Atheists often want to define 'Atheism' as 'lacking a belief in gods'. That the Atheist isn't necessarily making the opposite claim, that there are no gods, or necessarily holding a belief that there are no gods.

Or are they? That's my query. If there are two possible values, true or false, and you say 'I don't believe that's true', are you not then by default saying that you believe the other option, that it's false? If you don't hold a belief at all on the subject, should you say that, rather than saying 'I don't believe one of those options'?

Consider three responses to the proposition, "There is a god", I can

1 Assent to the proposition. It is true there is a god.
2 Reject the proposition. It is not true there is a god.
3 Withhold assent to the proposition, I do not know if it is true there is a god.

Theism can be understood as 1, atheism can be understood as 2&3

the often used example is of the number of stars in the sky

Its either even or odd.

do I believe its even? No
do I believe its odd? No

Depends on the person. Areligionism comes in different flavors depending on what your mind was filled up with

Some atheists are merely rebelling against a religious society or religious indoctrination.
Some atheists were indoctrinated and have come to view the God story is ridiculous/implausible
Some atheists have had little contact with God ideas and don't find them relevant to their life; they're atheists from boredom and disinterest with the idea of God, which isn't the same as holding a position.
Some atheists have delved into the philosophy and rationale of it all and have come to the intellectual view that God specifically is highly improbable
Some atheists are materialists who lump all supernatural claims together, and reject them; they don't specifically reject God so much as broken ways of thinking that lead to God (and leprechauns, and Zeus).
Some atheists deny that God is a meaningful concept; calling it a feeling salad and mental association salad with no relationship to anything real (this is a valid view whether or not you think a supreme being exists).

It's a bit like Christian's atheism toward Allah and Islam.

Some Christians reject the truth of Islam because if conflicts with their existing beliefs
Some Christians reject the truth of Islam because they know little about it
Some Christians feel happy with what they have, and don't really consider much else, and thus are de facto atheists toward Allah.
Some Christians reject Islam because it doesn't fit with their values
Most Christians reject Islam because they were never indoctrinated into it (religious claims are bizarre and hilarious if you're not fed them with your mother's milk).
Most Christians reject Islam because the society around them isn't Islamic, and people are predisposed to take cues to truth from other people and those they trust.

It's not either/or for something as conceptually complex/undefined as God, as God isn't a single claim or attached to a single feeling. You can squash the categories of belief/disbelie into "rejects" or "doesn't reject" or even a trinary scale with "unknowable", but I don't think you're capturing what's really going on in people's heads when you do.

So you can certainly be an atheist by "lack of belief"" without taking a strong position.

You're conflating areligionism with atheism, which will lead to confusion as some religious people are atheists and some people who believe in god aren't religious.


This is also more complicated. It is common for Christians to view Jews and Muslims as worshipping the same God as them, just having false beliefs about the nature of that God.

Interested to hear what religion disavows a creator. I know you have things like Deism/pantheism, but they're more an attempt to fit spirituality with materialism. I'm not sure you'd call them atheist. At best agnostic. Even Buddhism would struggle to be called atheistic.

Scientology? They're a scifi cult, but I guess there might be atheist in there if you call them "religious".

Many religious Jews are atheists. Orthodox rabbis will generally say that what is required is that you follow the law, and the law requires that you honor and obey God, not believe in God. Some versions of Buddhism, such as Zen, don't particularly require a belief in a god (there are also completely naturalistic versions of Buddhism). Shinto has all sorts of legends about nature spirits, most of which its modern-day practitioners do not believe are real. Some versions of liberal Christianity are neutral about the actual existence of God.

If I reject a proposition, or withhold consent for it, am I not expressing doubt about it? Plus, if I do explicitly reject the proposition as 'not true' by saying 'I don't believe that is true', am I not accepting the only other option, that it is false?

That seems like a stretch to me. They participate in the ethnic customs, so as not to be shunned from the often deeply bigoted Jewish community they're involved in (for example, many Jews are so bigoted they will refuse to marry a non-Jew, parents will nag and disown children), but it's a stretch to call them religious. When I go to a wedding in a church, or participate in Easter festivities, or even read the bible in church during a ceremony, or believe that Christian rituals have value, I'm not a Christian. I'm participating in the customs of my community while disavowing the religion.

The trouble with the term "Jew" is that it defines both a religion and an ethnic group and their customs and norms. Not believing in God while still being a Jew relates to the latter part, imo.
Some of the milder versions of Buddhism could be called atheistic I guess.

If you are rejecting it you are denying the proposition so someone who rejects the claim there is a God assents to the claim there is no God, the person that withholds assent to the claim there is no God doesn't assent to the claim there is no God. Saying I don't believe that is true is withholding rather than rejecting.

Neeeel's example is a decent one. Do you assent to the proposition that there is an even number of stars in the universe?

Which brings me to my question about what it means to 'not believe'. If saying 'I don't believe that' is simply withholding assent, then why does it also mean 'I think that's not true'? If I said to you 'I don't believe what you're saying is true', how would you interpret that?

Often someone saying I don't believe X is true means they believe X is false but just because that's often the case it doesn't mean there isn't room for them also meaning, I don't believe you have provided sufficient evidence that X is true.

I don't think belief is really a yes or no type question... It seems to work on a scale for me, you can have a lot of belief in a thing or a little. If you have no belief or 100% belief then it is no longer belief. It is knowledge. You would know that the thing we're true or not true.

