Ignosticism
- “The philosophical position that the question of the existence of God/gods is meaningless, because the term “God/gods” has no coherent and unambiguous definition. It may also be described as the theological position that other theological positions assume too much about the concept of God/gods.” ref
“Ignosticism (also called igtheism), may be considered synonymous with “Theological Noncognitivism” which is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as “God“, is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like “God exists” are cognitively meaningless.” ref
“Theological noncognitivists, like Ignosticism (also called igtheism), argue in different ways, depending on what one considers the “theory of meaning” to be. One argument holds to the claim that definitions of God are irreducible, self-instituting relational, circular. For example, a sentence stating that “God is He who created everything, apart from Himself”, is seen as circular rather than an irreducible truth.” ref
“Ignosticism, as a term was coined in 1964 by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism. And Michael Martin writing from a verificationist perspective concludes that religious language is meaningless because it is not verifiable.” ref
“George H. Smith uses an attribute-based approach in an attempt to prove that there is no concept for God: he argues that there are no meaningful attributes, only negatively defined or relational attributes, making the term meaningless. An example: Consider the proposition of the existence of a “pink unicorn“. When asserting the proposition, one can use attributes to at least describe the concept such a cohesive idea is transferred in language. With no knowledge of “pink unicorn”, it can be described minimally with the attributes “pink”, “horse”, and “horn”. Only then can the proposition be accepted or rejected. The acceptance or rejection of the proposition is distinct from the concept.” ref
“Steven J. Conifer contrasts theological noncognitivism with positive atheism, which describes not only a lack of a belief in gods but furthermore denies that gods exist thereby giving credence to the existence of a concept of something for “God” to refer to, because it assumes that there is something understandable to not believe in.” ref
“Paul Kurtz finds the view to be compatible with both weak atheism and agnosticism. However, Theodore Drange distinguishes noncognitivism and agnosticism, describing the latter as accepting that theological language is meaningful but being noncommittal about its truth or falsity on the grounds of insufficient evidence.” ref
I classify my Ignosticism:
Ignosticism: Sees theological arguments and language as equivocation, contradictory, and/or un-cognitively relatable other than emotionalism or the like. I see Ignosticism as using the Theological non-cognitivism arguments of “mind understanding issues” (rationalism challenging) and an evidentialist/verificationist arguments of “lacking evidence issues” (empiricism challenging). As an atheist, I am a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of god or gods. In my non-belief, I am also ignostic feeling that every theological position assumes too much about the concept of god(s). As an ignostic, I am a person who rational no idea of anything from reality whatever to label as “a concept of god” thus I can say I have no idea of anything that can connect to the term god and no reason to think anyone else can either.
- I see Theological noncognitivism as a kind of duel attack a semantic/logical and a reasoned psychological that the mind must be able to conceptualize.
- I see Ignosticism as using the Theological noncognitivism arguments of “mind understanding issues” (rationalism challenging) and an evidentialist/verificationist arguments of “lacking evidence issues” (empiricism challenging).
“Damien, I had a difficult time believing in God or any type because it seems unlikely that one supreme being could control everything yet allow hate, war, misery, suffering, and pain to hurt everyone on earth.” – Messanger
My response, well to hold the thinking that it is unlikely that one supreme being could control everything yet allow hate, war, misery, suffering, and pain to hurt everyone on earth. is actually an axiological atheism argument or moral argument against god(s).
No god Claims have Justification, Challenge?
“Damien, (responding to me saying no god claims have justification) there are problems thinking everything you believe needs a justification.” – Challenger
My response, so, are you saying something can be claimed as real but have no warrant to justify why one should agree or even entertain it?
“The idea that Induction is reliable can be claimed and seems like an important assumption, but arguments for it are fallacious. There are similar issues with thinking an external world exists.” – Challenger
My response, ok, and how do we discern any of it, if nothing has a need for justification? Because to me, I see you’re saying something is fallacious as asserting a justification stance and thus, is similar to what I think, which is valid, that there is a rationalistic need for justification. You are telling me I am wrong and that needs a justification, just as me showing your thinking wrong took a justification. If not then tell me how I am wrong utilizing no justification at all. So, try to prove me wrong because even if you do you will have provided a justification so then further proving my assertion of the need for justification.
“You are missing part of the conversation. Can you prove every belief needs a justification? Let’s say every belief needs a justification. Then you have to argue for every premise of every argument. That requires infinite arguments. What exactly is your argument that all beliefs require a justification? I am not challenging the importance of justification. I am challenging the idea that every belief has to have a justification. The example above is induction. Hume showed why arguments for induction will be fallacious. I did not just make the claim. Go ahead and prove induction is reliable if you can. It would revolutionize philosophy. In response to >>sure you can believe all kinds of things with no justification at all but we can’t claim them as true not wish others to actually agree unless something is somehow and or in some way justified. I already said every challenged claim in a debate has to be argued for. Every claim has a burden of proof anyway. Most beliefs that do not require justification are things basically everyone already agrees with. But if you debate someone who rejects the existence of an external world or the reliability of induction, you can’t prove that they have to agree as far as I can tell. In response to >>When is something true that has no justification? Lots of things are true and we don’t know they are true. To claim to know something is true is another issue. But maybe we know induction is reliable. Maybe we know there is an external world. If so, it’s not clear how we know those things. I already mentioned induction above and you never talked about it.” – Challenger
My response, “Sure, there can be many things that may be true but actually receiving rational agreement that they are intact true needs justification.”
“Right, I think we might have talked past one another a bit. I don’t expect agreement without a good argument.” – Challenger
My response, so you, like me want a justification?
Of course, it is a very important thing to me in general.” – Challenger
What is a god?
If you think you believe in a god, “what do you mean by god,” saying a name tells me not one thing about the thing I am asking to know “its” beingness/thingness/attributes/qualities. Thus, what is the thing “god” to which you are talking about and I want you to explain its beingness/thingness/attributes/qualities? Religious/theistic people with supernatural beliefs often seem as though they haven’t thought much about and that is something we can help using ontology questions about the beingness/thingness/attributes/qualities they are trying to refer too. What do you mean by god, when you use the term god? And, I am not asking you for the name you attach to the thing you label as a god. I don’t need to know what the god you believe is known “by.” I am asking, what is the thing you are naming as a god and what that thing is, its qualities every detail like all things have if they are real. Are you just making stuff up or guessing/hoping or just promoting unjustified ideas you want to believe, what is a god?
Do you want what is true or want what you believe without concern for what may actually be true?
Faith is Not Evidence of Reality
Faith is not a substance with which to judge the truth or falsehood of a reality claim, faith is not evidence of reality things, it’s a mental attitude. So bringing up trust, faith (trust to you) when one is asserting a reality thing without evidence is to offer a lie. So faith or trust can be at 100% and yet 100% wrong. Think there are millions of people of different faiths all believing with the same assurity that they and only they are right due to faith. But then you see the trust/faith dilemma you can’t determine who is wrong or right by a proclamation of faith because faith is strong belief without evidence or contrary to evidence it is not a valid test of testing reality or making valid claims about it. Faith is not something one offers if they have evidence but in theism and religions, faith is set in glimmering lights some prized possession believed by some who are desperate to force and keep believing that they use faith this not real world feeling of trust (like religion believers the world over) without valid evidence other then feelings that are not derived from reality but do rely on as well as involves fideism (faith-ism), which is Theistic Reality Confusion that to have faith one has proof of reality and this magic devoid world s filled by magic run with magical intervention often including reality was creating by magic and to some others magic will one day destroy reality. All nothing but stories supported by Theistic Reality Confusion on the truth value of faith. A rationalist mind rejects the use of the “F” word, FAITH as anything but FEELINGS. We use feelings and emotions in every thought that enters or leaves our minds we never stop emoting but that is not the same as trying to actively claim to use feelings and emotions as if they are facts and evidence i.e. FAITH (an expression of Fideism “faith-ism”).
Psychological certainty and Epistemic certainty?
Understanding Religion Evolution:
Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion
Fideism “faith-ism”
“Fideism (from the Latin “fides” or “faith”) is the view that religious belief depends on faith or revelation, rather than reason, intellect or natural theology. In this respect, it is in direct opposition to the doctrine of Deism. More accurately it objects to evidentialism, the notion that no belief should be held unless it is supported by evidence. As a result, it holds that theology may include logical contradictions without apology. It may or may not also involve active disparagement of the claims of reason. Fideism teaches that rational or scientific arguments for the existence of God (see the section on Philosophy of Religion) are fallacious and irrelevant, and have nothing to do with the truth of Christian theology because Christian theology teaches that people are saved by faith in the Christian God (i.e. trust in the empirically unprovable) and if the Christian God’s existence can be proven, either empirically or logically, then to that extent faith becomes unnecessary or irrelevant. Therefore, if Christian theology is true, no immediate proof of the Christian God’s existence is possible.” In religious faith beliefs, it is common to hear expressions like “believing with your heart” or “believe in faith alone no facts needed” is an expression of Fideism “faith-ism” and in the end Fideism (faith-ism) adding their chosen version of the “Theistic Reality Confusion.” 1
The god claim is a clown car in the magic big top of Fideism! The god claim is like a clown car rolling in from out of nowhere and it seems like it is only one or possibly a few bad ideas, but no. No, it is a dark festival that masquerades as truth but it is only an evil funhouse of mirrors that distorts reality. The term god is an empty meaningless term and if it was not for man-made myths or wild speculations which are usually the misinterpretations of nature, no one would claim to know what a god is or could be. Unless one falls back to the circus of fallacies in the magic big top of fideism and the faith fallacy that you do not need anything but faith to validate, justify, or prove any mystical belief you so desire.Theists like to confuse the understanding of atheism to lessen its obvious reason. So here’s a definition of atheism: all offered claims of god(s) are baseless and devoid of a shred of testable or provable evidence and the claims of or about gods either don’t represent in reality or claim to represent things contrary to reality requiring a conclusion of atheism (lack of belief or disbelief in theism). The god claim, is a clown car in the magic big top of Fideism (faith-ism)!
The god claim, is like a clown car rolling in from out of nowhere and it seems like it is only one or possibly a few bad ideas, but no. No, it is a dark festival that masquerades as truth but it is only an evil funhouse of mirrors that distorts reality. The term god is an empty meaningless term and if it was not for man-made myths or wild speculations which are usually the misinterpretations of nature, no one would claim to know what a god is or could be. Unless one falls back to the circus of fallacies in the magic big top of fideism and the faith fallacy that you do not need anything but faith to validate, justify, or prove any mystical belief you so desire.Theists like to confuse the understanding of atheism to lessen its obvious reason. So here’s a definition of atheism: all offered claims of god(s) are baseless and devoid of a shred of testable or provable evidence and the claims of or about gods either don’t represent in reality or claim to represent things contrary to reality requiring a conclusion of atheism (lack of belief or disbelief in theism). The god claim, is a clown car in the magic big top of Fideism (faith-ism)!
Atheistic Null Hypothesis: There is no God/Gods
Presuppositional Apologetics is Just Fascist Fideism
Presuppositionalism to me is fascist Christian fideism: Christofascism was caused by the embracing of arrogant authoritarian theology by Christian thinkers. Fascism, in this case, is a form of radical authoritarianism theory about epistemology: the theory of knowledge, beliefs, truth etc. especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. The ideological roots of fascism have been traced back to the 1880s, and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time notably supporting emotionalism, irrationalism. The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, and positivism. Fascism may seem a bit extreme a claim but it can start to sound like fundamental christianity in how it adopted policies such as promoting family values, banning literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion. Presuppositionalism positions itself as Christian authoritarian fideism (all must accept their apologetic theology). It puts others under philosophic skepticism and places itself under fideism. Fideism is roughly a doctrine that faith is the basis of all knowledge. Presuppositionalism is a school of Christian apologetics that believes the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought. It presupposes that the Bible is divine revelation and attempts to expose flaws in other worldviews. It claims that apart from presuppositions, one could not make sense of any human experience, and there can be no set of neutral assumptions from which to reason with a non-Christian.
The Doctrine of Fascism states, “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”
Let’s see how well The Doctrine of Presuppositionalism
sounds in the place of The Doctrine of Fascism
“The Presuppositionalist conception of the Christian apologetics is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Presuppositionalism is totalitarian, and the Presuppositionalist Christian apologetics — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.” Critics of presuppositional apologetics claim that it is logically invalid because it begs the question of the truth of Christianity and the non-truth of other worldviews. Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths (see natural theology). The word fideism comes from fides, the Latin word for faith, and literally means “faith-ism.” Fideism has received criticism from theologians who argue that fideism is not a proper way to worship God. According to this position, if one does not attempt to understand what one believes, one is not really believing. “Blind faith” is not true faith. Fideism can lead to relativism. The existence of other religions puts a fundamental question to fideists—if faith is the only way to know the truth of God, how are we to know which God to have faith in? Fideism alone is not considered an adequate guide to distinguish true or morally valuable revelations from false ones. An apparent consequence of fideism is that all religious thinking becomes equal. The major monotheistic religions become on par with obscure fringe religions, as neither can be advocated or disputed. As articulated by Friedrich Nietzsche, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”.
