SafeAsMilk wrote:Then it's the lack of the proposition that god exists, which means it's still not the proposition that gods don't exist. Ho hum.

DavidMcC wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:

laklak wrote:How about apathetic atheism? I don't give a fuck if god exists.

That is what atheism is about. There are no subsets or anything else. That is exactly the argument theists try make. They want atheism to be a belief system so as to make comparisons as with for instance catholicism and islam.

It is nothing. An atheist just says there is no evidence of a deity existing. You dont say a deity does not exist but until evidence and that is true scientific evidence, the existence of a deity has not been proven.

Technically, that's correct, but how many rational people expect that such evidence will come along anytime soon?

monkeyboy wrote:That's the 6.9 on Dawkins scale position. Pretty much convinced that there are no gods bit leaving the tiniest sliver available for the really unlikely possibility that someone will come up with some evidence after so long and so much fail.

SafeAsMilk wrote:Then it's the lack of the proposition that god exists, which means it's still not the proposition that gods don't exist.

laklak wrote:How about apathetic atheism? I don't give a fuck if god exists.

tuco wrote:Let me just note that babies and rocks are not capable of confirming nor negating a proposition.

DavidMcC wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:Then it's the lack of the proposition that god exists, which means it's still not the proposition that gods don't exist. Ho hum.

I thought there was no single "correct" form of atheism. Rather, atheism is the sum of all the varieties discussed above. To me, it's splitting hairs to distinguish so assiduously between them.

EDIT: Unfortunately, dictionaries have to be somewhat more pithy than that, so they are bound to be open to criticism.

If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists.

It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing.

Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism ...

Settling this issue, at least for the purposes of this entry, ...

If atheism is usually and best understood in philosophy as the metaphysical claim that God does not exist, then what, one might wonder, should philosophers do with the popular term, “New Atheism”? Philosophers write articles on and have devoted journal issues (French & Wettstein 2013) to the New Atheism, but there is nothing close to a consensus on how that term should be defined. Fortunately, there is no real need for one, because the term “New Atheism” does not pick out some distinctive philosophical position or phenomenon. Instead, it is a popular label for a movement prominently represented by four authors—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—whose work is uniformly critical of religion, but beyond that appears to be unified only by timing and popularity. Further, one might question what is new about the New Atheism. The specific criticisms of religion and of arguments used to defend religion are not new. For example, an arguably more sophisticated and convincing version of Dawkins’ central atheistic argument can be found in Hume’s Dialogues (Wielenberg 2009). Also, while Dennett (2006) makes a passionate call for the scientific study of religion as a natural phenomenon, such study existed long before this call. Indeed, even the cognitive science of religion was well established by the 1990s, and the anthropology of religion can be traced back at least to the nineteenth century. Shifting from content to style, many are surprised by the militancy of some New Atheists, but there were plenty of aggressive atheists who were quite disrespectful to religion long before Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens. (Dennett is not especially militant.) Finally, the stereotype that New Atheism is religious or quasi-religious or ideological in some unprecedented way is clearly a false one and one that New Atheists reject. (For elaboration of these points, see Zenk 2013.)

SafeAsMilk wrote:

tuco wrote:Let me just note that babies and rocks are not capable of confirming nor negating a proposition.

I never really got the whole babies/rock comparison.

SafeAsMilk wrote:If you lack belief in gods, you're an atheist.

Scot Dutchy wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:If you lack belief in gods, you're an atheist.

It has nothing to do with belief or the lack of it. That is the theist point of view. They want to put atheism there in amongst belief and non belief so that a comparisons can be made.

An atheist does not see any evidence for the existence of deities. Nothing to do with belief or non-belief.

Scot Dutchy wrote:Sorry it has nothing to do with belief or non-belief. I dont have a lack of belief in deities. I just dont see the evidence to prove their existence.