Basically the crux of the issue right here. You know nothing about Universe making, and neither do anyone else on this earth. Just because you can think of three possible ways it came about does not mean those are the only three ways.

Yeah your position, since you always feel compelled to take a view. Other people don't, no matter how many times you insist they have to (and then proceed to tell them what that view is and to declare them inconsistent or outrageous).

You can require all kinds of things. What you can't do is claim to know which view someone else holds. (maybe my Lego car is necessary, random, eternal or some other brilliant solution I haven thought of yet - some a-legoists are sitting on the fence until they have a reason to form a view).

Well I disagree, but this refutes your position anyhow (now youve come up with three options, before you said there were only two).

"as far as I can see" doesn't allow you to declare it a logical deduction. It tells us something about you and your ability to conceive other possibilities, nothing more.

Atheists believe that there is no God, not "Atheists do not believe in God".

Slightly different statements, no?

Atheists in general do not believe there is no god.
Atheists simply do not believe your claim that there is a god and he is X, Y and Z.

You - "there is a god , he is called Blah, he can do X,Y and Z"
Atheist- " I dont believe you"

Simple really

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...niScmOc#t=345s

Okay. My problem is that what you are saying here seems so obviously contradictory that I just assume I don't understand what you are saying. For instance, you admit that some atheists, such as batair really does abstain from believing that god doesn't exist. But on the other hand you seem to say that as a matter of logic if you don't believe god exists you must accept some other belief. But since batair can't do what is logically impossible, I don't know how this can be a matter of logic (i.e. of the excluded middle).

Maybe I am just not clear on your view then. Do you believe that being a weak atheist requires that you believe anything?

I honestly have no idea. My guess is that it would be fairly high, but my experience is biased as I tend to primarily be interested in theologians who are also philosophers and so who often talk with thoughtful non-believers.

Some atheists like batair may not have a belief in God. But he would not say that the proposition "An intelligent purposeful being created the universe", to be further known as proposition A, is false. (Batair feel free to step in anytime if I am misrepresenting you). He would hold a position that he does not know about the truth or falsehood of A. Because of this he would not logically be forced to accept the truth or falsehood of -A.

Now if an atheist was to take a firm position (any sort of certainty really) that A was false, the would be logically forced to accept that -A was true.

Is this not a correct application of the law of excluded middle? If not maybe I am just missing something.



Maybe the above clears it up.

Even if I were to accept that -A is false, it has nothing to do with my beliefs about propositions D-Z. Why are you having such a hard time with this? Try this one out...

My buddy was sitting at home by himself last night watching the NLCS in his living room when a dish fell off a shelf in the kitchen and broke. I say it was a ghost. Do you believe in ghosts? Do you accept this claim (A)? No? Then you must accept that it is false (-A), right? What an outrageous position to hold that dishes are able to jump off shelves by themselves. How can you believe that?

Your fine, i wouldn't say A is false.

Okay, I don't have a problem with any of this. If you believe that A is false, then since ~A is a logical implication, you should also believe ~A (although strictly speaking it is still possible to not believe ~A since it is possible to both believe contradictions and not believe all of the implications of your own beliefs).

It seems to me then that the issue, if there is one, is around whether these atheists believe regarding deistic-type gods that they do not exist. Most of the atheists here claim to not actively believe that such gods don't exist, but to merely lack a belief in their existence. I suspect that you are skeptical of this claim because many of these atheists will claim to have a fairly high degree of certainty that such a god doesn't exist, but yet to not believe that it doesn't exist.

Now, on the face of it, this might seem contradictory. This is probably due to the assumption VeeDDzz` made in his agnosticism thread--that we should view propositions about which we don't hold beliefs to be 50% likely to be true or false. I think the reason this doesn't hold regarding the deistic god is that most atheists view this god as an attempt to explain the origin of the universe. As such, it could be true--we don't have a very good understanding of how the universe came to exist--and deism is at least one of the viable alternatives. However, it is only one of many such viable alternatives, and since they can't all have a probability of 50%, the initial probability of this claim is fairly low. However, that doesn't mean that these atheists are willing to say that they believe it is false.

For example, say that you are a detective investigating a murder. You know that there are 100 people who had the same opportunity and motive for committing the murder, and you have no good evidence to distinguish between these suspects. Now, an objective detective might say of any particular one of these suspects (call him Bill) that while he is 99% certain that Bill didn't commit the crime, he still doesn't believe that Bill didn't commit the crime. It seems to me that we have something similar going on with regards to the deistic hypothesis.

It seems to me that what Jib is saying, is that if we don't accept claim A (a deistic god), and therefore accept that A is false, then we automatically must also accept claim Y (that the universe came about through a series of happy accidents, or something similar). My point is that Y does not necessarily follow simply from rejecting A (or accepting ~A). Jib seems to insist that it does (he can correct me if I'm wrong).

I like my ghost example where a dish falls in another room for no apparent reason. You can reject the existence of ghosts without committing to the proposition that plates jump off of shelves on their own. Jib on the other hand, will not allow for any other alternative. Either you accept the existence of ghosts, or you automatically hold the outrageous belief that plates jump by themselves, because after all, he can think of no other way for plates to just fall.

