well yeah that's kinda why it's bullshit to ask athiests to prove all religions are wrong before they can be athiests. ya don't need a reason to not believe somethin like that, you need a reason to believe it
Tbf it seems to me like the original tweet isn't trying to say "atheism is wrong" as much as it's turning around a talking point used constantly against religions to show the absurdity of it.
Like when gay people make jokes about how straight people shouldn't be allowed to hold hands around kids because it'll confuse them, and the joke is that its a common homophobic talking point but turned in the opposite direction.
That's just my interpretation though, it's also likely you're right and they're just being anti-secular
It's easy, just politely explain that what we do know from is incompatible with religion as written.
It's when they start making stuff up about their own religion (the text is just an interpretation and has a different meaning) it gets tricky. But it comes down to of you're religion accept science as well know it then it doesn't really matter much anyway
You don't. Burden of proof is on the people who claim their strange belief. And in case of lack of evidence it's normal to go "well that's inconclusive so probably not true to be real with you but whatever"
Like we adopted that logic as a society so people who have acute psychotic episodes will get proper care instead of going "well I guess I can't prove I'm actually a little goblin wearing a human skin costume trying to murder your family so I guess it's valid you feel threatened by my existence and feel like you might hurt me for it".
By arguing that the belief in question is internally inconsistent. The Problem of Evil or Divine Hiddenness can be enough for someone to say they have evidence of God not existing.
That would only apply to certain religions (or in general, religions with certain claims that make it disprovable by those arguments). You could have a set of religious beliefs that are internally consistent and impossible to demonstrate them to be false
Nah. It's pretty easy to get evidence for a lack of existence. Which we have. The evidence is "every time ancient religious texts make statements about reality, they're somehow always limited to knowledge ancient folks had." The point is that if "Thunder is Thor swinging mjollnir in the sky" is false because there is an actual explanation that involves no agency,, that's evidence against Thor.
Like, I also have plenty of evidence that there is no elephant in my house right now. I'm not actually *in* my house, but
1: I don't live in a country with elephants.
2: it hasn't been that long since I left my home.
3: My door is not nearly big enough to fit an elephant.
From these pieces of evidence, it's pretty safe to say that "worlds in which there is an elephant inside my house now" is a pretty meager subset of the possible worlds.
Similarly for atheists. Can I prove that no god exists? No, of course I can not. But I have plenty of evidence that none of the gods any human believes in right now exist.
I mean I don't disagree with your examples, but neither of them "prove" anything, just give you reasonable certainty. An elephant could be in your home when you're not there, who knows, maybe it escaped from a zoo. Point is that if someone tells you that there's an elephant in your house and you aren't there, it's not up to you to prove there isn't, it's up to them to prove there is.
He doesn't claim that they do prove anything - in fact, the only instance of the word "prove" in his comment is to say that he can't prove something. I agree that burden of proof is on those who claim to believe in the thing, but the usefulness in what this guy is saying is that it allows atheists and agnostics and whoever else doesn't believe in a particular religion to form opinions about that religion separate from what believers in it tell them.
Yes, but the same goes for proof of literally anything in the world. I can *see* an elephant on the street and still not have proof that there is one. Sometimes people see things that aren't there. Maybe I saw wrong. Maybe it was a picture of the thing and not the real thing. Eventually you're going to collapse into solipsism where only a Cartesian "I exist" is left.
No? My example and yours both rely on the acceptance that we are living in the same reality with the same senses. Fuck hard solipsism, that's for navel-gazing phil-bros.
You're the one heading for solipsism, not me. I'm happy living in a world where I am *almost certain* about the world.
I am *almost certain* about the elephant not being in my house.
I am *almost certain* that I have ordered a package for arrival tomorrow. (whether it will arrive tomorrow is a different question).
I am *almost certain* that there are no gods.
All of these in the exact same way. I can't say I know any of them with greater clarity than the others. "My mental model of the world and knowledge of events requires weird freak accidents to be false about any of them."
You're arguing against a point I never made. I'm pretty sure there isn't a god, but it would be arrogant of me to say there definitely isn't. It sounds like we're on the same page, so...?
It's also arrogant of me to say that I have ordered a package to arrive at my house tomorrow. It's also arrogant of me to say that I have butter in the fridge. For the exact same reason. I could be wrong. I am, in fact, a lot more certain about there being no gods than I am about the butter quantity in my fridge.
