Do you think that the statement "I believe there is no god" flawed?

Let's say I look at my coffee table and I see a cup on it you would be okay if I said that I believed there is a cup on my table? Consider that the cup is removed would you be okay if I said I believe there is no cup on my table?

It's still a belief, it's a result of the same cognitive processes that led me to believe there was a cup on my coffee table that now leads me to believe there is no cup on my table.

I disagree, But ill let others.

It's not always going to be appropriate.

I think it depends on how you're defining or using 'belief'. If you simply take it to mean an opinion, a way of thinking about something, I think it renders it virtually meaningless. I think that a belief is more than just an opinion, it is a positive affirmation of something, you believe that something exists, that something is true, that it has actuality or validity. You don't believe that something doesn't exist, you just have no belief that it does.

I think it would be odd to say 'I believe that there is no cup', you would probably say 'I don't believe there is a cup' to someone asserting that there is. You would lack a belief that there's a cup, you would express disbelief, not belief.

Many people doing something incorrect doesn't change that it's incorrect.

I believe that they used poor wording. I can say that I believe that because I think it's true, and have what I think are good reasons so it's more than just an opinion, it's a conviction that has validity

Perhaps this is the one area where an atheistic viewpoint might be described as a belief then, because of the level to which that principle or conviction is held, it becomes more than just an opinion and becomes a belief. I however am not so sure, I don't know that it's true that there are no gods and I wouldn't say that I believe that there are no gods. I simply suspect it.

So, I don't think it can be generally held that atheism is a belief system.

(OTOH, I do believe that all religions are man made constructs..)

Do you think it's ever appropriate?

There are classes of beliefs, some of them positive some negative. There is no problem with the sentence.

"There is no cup on the table"

It reflects my belief that there is no cup on the table. Just as the statement "There is no God in the universe" may reflect a persons belief that there is no God in the universe.

I don't know why you think this renders belief meaningless, opinions are classes of beliefs, facts may be believed or not, a belief can be understood consistently and meaningfully as the output of some cognitive process.

Consider the discussion of whether or not a statement is truth apt, whether or not it attempts to describe the world, if it does, irrespective of whether it is true it's a belief. It

Is there any reason that the word "false" could not be substituted into this sentence in place of "true" and everything still be completely meaningful?

"I can say that I believe that because I think it's FALSE, and have what I think are good reasons so it's more than just an opinion, it's a conviction that has validity"

Treating these categories of statements as being disjoint is going to be problematic.

This is another area where you're creating artificial distinctions. If my memory is right, you got yourself in a pretty deep morass trying to say that you hold "suspicions" and other people's statements were some other category.

This is very likely wrong.

Yes, I think so, see my reply to NR about strong atheism.

So if you've ever thought about something, you now have a belief about it? Is the only time it's possible to lack belief when it concerns something about which you have no knowledge and about which you've never thought?

This is what I think renders the word virtually meaningless, and that belief actually indicates a level of opinion beyond merely having considered something. Belief is an opinion or viewpoint that has moved to firmer ground, a higher degree of conviction that something exists or is true.

I merely think that there are no gods, I don't 'believe' it.

I can only refer you to my previous explanation.

Merely thinking about something is not enough. You have to reach a conclusion of some sort. I can think about flowers without having any particular belief about flowers.

That's the easiest way for it to happen. Since the human mind is quick to form judgments about things, it's hard not to hold beliefs as we start to gain information about a topic. The idea of a neutral position is quite difficult to maintain in any practical sense. (This is at least with regards to concrete claims. Nebulous/meaningless claims or just thoughts in general can be thought without forming beliefs.)

Why does it render the word meaningless? Saying this is one thing, but you need to actually present a rationale as to why it is the case.

This seems more meaningless to me because it doesn't create a clear distinction between positions. How much higher is enough to convert something to a belief from whatever it is before it reaches a belief?

What is the actual distinction between "think" and "believe" in this sentence? Can you cleanly draw a line between the two mental states in a way that people not inside your head can access?

Not quite, if you consider previous discussions about propositional knowledge you'll recall that there are 3 attitudes one can take towards a proposition one can assent to it, one can deny it and one can withhold assent to it. If we consider the proposition

P1 There is a god.

One can assent to this proposition, the theist does this, one can deny it which is equivalent to saying

P1r There is no god

The strong atheist does this or one can withhold assent to both P1 and P1r which is roughly equivalent to the weak atheist position. Notice the position that the weak atheist takes does not entail a belief about whether there is a god or not. The most that can be said is that the weak athiest believes the case for P1 and P1r is unproven or unlikely it does not require a belief regarding the specific propositions, in this case, reflected by you, atheism is merely the lack of assent to and so belief in P1. It does not require a belief P1r.

However there is nothing inconsistent in denying P1 and so asserting P1r. It is perfectly reasonable to hold a belief with regard to something that does not exist whether metaphysical in the case of god or mundane in the case of the coffee cup that is not on the table.

