The Definition of Atheism

Philosophy of Religion
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First up, what a super-weird thread. Fun.

A-theism means (i.e, the word itself) means non-theism. It does nto commit. It rejects. So, prima facie atheism is the rejection of belief in a god/God.
Agnostic means “unknown” basically. So, that speaks for itself. I suppose this has weaker and stronger versions though: Some think we cannot know, as opposed to ‘don’t know’. That said, ‘don’t know’ fits squarely with the etymology of atheist, so I think it helpful to stick to non-overlapping uses of these words thus:

Theist: Believes in a god/God
Atheist: Rejects that same belief
Agnostic: Does not believe we can know whether or not there is a god/God.

As best I can tell, not using the words this way leads to conversations that go absolutely nowhere and people want to cling to the word which fits how they feel, instead of clarifying things for hte sake of efficient communication. It seems to me this thread represents this fuzzy communication, thus far. Nothing moral in this claim, to be sure. Just observation.

ALL of this said, obviously, plenty of people use “atheist” to denote their belief in a lack of gods/God. c’est la vie. I think this unfortunate.

I do not thikn Dawnstorms approach is helpful, as you can tell.

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Getting hung up on definitions isn’t of much use. In the freethought communities I know people often talk about being agnostic atheists since atheism goes to belief, not knowledge. I’d identify as an atheist (reluctantly because the word has baggage) and say that I lack belief in gods. I do not hold that there are no gods or know there are no gods. I don’t believe that reason can conclusively determine either position. I also think that theism is a bit like sexual orientation, you can’t help what you’re attracted to. Any reasoning is likely post hoc.

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Why insist that there be only one true use for “atheism”? Can’t it have various meanings?

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Indeed. I guess that’s why I don’t always find definition chasing of much interest. Consider the thread on love. :face_with_tongue: I’m more interested in usage. But there’s often a crusty pedant who will argue that unless it conforms to the “true defination” it’s not accurate.

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As if there were an essence of atheism…

There’s a naive view of philosophy as at least in part consisting in the seeking of definitions, of what this or that “really means” or “is really”. It’s nonsense, of course.

So I’ll unrepentantly again plug my thread on definitions, An Approach to Aesthetics. It’s about how definitions are always inadequate.

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The OP isn’t against polysemy. He finds the lumping together of quite different positions under the rubric of atheism problematic. Lack of belief (in whatever) is distinct from possessing knowledge (of that whatever). Belief is not the same as knowledge. That atheists have to keep explaining this to theists is problematic. It’s like constantly being mistaken for a robber, and having to repeatedly prove your innocence. :grin:

P.S. We’re not talking about the word, “atheism”.

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Are there not several uses of the term atheism or are you more prescriptive?

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I acknowledged polysemy is part of the issue. Non-belief and knowledge are referents of the same word, “atheism”. Hence strong vs. weak atheism, sufficiently clarificatory.

1 Like
29

Ok. Let’s do some overkill.

The possible range of beliefs are:

A) one believes that god exists, or

B) one believes god does not exist, (disbelief);or

C) one, after due consideration, chooses not to commit to believing in god, nor to commit to disbelieving in god or

D) one has not formed an opinion because one has not considered the issue (lack of belief)

Position A is (amongst other things), theism. B is atheism. C is agnosticism, and D pig ignorance, which for the remainder of this post, I’ll ignore.

The law of excluded middle appears to invalidate (C), but this is superficial. It is true that either god exists, or that god does not. No other possibility is available. It is also true that either one believes that X, or one does not. But belief statements can contain existential statements wholly within their scope. They are predicates of the second order. Placing the two possible existential statements within the scope of the two possible belief statements delivers four possibilities. One can:

i. believe (god exists)

ii. not believe (god exists)

iii. believe (god does not exist)

iv. not believe (god does not exist)

Each of these can then be paired, thus:

a) A theist will accept both i and iv.

b) An atheist will accept both ii and iii

But there are two other permutations; (i and iii), and (ii and iv). One cannot consistently believe both (i) and (iii), since they would imply that one could:

v. believe (gods exists and god does not exist)

that is, believe a contradiction.

But one can consistently believe (ii) and (iv), since they would, by the same process, imply that one could

vi. not believe (god exists and god does not exist)

that is, believe a tautology. This gives us a third mode of belief,

c) an agnostic will accept both ii and iv

We are left with three possible forms of considered belief:

  • Committing to a belief that god exists

  • Committing to a belief that god does not exist

  • Not committing to either belief

That would be odd, in a thread called “The definition of Atheism”.

1 Like
30

It’s not that complicated. See here

Disbelief means withholding belief, which is lack of belief.

To me the following is the case
Given p

  1. Know(p)
  2. Know(~p)
  3. Don’tKnow(p)
  4. Don’tKnow(~p)
  5. Believe(p)
  6. Believe(~p)
  7. Don’tBelieve(p) [Disbelieve(p)]
  8. Don’tBelieve(~p) [Disbelieve(~p)]

For strong atheists and strong theists 1 and 2
For weak theists and weak atheists 5, 6, 7, 8
For agnostics 3, 4

“God is not the author of confusion.” ~ Paul

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You appear to say that it’s not that complicated, only to repeat what I just wrote.

