Atheism, nature or nurture?

[Intoscience]

14 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

Is there a difference between these two definitions?

"an atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists" 

and
"An atheist is someone who believes that God does not exist"

Ordinarily the statements are considered equivalent.

But, by one definition a rock is an atheist. A rock doesn't believe anything, so it doesn't believe in God.

A person who has never been told about God is in the same position as that rock. You can't believe in something that you don't know about. By that definition, they are an a atheist.

But, by the other definition, a rock can't believe that God does not exist. The rock is not an atheist.
A person who has never heard about God is, again, in the same position as that rock; they hold no opinion about the nonexistence of God and is therefore not an atheist.

The OP's question talks about nature or nurture.

Being told that God exists (or that some people think He exists) is part of nurture.

By the first definition, if you do not receive that nurture you are an atheist.
By the second definition,  if you do not receive that nurture you are not an atheist.

So the answer to the question depends very strongly on how you define atheism.



 
 

+1

So from this the logical conclusion is that its nurture not nature. 

[studiot]

15 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

By the first definition, if you do not receive that nurture you are an atheist.
By the second definition,  if you do not receive that nurture you are not an atheist.

Very clever, John, +1

 

11 minutes ago, Genady said:

Exactly.

As for me, for the most of my life I thought that the first definition is the accepted one. Only discussions in this forum convinced me that most members rather relate to the second one. Since then, I don't call myself an atheist, at least not in this forum.

I would like to point out that not only is Nature v Nurture not balck and white, but the issue of belief or disbelief is also non binary.

I didn't catch on to Joh's argument until he potently either.

For myself as a youg child I just accepted the idea more or less as I was taught.

About 12 I worked out for myself the logical inconsistency of an omnipotent being and for a few years I followed the debate.
In doing so I never came across any conclusive pros, but the cons began to build up.

Then I decided on my third way.

I just don't care. I don't need a man in a long black or white garment and a pointy hat to tell me what's what. I can work that out for myself.

So I asked myself "would it make any difference to how I go about thing ?".

Since my self answer was no I came to the conclusion that the isue was irrelevant to me.

[Genady]

15 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

So from this the logical conclusion is that its nurture not nature. 

Only if you stick with the second definition.

[dimreepr]

44 minutes ago, Genady said:

Variable substitution is not a logical fallacy.

Your downvote of my post is a bad mark on you.

Tell that to the strawman.

I wouldn't have left a red 1, but the post didn't deserve a green 1.

Because you're conflating santa and god in an attempt to ridicule my premise, not argue it.

But just to be clear, most philosophical/cultural attacks on religion revolves around the existence of god (or santa if you prefer), rather than the credence of the philosophies written. 

Edited February 20, 2023 by dimreepr

[studiot]

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

 .....not argue it.

But just to be clear, most philosophical/cultural attacks on religion revolves around the existence of god (or santa if you prefer), rather than the credence of the philosophies written. 

I'm not interested to your (other) argument.

But I would ask if this is not because of the sentiments put so fully in the words of the Hymn  "Immortal, Invisible, God only wise"

Definitely implying that God is central to that religion.

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, studiot said:

I'm not interested to your (other) argument.

But I would ask if this is not because of the sentiments put so fully in the words of the Hymn  "Immortal, Invisible, God only wise"

Definitely implying that God is central to that religion.

But not why, that God is central to that culture, so much context is lost between the generation's. 

[Genady]

14 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I wouldn't have left a red 1, but the post didn't deserve a green 1.

This is even worse. Now you decide for other people what their opinion should've been.

 

16 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

not argue it

I show that your argument is illogical. Of course I don't argue it, because there is no way to logically argue an illogical argument.

 

18 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

philosophical/cultural attacks on religion

Here is another example of how illogical your argument is. There, you talked about atheists. Now, you replace it with the attacks on religion. 

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, Genady said:

This is even worse. Now you decide for other people what their opinion should've been.

Point well missed, besides how is 0 worse than -1?

3 minutes ago, Genady said:

I show that your argument is illogical.

How did you do that?

4 minutes ago, Genady said:

Here is another example of how illogical your argument is. There, you talked about atheists. Now, you replace it with the attacks on religion. 

Context missed:

26 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

But just to be clear, most philosophical/cultural attacks on religion revolves around the existence of god (or santa if you prefer), rather than the credence of the philosophies written. 

I'm starting to think your arguments are less than, honest.

Much like your voting protocol. 🙂

[Genady]

3 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I'm starting to think your arguments are less than, honest.

I'm starting to think your arguments are less than logical.

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Genady said:

I'm starting to think your arguments are less than logical.

The difference is, I have evidence... 😉 

[iNow]

This would be boring if it weren’t so annoying. 

Dim - You’re saying sometimes stories from religion have value, correct? If not, please set me straight. If so, please advise who claims otherwise. 

There are so many conflated concepts here. Atheism and lack of belief in god or gods. Opposition to organized religion, primary of the Abrahamic variety.

Perhaps going back to the basics and defining our terms would suffice to move past the bickering ridiculousness. 

[Genady]

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

Perhaps going back to the basics and defining our terms would suffice to move past the bickering ridiculousness.

I wish. +1

[John Cuthber]

3 hours ago, Intoscience said:

+1

So from this the logical conclusion is that its nurture not nature. 

No
The conclusion is "it depends what you mean by atheist".
There are two perfectly plausible definitions, and they give different outcomes.