I think you occasionally give too much weight to words. To count as a belief it is only necessary that something is a truth apt output of your cognitive process, opinions are beliefs.

Consider your last sentence, thinking is the process the belief is the output of the process, it seems, because you don't wish to consider belief meaningless, you attempt to distinguish between beliefs and opinions/thoughts/suspicions when they are in fact subsets of beliefs that we may assign a lower degree of probability to than those beliefs we not only believe but we believe to be true.

Also with regard to the last sentence if you think there are no gods you do actually hold a belief, you may not be certain of this belief or sufficiently confident in it to claim to know it but you hold a belief with regard to P1r. There is a distinction between thinking/believing there is no god and not thinking/believing there is a god.

That's fine, it is this belief which you are arguing for.

I can't really add too much to this conversation at this point.

What does stands out to me is that when you are asking yourself if God exists or not, you are at the same time asking who made the universe. What we are really doing is observing the world and asking how it got here. Those who are deists conclude that God is a reasonable answer. Those who are atheist prefer a non sentient explanation.

I think this is what separates atheism from other non-beliefs, in that you have data to observe, namely, everything we see. So you're examining the data, making assumptions, and coming to a conclusion, which makes it a belief, IMO.

This is different than when arguing that there are other things you don't believe in like leprechauns for example, which are non-beliefs, since there is nothing to observe, and you can just lack a belief without observing any data, since the leprechaun's existence does not hinge on anything else. You can look around, not see a leprechaun, and be done with it. With God, you are asking other questions beyond the superficial ones.

This is a little confusing, I'm certainly not asking 'who' made the universe, I'm doing what followed that and wondering what the origin of the universe is. I'm also aware that we may not in fact understand the reality of the universe at all, are looking at it entirely the wrong way, asking completely irrelevant questions and coming up with meaningless answers. I think organised religions are probably the most useless of the ways we have of acquiring knowledge and explaining reality, too limiting and not at all satisfactory.

And I think that it's the level of conviction that determines whether or not it's a belief as opposed to a thought, or an opinion or some level of doubt or uncertainty.

In fact this is a great example for me to use too to help you understand my perspective, because I'm really not certain that you do. My view of your god is no different at all to this view of leprechauns that you describe here. This may be something you struggle to understand because you assign an importance and significance to your views that I don't, but I think your belief in the Christian god is utterly unsupportable, no more than wishful thinking and so it doesn't achieve the level of a 'belief' for me, it's simply one of many supernatural theories that I reject. I have no need to 'believe' it not real, it's doesn't require that level of conviction for me. I simply lack that belief.

If your reaction to that is something like 'but.. but... it's Christianity!!!' try to imagine feeling about it the same way you feel about leprechauns.

Okay can you explain to me why you believe this and why you think I am wrong.

I'm really not sure how this is different from what I'm (trying) to say. You're agreeing that the weak atheist does not 'believe' that there are no gods, they simply don't give their assent to either proposition. So, no belief is involved then right?

So it's not really true to say that atheism is a belief system, at best you could argue that strong atheism is a belief.


An opinion can be held with zero knowledge or experience of the thing that the opinion is about (as opposed to a 'valid' opinion'). Would you consider anything 'output' from that position to be a belief?

I think the truth value is essential to calling something a 'belief'.

It seems to me that you're making a point that you would normally put into practice, you aren't likely to say 'I believe that there is no cup', you would be more likely to say 'I don't believe that there is a cup', i.e. you lack that belief. Are you required to hold a contrary belief?

Darn, the first sentence of the last paragraph in my reply to you Dereds should read "It seems to me that you're making a point that you wouldn't normally put into practice". Hopefully the rest of that part makes more sense now.

You're parsing a linguistic phrasing against a logical formulation. That's not going to work if you're trying to make a logical argument. People say "6 divided by half is 3" even though mathematically it's the case that "6 divided by half is 12." There are many other instances in language where what is said as a literal phrasing and the content of information conveyed are two different things.

If you were to follow up with the person and ask if there is a cup, they would say "no" and not "I hold no beliefs with regards to the existence of a cup."

This is what I am saying, I've not claimed that atheism is a belief or that it necessarily entails one. The point I am disputing is this

If the opinion is a descriptive one, if it is truth apt then yes.

That it is truth apt is important not that it is true.

The point is only that it is possible to hold beliefs about things not existing contrary to the point in bold above.

I believe there is no cup is different to I don't believe there is a cup, both consistent, the former entails a belief the latter doesn't.

I believe Zeus did/does not exist. There is no withholding of belief. Id be surprised if we hooked up Mightyboosh to a machine that could tell the deference he wouldn't believe the same.

You started speaking about Christianity when I'm specifically speaking of deism.

I'm not sure I understand why you see God the same way you see leprechauns. When thinking about God, you have things to consider that you simply don't with leprechauns. For instance, is an intelligent creator more reasonable an explanation for the universe than a non-intelligent creator? Is the universe simply eternal in nature, and there is no creator?