I think you're getting close to the issue, but the problem with the jibninja claim is the same as with a lot of DS claims. You reject the first claim and they don't address the objection but keep modifying the claim.

Here is Jibs claim that the OP posted to deal with --
that a person who doesn't believe the universe is a creation of a (A) "intentional, mindful being" then you must believe --
(B) THAT claim is false ! and obviously so, because B is not not-A.

Now, we've gotten him to make a totally different claim which unfortunately HE still thinks is the same claim worded differently.
Jib -
So, we've gotten nowhere.

Personally, when an entire new thread is created to deal with a specific claim ( as in the DS case and in this one) I find it frustrating when the one challenged is allowed to defend his claim by changing it.
I'm not confusing that with how we work through an interesting or confusing topic to try to get closer to some understanding of it. But those ( usually more interesting experiences) don't mean certain specific thread-creating claims shouldn't be put to rest as they were originally trumpeted.
grrrrrr

So, at the end of this and Jib now has made a different claim ( which he thinks is a re-wording of his first claim .... jesusHbalded!) an entire thread has been a waste of time as far as it's stated purpose. Jib believes he was right and us objectors ( well this objector) feel cheated of a good debate.

My claim has been the exact same throughout, although I admitted that I used some sloppy wording. It is evident that my claim did not change as I spent most of the thread trying to explain to people that I was referring to a belief in no-god, not simply a lack of belief in god, which is what you were trying to attribute to me.

So am I misunderstanding you as well? It seems you are claiming that a belief in no god requires the belief "that all of reality is a product of nothing coupled with a series of mindless purposeless processes and attributes" and that this belief is more outrageous than a belief in a god. Do I have that correct?

When I was much younger, my atheism required no belief. No one tried to sell me on God, when I went to church (the few times I did) I didn't see anything particularly supernatural behind it... it was just church. I was never forced to identify any religion or consider any god so the entire problem didn't exist for me until I was ~19. Til then, things were the way they were and I didn't see any reason to believe in anything supernatural. And even at 19 it wasn't a problem at all, just a "do I really need a label? I prefer it the way it was."-type deal.

Yes. that was his claim that was challenged.

He has not defended that claim but has come up with a new one which is -
If you don't believe goddidit then you believe god didn't do it, or some such. Irrelevant to the OP but what's new.

I'll go with that, but what is so outrageous about the bolded part? What I've been trying to challenge, is his claim that atheists hold a much more outrageous belief. However, I can't seem to pin him down about this.

Nothing worthwhile. That's just what his outrageous, and challenged, claim has been morphed into though. This one is either beyond trivial or essentially meaningless because of lack of word definition, but personally I don't care. It was the original claim that was ludicrous and thus interesting.

Its because the much vaunted "A" is a composite statement (the universe was created and it had a creator and that creator is mindful and..." so A = X+Y+Z+...

He's right that if you think Not-A is true you should (usually) think A is false. A can be false if any of it's constituent statements are false though - he picks out one way it could be false (because he can't think of another way) and then labels it a "logical consequence". It's weird, because he knows that I (who do believe in no-god) also believe that the universe wasn't created (because creation doesn't make sense, in my view, when applied to time). So he should be aware of alternatives to "reality is a product of nothing...etcetera"

Logical noncognitivists also think there is no-god, but have no necessary view as to where the universe came from. There are also people who reject the law of the excluded middle, people who believe in an eternal universe, some who believe in a finite universe, but an eternal "potential-verse"... All of these people may be believers in no-god, without holding the "outrageous" view jibninjas claims they must.

Yes. that is what I was attempting to capture with my " lack of word definition" statement. It's like he's unaware of the compound meaning he attaches to the word which doesn't all transfer into the negation.
Personally, because of the length of time he's had the issue addressed I'm fresh out of the Principle of Charity. It's not like it's a complex situation which would require cutting a lot of slack.

Can you tell me what a logical noncognitivist is? I cannot find anything out there on this.

What does "not created" have to do with being the "product of"?

An eternal universe does not make the situation any different.

I havent really put much effort into understanding it, to be frank. The ones who've popped into RGT/SMP over the years just seemed obviously wrong and uncomfortably zealous about it (Nielsio was a good example).

Basically, they think the word "God" has no meaning - that not only does it not refer to any actual object and that it is fundamentally ill-defined. Thus it is not actually possible to believe in God - the sentence appears grammatical, but is not actually specifying anything and as such can't be true or false.

EDIT: Ahh - there's the problem I think I'd been reading duffe's posts. I meant theological noncognitivist, not logical noncognitivist - sorry about that.

A theological noncognitivist says that "God" is not a meaningful term. Thus God does not exist. Nonetheless, they are not necessarily claiming the universe is "the product of nothing...etcetera"

No idea. But one way of declaring "God exists" to be false (using your earlier definition of God as a mindful, purposeful creator of the universe) is to say that the universe was not created and therefore has no creator. Doing so doesnt entail a belief that it was a product of nothing (which you claimed was an outrageous and logically required consequence of believing in no-God).

"e·ter·nal   /ɪˈtɜrnl/ Show Spelled[ih-tur-nl] Show IPA
adjective
1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing ( opposed to temporal): eternal life."

No need for a creator there - nor is someone who thinks the universe is eternal therefore forced to conclude that it was the "product of nothing...etcetera".