[Genady]

12 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

No
The conclusion is "it depends what you mean by atheist".
There are two perfectly plausible definitions, and they give different outcomes.

They are both plausible definitions, but the second one has a problem, IMO, that it requires some definition of God, and this is problematic. The first definition, OTOH, does not require it and thus is easily tested.

The second definition leads to farther confusions about 'which God don't you believe in?', 'does it include Buddha?', 'is Jesus God?', 'can you prove that God does not exist?', etc.

OTOH, the first definition only needs to look at the list of things I believe in - which is not very long and definitely finite - and to check that there is no God on this list.

[TheVat]

49 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

No
The conclusion is "it depends what you mean by atheist".
There are two perfectly plausible definitions, and they give different outcomes.

I'm glad that people here are at least noticing there are two different definitions.  The second one seems like the one that is most widely used in philosophy, i.e. that atheism is an active belief (learned) that the universe does not have a deity of supernatural life force of any kind.

Like most people, I feel that epistemological integrity (of the "who knows?  there is no way to definitively disprove such an entity" variety) requires me to be agnostic.  I generally assume that objective truths about the world are not dependent on my personal beliefs and that I am a finite creature who cannot have perfect knowledge of the universe and all conscious beings (god(s) or otherwise) in it. 

That agnosticism was also, I'm sure, learned. 

Anthropological evidence suggests that the default state of a human neural net is to view the world as somehow alive and full of spirits.  We see a residue of that in the way that we personify inanimate objects.

  The sea was angry that day.  My car is a stubborn bastard when it's cold in the morning.  I hear the cottonwoods whispering above. The sun was merciless. 

Our primitive view of the world often emerges in poetry. 

[John Cuthber]

57 minutes ago, Genady said:

The first definition, OTOH, does not require it and thus is easily tested.

Yes it does.
And it's the same definition of "God" for both definitions of atheist.

 

 

58 minutes ago, Genady said:

and to check that there is no God on this list.

If you don't say what God is, how do you know if he's on the list or not?
He might be there, but labelled as Allah.

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

If you don't say what God is, how do you know if he's on the list or not?
He might be there, but labelled as Allah.

I don't need to know, because I am not the one who asks the question. I am an object in this test. The subject, the one who wants to know if I believe in God, supposedly has some idea what it is. Then they go through my list:

Item 1: facts and logic. Is it God? - No.

Item 2: Earth is not flat. Is it God? - No.

Item 3: Money helps. Is it God? - No.

...

etc. 

[John Cuthber]

32 minutes ago, Genady said:

Item 1: facts and logic. Is it God? - No.

That's begging the question.

The other person may well consider God to be a fact.

[Peterkin]

I don't need to define a god, or gods, or deity in order to be absolutely convinced that I do not believe any of the god-stories that I have heard or read so far. I can call myself an atheist, since I actively reject all of the supernatural claims of all of the religions i have encountered - including the ones I find attractive. If a belief system shows up that convinces me of its validity, I am prepared to change my mind ... but there isn't much time left, before I go to what I (sadly, reluctantly) believe is oblivion.  

If there is Something Out There that hasn't been catlogued and enshrined by organized religion, I'm content to remain ignorant of its existence and irreligious of its potential divinity.  

[sethoflagos]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

I'm glad that people here are at least noticing there are two different definitions.  The second one seems like the one that is most widely used in philosophy, i.e. that atheism is an active belief (learned) that the universe does not have a deity of supernatural life force of any kind.

I'm inclined to see even this as a false dichotomy. 

I like Aristotle's ancient maxim: 'Nature operates in the shortest way possible'. 

It keeps coming back in various guises: the various statements and restatements of Occam's Razor; Principles of Parsimony and Least Action; even the simple symmetries underpinning the Standard Model. 

In context, it is indifferent to any concept of supernatural being. Why should a principle that frames much of your core opinions be framed in terms of something you've rejected? Do we label modern chemists as 'antiphlogistonists'? At some stages in our development, explanations involving supernatural beings were the simplest and therefore the best explanations going. But we have better explanantions available to us now and are able to discard some of the more elaborate beliefs of our ancestors.

So like @Genady I find the term 'atheist' unhelpful though I stopped believing in fairies nearly 60 years ago. I feel the term is maintained in the interests of those who wish to keep an outdated concept centrestage. Time to move on.

[Genady]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

That's begging the question.

The other person may well consider God to be a fact.

In that case, the person will need to check in the list of facts I believe in, if that fact is there:

Item 1a: My name is Genady.

Item 1b: I am a member in SFn.

Item 1c: I live in Bonaire.

...

This list is longer, but finite anyway.

 

Alternatively, the test could go like this, for example:

They: Do you believe it is a fact that an intelligent being created Universe?

I (quickly checking my list): No.

 

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, Genady said:

In that case, the person will need to check in the list of facts I believe in, if that fact is there:

Item 1a: My name is Genady.

Item 1b: I am a member in SFn.

Item 1c: I live in Bonaire.

...

This list is longer, but finite anyway.

 

Alternatively, the test could go like this, for example:

They: Do you believe it is a fact that an intelligent being created Universe?

I (quickly checking my list): No.

 

So, if they're not you they can't believe in a fact?

"Cogito ergo sum", has it's flaws.

[Genady]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

So, if they're not you they can't believe in a fact?

Why not?

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Genady said:

Why not?

Because it's a different question; what is a fact? or why does my belief trump another's? 

[Genady]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

why does my belief trump another's?

Does it?