Circularity of Presuppositional Apologetics
The goal of presuppositional apologetics is to argue that the assumptions and actions of non-Christians require them to believe certain things about God, man and the world which they claim they do not believe. This type of argument is technically called a reductio ad absurdum in that it attempts to reduce the opposition to holding an absurd, i.e. contradictory position; in this case, both believing in facts of Christian revelation (in practice) and denying them (in word). So in essence, presuppositional apologetics attempts to claim all facts for the Christian worldview as the only framework in which they are intelligible. The reasoning in such arguments is fallacious because simply presupposing the conclusion is true in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion. Clearly, assuming a claim is true does not constitute evidence for that claim. (“X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true.”) They should be able to do this in a way that isn’t also equally valid for the truth claims of any other religion. If this can not be done, I can only assume that in their realm of thinking all religious scripture, from any religion is equally valid and equally true removing any special claim for christianity or they are using special pleading. Presuppositionalism is a form of fideism that is based on philosophical skepticism. Presuppositionalists generally believe that theological assumptions or presuppositions are loaded into the epistemological foundation of every ‘worldview’ [i.e. philosophy]. Since they also believe that every worldview built on false presuppositions is a false worldview and that Christianity is the only true religion, therefore, they conclude that only the worldview (i.e. philosophy) built on Christian presuppositions is true or reliable. The error is located in the very first premise, i.e. in the notion that theological assumptions or presuppositions lie behind every claim or position, theory, or philosophy. Why do they think that? Is Fascist Christian Fideism and the trinity of logical fallacies: begging the question, special pleading, and circular reasoning. If you point out the circularity in the thinking of Presuppositionalism they may say well under your worldview all positions are circular and under our worldview, we have the truth of Christian god so we are not bothered by such a claim of circularity in the thinking as god created all thinking.
“We can say that at their core all positions are circular,
however, this is not proof of the equalizations of all circular positions.”
I am stating this to address religion circular positions such as “are not equal to the problem of deduction (reason) and the problem of induction (evidence) underlining all problems in philosophy, especially epistemology. All deductive systems, logic in particular and philosophy in general, rely on the truth of its axioms or premises. So the problem of deduction is really that it is impossible to know the truth of axioms without assuming some a priori “fountain of truth” on which to rely. While rationalism claims access to the truth of innate ideas or revelation, skepticism rightfully points out that such fountain of truth is unattainable. The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge, since it focuses on the alleged lack of justification for either: Generalizing or Presupposing.
1. Generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class (for example, the inference that “all swans we have seen are white, and, therefore, all swans are white”, before the discovery of black swans) or
2. Presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold). Hume called this the principle of uniformity of nature.
Presuppositional apologetic fascist Christian fideism contrasts every non-Christian epistemology with Christian epistemology by saying that Christian epistemology believes in an ultimate rationalism while all other systems of epistemology believe in an ultimate irrationalism by the default of not being or starting with a Christian epistemology.
Certainly one of the most frequent characterizations of the presuppositional apologetic of Cornelius Van Til is that it is “fideistic.” Lewis, for example, is concerned that Van Til, despite serving forty-five years as a professor of apologetics, has constructed a system of theology, not a system of apologetics. In Lewis’s estimation, Van Til has not supplied a means of disputing with unbelievers concerning the truthfulness of Christianity. “In the name of defending the faith he has left the faith defenceless. Montgomery likewise warns against Van Til’s tendency to treat the unbeliever as a believer, working out systematic theology and its implications rather than verifying Christianity by “focusing upon their needs” and using as a “starting point” the “common rationality. Montgomery fears that Van Til has given the unbeliever “the impression that our gospel is as aprioristically, fideistically irrational as the presuppositional claims of its competitors.’” Pinnock also raises the same issue. While saluting the contribution that Van Til has made to “a virile twentieth century apologetic,” Pinnock contends that “a curious epistemology derived from a modern Calvinistic school of philosophy in Holland has led him to align his orthodox theology with a form of irrational fideism.”s Geisler, in his Christian Apologetics, includes Van Til in his chapter on fideism along with Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Barth. Geisler states that Van Til “speaks from a strong Reformed Biblical perspective theologically and yet in an absolute revelational presuppositionalism apologetically. “Methodological fideism” is Geisler’s term for this position.? Geisler notes five “central contentions” that are characteristic of fideism (including, apparently, that of Van Til): (1) faith alone is the way to God; (2) truth is not found in the purely rational or objective realm, if it is there at all; (3) evidence and reason do not point definitively in the direction of God; (4) the tests of truth are existential, not rational; and (5) not only God’s revelation but his grace is the source of all truth. Hanna has contended that “presuppositionalism” (as he terms it) is able, in response to inquiries as to the warrant for belief, to answer only “in terms of obscurantistic fideism. Hanna regularly uses presuppositionalism and fideism interchangeably in his book. More recently, Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley have argued that protestations to the contrary notwithstanding-Van Til’s apologetic has no place (or at least not warranted place) for reasoning with or giving evidence to unbelievers. In their judgment, fideism is the inevitable result of Van Til’s presuppositionalism. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
God, the Presuppositional Error
First, truly what is a god and how can you claim to know about it? Guessing is not evidence, neither is wild, unfounded assertions that are written in reality devoid documents such as holy books. Atheists do not have to prove that gods do not exist, as gods have never been proven to exist. Nor is there any good reason to think they could exist.
Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
Vague Theism or god Somethingism: just say NO
“Damien sir, i am in a dilemma, can you help me???? i don’t believe in any particular god, but i believe in the god, i believe everything exist in this whole universe is part of god, am i an atheist????? each & everything made out of some mass & energy……” – Challenger
My response, You are a pantheist, a doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of god(s).
“Damien, as the conservation theory explain that the total mass & energy is constant, & we are made from these mass & energy, why we are not part of the god???” – Challenger
My response, To me to call a thing god is to say it’s a superpower with a mind or intelligent expressed will. I don’t see anything like that in nature.
“Damien, sorry sir, but to me it’s the entire mass & energy of the cosmos, which runs on some simple some physical rule……” – Challenger
My response, Then it’s not a god.
“Damien, why sir????” – Challenger
My response, It’s like me calling love the expressed emotion god because all humans and most animals have this. But this is a logical fallacy of categorical error. A category mistake (or category error) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a speaker (knowingly or not) confuses the properties of the whole with the properties of a part. It contains the fallacy of composition (assuming the whole has the properties of the part) and the fallacy of division (assuming the part has the properties of the whole).
“Damien, i believe everything i can touch, see or feel, are part of god, even my toilet also is part of my god…… that’s why i never go to the temple (by the certificate i’m a hindu), or any kind of religious place…. my work is my religion…. & god (as I believe) never failed me….. i always get result as i worked…” – Challenger
My response, Everything in the real world can fail and does so often. You sound like you have made your claim of god above failure. However, if there is no standard to fail by then there is also no standard to success. So, either your titled god does nothing or to you it does everything but then your label of god actually ends up meaning nothing….
Why are all gods unjustified?
Okay, so, anything you claim needs justification but no one has evidence of god claim attributes they are all unjustified. All god talk as if it is real acts as if one can claim magic is real by thinking it is so or by accepting someone’s claim of knowing the unjustifiably that they understand an unknowable, such as claims of gods being anything as no one has evidence to start such fact devoid things as all knowing (there is no evidence of an all-knowing anything). Or an all-powerful (there is no evidence of an all-powerful anything). Or the most ridiculous an all-loving (there is no evidence of an all-loving anything). But like all god claims, they are not just evidence lacking, the one claiming them has no justified reason to assume that they can even claim them as proof (it’s all the empty air of faith). Therefore, as the limit of all people, is to only be able to justify something from and that which corresponds to the real-world to be real and the last time I checked there is no magic of any kind in our real-world experiences. So, beyond the undefendable magical thinking not corresponding to the real-world how much more ridicules are some claimed supreme magical claimed being thus even more undefendable to the corresponding real-world, which the claimed god(s) thinking is a further and thus more extremely unjustified claim(s).
What is this god you seem to think you have any justification to claim?
Saying that some features of reality are not fully known is not proof of god myth claims. II’s not like every time we lack knowledge, we can just claim magic and if we do we are not being intellectually honest to the appraisal of reality that is devoted of anything magic. So what is a god, when no one has some special knowledge to say what it could be and shotgunning unjustifiable hypothetical claims that one thing or another that you like must gold some magic which there is no evidence of magic anything? Thus, to assert magic anythings by its nature an unjustified ascertain to even present. God claims are presupposition errors in how they are most often assumed to be a hypothetical explanation to the unknown or fear of something it’s not from facts in reality.
“Reason is my only master, whereas faith offered as reality is most defiantly not my friend.”
What do you mean by god Evidence?
As ethical atheists, we are not ok with pretend. So we are not silent because sacred falsehoods must end, even if the truth may offend. What is Faith but an unjustified belief that is willfully supported in violation to The Ethics of Belief, as faith holds a burden of proof until justified so faith claiming to “know” anything by this means is intellectually dishonest, uninformed on good belief etiquette or confused thinking offered as pseudo-knowledge? Theists like to confuse the understanding of atheism to lessen its obvious reason. So, here’s a definition of atheism: all offered claims of god(s) are baseless and devoid of a shred of testable or provable evidence and the claims of or about gods either don’t represent in reality or claim to represent things contrary to reality as well as contradicts each other requiring a conclusion of atheism (lack of belief or disbelief in theism). The god claim, is like a clown car in the magic big top of Fideism “faith-ism”, and Presuppositional Apologetics is Just Fascist Fideism all of which demonstrates the Theistic Reality Confusion. Sure there are intelligent theists and that does not in any way make theism even reasonable as one can be brilliant and hold logical fallacies as their truth and that like any thinking errors like theism can happen to an otherwise sound thinker. I strive to be a sound thinker thus I am an axiological atheist and some may wonder what is that?
Axiological Atheism (“philosophic” value theory/value science “formal axiology” social science” atheism) is Classed Under Anthropocentric (human-centered) arguments: “Axiological atheism favors humanity as the absolute source of ethics and values, and permits individuals to resolve moral problems without resorting to God. Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Freud all used this argument to some extent to convey messages of liberation, full-development, and unfettered happiness.” – Link
“Damien, your Axiological Atheism sounds Highly interesting! One point, though. Have you considered that all of this philosophizing will mean nothing when you are dead? Human ideology on the concepts of mortality have been around since the dawn of mankind and will continue until every last human being is dead.” – Challenger
My response, philosophizing like all science will mean nothing after “we” are dead but I care about more than me I want universal betterment and true humanity flourishing so philosophizing like all science matter in this goal does it not? I am Not just Atheist, I am a proud Anti-religionist as well as Anti-theist. Those atheists who still like esoteric religions or religious philosophies, that is not me at all I oppose it all. Yes, you read that right, I reject it all, every religion or even pseudo-religion like. Just so I am not misunderstood, this includes buddhism, satanism, taoism, paganism, wicca, spiritualism, etc. Don’t get me wrong I am against ALL religion. What makes some believed Truth is actually True? To me, truth, in general, is a value judgment we place on what we think or believe is evidence or reason. Therefore, the rational imperative on us as intellectually honest thinkers to demonstrate that the proposed evidence or reasoned assumption is actually of a high epistemic standard with as much valid and reliable reason and evidence as possible from a credible source as possible which then makes some believed “Truth” actually worthy to be seen as Epistemologically True thus a “justified true belief”. Broadly, epistemic means “relating to knowledge (itself) or to the degree of its validation” and epistemological means ” critical study of knowledge validity, methods, as well as limits to knowledge and the study or theory of various aspects of or involved in knowledge”.
I have justification to claim to know what I claim to know, that is proof, not faith which is unproof “Unjustified Belief.” Do you have such Justification? By claiming to know something by faith is to act in a way mirroring a dishonest thinker, as intellectually honest thinkers don’t claim knowledge without justification.