An old approach to "believe" is contained within the words "to live within", somehow from the root of "lieve", anglo.....?

If a man "lives within" the "belief" ceases to become a, intellectual statement but more of a will laden receiving of the "other" within one's self.

If one "lives within" there is no contrary due to intellectual maneuvers but an actuality which cannot be gainsaid.

This is a misunderstanding of the Jewish religion. Judaism is not fundamentally a faith-based religion in the way that Christianity is. Being a religious Jew means identifying as such and keeping the law. The law does not command that you believe in God. Now, obviously it is true that much of the law is premised on the assumption there is a god. But the nature of law is such that you don't have to agree with the reasons for it in order to follow it (eg libertarians still pay taxes even if they don't agree with much of the spending on which those taxes are premised). In a similar way, you can choose to identify with a particular religion and follow the laws commanded by that religion even if you think some of those laws are premised on false beliefs.

There is a common prejudice among young internet atheists that religious practice is boring and so people wouldn't do it if they didn't have all those crazy beliefs. This is not true (the second part at least . In fact, people have a myriad of reasons not directly related to believing the main tenets of the religion that can also sufficiently motivate them to join a religion and engage in religious practice: because they enjoy it, because they think it makes them a more moral person, because it is a way to strengthen community bonds (costly signalling), to become more spiritual, as a pedagogical tool for their children, and so on.

EDIT: I should add that I'm primarily talking about Orthodox Judaism, I think this is also true of Reformed Judaism, but that is a more complicated story.

You missed out on the tail. That's a big reason.

I guess it comes down to a different definition of areligious. I have claimed to be religious for the social benefits it affords at times (it's a hilarious way to manipulate people and get access to nice-girl church tail), and I know other people who have, but I wouldn't say that makes me religious. Wolves in sheep clothing aren't sheep.

I do know plenty of Jews who can tie the truth in knots, and even lie to themselves. Strong social pressure + a high intelligence makes for some interesting contradictions and sophistry that would do even Orwell proud.

Regardless, I think technically I have to concede your point (that atheism isn't necessarily areligion), even though I think it's weak and of dubious truth. If we define religion as "what people say they are when asked in polite company", then your point is correct. There are many religious atheists. You only have to look at Congress.

Right, we are arguing about different definitions of religion. I'm claiming that the definition you are using is a poor one that doesn't reflect the reality of religion. For instance, here you still are assuming that these people are pretending or lying about their religious beliefs for some social benefit. That isn't my claim. I'm talking about open atheists who are religious Jews.

That of course is not my definition.

Is everybody in this thread nuts? In ordinary discourse the definition of believing something is "the willingness to lay eleven to ten". Why do people think that when it comes to the subject of the correctness of a religion you have to be willing to lay six or seven to one in one or the other direction to assert you "believe" or "disbelieve"?

Just you.

Nobody uses that definition.

I don't really think anyone is saying that here. It has more to do with the fact that belief is not a binary proposition, no matter how much you try to shoehorn it into one.

This is more a question about the epistemological view of what it is to 'believe'.

Agreed and good point. Thanks for keeping it real.

If there are only two possible values and you must choose, then yes... not choosing one means choosing the other. But that's a fairly contrived scenario set in a system of perfect information.

But reality is usually more like climbing a steep staircase in the dark. Sure, you might remember there to be no obstacles, but it's generally prudent to assume that information isn't perfect.

Neel's star post is a perfect example.

So you're saying that philosophical explorations, through Epistemology, of what it is to 'believe', are not 'real'?

There may well be a pragmatic, lay understanding of what it is to believe, but what I'm after here is something much more in depth and studied than that. It's that difference between lay understanding and the much more rich and nuanced Epistemology of Belief that caused me to start the thread in the first place.

You can't get into the epistemology of belief without pure psychology and cognition. I made a ham-fisted attempt above. It's not a thing of logic, and logical exploration is near worthless. The extent to which you believe or not is based on a mishmash of:

- Exposure to the said religion
- Reasons for disbelieving
- Social pressures
- Habits formed
- Etc

A Jew who goes along with the religion because of constant social pressure, but would take a Sklansky bet against both the religion and God in private, is not the same class of believer as someone who "feels" God inside them and links that feeling with a Supreme Being (God-as-a-neurotransmitter).

Similarly, for the question in your OP:
It's not a logical proposition (to the extent that it is, neeel debunked it). Other possible states:

- Refuse to consider the question, simply rejecting it with a general skepticism (this is rational; Christians do this every day)
- Find all existing formulations of God ridiculous (like Christians, just with one less God they find ridiculous)
- Have not applied logic to the problem
- Find that the notion of God doesn't apply to what they feel.
- Simply do it out of habit

"I don't believe that's true" is not equivalent to "I hold strongly the notion that it's false". I can reject a notion without necessarily strongly holding the contrary. Given that we're messy emotional and habitual beings, rather than purely logical, most people fall into that category.

Hence David's 11 to 10 example.

Moreover, there's more than one notion of God to reject. God is not a apple that is either in front of you or isn't. God is bunch of touchy-feely horsehit that means different things to different people. What notion of God you hold in your mind when you reject God is also relevant.

I guess I'd put it this way. God is a complex mind map and mental habit process that's different for every person. You can reject someone's mind-map without taking a strong position on the contrary.

When we're talking about God we're not talking about objective reality. We're talking about people's broken mind maps.

If you disagree with that, explain to me, in concrete terms

a) what is God
b) what evidence is there of God?