Anyway, if you want to call your beliefs with little conviction a lack of belief, that's certainly your right. I don't think you've explained at what level of conviction your lack of belief becomes a belief, and what your metric is for measuring conviction.

Edit: Starting to forget what my initial question was. I originally asked dereds, and I'll extend this to you as well - do you think the deist's position is a reasonable one?

I've said this to you before that when you consider how non-believers feel about Christianity, you still expect them to assign a greater significance to your beliefs than that of, say, leprechauns, and you can't understand when they don't, and yet you yourself give no credence to what 1.8 billion Muslims think, you just think they're wrong and believe something that is at worst made up, at bets a mistaken interpretation but still completely wrong. It's irrelevant to me that your religion happens to be the most popular at this point in time in our history, it's still simply one of many thousands of belief systems that I entirely reject as fanciful imaginings.

I don't believe in the existence of the god of the Christians, I don't believe in the existence of Mithras. Those statements have the same weight, value and meaning to me.


My rights are irrelevant, and I'm not sure that I could describe an exact threshold or a metric or if that's actually possible. I think it's down to the individual to decide whether or not what they think is something they feel strongly enough about to call it a belief. It's possible to believe a negative, but more often I think we simply lack a contrary belief.

Yes. Always have.

I think this is kind of off topic, at least not that relevant an analogy when comparing specific theist gods to that of a deist one.

The non-belief of leprechauns doesn't really apply to discerning a specific God, only a general one. Looking at the universe and reasoning that a sentient being is more reasonable (or as reasonable) an explanation in no way leads to a specific God without taking further steps.

I think when you concede that the deist is reasonable, your position of non-belief becomes more credible, at least to me.

The conversation I had with someone, which brought about my question, had him claiming a non-belief specifically so he could claim the deist was unreasonable. He refused to acknowledge that his atheism was based on observation, and I argued that both the deist and the atheist observe the same "data" and make conclusions as to what they see.

I'm actually a bit surprised to hear you admit that the deist is reasonable, is this a new stance?

Well, I'm quite happy sometimes just to go wherever conversations take me, unless I'm trying to stay on one point for some reason. But, I think what I'm saying is relevant in that it's establishing the level to which I take seriously all detailed god claims (not at all), and which helps explain why I don't feel that I need to hold a contrary view strong enough to label it a 'belief'. And from that, why I don't consider my weak atheism to be a 'belief system'.

If I understand you correctly here then no, it's the other way around for me. If you want to posit a creator being and call it god, I have to accept that as a possibility (although not as credible as natural explanations for me because there is actually no evidence to support it) but when you start getting specific, then it enters 'leprechaun' territory. See below:

Depends what you're calling 'recent' I guess it came after I started posting here (so when I said 'always have' I meant while I've discussed things with you). The idea that the universe was 'created' as opposed to occurring through some natural process is a possibility that can't be ruled out in my world view. But, once you start claiming to know things about that creator, what it's done, what it wants, it's characteristics etc etc, then we get into the realm of pure human fantasy (with a variety of motivations behind it), IMO, and that I find quite easy to dismiss. I don't need to hold a contrary belief, I simply don't believe it the way I don't believe in leprechauns.

(Edit: I'm not 'admitting' it , it's just what I think, I don't feel like I'm conceding anything.)

You and I have gone many rounds on the Christian view being reasonable or not, and I think we've established a pretty sizeable impasse there, but apart from that, I find the deist conversation more interesting when it comes to comparing weak vs strong atheism.

What I don't quite understand is that when you say "god is not as credible as a natural explanation" you appear to have already exercised some critical thinking about whether or not god exists and if an intelligent being is better or worse an explanation. Which is why your conclusion seems to be a belief at that point (imo) as you've thought about the likelihood of that truth given what you observe.

Don't get me wrong, I think one is entitled to a "non belief" but I think when you form a view as you have described, it becomes a belief. That's why I was interested in hearing what specifically separates your beliefs from non-beliefs.

Yeah, that's fine, I guess we never really spoke of the idea of god as a non-personal creating entity. I also think the deist and the atheist are reasonable in their beliefs.

You're still stuck on this point. What is so complicated about people assigning a stronger significance to their own beliefs and experiences relative to other people's external beliefs and experiences?

And this also falls back into the "But what about you?" category. You continue to say that he doesn't give the 1.8 billion Muslims' beliefs any weight, but neither do you. You want to think that everyone else should put weight into other people's beliefs, but you're somehow an island of clear-minded sanity and you don't need to put any weight into other people's beliefs.

So many good posts to boosh from Aaron that go unread.

Mightyboosh you should trade me for Aaron on your ignore list...ill still post to you too like he does.

Then he shouldn't so be thoroughly unpleasant in the way he talks to me. I made the mistake of softening and thinking that it might be 'better this time' once before, I'm not making it again. I don't know why after all this time he's still replying, I guess it's because he wants other people to see what he thinks.