As a general thinking in all my epistemology is Justificationism:(philosophy) is an approach that regards the justification of a claim as primary, while the claim itself is secondary; thus, criticism consists of trying to show that a claim cannot be reduced to the authority or criteria that it appeals to. In a general way, “Justificationism” to me, is the presupposition that claims to knowledge must be authenticated, certified, verified, validated, confirmed, proven, corroborated, back up, show to be accurate, confirmed or in some other way shown to be justified. In other words, if a belief is knowledge, then it is in some way justified, and if a belief is unjustified then it is not knowledge. Justificationism” is the presupposition that claims to knowledge are on trial and the desire is make sure or demonstrate that (something) is true, thus in a Justificationism presupposition inquiry any claim to knowledge can be analyzed, for value by asking for its justification, and failure to provide sufficient justification is enough to reject that claim to knowledge until adequate justification is provided. In this context, a rational ethical belief (Ethics of Belief), is one which is justified, and a rational person is one who provides a rational ethical belief, with good reasons or proof to justify what is believed. For a justificationist, the purpose of philosophical investigation is not a search for faith (unjustified) belief, but only a search for justified true belief. This difference is subtle but important: while a justified belief is always rationally justified as true, it still must be realized that an unjustified belief is not necessarily always false but indeed is not justified. Failure to provide sufficient justification is enough to reject an offered claim to knowledge as unjustified belief (faith: belief without evidence or belief even up against contradictory evidence). These presuppositions constitute a reinforced justificationism uses and defines the rules by which competing proposals are evaluated, it can ensure any attempt to introduce faith (unjustified) belief(s) can be dismissed as unjustified. “Theory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, and probability. Loosely speaking, justification is the reason that someone (properly) holds a belief. When a claim is in doubt, justification can be used to support the claim and reduce or remove the doubt. Justification can use empiricism (the evidence of the senses), authoritative testimony (the appeal to criteria and authority), or logical deduction.” Ref
I have to challenge your beliefs, because you won’t. To me, every religion was new at some point and had someone who made shit up, yes all of them, every religion. As an atheist, I am a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of god or gods. In my non-belief, I am also ignostic feeling that every theological position assumes too much about the concept of god(s). As an ignostic, I am a person who rational no idea of anything from reality whatever to label as “a concept of god” thus I can say I have no idea of anything that can connect to the term god and no reason to think anyone else can either. As an anti-theist, I am a person who is active in opposition to theism: both the concepts of god(s) as well as the religions that support them. This is because theistic concepts and theistic religions are harmful and that even if theistic beliefs were true, they would be undesirable. As an anti-religionist, I am a person who can look at religion on the whole and see it is detrimental to the progress of humanity thus am in opposition to all and every religion, not even just opposition to organized religion. In case you were wondering, I am anti-pseudoscience, anti-supernatural, and anti-superstition as well. Therefore, I am a proud anti-religionist, not just atheist or even anti-theist. Yes, I am an atheist, anti-theist, and an anti-religionist. I am against flawed superstitious magical beliefs like god(s) and/or religion. However, I am not against people. I have many strong opinions and beliefs as well as my challenge of others or I am against many types of beliefs especially if they involve supernatural or superstitious, or harm. However, I am not against people nor am I against their free right to believe as they wish. To me, everyone owns themselves and their beliefs are theirs as well, and will be held accountable for those beliefs. Thus, to me, not I or anyone has the right to force people on what to believe. I as others do have the right to voice our beliefs, just as I or others then have the right to challenge voiced beliefs. Long live mental freedom. Proudly, I am an atheist, anti-theist, and an anti-religionist.
“Damien, what’s your philosophical position? Are you a materialist who believes that everything is reducible to physical? Idealism, Neutral Monist, etc.?” – Questioner
My response, I am a metaphysical naturalist (basically everything is reducible to physical) because of the universal reliable truth of the application of the scientific methods reliable and only demonstration using methodological naturalism, no magic, not even simple supernatural found in any amount ever anywhere by anyone.
“Damien, regardless of fancy wording we can not prove something is true without evidence just the same as we can not prove something is not true without evidence. Do you not agree that is the real argument?” – Questioner
My response, No, I don’t agree, it is always so. If I say I have the Nile River in my pocket you can’t see in my pocket but if you are rational and assess just what is allowable in reality, you don’t have to even look I know as you such a claim is preposterous to the point it can defy reason thus anyone would rightly reject a claim that a very limited space of a pants pocket watch can only at most fit something about 10 inches long but the Nile River is 4,258 mi long and even if it could be moved, which it can’t, more issues, but all and all it is clear that you can with certainty say that the Nile River in my pocket does not exist. I will give you another. Or say I said I have a money in my front pocket and you look finding nothing where it would be if there thus you now have negative evidence of my pocket which is empty when reasonably searched and nothing, you rightly can confirm with certainty that the pocket is, in fact, empty and not filled with money as I had claimed. You are certain there is no money in my pocket exists. There are many more examples but I think you can see what I am saying. To me even your question, while a good one exposes how the approach to reason may be used differently depending on the thinker. I am a Methodological Rationalist, I rarely am pushed to doubt as a default, instead, I see reason as my default and at times it may be responsible to doubt, but I get to that conclusion because of reasoning. A common saying in pseudologic is “You can’t prove a negative.” This is, simply not true. This is clearly not true because any statement can be rewritten into the negation of its negation. Any provable statement can be written as a negative. For example, “X is true” can be rewritten as “X is not false”, a negative statement! If “X is true” can be proven true, then you have also proven a negative statement “X is not false”. Moreover, even if it is widely believed that you can’t prove a negative. Going so far as to have people thinking that it is a law of logic—you can’t prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq and Bigfoot don’t exist. This widespread belief is flatly, 100% wrong.
In this little essay, I show precisely how one can prove a negative, to the same extent that one can prove anything at all. Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. Per the traditional aphorism, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, positive evidence of this kind is distinct from a lack of evidence or ignorance of that which should have been found already, had it existed. In this regard Irving Copi writes: “In some circumstances, it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.” — Copi, Introduction to Logic (1953), p. 95
Here are some links about proving a negative: Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link We fight IDEAS, not people, so while I wish to destroy harmful or false ideas I wish to uplift and empower people by inspiring their will to reason and know REASON is often the enemy of ignorance.
My Strongest Explicit Atheism “positive” / “strong” / “hard” atheists similar to Antitheist Atheism.
My Atheism: “Axiological Atheism”
God: “antihumanism thinking”
God thinking is a superstitiously transmitted disease, that usually is accompanied by some kind of antihumanism thinking. Relatively all gods, in general, are said to have the will and power over humans. Likewise, such god claims often are attributed to be the ones who decide morality thus remove the true morality nature in humans that actually assist us in morality. So, adding a god is to welcome antihumanism burdens, because god concepts are often an expression. This is especially so when any so-called god somethingism are said to make things like hells is an antihumanism thinking. A general humanism thinking to me is that everyone owns themselves, not some god and everyone is equal. Such humanism thinking, to me, requires a shunning of coercion force that removes a human’s rights or the subjugation of oppression and threats for things like requiring belief or demanding faith in some other unjustified abstraction from others. Therefore, humanism thinking is not open to being in such beliefs, position or situations that violate free expression of one’s human rights which are not just relinquished because some people believed right or their removal is at the whims of some claimed god (human rights removing/limiting/controlling = ANTIHUMANISM). Humanism to me, summed up as, humans solving human problems through human means. Thus, humanism thinking involves striving to do good without gods, and not welcoming the human rights removing/limiting/controlling, even if the myths could somehow come to be true.
Stop Promoting Errors in Thinking like gods
Theists seem to have very odd attempts as logic, as they most often start with some evidence devoid god myth they favor most often the hereditary favorite of the family or culture that they were born into so a continuous blind acceptance generation after generation of force indicated faith in that which on clear instinctually honest appraisal not only should inspire doubt but full disbelief until valid and reliable justification is offered.
I Hear Theists?
I hear what theists say and what I hear is that they make assertions with no justification discernable of or in reality just some book and your evidence lacking faith. I wish you were open to see but I know you have a wish to believe. I, however, wish to welcome reality as it is devoid of magic which all religions and gods thinkers believe. I want to be mentally free from misinformed ancient myths and free the minds of those confused in the realm of myths and the antihumanism views that they often attach to. So, I do have an agenda human liberation from fears of the uninformed conception of reality.
No god Claims have Justification, Challenge?
“Damien, (responding to me saying no god claims have justification) there are problems thinking everything you believe needs a justification.” – Challenger
My response, So, are you saying something can be claimed as real but have no warrant to justify why one should agree or even entertain it?
“The idea that Induction is reliable can be claimed and seems like an important assumption, but arguments for it are fallacious. There are similar issues with thinking an external world exists.” – Challenger
My response, Ok, and how do we discern any of it, if nothing has a need for justification? Because to me, I see your saying something is fallacious as asserting a justification stance and thus, is similar to what I think, which is valid, that there is a rationalistic need for justification. You are telling me I am wrong and that needs a justification, just as me showing your thinking wrong took a justification. If not then tell me how I am wrong utilizing no justification at all. So, try to prove me wrong because even if you do you will have provided a justification so then further proving my assertion of the need for justification.
“Do you know god?”- Challenger
“Damien, God exists go to YouTube and type in Dr.Dino u will understand.”- Challenger
My response, What is a god and how do you know some claim about that concept is real?
“How can u believe that a spinning created life and I also wonder why we don’t see people evolve now days can u observe evolution”- Challenger
“Dot.”- Challenger
“You have no responce? Exactly.”- Challenger
My response, What do you think you did? You did nothing at all to demonstrate magic was, real, did you? NO. Again, what is a god?
Animistic superstition origins of bible god.
El-Shaddai is the claimed original name of bible god Exodus 6:2 it occurs 48 times in the bible 42 of which in the patriarchal period, but which animistic mountain superstition is this god attributed to? Here are a few mountains/hills of bible god: Mount Zion-Psalms 132:13; Mount Sinai-Exodus 19; Mount Horeb-1 Kings 19:8; Mount Paran- Habakkuk 3:3; Mount Hor- Numbers 20:22-29. More animistic superstition origins of bible god as an earthquake: Judges 5:5 – mountains quaked at the presence of Yahweh; Isaiah 64:1- mountains might quake at Your presence; The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; Psalm 18:7 – The earth trembled and quaked, and the mountains shook trembled because god was angry; Nahum 1:5-6 – Mountains quake because of god and the hills dissolve, who can endure god’s anger; Isaiah 64:3 You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence; Habakkuk 3:10 the mountains saw god and quaked.
Bible Believer Challenge
“Damien I am a Christian because the evidence supports the gospel (bible) as being objectively true.” – Challenger
My response, wait, are you saying there is evidence of magic or supernatural? I think not, so it’s still belief built of wishful thinking supported by the confusion of looking through an indoctrinated religious mind bent on belief not truth. And I must question your trust in worthy compared to unworthy evidence standard for your source like the gospels. Was it not this reality confused gospel, that said the sun stopped one as well as how there was light on the earth before the sun and the moon were claimed to have been created which was not until the fourth day if I remember right as well as referencing pillars of the earth also expressing that the World is Flat. And what really is a god?
*I hear all the time but did you read the bible?*
Read the bible, you mean the book of dogmatic propaganda. Yes, sadly I have. I read two versions of the bible, the King James, and the NIV. I have read history, anthropology, and archaeology of world religions and understood right thinking because of philosophy. I know a lot, I don’t claim to know everything but certainly enough to firmly know religion and gods are myths. I could list countless scriptures to contradict the bible’s credibility (it has none) as I have listed some but true believers will believe as they wish (blind faith). The male god (Single God Religions (Monotheism) = Man-o-theism) is an invented idea no more than 5,000 years the female goddess at least 12,000 (Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses as well as gods)but the first worship was and the world’s oldest ritual was of a large Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago.
- You have to agree, there is a possibility of god?
- Debunking Jesus?
- jESUS (a fake story) explained as a real bigot but not a gOD
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Archaeology Knowledge Challenge?
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
You say you believe in a possibility of your favored god-claim?
Okay, let’s think through what you claim to believe, if you think there is a possibility of your god-claim existing as something in reality, then there would also have be, to YOU, I am guessing, a possibility of every other god claim in recorded history being possible? I assume by your single-possibility-god-claim that you don’t think all god-claims are possible with the same level of equality in the amount of possibility, do you? That’s even ridiculous to you as a single-possibility-god believer, right? But hold on, wouldn’t that require YOU, I am guessing, as a single-possibility-god believer, to reject believing in any equal possibility of any possible gods, as that would be ridiculous, because they need evidence, right? But hold on, wouldn’t that require YOU, I am guessing, as a single-possibility-god believer, who also like the gods you reject out of hand, also lack any evidence but empty assertions, a single-possibility-god, right? But that is no different than the god-claim you favor belief in, which is a claimed-god-something seen as if it is possible, yet it too is a claim without any evidence. But hold on, wouldn’t not believing in things without evidence, be better? Well, not believing in things without evidence, is exactly why I don’t believe any gods, including one you may favor. Believing in things without evidence, like all god-claims, are like magical thinking child’s play, believing any of them is empty intellectual confusion, as to believe without evidence, is uncritical thinking, foolishness like hiding from imaginary shadows thinking they can hurt you.
You have to agree, there is a possibility of god?
No, possibility, my friend, is not a thing in isolation; as in one needs a frame of reference or there is no possibility to discern anything to attach a possibility too. Without a frame of reference, all you have is just an uncalculated and unknown communicated claim with no relevance or attributed properties to assert. We need to think deep and broad to see many things missed. This reality itself requires a belief, in many presuppositions like there is reality, I the thinker, am actually in control of my thinking, that this thinking is rational and that what I observe is real and corresponds to that real reality, I am an active agent awake and not dreaming this is mostly an internal awareness in confrontation in how I interact with it. We can bypass this and say we don’t believe it but we all actively relate in the world so it is valid to believe.
