock does believe there is a turtle", and given that the rock is incapable of belief, that statement would be false. Thus, a rock would answer true to the "I do not believe..." statement but false to "I believe there is no...", and so they cannot be the same statement.

 

No, but the dictionary creators did.

Why would that make them bad? As mentioned in [source], language is an exception to the fallacy of the masses. The earth revolving around the sun doesn't care what people think about it, so no matter how many people believe otherwise, it is still true. Language however, is what it is because that's how people use it, so if we were using it differently, it would be different. There is nothing bad about that, it is necessary.

What's the problem with the argument? It shows that the two statements are not the same.

Well, I have avoided using the word disbelief, since its definition is slightly ambiguous. My example exclusively says "believes"/"does not believe". Unless you propose that a rock is capable of believing things, rocks do not believe things.

I don't see how this explains anything.

Nope, given the definitions I have consistently used for belief, negations and lack, it merely says that you have not affirmed that you believe that there is a god.

Well, I already made the same argument somewhere else, there's no point in repeating it in the same post.

Here is what I wrote, followed by what you thought I should have written:
"Kokomojojo fits into "does not believe in the existence of God" but not into "believes god does not exist"" (source)
"Kokomojojo fits into "does not believe God exists " but not into "believes god does not exist" (source)

The only difference is that you switched from "believe in the existence of God" to "believe God exists", which at least I think are the same thing. If not, please elaborate on the difference.

Ok, here is one difference, one requires capability to believe. To believe that there is no turtle, one has to have the capability to believe in statements. To not believe something doesn't require anything, it is not an action you take.

 

I agree. We seem to differ in that you think about what is true, judging from what people have said, and I only think about what has been said. I someone says "I am not happy", they probably mean "I am unhappy", but the statement itself only says "out of all the possible emotions I could have, happiness is not the one I have".

In this case, I think there is a practical difference too. Many anti-religious people are not so worried about whether there is a god, they are more worried about the impact of religion on the world. As such, it may be true that they believe that there is no god, but they have no interest in proving that. They could go on to argue agnosticism, but if they do believe that there is no god, then it would be dishonest of them to argue actual agnosticism.

If someone says "Jonah lived in a fish for a week", someone might have an objection to that and say "that's not persuasive". In order to stop people believing that Jonah lived in a fish, it is not necessary to prove that no god exists, it is only necessary to prove that the argument for Jonah living in a fish is unpersuasive. If the matter at hand is Jonah living in a fish, then the idea of god not existing is a red herring (pun not intended).

Your complaint seems to be that the definition I have suggested does not describe whether someone believes there are no gods, but as you can see in this example, that position is not important, it is a red herring (in certain contexts).

True, but the point is that for the arguments that Kokomojojo have been addressing, that argument is not relevant. Even if everybody suddenly agreed that the cosmological argument is true and "there is exists no god" was thoroughly proven false, it does nothing to prove that Jonah lived in a fish or that "God hates ****", and that is what the arguments were made to address.

Why not? Rocks might not believe many true things, but at least they are rarely wrong.

 

seriously? you come out here as a logician and you cant take one quick glance and figure that out? Tell me thats not the case!

This is a school assignment for you to tell us all about it, how about doing some truth tables for us?

 

so you dont mind showing is the poll results, oh wait you just made that up.

Yeh from your source:
Language
Linguistic descriptivists argue that correct grammar, spelling, and expressions are defined by the language's speakers, especially in languages which do not have a central governing body. According to this viewpoint, if an incorrect expression is commonly used, it becomes correct. In contrast, linguistic prescriptivists believe that incorrect expressions are incorrect regardless of how many people use them.
Just because 10,000 asshelmets says the earth is flat that doesnt make it correct. Sure its correct in the form of cult slang

it does? where?

why would you avoid the antonym? a rock cannot disbelieve only a person can disbelieve, but a rock can certainly lack belief.

I cant believe you come out here arguing logic and dont see what that means.

huh? where did you say that?

there is because I am not going to read 100 pages to see which one specifically you are referring to .

I'm glad you see that, past history would have led me to believe you would not see it.

WRONG it requires the same analysis as someone who believes the only thing that is different is which conclusion that is accepted as true.
So you think that acceptance of something as false is not an action?

 

bullshit, you quote asshelmet anthony flew who I ripped to shreds and claim his statements are mine, cant get much more dishonest than that. I see you changed it from a quote to the link so I know the **** you tried to pull here. Like you said you cannot quote it because it never happened, thanks for proving me correct once again!

 

You should be able to see what you are up against on the boards. They apply all the rules to you but not to themselves. LOL

Did you see this one?:

you correctly explained all of this how many times? and here it is again.

 

you obviously dont understand the associative principle.

In logic you examine the whole statement

write out both statements, with p's and q's of what you think they 'really' mean so we can take a look at how you are coming to that conclusion, or a truth table is fine too since you claim they do not always have the same truth value.

so take the 2 statements

not believe turtle exists
believe no turtle exists

which we can say:

not believe exist
believe not exist

here I will even make it look pretty

¬believe exist
believe ¬exist

and set up what you disagree with for us, and where the truth values supposedly flip.

 

It is all there in black and white little koko faker, no conspiracy, no changing, no atheist govmint plot. Just Koko the faker caught red handed!

 

yes it is, you attributed anthony asshelmets claims that I argued against in the same post to me, and pretended that I stated it.

 

That is right little Koko, I got in the computer software and altered it, they are out to get you, I am a atheist government agent!
You really are to funny!