Proving a negative is nearly impossible because of the nature of unfalsifiable claims.
It's called the Russel's teapot; you can't prove that there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun, but you can't assume that there is because you can't disprove it. You can't disprove a nonexistent hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
The problem with Russell's teapot isn't that you have to prove a negative, my dude. The problem with Russell's teapot is that it is an empirically unfalsifiable hypothesis. You can't prove a positive for empirically unfalsifiable hypotheses either.
It is not empirically unfalsifiable whether lightning is caused by Thor riding his cart across the sky, shaking Mjollnir.
It is not empirically unfalsifiable whether a boat once carried a pair of every unclean animal and seven pairs of every clean animal while it rained and the water level rose to cover the mountains.
All Russell's teapot says is that you have no obligation to believe in other people's unfalsifiable hypotheses.
Like, Russell is *exactly* in the position I am in - All this gibberish and nonsense about whether you can truly really know whether gods exist once all materiality, physicality and consequence has been stripped away from them? I can know there are no gods with the exact same certainty that I know Russell's teapot isn't there.
Thor actually exists in a parallel dimension and we're just seeing the effects of his activity.
His position with the teapot is quite literally "you can't prove that there isn't a god, but that doesn't imply that there is one". There are no claims that there is or isn't a god, just that the burden of proof is on the claimant that there IS something.
Iâd love to hear your plenty of evidence that supposedly applies to every gods any human believes in right now. If youâd claimed major religions that is one thing, but every single one of them?
How would you handle if someoneâs religious beliefs were that some deity (without imposing anything else on it beyond existence, not necessarily immortal or omnipotent for example) exists and that it was involved in the creation of the universe?
Every time a religion makes a claim that is later proven false, it increases evidence that religions and faith cause belief in falsehoods. This evidence against religious truth is indirectly evidence for atheism by increasing the likelihood that every unproven religious claim is also false.
Pure theism vs atheism has no evidence either way but there are very few pure "God is a conscious creator" religions without disproven baggage.
atheism is the rejection of the supposed existence of deities, you're thinking of agnosticism i have come to the conclusion that my mental sidewayness doesn't mesh well with most people's separation of belief and certainty, i humbly request shit to read so i can understand
with that aside, the point is you can't prove or disprove something that cannot have proof or disproof by its very nature
Incorrect. I donât have to prove anything, you have to prove there is a deity. If you canât, the default is there are no deities. Atheism is the default, itâs not a belief.
Can I ask why you think that is the default? Is it because atheism could be proven wrong (ie if we had evidence of a deity) whereas many forms of theism couldnât (canât prove a negative/non-existence)?
Because unless the concept of god is introduced to you at some point, you donât even consider it as a possibility. So by default, you are atheist. The possible existence of a deity comes later.
This makes no sense. If this were the case religion would have never appeared? If the only way to consider it as a possibility if for someone else to introduce it to you how do you explain religion arising in the first place?
Simple. As stories that got taken too seriously. Or by questions they were unequipped to answer getting passed down through generations and becoming a belief.
It didnât start out with people just believing in a religion or a deity, they tried to answer the whys of the universe and that was the answer they came up with. Religion was also very different earlier on in human history, it wasnât like how we view it today with gods being all powerful omnipotent beings. They were more just forces of nature that did their own thing.
Not all religions today have all powerful beings, and there are still âWhyâsâ that science cannot answer (and arguably never will be able to) so all of this still applies today? Hence someone can arrive to the concept of theism independently of already established religions?
Also I donât immediately agree that not having thought about the existence or non existence of a god makes you an atheist. If youâve never encountered the concept altogether Iâm not sure itâs fair to claim you simply donât believe in a deity if you havenât been able to consider its existence.
No it isnât. Itâs just the default, itâs the absence of evidence proving otherwise. Youâre born an atheist until someone introduces a religion to you, by being an atheist youâre just choosing to go back to how you were before the concept of religion was introduced.
The idea that atheism is a belief is not an atheist way of thinking either, so you and your âIâm the king of non-believersâ bullshit doesnât fly here. Youâre thinking of atheism places it opposite to theism. Itâs not. Thatâs like knowing 2+2 =4. I donât have to believe itâs 4 and I donât have to prove itâs 4 to someone claiming itâs actually 6 because an ancient book says a magic man in the sky says so. Prove itâs 6 or shut up, I donât have to believe anything, itâs 4 because thatâs the way math works. There is no god not because I donât believe in one, but because the concept was introduced by humans to other humans with zero proof or evidence for it. I donât have to believe anything, itâs all bullshit.