Justifying Judgments: Possibility and Epistemic Utility theory
The Rationalist Desire for Epistemically Credible Thinking
As a rationalist when I debate or challenge a position or thinking I want the epistemically provable truth, as I am not only closed to my own ideas, rather, I am just as willing to adapt my position if given strong warrant or justification supported by valid and reliable reason and evidence with epistemic credibility.
“Incorporating a prediction into future planning and decision making is advisable only if we have judged the prediction’s credibility. This is notoriously difficult and controversial in the case of predictions of future climate. By reviewing epistemic arguments about climate model performance, we discuss how to make and justify judgments about the credibility of climate predictions. Possibly proposing arguments that justify basing some judgments on the past performance of possibly dissimilar prediction problems. This encourages a more explicit use of data in making quantitative judgments about the credibility of future climate predictions, and in training users of climate predictions to become better judges of value, goodness, credibility, accuracy, worth or usefulness.” Ref
Stop believing in supernatural and be honest in the wonderment of natural reality as it truly is.
Supernatural is our minds animating reality because it is beyond our understanding. That lack of grasping and accepting reality as it is does not change it into anything more than it should be. It only shows how profoundly human emotionalism can lead us to conceptual error when allowed to invade our method of knowledge acquisition. For us to finally grasp the amazing facts of reality (naturalism which is proven) we must stop the false beliefs (supernatural which is disproven) holding us back from doing so.
Stop the insecurity of wanting or needing to believe in the possibility of magic.
I see all magical thinking “religious belief” and doubting or rejecting the magical thinking “atheistic disbelief” and stating a possibility of magical thinking being real “agnostic belief”. Allowing that magical thinking or the possibility of magical thinking being real is clearly not supported by any facts in reality. Thus, it is just more a social engineering “indoctrinated belief” connected to learned magical thinking supernaturalism and/or superstitionism. When asked whether they believe in the existence of one or more Gods and/or Goddesses, Theists will answer in the affirmative; strong Atheists will say no. Agnostics often cannot give a straight “Yes” or “No” answer. Agnostics might respond with one of the following (Weak Theism or Weak Atheism):
Weak Atheism: I don’t know. (So, they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: The Gods that various believers worship are like unicorns: they are obviously fictional creations of humanity. But, who knows. They might actually exist.
Weak Atheism: There is no way to know, but perhaps someone will find a proof or disproof in the future. (So, they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: There will never be any way to know. (So, they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: The question is meaningless. (So, they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: I don’t know but will lead my life in the assumption that no God exists. (So they dont believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: I cannot give an opinion because there is no way that we can prove the existence or non-existence of God-given currently available knowledge. (So they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: I cannot give an opinion because there is no way to know, with certainty, anything about God, either now or in the future. (So they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Atheism: I will have to withhold my opinion until God, if he exists, decides to make his presence known. Rearranging, say, 10,000 stars in the sky to read “I AM” would be a great start. Even recreating an amputated leg would be a strong indicator. But, of course, neither has ever happened. (So they don’t believe theism thus are atheists)
Weak Theism: I doubt it, but cannot be sure God doesn’t exist.
Weak Theism: I think so, but cannot be positive that God exists.
Weak Theism: I don’t know but will lead my life assuming that God does exist — perhaps because of the rewards I would receive if God does exist.
Weak Theism: I think that God exists, but have no proof.
Weak Theism: I worship a god (or a god and goddess, or a goddess, or some combination of god(s) and goddess(es) but cannot prove that they exist.
Weak Theism: Yes, God exists. But we do not know anything about God at this time.
Weak Theism: Yes, God exists. But we have no possibility of knowing anything about God, now or in the future.
The god “magic” is a Non-Sequitur
A hypothetical god(s) “magic” offered as a reason for a known aspect of naturalism such as saying, “there is so much beauty in nature, there must be a god” is a Non-Sequitur. Which is better understood as “there is so much beauty in nature, there must be supernatural ‘magic’.” Hearing the god “magic” claim for what it is truly saying helps expose that it is a logical fallacy of Non-Sequitur. This term Non-Sequitur translates to “doesn’t follow”. This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists.
So, the saying there must be a non-natural god hypnosis because nature is beautiful, is demonstrating a logical conflict why would anyone have to think because nature is beautiful god “magic” must exist? If nature wasn’t beautiful would they say this was evidence a devil existed? Since they say both a god and devil exist should nature be less beautiful? Is nature as a whole truly beautiful? Think of all death and harm from earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, rip currents, coastal erosion, avalanches, mudslides, lightning, wildfires, erupting volcanoes, drought, hurricanes, tornados, disease, decay, and extreme weather freezing cold or sweltering heat. The world is cruel, pitiless and has a harmful ugly side so maybe nature is not so beautiful after all and you just only want to see the good side just like you only want to see a possibility for your magical god. Supersessionism is the Mother of Supernaturalism, thus Religion is its child.
How does superstitious and magical thinking conform or limit how faith introduces religious and sacralizing thinking particularly on the concept of gods?
Faith hurts itself as it desires to build on its self which only serve to topple the stack of cards it invents to shore it up trying to create more faith. Thus, faith will always involve a willingness to not understand and offer this as a kind of evidence. True believers are utilizing faith as a product to conceive the true concept of gods are then left saying “faith is beyond reason thus with such reasonless faith in god nothing is impossible”, “you must trust in faith and believe even if it contradicts reason in order that you may understand”, Or the believer will say something like “I believe in faith in order that I might understand and make sense of god.”
Let’s look how that plays out in the bible: 1 Corinthians 2:5 your faith might not rest on human wisdom; Proverbs 3:5 don’t lean not on your own understanding; Hebrews 11:1 faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen; Proverbs 1:7 fear of god is the beginning of knowledge.
Gods need to be well defined to be understood however the more they are defined the more problematic abilities come into thoughtful challenge because their unattainable complexities come into play defying reason. Yet on the other end if gods are simply left undefined they are meaningless or cease as being able to hold reason as be usable as god concepts. I surmise that gods are supernatural agents which are early humans created that started as spirits forces who were wholly lacking developed formal structure and the substance in beingness. It is this unconfirmed or limiting spirits forces concept of gods that comprise this emerging container unit which the mysterious elements of nature could be put in. But as increasingly higher thinking beings evolve who likewise kept gaining more awareness of the discernable patterns of the mysterious elements of nature attributed as involving spirits forces then to be used managed and understood to keep faith needed to be defined more. So early humans made their spirits forces which had before been undefined lacking beingness or contained no full unit of beingness into which the needed knowable source or like us anthropomorphic spirits forces details could involve reason. But the more this container unit comprising spirits forces which lack understanding morphed into more complex concepts of goddesses then gods it the less the reason it entails.
Thus, superstitious and magical thinking commonly evolves from unorganized conceptions and then overtime grouped together turning into organized forms often denoting some amount of anthropomorphism. This, anthropomorphism though unrealized are what faith needs to create concepts found in what we refer to as religious thinking and the existence of supernatural agents like gods which require anthropomorphic to be thought as even being real. Some may try to challenge whether in “their” conceptions of religion and their creator deity is anthropomorphic (i.e. exhibits human characteristics; such as seen in in the phrase god is a jealous god Exodus 20:5). Moreover, this fact of an undeniable anthropomorphic connection found in all creator deities even in their most ethereal forms can be easily addressed, for instance if you say the “unknown/unknowable” origins of the universe involves an “it” something with a beingness or “I-ness” (like an actual being) in some form which then reasonably can be seen as denoting some amount of anthropomorphism. A problematic reason involved issue this beingness god with anthropomorphic attributes entails is how it evokes a limited realm of personality in which is fixed in time, space, and place. But to do so then makes the anthropomorphic god becomes in some way corporeal (that is, material and natural not supernatural) within its association with beingness.
However, if we try to sidestep this problem and think in terms of a non-beingness god or non-anthropomorphic concept of god such a creator deity becomes a blind power present in uncountable ways. Thus undefinable and an “unknown/unknowable” thing which possibly could be labeled a force which lacks all beingness but where would that leave us? Even if we then buy this creator deity concept of a force which can somehow lacking all beingness thus is a non-being of anti-anthropomorphic blind power we would seem to be left accepting a creator deity who entailed an expression of nothingness or “unknown/unknowable” presence. How then could this still be attributed as being a thing with somethingness?
Does such a nothing or non-defined entity such as this simply through logic ceases to exist as a reasonable conception that is allowed to be referred to as god? Can thoughts about the direction of a creator force with purpose be any more demonstrable or ascertainably different than our notions of purposeless direction (i.e. I say the wind is a purposeless natural force whereas gods are often attributed as being the force of purpose in wind; such as the phrases god made a wind blow and the waters subsided Genesis 8:1; god brought an east wind and with it came the locusts Exodus 10:13; god drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land Exodus 14:21-22)? Let us assume that a deity is ultimately an indirect reference to anthropomorphism which is found in the proposal of god which involves the absolute infinite beingness; thus, the quality of omnipotence (i.e. it can do everything it wants to).
Omnipotence would logically be needed for a being or force of creation in that to be an all-powerful designer of the said universe a power beyond any another would reasonably be required. But if this designer of the universe is an all-powerful and infinite thing is, thus, is being attributed to an unbound possibility of actions which creates an omnipotence paradox. Such as could a said infinite creator being or force be able to destroy itself or deny its own existence? If the deity or force is omnipotent it can destroy itself, or deny its own existence but an infinite being cannot be eliminated by definition which creates a contradiction.
gOD Believer, Pease Think Critically
If you are a believer think critically, it is not the one deity you see as possible without evidence but to notice how many gods or goddesses you reject as impossible without evidence. What kind of thinker can believe that rationally? There are literally thousands of religions being practiced today and many others once were once thought true in history just to be reworked or rejected.
The world’s 20 largest religions and their number of believers are:
Christianity (2.1 billion)
Islam (1.3 billion)
Nonreligious (Secular/Agnostic/Atheist) (1.1 billion)
Hinduism (900 million)
Chinese traditional religion (394 million)
Buddhism 376 million
Primal-indigenous (300 million)
African traditional and Diasporic (100 million)
Sikhism (23 million)
Juche (19 million)
Spiritism (15 million)
Judaism (14 million)
Bahai (7 million)
Jainism (4.2 million)
Shinto (4 million)
Cao Dai (4 million)
Zoroastrianism (2.6 million)
Tenrikyo (2 million)
Neo-Paganism (1 million)
Unitarian-Universalism (800,000) [Ref]
If you can believe only in a possible God of Christianity, you have chosen to reject Allah, Vishnu, Lord Buddha, Waheguru, Ngame, Isis, Kali, Brigid, Kuan Yin, Europa, Aphrodite, Amaterasu, Aurora, Chicomecoatl, Ishtar, Antares, and all of the thousands of other gods or goddess that other people worship today or once held faith in. It is quite likely that you rejected these other gods or goddesses without ever looking into their history, religions, reading or even learning about them. You may not even know some of the names listed or have heard much about them or the thousands of other deities and mythical beings people now or through time have put faith in. Most people believer or agnostic are singly indoctrinated all their life and simply have absorbed the dominant faith in your home or in the society you grew up in, thus you now see only it as the only possible truth. In the same way, the followers of all these other religions have chosen to reject god or goddesses without reading or even learning about them as well and as many believers put faith over scientific facts. If you are a believer or agnostic only your possibility is true and you think their gods are imaginary, similarly they think you’re god or goddess is imaginary. In other words, each religious person on earth today arbitrarily rejects thousands of gods or goddesses as imaginary. A rational person armed with history, science, psychology, sociology, biology, and archeology rejects all human gods or goddess myths equally, because all of them are equally human inventions. How do we know that they are human inventions? Show me a claimed god that is not limited to having to be promoted by people, only transferred by people who were told about this brand of god or it stays unknown or stops being known when it stops being talked about.
“Sounds like these claimed all-powerful gods are not any power at all, instead they are universally limited and as fragile as any lie, you know just stop telling a gOD lie and it stops existing.”
These gOD myths like all myths not only must be told and retold by humans to other humans they suffer another weakness all myths share in that they tend to be changed or altered as they are retold. Some say not my god (let’s say Christians) but this is a pure delusion and undeserved self-confidence as the over 40,000 sects and denominations as well as the many different translations of one book the bible which easily has over 100 versions in English alone. And even using the same translation people differ how they view or believe the myth of the bible god, you can see why now right because it is only a myth that is limited to being believed and being told. Still not convinced all gods are lies even the one god myth you may like or believe you choose or chose “more likely where raised in and forced to believe” then stop telling people about it and see if it keeps going as always gods have no more power than the believer gives them. God myths are weak and fragile simply stop believing in them and stop talking about them and they stop existing. Just think what claimed god if real requires you to talk about it or it stops being known. What real features of the world stop existing just because we stop talking about them or stop believing in them? Simply imagine that one of these god myths was actually real it would automatically be real not limited to being expressed to stay seen as real. We know that all gods are myths, as if one of these thousands of mythic gods were actually real, then its believers would be experiencing real, undeniable benefits. These undeniable benefits would not only be obvious to everyone they could be testable and demonstrable limited only to some the believers in the one claimed real god. But spoiler alert no such evidence exists, not that it’s a real shocker as all gods are myths. That right there is no special anything followers of a claimed one true god have others don’t have but an odd belief in a God myth as true when there is no proof of such claims not even in the lives of the ones doing the claiming. Because if some myth god was real couldn’t we at least see actual proof in the lives of the ones believing that only occurred in the lives of the believers and was testable and demonstrable like have fewer diseases, or more so-called blessings like more money, etc. In fact, is a belief in a god meant anything at all there would be and I say must be, testable and demonstrable proofs directly connected to or special attributions only surrounding the lives followers of some claimed true god or it’s just not anything true. I know if you are a believer in some claimed god you may defensibly say well even if there is not any testable or demonstrable proofs you still should believe as you don’t want to go to hell if you are wrong, to which we all should say and that works for you? As in what a bunch of nonsense and simple reasoning supported only by fear. Stop this unjustified fear and live life free.