 

I never said or implied anything like that, you claimed you could quote me and you failed miserably time and time again because what you said never happened, it was a fabrication.

Either way thanks for proving to people how you simply make any **** up and say any damn thing to attack your opponent when your ass is handed to you in spades LOL.

 

Koko it is all there, keep denying as much as you like. You cannot change the quotes, what you wrote and what you falsified.
Fakers going to fake!

 

yes its all there and there is nothing you can say to sweep your falsification under the carpet, I seen you remove the actual quote from your original post and replace it with the link because you know its all over the top fabricated quantum bullshit.

Seriously Thanks! I have been giving you likes because everyone can see how you totally fabricate **** in a debate.

 

Koko, keep it up, please!

 

I am an atheist, I lack belief.

 

I am quite well versed in it, and I know when it is valid. The associative principle is, as wikipedia describes it "a property of some binary operations". The word "some" is there because it is not always true. Also, b() is not a binary operator, since b(A) does not only depend on whether A is true (let's say the earth is round, it is still possible for someone to believe that it is or that it is not).

I mean, the b(A) notation is basically that sort of notation. You could replace A with p if you really wanted to.

You start the logic with two statements, what makes you think those two are equivalent (if that is what you think)?

The forum editor makes tables a bit of a faff. I doubt it will do much good, given that a truth table is merely a representation of the arguments I've already made, but since you ask nicely.


The two lowest lines are the negation of the upper two, so the truth values are flipped.

As you can see, b(not A) and 'not b(A)' have different truth values.

 

The results are published as dictionaries. Here's what some editors have to say about the process
https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/our-story/creating-dictionaries

Then why does any word mean anything? Why do you think the word "apple" is applied to the fruit apple? If nobody had ever come up with the word apple, then it would not have made it into the language. Prescriptivism has a very hard time explaining why any language exists and how any change of a language can happen (like "thou"->"you").

For a rock, one is true and the other is not, so they cannot be the same statement.

I'm avoiding it because it is easily possible to make my point without it, and it seems that people have been using it in two different ways, possibly without realising it, so it opens an unnecessary scope for equivocation.

You just gave two lines and implied (?) that they were the same, you have not given a reason for why they would be the same.

I have consistently said that you do not believe (which I say is different from believing the opposite). As we have discussed before, it is not the vocalisation that is the issue, so if you believe something, you affirm it, if you do not affirm it, you don't believe it (as you said, barring lying and other misrepresentations).

How? That's exactly what I have been saying for about a hundred pages, what has made you believe differently?

No, anything you accept, including a statement like "A is false" is an action, and can be performed only by minds (and not for instance rocks). A rock may fail to accept something, "I believe it" would be false, and by the law of the excluded middle, that makes "I don't believe it" true.

 

I get the grand gist, but I don't understand whether you think what you've written carries any believability. I understand what you're trying to say, I don't understand why you think it is persuasive. You also have one line with more than one follow up, it doesn't seem at all to follow that those must be the same.

 

So we agree on something, I suppose that's a step in the right direction.

I like what you said here, that I think about what is true, that's definitely the case, if someone says, "I am not happy," not only do they mean, "I am unhappy," they mean something in the immediate vicinity (geographically or temporally) has made them unhappy, or else they would have chosen different wording, such as, "I am depressed," which usually means a more long-lasting type of unhappiness and not one caused by proximate circumstances. So then the question I would have for you is, why don't you do the same thing?

The solution here, then, is to discuss that issue and leave God out of it. As an atheist and a former believer, I'm of the opinion that Christianity is good for society and Islam is bad for society (and human beings in general), and I can argue those points without bringing God up at all.

Edit: Too often, it seems to me, that those who want to argue how religion is bad for society attack God rather than the religion itself, and ask how could a good God do all these horrible things, or approve all these horrible things done by others in his name. But if they don't believe in God anyway, what difference does it make what a fictional character did or didn't do? Talk about what the religion does today, not what God did or didn't do, or what the religion did 1000 years ago. Those are irrelevant.

It was a whale and three days, but never mind. Saying something is "unpersuasive" isn't going to change the mind of a believer in any case. Saying something is "impossible" has a slightly higher chance of changing someone's mind, but still fairly low. Many impossible stories from the Bible have been thrown out over the centuries, but the ones that remain are usually there because they make an important point of some kind. Jonah's story makes several important points, so it's not going anywhere: 1) the penalties of refusing God's call; 2) how one man can cause an entire town to repent of its sins (Ninevah, in Jonah's case, now destroyed by ISIS); 3) the dangers of resentment; and 4) a prefiguration of Christ's three days in the grave.

I disagree. If it wasn't important, they wouldn't bring it up at all. You're right, it's a red herring, but it's a red herring from the atheist side, trying to avoid having to support their position and throwing all the burden of proof on the theist side. Even the logic books use atheism and theism as an example of how both sides have a burden of proof.

Since none of the other gods out there share the same qualities as the God of the New Testament, if you could establish that God exists, you would be hard pressed to say the New Testament didn't apply. If you could establish that Allah exists, or the god of the Sikhs (another monotheistic religion) exists, or the limited but bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament exists, you'd get very different qualities and very different religious results.

They're never right, either. If you want to be right about something, you have to stick your neck out and make a true/false claim. You have to risk the possibility of being wrong.

 

Except that they don't. For the agnostic, the answers would be, "Don't know or it cannot be determined," for all four statements. For the rock, the answers would be, "Not applicable," since a rock can neither believe nor disbelieve. It is incorrect to say that an agnostic disbelieves since the agnostic does not take a stand. It is imputing a belief (or disbelief) where none exists.