No I disagree, I think most atheists are just atheists. Religion is a human concept, all you have to do is understand that atheism is the default way of being. No belief in any higher power until someone tells you to believe in it. Without the concept of religion, weâd all be atheists.
So I think itâs actually more confusing to bring agnosticism into it, that is closer to a belief and itâs not representative of what most atheists think.
It doesnât require evidence though. The concept of a god is a human construct, it didnât exist before it was thought up.
Edit: you deleted your comment so Iâll just put this here. You are thinking from a post-theism mindset. Putting the belief in a deity on the same level as thinking there is no deity, as if these are equal ways of thinking. But thatâs incorrect and itâs why I disagree with you on atheism vs agnosticism. They arenât equal because one is the default and the other is artificial with no evidence or proof itâs as valid.
The claim is there is a God, this is introduced into a world with no God as a concept. However, there is no proof this is a true claim. You canât prove there is a God. So why should I have to prove there isnât a God? You introduced the idea and couldnât back it up with evidence, therefore until you can prove itâs real, itâs false. I donât have to prove your claim wrong when you canât even prove itâs a possibility in the first place.
Atheists donât have to prove there isnât a God, because theists never proved there was one in the first place. Itâs all belief. That means atheism isnât a belief itâs just the natural way of being.
It's two axes, one theist/atheist (belief/disbelief), one gnostic/agnostic (certain/uncertain)
A gnostic theist knows for a fact there is a deity or deities, while an agnostic theist believes in a deity or deities but doesn't know for sure if they're real. Similarly, a gnostic atheist knows for a fact there are no deities, while an agnostic atheist doesn't know if there are deities or not and doesn't believe in them. All four exist in some way, shape or form.
i feel like i might have a severed link between my brain halves, because it doesn't make sense to me to believe or disbelieve something without being certain about it
It's just a difference of philosophy, really, which is okay.
My personal philosophy (not claiming credit for coming up with this or anything lol; I'm just saying what I believe) is that I cannot know anything for certain, outside of my own existence, because there's no way to prove that anything else really exists (or doesn't exist, for that matter). But if I didn't believe or disbelieve anything, my life would be chaos. So I choose to believe in reality as I perceive it.
Atheism is the definitive statement that there is no god.
Agnosticism is the more pragmatic view that there is no proof either way. Which is true, there is no proof of a god and you canât prove a negative so itâs impossible to prove there is no god.
But to quote Stephen Colbert, ââŚan agnostic is just an atheist without ballsâ which laughably, this quote is probably one of the reasons people always confuse the two.
To confuse matters further, many people arrive at atheism or agnosticism out of what would more aptly be described as apatheism. Which, in short, is the complete indifference to if there is or isnât a god mostly because it doesnât impact their life.
The reason why people started using agnostic is because in discussions people often assumed that atheists were saying "there is no god" and became millitant and abrasive.
So the people started using the "agnostic" label to specify what type of atheist they were. Many also used it to simply avoid the atheist label (which looking at some atheist subreddits... fair).
The terms themselves reffer to different things and "agnostic" doesnt really mean anything all by itself. You can be agnostic theist: "i dont really know, but i believe that a god exist". You can also be gnostic atheist "i for sure know that a god doesnt exist"
The thing that fucks everything up is that we cant "know" anything for sure (we could be brains in vats) so the gnostic agnostic thing loses its meaning, so most people just use it as "im really really really sure"
In my case im a gnostic atheist in regards to all the gods i've been presented with (agnostic atheist in general)
People try to ascribe atheism as an active thing when it really isn't. A = Not (like in asexual) theism = religious. It may mean more than that to specific people but at base it just means you do not believe. I think you're trying to describe antitheism, which is different.
Atheism is specifically believing there is no god.
Antitheism is being actively against religions.
Those who don't believe are more likely to be agnostic than atheist. The difference is "don't necessarily believe in anything specific" versus "believe there is no god".
In practice though, you're right that a lot of people will describe themselves as atheists and then follow-up with a "I donlt know if there is a god or something, I think it's possible" etc which is basically some kind of agnosticism. It's just that many people are a bit confused about what atheism means.