In standard interpretations, you can’t know something that you don’t believe, and you can’t know something that is not true. Adding “know” to the mix, in addition to belief, is not obviously helpful. Better to keep to belief.

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Welcome to the Forum! I first discovered forums because I found Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, and those of the other so-called ‘New Atheists’, philosophically objectionable. At the time (about 2008) there was a ‘Richard Dawkins’ forum, the first forum I joined, which as you can imagine was a knockdown drag-out brawl most of the time. This forum is (I think) the fifth or sixth since then.

Myself, I’m open to the religious dimension of life, and, although not a denominational Christian, I’m far from atheist. My religious orientation is generally more Eastern in which I’ve pursued an interest through Buddhist Studies.

Much (or even all) of the debates about the existence of God are grounded in a misunderstanding of what exactly is being debated. Oftentimes it comes down to the associations that the individual attaches to the name, mostly coloured by their attitude to denominational religion. Then there’s the evangalisation impetus in Christianity — going forth and spreading the Word, and the idea that those listening are in need of saving, even if they themselves have no idea. That naturally engenders a lot of pushback, not to say hostility.

But here I want to make a philosophical point, which is to question whether it is meaningful to either assert or deny the existence of a Supreme Being (which I will call here ‘the One’). The point being that whatever can be said to exist comes into and goes out of existence - in other words, it has a beginning and an end in time. It is also spatially delimited - it exists in some location or in relation to something else. None of these attributes can be said to be true of the One.

(It is true that the terminology of the One has more in common with Greek philosophy (specifically Plotinus) than with denominational Christianity, but it’s also true that much of Christian theology adopted such ideas from the sorrounding Greek world early in the piece.)

The point being that, as David Bentley Hart says:

while there has been a great deal of public debate about belief in God in recent years…the concept of God around which the arguments have run their seemingly interminable courses has remained strangely obscure the whole time. The more scrutiny one accords these debates, moreover, the more evident it becomes that often the contending parties are not even talking about the same thing; and I would go so far as to say that on most occasions none of them is talking about God in any coherent sense at all. …As Hart (and others) have demonstrated, whatever the New Atheists don’t believe in, it’s not God, at least not God as conceived by a single one of the major theistic traditions on the planet.

Instead, the New Atheists ingeniously deny the existence of a bearded fellow with superpowers who lives in the sky and finds people’s keys for them.

So, as far as philosophy of religion is concerned — and it should be a concern, on a philosophy forum — perhaps the first stop is to analyse what the subject of the debate is, before declaring whether one does or does not believe in it.

1 Like
33

But my post has fewer words than yours.

I don’t think you’re following me all that well. Belief and knowledge are different beasts. How would you respond to me saying, “I believe this plant is edible” and me saying, “I know this plant is edible”?

I could also say, “I don’t believe that Tom is in NY” and “I don’t know if Tom is in NY”.

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And correspondingly less logic.

But whatever.

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:smiley: That’s a non sequitur.

Anyhow, there’s no need to quarrel over such a small matter.

The OP has, well, opened Pandora’s box. I’ve seen this star and the asterism it is a part of so to speak. I worked on the problem for at least 1 week (not the brightest bulb on the chandelier), but I seem to have forgotten most of it. Sic vita est.

In debates atheists tend to assume the lack-of-belief/disbelief position. It has certain advantages. Scratch an atheist and you’ll find a skeptic. You know skepticism. Monkey business?

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Perhaps, rather than looking for a definition of atheism, we should discuss whether God exists or not. Or ask ourselves whether we simply do not believe in God for one reason or another. Or even ask ourselves whether we feel no need to believe, and so on.

Or whatever. Vive la dissémination.

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You’re invited

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In Australia, I spent time affiliated with the freethought community. I found that atheists really only share one thing: a disbelief in God. Many atheists I have met, however, believe in everything from astrology to Bigfoot. Politically they might be libertarians or socialists. Some atheists are not much bothered by religion, others are evangelical fundamentalists against it.

For me the notion of God or gods doesn’t add anything to my sense‑making or life. So I find the idea superfluous to my experience. Laborious reasoning against Neoplatonic accounts of God, or Aquinas’ Five Ways, or whatever it might be, is beyond tedious. Reason can take you to atheism or to fundamentalist Islam, which makes its usefulness unclear to me.

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That’s ok by me. There are wondeful peeps that take a utilitarian approach to things. If it ain’t useful, it’s dumped. If it is then, they’ll use until no longer so. Of course I’m not saying this of you, but who knows? Deep down things are dark and fuzzy and cold.

I don’t know how important God is in the 21^{st} century, but the majority of h. sapiens believe in some god. It’s odd given we’ve fair records since around 5000 BC. However, the world population isn’t homogeneous with respect to belief. You should check out the statistics. Informative to say the least. Permutations of various sorts exist e.g. the head of a syndicate might be an atheist, but all his underlings could be theists. Some could be cultural Christians/Buddhists, and so on. I suppose one has to compensate for the black sheep. A karmic calculus, which a priest could work out?

To return to possible reasons to suspect monkey business, theism-atheism is a good place to sharpen those grey cells.

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Humans seem to be flawed and fearful so it’s not surprising that many belief systems have persisted as ways of managing existential anxiety, as described by Terror Management Theory.