“Stop believing in supernatural or the possibility of magic or other supernaturalism nonsense, stop believing in gOD!”
Yes, I proudly reject gods and religions
It should be understood, that religion as well as its love of gods, must be sean for what they are, which beyond their pomp and circumstance are exposed as little more than indoctrinated cultural products, the conspiracy theories of reality no one should believe today in our world of science. Simply, religion and its gods are the leftovers of an ignorant age trying to explain and control a fearful world which seems now favored by the uninformed, misinformed, emotional/physical/social support seekers and conmen.
Dealing with theists?
When dealing with theists we atheists should ask “What is our goal,” as this very important to me and beyond a call for truth over lies I wish positive kindness over a negative hatred already too prevalent in the world. So, what happens if theists don’t ever change? What is more important, what they believe in made up magic or how they behave? If behavior is “true” which is real, unlike myths that are not, are we atheists more situated to demonstrate ethical and kind behavior? I strive all the time to re-guide my behavior so it better matches what is worthy.
I have been asked before, “Well, Damien, what is your idea of truth?”
So Here you go, I hold a general persuasion that claims with valid justification or proof are true. My general standard for truth is the correspondence theory of truth. “our ideas are true if they accurately correspond to reality and its facts” A common thinking states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world. There is a sense in which that which is truth depends on the world it can be demonstrated in, similar to the scientific methods presupposition of methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is not a “doctrine” but an essential aspect of the methodology of science, the study of the natural universe. If one believes that natural laws and theories based on them will not suffice to solve the problems attacked by scientists – that supernatural and thus nonscientific principles must be invoked from time to time – then one cannot have the confidence in scientific methodology that is a prerequisite to doing science. The spectacular successes over four centuries of science based on methodological naturalism cannot be denied. Correspondence theories claim that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. Bertrand Russell theorized that a statement, to be true, must have a structural isomorphism with the state of affairs in the world that makes it true.The truth predicate of interest in a typical correspondence theory of truth tells of a relation between representations and objective states of affairs, and is therefore expressed, for the most part, by a dyadic predicate. In general terms, one says that a representation is true of an objective situation, more briefly, that a sign is true of an object. The nature of the correspondence may vary from theory to theory in this family. The correspondence can be fairly arbitrary or it can take on the character of an analogy, an icon, or a morphism, whereby a representation is rendered true of its object by the existence of corresponding elements and a similar structure. Historically, most advocates of correspondence theories have been ontological realists; that is, they believe that there is a world external to the minds of all humans.
Pragmatic-theory-of-truth Coherence-theory-of-truth and Correspondence-theory-of-truth
When you ask me, “Do you believe in god?”
I ask, “What is a god? Are you asking me if magic exists?”
Well, my answer as an ignostic atheist is,
first prove the actuality of simple magic before
you try to ask anyone about the possibility of some supreme magic.
Out Atheist?
I am so out about my disbelief as I support reality and not because I feel better than a believer in supernatural things, gods or religions. Actually, I too once was the same until somewhat late in my life. In fact, I did not stop being this way until I was 36. I am so open now with good belief etiquette focusing on reasoned belief acquisitions, good belief maintenance, as well as honest belief relinquishment and challenging not out of hate or loathing, but out of deep compassion and understanding. This care wishes to save the indoctrinated victims of magical thinking falsehoods. I wish then self-esteem, self-ownership, self-leadership, self-efficiency, self-empowerment, self-love and self-mastery all of which can and in some way, are undermined by God’s and Religions; which either directly attack/challenge or subvert in some lesser realized way.
Science is an intellectual endeavor to search for that which is accurate to the way the world is while religion is still desperately relying on fantasy stories and about what the world is not full of many inconsistencies as well as glaring inaccuracies in relation to true reality, thus religion is an unintellectual endeavor forcing a non-accurate/non-truth “faith” over “valid and reliable reason and evidence” so a blind searching to not understand the accurate to the way the world actually is in reality. This is likely because religions are not “real truth” searching endeavors and beyond all the other negative things, on the whole religions and their make-believe are but conspiracies theories of reality not worth believing in. Did you know Moses write nor asked for the writing of the Torah, the first five books Jewish holy book (the old testament)? Well, Moses didn’t, and neither did Jesus write nor asked for the writing of anything not one word in the Bible, just like how Mohammed did not write nor asked for the writing of the Quran: holy book of Islam. Do you see a theme? Well, here you go, because neither did Lao-Tzu write nor asked for the writing of the Tao Te Ching, the holy book of Taoism, and guess what neither did Gautama Buddha (the first Buddha) write nor asked for the writing of a book in Buddhism. And what do you know just like all the rest neither did nor guru Nanak write nor asked for the writing of Guru Gobind Singh the holy book in Sikhism?
Funny isn’t it how almost all of the world’s religions share the same facts that the claimed holy teacher never wrote their holy book and for that matter are not even sure if they are historical or made up. But please don’t say they were not fake or that we don’t know the truth about them. Ha, ha, ha, please, I feel safe in my anti-religionism, thank you very much. I am a reality revolutionary fighting hard to defend reality as it actually is in a world working hard to do the opposite. To offer that which is not true to reality is to offer a conspiracy theory about it, including the beliefs of ghosts, gods, and religions. Believe me wrong prove it with valid and reliable reason and evidence or I don’t believe you nor would anyone have good reason to either including your self if you are an honest thinker. I don’t really have trust it is just from experience I know many beliefs people like holding are not worth believing in and full of shit. Why do most religious people claim to have religious or spiritual experiences is they add make-believe to “reality.” And the general “WHY” people profess to have religious or spiritual experiences is because we are emotional beings, that while we can employ the thinking strategy of rationalism over faith or unreason/illogical beliefs, we still often seem to prefer to follow emotional driven thinking or simply learn to appeal to emotionalism. Things are not the other way around as we are not rational beings who understand the world accurately by employing the logical thinking strategies and not thinking clouded emotionalism needed to replace faith or unreason/illogical beliefs that follow such thinking, right? We are all emotional and thus will experience emotional wonder.
This common experience of things like emotional wonder or awe is just a positive emotional hijacking, as the experience of joy, but that is just the joy of being alive, it’s wholly cheapened to me by fantasy daydreaming delusions (supernatural) to this beautiful magic devoid reality. To me, rationalistic thinkers of intellectual character engaging in a thoughtful critical challenge, and thus should strive to disagree, debate, dispute, debunk, and degrade harmful unjustified beliefs (such as pseudo-science, pseudo-history, and or pseudo-morality the stuff religions love to promote) and not the swindled or reality deluded believer. However, I understand how we treat others matters even as an atheist dealing with theists. When I get angry or frustrated, I strive to have understanding and patience. When I get to where I think I will say something hurtful, so I strive, to say it a better way if possible, as I want to help not hurt. So, I wish to something not often offered to me; I wish to be kind, compassionate, and thoughtful as much as I can, as often as I can because how we treat others matters. Therefore, even as an out firebrand atheist I do respect people, I do not respect religion. I believe in people; I do not believe in religion. Tolerance has its limits for it will not stand for blind ignorance and the intolerance of bigotry, and it’s connected injustice cross that line first. I will NOT tolerate the unjust intolerance of oppression and harm.
Because I want to live a value-driven life to promote kindness and human flourishing as an axiological atheist not just the call for reason in thinking but also thinking in behaviors as well. Simply how we treat others reflects on us just like how we make others feel about themselves tells a lot about our chosen character. Thus how we choose to treat others, respond or react to others, will often identify the kind of person we are striving to be. I wish to be a person of value. I am 100 % sure not you nor anyone can honestly justify their claim of knowing even the concept of gods, if one like me simply demands a valid and reliable ontology of the term god. I see no honesty is saying that god anything as not one person can truly even say what it is and defiantly can offer no valid justification for the thinking either the concept of gods is a thinking error period. You have no ontology of god as you have not validated the term to mean anything but myths or confusions. Provide a support to even claim what a god could or could not be then validated hoe you know this and why it is valid and reasonable or as I already know, no one honestly can they must intellectually lie or be so under confusion they can’t think clear to do so. What is this god whatever you are supposedly agnostic about? if you don’t know then you don’t have something to doubt rather you are holding open a thinking error possibility from some myth others invented without reason as if it was reason.
The concept of gods begins with a faulty presupposition of an unsound thinker who has failed to demand justification an simply accepts the absurd. May the actions of my life be written deep with the poetry of my humanity. I have one big goal in life, I just want to make the world kinder. I am intelligent enough that I see I must be open to learn from everyone around me. I don’t try to compare people, Instead, I compare ideas. I am willing to have anyone teach me something and I hope I am always so wise. Some wish for empirical proof of some god. I say no start at what is god and how is it that you are claiming to know anything about it with a sound justification. I say empirical proof of what, when you cannot justify what the term god should contain? Start by justifying there is anything in the term god other than simply a three letter noise. Theists love their faith so much they unjustifiably appealed to the term god as if its attributes were a given, well they are not and to claim they are is uninformed, intellectually dishonest or confused. Actually, I know there is no theist that has done anything but start with something unjustified “the god claim” empty of worth to begin with, then take said unjustified claim to add something to this unjustifiably defined god term and then assert this willful theist with its myth and superstition driven attributes that not one of them are justified to be packed into the term god seems a kind of mental masturbation inventing unjustified attributes drunk on some wishful thinking hijacking, may simply be confused/uninformed, not truly thinking just willfully believing or outright intellectually dishonest.
God talk is unjustified until you can demonstrate that you can know anything even belongs in the term with valid and reliable reason and justification. What is a god is the first burden of proof that is required. Some wish for empirical proof of some god. I say no start at what is god and how is it that you are claiming to know anything about it with a sound justification. I say empirical proof of what, when you cannot justify what the term god should contain? Start by justifying there is anything in the term god other than simply a three letter noise. Theists love their faith so much they unjustifiably appealed to the term god as if its attributes were a given, well they are not and to claim they are is uninformed, intellectually dishonest or confused. Actually, I know there is no theist that has done anything but start with something unjustified “the god claim” empty of worth to begin with, then take said unjustified claim to add something to this unjustifiably defined god term and then assert this willful theist with its myth and superstition driven attributes that not one of them are justified to be packed into the term god seems a kind of mental masturbation inventing unjustified attributes drunk on some wishful thinking hijacking, may simply be confused/uninformed, not truly thinking just willfully believing or outright intellectually dishonest. God talk is unjustified until you can demonstrate that you can know anything even belongs in the term with valid and reliable reason and justification.
What is a god is the first burden of proof that is required. You say some wish for empirical proof. I say no start at what is god and how is it that you are claiming to know anything about it with a sound justification. I say empirical proof of what, when you cannot justify what the term god should contain? Start by justifying there is anything in the term god other than simply a three letter noise. Theists love their faith so much they unjustifiably appealed to the term god as if its attributes were a given, well they are not and to claim they are is uninformed, intellectually dishonest or confused. It is not intellectually honest to support that that lacks a sound justification. So there is no way a theist or agnostic can honestly assess to know, it’s like you saying you without looking can affirm what is in box A compared to box B. You nor anyone can honestly know anything get it the god term (asserted unknown box you have not looked inside, nor an you: thus you cannot claim anything is inside the hypothetical available posable attributes) you and others see as something is an unjustified list of things added without justification thus you don’t know nor can anyone justify claim knowing what should be added removed fro a possible god term, not one, one attribute, nothing… and each peace anyone wishes to add must be justified. All terms are empty of reality anything unless justified, there is nothing to add to justify the term god after doing so I will create a justifiably offered concept of a god something. What else do you have as a justification if you are a theist or an agnostic available something to assert?
I am all ears? It is nothing that I have to know other than the term god is offered without justifying anything in the term deserves to be in the term. Is god, hod fod, nod, who knows its just letters put together, is this unknown whatever a woman, man, transgender, or intersex? Is god pink, black collarless? All claims to everything or anything and there is no such valid confirmation for anything wished to be added in the term god must be proven to intellectually claim to know them. No such thing has ever happened or could thus there is no justified thing called god, period. So, are an ignostic now and agree no one can justifiably claim to know anything about the term god but myth terms or descriptions? I don’t start with debunking the offered term god instead I wish to show the absurdity of claiming the term god has anything of value. I begin with an argument of presumptive value, prove the accurate values for anything you wish to define the term god I assert until this is done the term god and all connected ideas that appeal to the god terms meaning which had not even justifiably been defined. You can’t get any church to 100% agree on what a fod/god is or how they think or behave because there is no valid ontology to begin with before everyone gets to do that, not even one of all the famous theistic apologetics nor any reported theist in history at all are the same no it’s a shit show with ideas all over the place, all are a little different you know like myths.