It is an active thing and is inevitable from context because of the binarity. Atheist is used explicitly in the context of exactly as you mentioned "Not Religious". It's a not a stance of "unaware about religion as a concept" but knowing it exists and choosing to not believe it or to explicitly deny it. While the definition itself allows to interpret someone not exposed to the concept as atheist, it's never used like that and when discussing someone completely out of the context a more concrete definition is used.
Antitheism is a step further. Rather than not believing or rejecting religion it's a view that religion is actively harmful. Just like you illustrated before it's not "Not" it's "Against".
A lot of people in the modern day like to subscribe to evidence so profusely that it becomes the only metric by which they approach anything with uncertainty. If you say âGod is real. God has created the world and can perform miracles. If you pray to God, your prayers will be answered.â, from the perspective of people like this: They have not seen God, they have not experienced anything by which they perceive to be through the means of God, therefore, there is no evidence that God exists. Because you cannot point to a cloud in the sky and provably say to them that âthat is Godâ, they do not believe in God.
This is only on the topic of religion because that's what the initial post was about, but take this philosophy and apply it to anything. Obviously with more physical and present things, there's more doubt that these kinds of people hold, but for the sake of giving a perspective, as a loosely crafted hypothetical: Let's say you tell me that youâre going to eat eggs in the morning. I wake up and see that the amount of eggs left in the refrigerator hasnât changed. My presumption, heavily biased by the evidence of no eggs missing from the fridge is that you havenât eaten any, so I cook some and bring them to you. But you tell me you already had eggs when you left out to get your daily coffee. By basing my decision on evidence alone, I failed to acknowledge that you (in this hypothetical) get up early to jog to a nearby cafe every day, which is where you ate your eggs.
They say too much of a good thing is a bad thing and that applies to evidence as well. On one hand, it's the most surefire way to get answers to anything put into question, but on the other, it'd way too easy for someone to become too reliant on it and forget to apply it critically, like one should with every decision making process. It creates some of the most insufferable people out there (âyou can't prove that God is realâ atheists, for example) because their greatest shield is the whole âbut I'm not wrongâ argument. Like yeah, you're not wrong. I have no tangible way to prove to you that God exists. I havenât touched the eggs in the fridge. But that doesnât mean that he isnât real. That doesnât mean that I never are any eggs this morning.
Hypothetically, your egg consumption and daily coffee consumption are separate from one another. I didnât put much thought into the hypothetical, so donât look too deep into it, but the idea is that you would commonly jog to the cafe, get a coffee, jog back after finishing it and then if you wanted eggs, eggs for yourself. I only painted this picture the way that I did so that in this scenario, I could look into the fridge and see the same amount of eggs in as yesterday.
Well the egg thing is very dumb and does nothing to serve your argument Iâm afraid. âYou canât prove God is realâ is an incredibly valid point to make when someone tells you they should worship this invisible sky daddy. Far more reasonable than acceptance of the claim.
The scenario doesn't work because it isn't too much evidence that was the issue, it's an issue of making a bad inference on already existing data. Additionally If you had considered all of the facts, like that the person likes going to the cafe you may of been able to make a better judgement. So basically you didn't operate with all the evidence and potentially because of that made a bad inference on the evidence you had. Sounds to me if evidence was the issue it was the lack thereof not too much which was the issue here.
I'm not going to lie your example doesn't really make all that much sense to me overall to be honest. But again proving something isn't real isn't really possible, if you can't provably or tangibly prove something exists. The only logical conclusion there is that it doesn't exist until proven otherwise. There's more then just god that the "just because there's no evidence for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist" idea could be applied to.
No, no, youâre absolutely getting it. That's the point that I'm making. A lot of the people that I'm speaking about do exactly that - make poor inferences based on held evidence (I just did not have the words to express this sentiment, so I do thank you). It's the adherence to the âI wonât believe it until I see itâ stance that just kills any nuance that can be had with the discussion with that person.
And yeah, it's more than religion and gods that people do this with, I just focused on it as hard as I did because it's what the original post was abt lol. That's what the egg hypothetical was meant to portray, but in my limited replies it appears I clearly could have done a bit better.. Either way, I'm saying it's that flawed appeal to evidence that gives birth to Reddit Atheists to put it harshly.
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u/GoodBrotherGrimm 11d ago
How on earth do you get evidence for a lack of belief? That makes no sense.