Theological Noncognitivist & Ignosticism
Agnosticism is a belief about knowledge built on folk logic and nonstandard philosophy it is not a true branch of the philosophy of knowledge at all, in fact, it is more connected to philosophical skepticism which is against asserting any firm knowledge claim.
If you are an unsure agnostic or a religious believer, may I remind you that faith in the acquisition of knowledge is not a valid method worth believing in. Because, what proof is “faith”, of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion? Here are facts to help understand how manmade religion and their god concepts are:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- Archaeology Knowledge Challenge?
- The Evolution of Fire Sacralizing and/or Worship 1.5 million to 300,000 years ago and beyond?
- Stone Age Art: 500,000 – 233,000 Years Old
- 400,000 Years Old Sociocultural Evolution
- Pre-Animism: Portable Rock Art at least 300,000-year-old
- Did Neanderthals teach us “Primal Religion (Pre-Animism/Animism?)” 120,000 Years Ago?
- Animism: an approximately 100,000-year-old belief system?
- Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago
- Similarities and differences in Animism and Totemism
- History of Drug Use with Religion or Sacred Rituals possibly 58,000 years ago?
- Totemism: an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system?
- Australia & Aboriginal Religion at least around 50,000 years old
- Modern Humans start around 50,000 years ago Helped by Feminisation
- Out of Africa: “the evolution of religion seems tied to the movement of people”
- Possible Religion Motivations in the First Cave Art at around 43,000 years ago?
- 40,000 years ago “first seeming use of a Totem” ancestor, animal, and possible pre-goddess worship?
- Prehistoric Egypt 40,000 years ago to The First Dynasty 5,150 years ago
- Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system
- Early Shamanism around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic)
- ‘Sky Burial’ theory and its possible origins at least 12,000 years ago to likely 30,000 years ago or older.
- Similarity in Shamanism?
- Black, White, and Yellow Shamanism?
- Shamanistic rock art from central Aboriginal Siberians and Aboriginal drums in the Americas
- Horned female shamans and Pre-satanism Devil/horned-god Worship?
- 12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” around 12,000 years ago.
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- “36cu0190” a Historic and Prehistoric site in Pennsylvania
- 12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 9,000-8500 year old Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- Connected “dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures?
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = Man-o-theism started around 4,000 years ago?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Archaeology Knowledge Challenge?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Empiricism-Denier?
Agnostic vs. Ignostic
“Damien, as a philosophical position, agnosticism is the only honest position……. but it fails when presented with physical evidence.. and so it is the middle way…” – Challenger
I hear people time and again asserting the 100% knowledge or truth claim that because they believe there is no such thing as asserting the 100% knowledge or truth claim that by default Every atheist is agnostic. Do you see the self-contradictory claim which would or I guess if one holds such a belief in the limits of knowledge, should refrain from making global affirming truth claims that one cannot make global affirming truth claims?
Some likely have such thinking because of they are using agnosticism’s folk philosophy ideology you like it are asserting something about the nature of knowledge and belief which is not how philosophy works. Here is what standard philosophy uses it is called epistemology and it never uses anything called agnosticism. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one’s own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.
A common concept in epistemology is “Knowledge is Justified True Belief”
There are various kinds of knowledge: knowing how to do something (for example, how to ride a bicycle), knowing someone in person, and knowing a place or a city. Although such knowledge is of epistemological interest as well, we shall focus on knowledge of propositions and refer to such knowledge using the schema ‘S knows that p’, where ‘S’ stands for the subject who has knowledge and ‘p’ for the proposition that is known. Our question will be: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for S to know that p? We may distinguish, broadly, between a traditional and a non-traditional approach to answering this question. We shall refer to them as ‘TK’ and ‘NTK’. According to TK, knowledge that p is, at least approximately, justified true belief (JTB). False propositions cannot be known. Therefore, knowledge requires truth. A proposition S doesn’t even believe can’t be a proposition that S knows. Therefore, knowledge requires belief. Finally, S’s being correct in believing that p might merely be a matter of luck. Therefore, knowledge requires a third element, traditionally identified as justification. Thus we arrive at a tripartite analysis of knowledge as JTB: S knows that p if and only if p is true and S is justified in believing that p. According to this analysis, the three conditions — truth, belief, and justification — are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for knowledge. Initially, we may say that the role of justification is to ensure that S’s belief is not true merely because of luck. On that, TK and NTK are in agreement. They diverge, however, as soon as we proceed to be more specific about exactly how justification is to fulfill this role. According to TK, S’s belief that p is true not merely because of luck when it is reasonable or rational, from S’s own point of view, to take p to be true. According to evidentialism, what makes a belief justified in this sense is the possession of evidence. The basic idea is that a belief is justified to the degree it fits S’s evidence. NTK, on the other hand, conceives of the role of justification differently. Its job is to ensure that S’s belief has a high objective probability of truth and therefore, if true, is not true merely because of luck. One prominent idea is that this is accomplished if, and only if, a belief originates in reliable cognitive processes or faculties. This view is known as reliabilism. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#JTB
Some thinkers and philosophers deny the validity of agnosticism assertions in general, seeing it as a limitation of man’s capacity to know the reality, affirming that “not being able to see or hold some specific thing does not necessarily negate its existence,” using gravity, entropy, reason and thought as examples.
Agnosticism is the position of believing that knowledge of the existence or non-existence of god is impossible.
Finally, there is an argument, popular among some who fancy themselves intellectuals, that agnosticism is the only intellectually honest position to take with regard to gods. According to this viewpoint, theism and atheism are arrogant affirmations of being certain about something that is intrinsically unknowable. It is, of course, true that it is possible there is some unknowable being or entity who creates universes, has unimaginable powers, and is like nothing we have any experience of. No atheist that I know of has ever denied such a possibility, nor have we denied the possibility of an unknowable Easter Bunny who lays eggs on Saturn or any other imaginable epistemic improbability. So what? Atheists and theists do not concern themselves with epistemic improbabilities, but with gods about whom stories have been told for millennia. The more we learn about the universe, the less reason there is for believing that any of these gods were not created by human imagination. Agnosticism regarding Zeus or Abraham’s god is not an intellectually honest position, as it can be maintained only by a fatuous and dishonest treatment of the available evidence. That evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that all gods fashioned thus far in the minds of men are highly improbable. Agnosticism regarding unimaginable, unknowable beings is redundant. http://www.skepdic.com/agnosticism.html
We can assert 100% psychological certainty we do it all the time. What most agnostics likely mean is they don’t want to claim epistemic certainty thinking it like knowledge is disconnected from belief. However, like knowledge, certainty is an epistemic property of beliefs. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/certainty/
Sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalized philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
- My life; the good, the bad, and the ugly on the road to the Mental Freedom of Atheism
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Truth is a Value (axiological) Judgment.
- Axiological Atheism not Nihilist Atheism
- Interview of Formal Axiological Atheist Dr. William Kelleher
- I am an Axiological Atheist, with a Rationalist Persuasion, who Supports Anarcho-Humanism
- Axiological Atheism is Intellectualism
- “Value Theory/Value Science” atheism: AXIOLOGICAL ATHEISM
- Explaining Axiological theism, Axiological agnosticism, and Axiological atheism
- Axiological Atheism Supports Humanism & Secularism
- Axiological Atheism Morality Critique: of the bible god
- As an Axiological Atheist, I wish for Human Flourishing
- Psychological certainty and Epistemic certainty?
- Losing My Religion and MY Faith Addiction
- Ignostic Atheist: Do you Have a Coherent Definition of god?
- god Claims are a Non-Reality Commodity
- My Blogs on the Evolution of RELIGION
- Explaining My thoughts on the Evolution of Religion
- My Blogs Somewhat Relating to Science
- I am against Hereditary religion?
I am an Out Atheist, Antitheist, and Antireligionist as a Valuized Ethical Duty.
How can we silently watch as yet another generation is indoctrinated with religious faith, fear, and foolishness? Religion and it’s god myths are like a spiritually transmitted disease of the mind. This infection even once cured holds mental disruption which can linger on for a lifetime. What proof is “faith,” of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion? When you start thinking your “out, atheism, antitheism or antireligionism is not vitally needed just remember all the millions of children being indoctrinated and need our help badly and who desperately need our help with the truth. Three things are common in all religions: “pseudo-science,” “pseudo-history,” and “pseudo-morality.” And my biggest thing of all is the widespread forced indoctrination of children, violating their free choice of what to not believe or believe, I hate forced hereditary religion.
I am a caring firebrand axiological atheist, wishing to be hard on ideas but kind to people.
Knowledge and Belief
Knowledge is an intellectual commodity which is true and believed and justified. There are two slightly different meanings of belief that must be distinguished. In the first sense, John might “believe in” his cousin Joe. This may mean that he is willing to lend Joe money, trusting in his paying it back. In this sense, John might say, “I know it is safer to fly than drive, yet I don’t believe it,” in which case John doesn’t trust in the safety of aircraft, even though as a cognitive matter he may understand the pertinent statistics. In the second sense of belief, to believe something just means to think that it is true. That is, to believe P is to do no more than to think, for whatever reason, that P is the case. It is this sort of belief that philosophers most often mean when they are discussing knowledge. The reason is that, in the view of most philosophers, in order to know something, one must think that it is true—one must believe (in the second sense) it to be the case. Consider someone saying, “I know that P, but I don’t think P is true.” The person making this utterance seems to have contradicted himself. If one knows that P, then, amongst other things, one thinks that P is indeed true. If one thinks that P is true, then one believes P. Knowledge is usually held to be distinct from belief and opinion. If someone claims to believe something, they are claiming that they think that it is the truth. But of course, it might turn out that they were mistaken, and that what they thought was true was actually false. This is not the case with knowledge. For example, suppose that Jeff thinks that a particular bridge is safe, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. One might say that Jeff believed that the bridge was safe, but that his belief was mistaken. One would not say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. For something to count as knowledge, it must be true—at least as knowledge is usually understood anyway. Similarly, two people can believe things that are mutually contradictory, but they cannot know (unequivocal) things that are mutually contradictory. For example, Jeff can believe the bridge is safe, while Jenny believes it unsafe. But Jeff cannot know the bridge is safe and Jenny know that the bridge is unsafe. Two people cannot know contradictory things. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Epistemology
Ignostic Atheist: Do you Have a Coherent Definition of god?
Rationality
If one does not reject rationality, but still wishes to maintain that knowledge claims cannot be or are not justified, one might be termed a non-justificationist. Here philosophers are on firmer philosophical ground; since non-justificationists accept the validity of reason, they can present logical arguments for their case.For instance, the regress argument has it that one can ask for the justification for any statement of knowledge. If that justification takes the form of another statement, one can again reasonably ask for that statement also to be justified, and so forth. This appears to lead to an infinite regress, with every statement justified by some other statement.
It would be impossible to check that each justification is satisfactory, and so relying on such a series quickly leads to skepticism. Alternately, one might claim that some knowledge statements do not require justification. Much of the history of epistemology is the story of conflicting philosophical doctrines claiming that this or that type of knowledge statement has special status. This view is known as Foundationalism. One can also avoid the regress if one supposes that the assumption that a knowledge statement can only be supported by another knowledge statement is simply misguided. Coherentism holds that a knowledge statement is not justified by some small subset of other knowledge statements, but by the entire set. That is, a statement is justified if it coheres with all other knowledge claims in the system. This has the advantage of avoiding the infinite regress without claiming special status for some particular sorts of statements. But since a system might still be consistent and yet simply wrong, it raises the difficulty of ensuring that the whole system corresponds in some way with the truth. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Epistemology
Ignosticism, or igtheism position?
If followed to its logical end it concludes that the entire question about God’s existence is a non-question and that taking a yes, no or even ambivalent position is absurd. It is based on an expectation of strong critical rational analysis of any proposition including the existence of God. As with any topic, and especially in the realm of the supernatural and woo, the subject of any debate should be coherently defined. If one offers a clear definition of an entity, then in order to take a position whether it exists or not the definition of the entity must be one in which its existence can be falsified (there is a rational and logical method by which we can test the existence of the subject as it has been defined). Few theists ever offer a clear definition of God. The few who do offer a definition almost never offer one in which the existence of that God could be tested. The rare falsifiable definition offered regarding God’s existence is easily falsified. And so as with any subject (such as the existence of almost all supernatural entities) debate about the existence of God is, for the far majority of such conversations, pointless. Ignosticism goes further than agnosticism; while agnosticism states that “you can’t really know either way” regarding the existence or non-existence of gOD, ignosticism posits that “you haven’t even agreed on what you’re discussing, as its nothing”. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ignosticism
I am Ignostic not agnostic and you should consider it too…
Axiological “Presumptive-Value”
Axiological “presumptive-value” success: Sound Thinker: uses disciplined rationality (sound axiological judgment the evaluation of evidence to make a decision) supporting a valid and reliable justification.
Axiological “presumptive-value” failure: Shallow Thinker: undisciplined, situational, sporadic, or limited thinking lacking a valid and reliable justification.
“Presumptions are things that are credited as being true until evidence of their falsity is presented. Presumptions have many forms and value (Axiology) is just one. In ethics, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different actions. It may be described as treating actions as abstract objects, putting VALUE to them. It deals with right conduct and living a good life, in the sense that a highly, or at least relatively high valuable action may be regarded as ethically “good” (adjective sense), and that an action of low value, or relatively low in value, may be regarded as “bad”. What makes an action valuable may, in turn, depend on the ethic values of the objects it increases, decreases or alters. An object with “ethic value” may be termed an “ethic or philosophic good” (noun sense). Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person’s sense of right and wrong or what “ought” to be. “Equal rights for all”, “Excellence deserves admiration”, and “People should be treated with respect and dignity” are representatives of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior and these types include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological(religious, political) values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues.” ref, ref
“Sound thinking to me, in a general way, is thinking, reasoning, or belief that tends to make foresight a desire to be as accurate as one can with valid and reliable reason and evidence.”
Sound axiological judgment, to me, a “presumptive-value” success, is value judged opinions expressed as facts with a valid and reliable justification. In an informal and psychological sense, it is used in reference to the quality of cognitive faculties and adjudicational (relating to adjudication) capabilities of particular individuals, typically called wisdom or discernment. In a legal sense, – used in the context of a legal trial, to refer to a final finding, statement, or ruling, based on a considered weighing of evidence, called, “adjudication“.
Sound Thinkers don’t value FAITH
Sound thinking to me, in a general way, is thinking, reasoning, or belief
that tends to make foresight a desire to be as accurate as one can
with valid and reliable reason and evidence.
Dogmatic–Propaganda vs. Disciplined-Rationality
Religionists and fideists, promote Dogmatic-Propaganda whereas atheists and antireligionists mostly promote Disciplined-Rationality. Dogmatic–Propaganda commonly is a common motivator of flawed or irrational thinking but with over seventy belief biases identified in people, this is hardly limited to just the religious or faith inclined. Let me illustrate what I am saying, to me all theists are believing lies or irrationally in that aspect of their lives relating to god belief. So the fact of any other common intellectual indexers where there may be right reason in beliefs cannot remove the flawed god belief corruption being committed. What I am saying is like this if you kill one person you are a killer. If you believe in one “god” I know you are a follower of Dogmatic-Propaganda and can not completely be a follower of Disciplined-Rationality. However, I am not proclaiming all atheists are always rational as irrationally is revolving door many people believer or otherwise seem to stumble through. It’s just that god belief does this with intentionally.
Disciplined-Rationality is motivated by principles of correct reasoning with emphasis on valid and reliable methods or theories leading to a range of rational standpoints or conclusions understanding that concepts and beliefs often have consequences thus hold an imperative for truth or at least as close to truth as can be acquired rejecting untruth. Disciplined-Rationality can be seen as an aid in understanding the fundamentals for knowledge, sound evidence, justified true belief and involves things like decision theory and the concern with identifying the value(s), reasonableness, verification, certainties, uncertainties and other relevant issues resulting in the most clear optimal decision/conclusion and/or belief/disbelief. Disciplined-Rationality attempts to understand the justification or lack thereof in propositions and beliefs concerning its self with various epistemic features of belief, truth, and/or knowledge, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, reliability, validity, and probability.
ps. “Sound Thinker”, “Shallow Thinker”, “Dogmatic–Propaganda” & “Disciplined-Rationality” are concepts/terms I created*
Epistemological atheism: highlights a branch of philosophy that deals with determining what is and what is not true, and why we believe or disbelieve what we or others do. On one hand, this is begging the question of having the ability to measure “truth” – as though there is an “external” something that one measures against. Epistemology is the analysis of the nature of knowledge, how we know, what we can and cannot know, and how we can know that there are things we know we cannot know. In Greek episteme, meaning “knowledge, understanding”, and logos, meaning “discourse, study, ratio, calculation, reason. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. In other words, it is the academic term associated with study of how we conclude that certain things are true. Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. From this atheist orientation, there is no, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any “external” something so there can be no god-concept. Many debates between atheist and theists revolve around fundamental issues which people don’t recognize or never get around to discussing. Many of these are epistemological in nature: in disagreeing about whether it’s reasonable to believe in the existence of a god something, to believe in miracles, to accept revelation and scriptures as authoritative, and so forth, atheists and theists are ultimately disagreeing about basic epistemological principles. Without understanding this and understanding the various epistemological positions, people will just end up talking past each other. it’s common for Epistemological atheism to differ in what they consider to be appropriate criteria for truth and, therefore, the proper criteria for a reasonable disbelief. Atheists demand proof and evidence for other worldviews, yet there is no proof and evidence that atheism is true. Also, despite the abundant evidence for Christianity and the lack of proof and evidence for atheism, atheist reject the truth of Christianity. *Epistemology (knowledge of things) questions to explode or establish and confirm knowledge. Epistemology “Truth” questions/assertion: Lawyer searches for warrant or justification for the claim. Epistemology, (understanding what you know or can know; as in you do have and thing in this reality to know anything about this term you call god, and no way of knowing if there is anything non-naturalism beyond this universe and no way to state any about it if there where). -How do know your claim? -How reliable or valid must aspects be for your claim? -How does the source of your claim make it different than other similar claims? I may respond, “how do you know that, what is your sources and how reliable they are” (asking to find the truth or as usual expose the lack of a good Epistemology) Atheists refuse to go where the evidence clearly leads. In addition, when atheist make claims related to naturalism, make personal claims or make accusations against theists, they often employ lax evidential standards instead of employing rigorous evidential standards. For the most part, atheists have presumed that the most reasonable conclusions are the ones that have the best evidential support. And they have argued that the evidence in favor of a god something’s existence is too weak, or the arguments in favor of concluding there is no a god something are more compelling. Traditionally the arguments for a god something’s existence have fallen into several families: ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments, miracles, and prudential justifications. For detailed discussion of those arguments and the major challenges to them that have motivated the atheist conclusion, the reader is encouraged to consult the other relevant sections of the encyclopedia. Arguments for the non-existence of a god something are deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments for the non-existence of a god something are either single or multiple property disproofs that allege that there are logical or conceptual problems with one or several properties that are essential to any being worthy of the title “GOD.” Inductive arguments typically present empirical evidence that is employed to argue that a god something’s existence is improbable or unreasonable. Briefly stated, the main arguments are: a god something’s non-existence is analogous to the non-existence of Santa Claus. The existence of widespread human and non-human suffering is incompatible with an all powerful, all knowing, all good being. Discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe, and about the evolution of life on Earth make the a god something hypothesis an unlikely explanation. Widespread non-belief and the lack of compelling evidence show that a god something who seeks belief in humans does not exist. Broad considerations from science that support naturalism, or the view that all and only physical entities and causes exist, have also led many to the atheism conclusion. 1 2 3 4
Matt McCormick
We can divide the justifications for atheism into several categories. For the most part, atheists have taken an evidentialist approach to the question of a god something’s existence. That is, atheists have taken the view that whether or not a person is justified in having an attitude of belief towards the proposition, “a god something exists,” is a function of that person’s evidence. “Evidence” here is understood broadly to include a priori arguments, arguments to the best explanation, inductive and empirical reasons, as well as deductive and conceptual premises. An asymmetry exists between theism and atheism in that atheists have not offered faith as a justification for non-belief. That is, atheists have not presented non-evidentialist defenses for believing that there is no god something. Not all theists appeal only to faith, however. Evidentialists theist and evidentialist atheists may have a number of general epistemological principles concerning evidence, arguments, and implication in common, but then disagree about what the evidence is, how it should be understood, and what it implies. They may disagree, for instance, about whether the values of the physical constants and laws in nature constitute evidence for intentional fine tuning, but agree at least that whether a god something exists is a matter that can be explored empirically or with reason. Many non-evidentialist theists may deny that the acceptability of particular religious claim depends upon evidence, reasons, or arguments as they have been classically understood. Faith or prudential based beliefs in a god something, for example, will fall into this category. The evidentialist atheist and the non-evidentialist theist, therefore, may have a number of more fundamental disagreements about the acceptability of believing, despite inadequate or contrary evidence, the epistemological status of prudential grounds for believing, or the nature of a god something belief. Their disagreement may not be so much about the evidence, or even about a god something, but about the legitimate roles that evidence, reason, and faith should play in human belief structures. It is not clear that arguments against atheism that appeal to faith have any prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence do. The general evidentialist view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound that imposes an epistemic obligation on her to accept the conclusion. Insofar as having faith that a claim is true amounts to believing contrary to or despite a lack of evidence, one person’s faith that a god something exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective, epistemological implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. Justifying atheism, then, can entail several different projects. There are the evidential disputes over what information we have available to us, how it should be interpreted, and what it implies. There are also broader meta-epistemological concerns about the roles of argument, reasoning, belief, and religiousness in human life. The atheist can find herself not just arguing that the evidence indicates that there is no god something, but defending science, the role of reason, and the necessity of basing beliefs on evidence more generally. If someone has arrived at what they take to be a reasonable and well-justified conclusion that there is no god something, then what attitude should she take about another person’s persistence in believing in a god something, particularly when that other person appears to be thoughtful and at least prima facie reasonable? It seems that the atheist could take one of several views. The theist’s belief, as the atheist sees it, could be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Must the atheist who believes that the evidence indicates that there is no god something conclude that the theist’s believing in a god something is irrational or unjustified? No. Most modern epistemologists have said that whether a conclusion C is justified for a person S will be a function of the information (correct or incorrect) that S possesses and the principles of inference that S employs in arriving at C. But whether or not C is justified is not directly tied to its truth, or even to the truth of the evidence concerning C. That is, a person can have a justified, but false belief. One could arrive at a conclusion through an epistemically inculpable process and yet get it wrong. Ptolemy, for example, the greatest astronomer of his day, who had mastered all of the available information and conducted exhaustive research into the question, was justified in concluding that the Sun orbits the Earth. A medieval physician in the 1200s who guesses (correctly) that the bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium yersiniapestis would not have been reasonable or justified given his background information and given that the bacterium would not even be discovered for 600 years. We can call the view that rational, justified beliefs can be false, as it applies to atheism, friendly or fallibilist atheism. See the article on Fallibilism. The friendly atheist can grant that a theist may be justified or reasonable in believing in a god something, even though the atheist takes the theist’s conclusion to be false. What could explain their divergence to the atheist? The believer may not be in possession of all of the relevant information. The believer may be basing her conclusion on a false premise or premises. The believer may be implicitly or explicitly employing inference rules that themselves are not reliable or truth preserving, but the background information she has leads her, reasonably, to trust the inference rule. The same points can be made for the friendly theist and the view that he may take about the reasonableness of the atheist’s conclusion. It is also possible, of course, for both sides to be unfriendlyand conclude that anyone who disagrees with what they take to be justified is being irrational. Given developments in modern epistemology and Rowe’s argument, however, the unfriendly view is neither correct nor conducive to a constructive and informed analysis of the question of a god something. Atheists have offered a wide range of justifications and accounts for non-belief. A notable modern view is Antony Flew’s Presumption of Atheism. Flew argues that the default position for any rational believer should be neutral with regard to the existence of a god something and to be neutral is to not have a belief regarding its existence. And not having a belief with regard to a god something is to be a negative atheist on Flew’s account. “The onus of proof lies on the man who affirms, not on the man who denies. . . on the proposition, not on the opposition,” Flew argues. Beyond that, coming to believe that such a thing does or does not exist will require justification, much as a jury presumes innocence concerning the accused and requires evidence in order to conclude that he is guilty. Flew’s negative atheist will presume nothing at the outset, not even the logical coherence of the notion of a god something, but one’s presumption will be defeasible, or revisable in the light of evidence. We shall call this view atheism by default. The atheism by default position contrasts with a more permissive attitude that is sometimes taken regarding religious belief. The notions of religious tolerance and freedom are sometimes understood to indicate the epistemic permissibility of believing despite a lack of evidence in favor or even despite evidence to the contrary. One is in violation of no epistemic duty by believing, even if one lacks conclusive evidence in favor or even if one has evidence that is on the whole against. In contrast to Flew’s jury model, we can think of this view as treating religious beliefs as permissible until proven incorrect. Some aspects of fideistic accounts or Plantinga’s reformed epistemology can be understood in this light. This sort of epistemic policy about a god something or any other matter has been controversial, and a major point of contention between atheists and theists. Atheists have argued that we typically do not take it to be epistemically inculpable or reasonable for a person to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or some other supernatural being merely because they do not possess evidence to the contrary. Nor would we consider it reasonable for a person to begin believing that they have cancer because they do not have proof to the contrary. The atheist by default argues that it would be appropriate to not believe in such circumstances. The epistemic policy here takes its inspiration from an influential piece by W.K. Clifford in which he argues that it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for which there is insufficient reason. There are several other approaches to the justification of atheism that we will consider below. There is a family of arguments, sometimes known as exercises in deductive atheology, for the conclusion that the existence of a god something is impossible. Another large group of important and influential arguments can be gathered under the heading inductive atheology. These probabilistic arguments invoke considerations about the natural world such as widespread suffering, nonbelief, or findings from biology or cosmology. Another approach, atheistic noncognitivism, denies that a god something talk is even meaningful or has any propositional content that can be evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. Rather, religious speech acts are better viewed as a complicated sort of emoting or expression of spiritual passion. Inductive and deductive approaches are cognitivistic in that they accept that claims about a god something have meaningful content and can be determined to be true or false. Many discussions about the nature and existence of a god something have either implicitly or explicitly accepted that the concept of a god something is logically coherent. That is, for many believers and non-believers the assumption has been that such a being as a god something could possibly exist but they have disagreed about whether there actually is one. Atheists within the deductive atheology tradition, however, have not even granted that a god something, as he is typically described, is possible. The first question we should ask, argues the deductive atheist, is whether the description or the concept is logically consistent. If it is not, then no such being could possibly exist. The deductive atheist argues that some, one, or all of a god something’s essential properties are logically contradictory. Since logical impossibilities are not and cannot be real, a god something does not and cannot exist. Consider a putative description of an object as a four-sided triangle, a married bachelor, or prime number with more than 2 factors. We can be certain that no such thing fitting that description exists because what they describe is demonstrably impossible. If deductive atheological proofs are successful, the results will be epistemically significant. Many people have doubts that the view that there is no god something that can be rationally justified. But if deductive disproofs show that there can exist no being with a certain property or properties and those properties figure essentially in the characterization of a god something, then we will have the strongest possible justification for concluding that there is no being fitting any of those characterizations. If a god something is impossible, then a god something does not exist. It may be possible at this point to re-engineer the description of a god something so that it avoids the difficulties, but now the theist faces several challenges according to the deductive atheologist. First, if the traditional description of a god something is logically incoherent, then what is the relationship between a theist’s belief and some revised, more sophisticated account that allegedly does not suffer from those problems? Is that the a god something that one believed in all along? Before the account of a god something was improved by consideration of the atheological arguments, what were the reasons that led her to believe in that conception of a god something? Secondly, if the classical characterizations of a god something are shown to be logically impossible, then there is a legitimate question as whether any new description that avoids those problems describes a being that is worthy of the label. It will not do, in the eyes of many theists and atheists, to retreat to the view that a god something is merely a somewhat powerful, partially-knowing, and partly-good being, for example. Thirdly, the atheist will still want to know on the basis of what evidence or arguments should we conclude that a being as described by this modified account exists? Fourthly, there is no question that there exist less than omni-beings in the world. We possess less than infinite power, knowledge and goodness, as do many other creatures and objects in our experience. What is the philosophical importance or metaphysical significance of arguing for the existence of those sorts of beings and advocating belief in them? Fifthly, and most importantly, if it has been argued that a god something’s essential properties are impossible, then any move to another description seems to be a concession that positive atheism about a god something is justified. Another possible response that the theist may take in response to deductive atheological arguments is to assert that a god something is something beyond proper description with any of the concepts or properties that we can or do employ as suggested in Kierkegaard or Tillich. So complications from incompatibilities among properties of a god something indicate problems for our descriptions, not the impossibility of a divine being worthy of the label. Many atheists have not been satisfied with this response. The theist has now asserted the existence of and attempted to argue in favor of believing in a being that we cannot form a proper idea of, one that does not have properties that we can acknowledge; it is a being that defies comprehension. It is not clear how we could have reasons or justifications for believing in the existence of such a thing. It is not clear how it could be an existing thing in any familiar sense of the term in that it lacks comprehensible properties. Or put another way, as Patrick Grim notes, “If a believer’s notion of a god something remains so vague as to escape all impossibility arguments, it can be argued, it cannot be clear to even one what one believes—or whether what he takes for pious belief one’s any content at all,”. It is not clear how it could be reasonable to believe in such a thing, and it is even more doubtful that it is epistemically unjustified or irresponsible to deny that such a thing is exists. It is clear, however, that the deductive atheologist must acknowledge the growth and development of our concepts and descriptions of reality over time, and she must take a reasonable view about the relationship of those attempts and revisions in our ideas about what may turns out to be real. Deductive disproofs have typically focused on logical inconsistencies to be found either within a single property or between multiple properties. Philosophers have struggled to work out the details of what it would be to be omnipotent, for instance. It has come to be widely accepted that a being cannot be omnipotent where omnipotence simply means to power to do anything including the logically impossible. This definition of the term suffers from the stone paradox. An omnipotent being would either be capable of creating a rock that one cannot lift, or he is incapable. If one is incapable, then there is something one cannot do, and therefore one does not have the power to do anything. If one can create such a rock, then again there is something that one cannot do, namely lift the rock he just created. So paradoxically, having the ability to do anything would appear to entail being unable to do some things. As a result, many theists and atheists have agreed that a being could not have that property. A number of attempts to work out an account of omnipotence have ensued. It has also been argued that omniscience is impossible, and that the most knowledge that can possibly be had is not enough to be fitting of a god something. One of the central problems has been that a god something cannot have knowledge of indexical claims such as, “I am here now.” It has also been argued that a god something can’t know future free choices, or a god something cannot know future contingent propositions, or that Cantor’s and Gödel proofs imply that the notion of a set of all truths cannot be made coherent. See the article on Omniscience and Divine Foreknowledge for more details. The logical coherence of eternality, personhood, moral perfection, causal agency, and many others have been challenged in the deductive atheology literature. Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that a god something is thought to possess. A long list of properties have been the subject of multiple property disproofs, transcendence and personhood, justice and mercy, immutability and omniscience, immutability and omnibenevolence, omnipresence and agency, perfection and love, eternality and omniscience, eternality and creator of the universe, omnipresence and consciousness. The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. To possess all knowledge, for instance, would include knowing all of the particular ways in which one will exercise one’s power, or all of the decisions that one will make, or all of the decisions that one has made in the past. But knowing any of those entails that the known proposition is true. So does a god something have the power to act in some fashion that he has not foreseen, or differently than he already has without compromising his omniscience? It has also been argued that a god something cannot be both unsurpassably good and free. When attempts to provide evidence or arguments in favor of the existence of something fail, a legitimate and important question is whether anything except the failure of those arguments can be inferred. That is, does positive atheism follow from the failure of arguments for theism? A number of authors have concluded that it does. They taken the view that unless some case for the existence of a god something succeeds, we should believe that there is no god something. Many have taken an argument J.M. Findlay to be pivotal. Findlay, like many others, argues that in order to be worthy of the label “GOD,” and in order to be worthy of a worshipful attitude of reverence, emulation, and abandoned admiration, the being that is the object of that attitude must be inescapable, necessary, and unsurpassably supreme. If a being like a god something were to exist, his existence would be necessary. And his existence would be manifest as an a priori, conceptual truth. That is to say that of all the approaches to a god something’s existence, the ontological argument is the strategy that we would expect to be successful were there a god something, and if they do not succeed, then we can conclude that there is no god something, Findlay argues. As most see it these attempts to prove a god something have not met with success, Findlay says, “The general philosophical verdict is that none of these ‘proofs’ is truly compelling.” The view that there is no god something or god somethings has been criticized on the grounds that it is not possible to prove a negative. No matter how exhaustive and careful our analysis, there could always be some proof, some piece of evidence, or some consideration that we have not considered. A god something could be something that we have not conceived, or a god something exists in some form or fashion that has escaped our investigation. Positive atheism draws a stronger conclusion than any of the problems with arguments for a god something’s existence alone could justify. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Findlay and the deductive atheological arguments attempt to address these concerns, but a central question put to atheists has been about the possibility of giving inductive or probabilistic justifications for negative existential claims The response to the, “You cannot prove a negative” criticism has been that it invokes an artificially high epistemological standard of justification that creates a much broader set of problems not confined to atheism. The general principle seems to be that one is not epistemically entitled to believe a proposition unless you have exhausted all of the possibilities and proven beyond any doubt that a claim is true. Or put negatively, one is not justified in disbelieving unless you have proven with absolute certainty that the thing in question does not exist. The problem is that we do not have a priori disproof that many things do not exist, yet it is reasonable and justified to believe that they do not: the Dodo bird is extinct, unicorns are not real, there is no teapot orbiting the Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, there is no Santa Claus, ghosts are not real, a defendant is not guilty, a patient does not have a particular disease, so on. There are a wide range of other circumstances under which we take it that believing that X does not exist is reasonable even though no logical impossibility is manifest. None of these achieve the level of deductive, a priori or conceptual proof. The objection to inductive atheism undermines itself in that it generates a broad, pernicious skepticism against far more than religious or irreligious beliefs. “It will not be sufficient to criticize each argument on its own by saying that it does not prove the intended conclusion, that is, does not put it beyond all doubt. That follows at once from the admission that the argument is non-deductive, and it is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue.” If the atheist is unjustified for lacking deductive proof, then it is argued, it would appear that so are the beliefs that planes fly, fish swim, or that there exists a mind-independent world. The atheist can also wonder what the point of the objection is. When we lack deductive disproof that X exists, should we be agnostic about it? Is it permissible to believe that it does exist? Clearly, that would not be appropriate. Gravity may be the work of invisible, undetectable elves with sticky shoes. We don’t have any certain disproof of the elves—physicists are still struggling with an explanation of gravity. But surely someone who accepts the sticky-shoed elves view until they have deductive disproof is being unreasonable. It is also clear that if you are a positive atheist about the gravity elves, you would not be unreasonable. You would not be overstepping your epistemic entitlement by believing that no such things exist. On the contrary, believing that they exist or even being agnostic about their existence on the basis of their mere possibility would not be justified. So there appear to be a number of precedents and epistemic principles at work in our belief structures that provide room for inductive atheism. However, these issues in the epistemology of atheism and recent work by Graham Oppy suggest that more attention must be paid to the principles that describe epistemic permissibility, culpability, reasonableness, and justification with regard to the theist, atheist, and agnostic categories.
The Santa Claus Argument
Martin offers this general principle to describe the criteria that render the belief, “X does not exist” justified:
A person is justified in believing that X does not exist if
(1) all the available evidence used to support the view that X exists is shown to be inadequate; and
(2) X is the sort of entity that, if X exists, then there is a presumption that would be evidence adequate to support the view that X exists; and
(3) this presumption has not been defeated although serious efforts have been made to do so; and
(4) the area where evidence would appear, if there were any, has been comprehensively examined; and
(5) there are no acceptable beneficial reasons to believe that X exists.
Many of the major works in philosophical atheism that address the full range of recent arguments for a god something’s existence can be seen as providing evidence to satisfy the first, fourth and fifth conditions. A substantial body of articles with narrower scope can also be understood to play this role in justifying atheism. A large group of discussions of Pascal’s Wager and related prudential justifications in the literature can also be seen as relevant to the satisfaction of the fifth condition. One of the interesting and important questions in the epistemology of philosophy of religion has been whether the second and third conditions are satisfied concerning a god something. If there were a god something, how and in what ways would we expect him to show in the world? Empirically? Conceptually? Would he be hidden? Martin argues, and many others have accepted implicitly or explicitly, that a god something is the sort of thing that would manifest in some discernible fashion to our inquiries. Martin concludes, therefore, that a god something satisfied all of the conditions, so, positive narrow atheism is justified. 1
Challenging Agnosticism Assumptions
Theists and Atheists as well as Agnostics?
A Challenge to My Anti-Agnostic Thinking?
Weak Theism and Weak Atheism being called Agnostic?
Addressing “ATHEISM”, reasons for it and its possible types/styles
Explaining Axiological theism, Axiological agnosticism, and Axiological atheism
Agnosticism Beliefs Involve “FOLK LOGIC” Thinking?
Discussions on Agnosticism and Atheism
Agnosticism: Non-Standard Epistemology
I am a caring firebrand atheist, wishing to be hard on ideas but kind to people.
My life; the good, the bad, and the ugly on the road to the Mental Freedom of Atheism
I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
I am not the thing abuse made, I am a shooting star blazing bright, shining far pass my past.
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref
“Theists, there has to be a god, as something can not come from nothing.”
Well, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something. This does not tell us what the something that may have been involved with something coming from nothing. A supposed first cause, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something is not an open invitation to claim it as known, neither is it justified to call or label such an unknown as anything, especially an unsubstantiated magical thinking belief born of mythology and religious storytelling.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)
Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft
Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
To me, animal gods were likely first related to totemism animals around 13,000 to 12,000 years ago or older. Female as goddesses was next to me, 11,000 to 10,000 years ago or so with the emergence of agriculture. Then male gods come about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago with clan wars. Many monotheism-themed religions started in henotheism, emerging out of polytheism/paganism.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com