Strong atheism is, in fact, a religious belief: claims of the non-existence of gods are no more falsifiable than claims of the existence of them, so in order to “know” there is no god one must have faith.
In other words, if religion is the faith-based belief in N gods, where N = many for religions like Hinduism and N = 1 for religions like Christianity, strong atheism is simply the religion where N = 0.
Meanwhile, scientific skepticism/disbelief in god(s) due to lack of positive evidence is more like agnosticism/weak atheism.
How is it any different than claiming with near certainty that leprechauns aren’t real?
I’m nearly 100% certain leprechauns aren’t real. Is my disbelief in leprechauns a religious belief? I similarly don’t believe in the Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods. Is that a religious belief, too?
The Christian god is a positive claim, and my near 100% certainty it’s not real is not a ‘belief’ unless you’re operating from a baseline that assumes it’s true, which is not how anything works. Strong atheism is a strong unwillingness to believe anything for which there isn’t evidence. That’s the opposite of faith – faith being the belief in things without evidence.
The only enlightened path for a Real Objective Thinker is to accept that anything might exist! If not you’re just engaging in the same mystical thinking as those people who believe sky-daddy is all powerful and all good, but is just working in mysterious ways all those times good people need help and nothing happens. It’s exactly the same you hypocrite. /s
Look, I’m just going by the classification system in the Wikipedia article I cited. I didn’t even slightly imply any of the bullshit you just tried to ascribe to me.
I find the issue with hardcore atheism is the certainy of a lack of God in a scientific sense instead of an philosophical sense. Also the organization, dogma, and a sense of hierarchy in regards to authorities on atheism.
That being said the amount of atheists who subscribe to the religion isn’t the root of all evil but false vs religion is the bane of all existence, is probably the same statically to jihadist and westboro baptist church
Again, do you believe in leprechauns? How certain are you that mermaids don’t exist?
How dogmatic are you in your lack of a belief in mermaids? Or fairies? How much are you bending to the will of anti-Tinkerbell propaganda?
Do you hear how insane that sounds?
eta: you said:
Also the organization, dogma, and a sense of hierarchy in regards to authorities on atheism.
What authorities on atheism? What dogma? What organisation? Do you mean the clubs such as this comment section? There’s no central group or organisation. Atheism is the opposite of that. Your answer makes me think you don’t understand atheism at all.
If that’s the case, please ask me anything. I love answering questions. :)
You also said:
the amount of atheists who subscribe to the religion.
I’m not going into the rest of what was obviously wrong in the bits I cut off, but I’ll just stop you right there, lol.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins describes people for whom the probability of the existence of God is between “very high” and “very low” as “agnostic” and reserves the term “strong atheist” for those who claim to know there is no God. He categorizes himself as a “de facto atheist” but not a “strong atheist” on this scale.
There are some semantics at play, reflected in your link. Many atheists take the label to mean simply: absence of belief. That is: atheists require evidence before making a claim. As such, those that “believe” in nonexistence wind up falling into another category: anti-theists. There’s hubris involved in making the leap to belief, so I wager many just want to illuminate the distinction.
Many atheists take the label to mean simply: absence of belief. That is: atheists require evidence before making a claim.
Well, yeah: that’s weak atheism (including “explicit weak atheism”, going by that Venn diagram’s categories). I don’t see any contradiction between that and what I wrote; weak atheism certainly still counts as atheism.
Are people getting offended because they think me calling their atheism something other than “strong” is some sort of judgement against them and not simply a categorization?
As such, those that “believe” in nonexistence wind up falling into another category: anti-theists.
Antitheism, also spelled anti-theism, is the philosophical position that theism should be opposed.
…
Antitheism has been adopted as a label by those who regard theism as dangerous, destructive, or encouraging of harmful behavior.
In other words, antitheism isn’t so much about the question of god(s) existence directly as it is about considering the behavior of those who answer in the affirmative to be harmful and dangerous. It’s more of an ideological or even political position than a purely philosophical one.
I certainly goofed on my lazy definition of ‘antitheism’. Certainly more logical it’d be predicated upon ‘disbelief’ (webster, 1913). I think I picked up my lazy “belief in absence” from elsewhere on the net where people were defending atheism and, mostly, railing on antitheism. I should be more careful.
I was thinking the response more folks that just didn’t check your link and were operating on their own definition. I do think it a useful link. I’ve only heard these concepts using ‘(a)gnostic’ qualifiers. I should update my vocabulary. My concept of atheism has long been a simple binary: believer | disbeliever.
Strong atheism is, in fact, a religious belief: claims of the non-existence of gods are no more falsifiable than claims of the existence of them, so in order to “know” there is no god one must have faith.
Um… Show evidence that a god exists. Poof, you have falsified the claim that no god exists. Pretty easy, actually.
Well, we can prove the universe exists, but not that it’s some unified, all-powerful thing controlling us all afaik.
It’s why I stick with agnostic atheism. I’m not claiming to know either way on all forms of deism or theism or whatever. There’s enough contradictions and falsifiable claims in all organized religions I’ve been made aware of so far, so I am gnosticly atheist for those specific gods.
Your inability to come up with a way to produce evidence doesn’t make the strong atheist’s stance unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiable isn’t “We can’t produce any evidence that would falsify the claim right now.” That would take us to an absurd definition of the word where any scientific theory that requires more advanced technology than we currently have is “unfalsifiable.” That’s not what the word means.
The difficulty in proving that God exists isn’t what makes theism unfalsifiable. You shouldn’t make any assumptions about what can or cannot be proven true at some point in the future. What makes it unfalsifiable is that there’s no rational way to prove that God doesn’t exist, not because of an inability to collect evidence, but because the logical framework constructed by religious claims forbids it. Strong atheism has forbade no such thing. There’s no equivalence here.
Believing that The Force isn’t real doesn’t make me a Star Wars fan, or even a Sci-Fi fan, even though that’s a Star Wars belief. People can have strong opinions about something without that belief indicating that they are devout zealots about that topic.
People can have strong opinions about something without that belief indicating that they are devout zealots about that topic.
Of course they can! I not only never said otherwise, I explicitly affirmed it myself:
Meanwhile, scientific skepticism/disbelief in god(s) due to lack of positive evidence is more like agnosticism/weak atheism.
Weak atheism is not a weaker opinion than strong atheism! “Weak” and “strong” are just categorical labels, not value judgements. Moreover, I didn’t make up the terms; if you don’t like them, blame the philosophers, not me.
The difference between weak and strong atheism is not of magnitude, but kind: they have different philosophical underpinnings. Strong atheism is a belief based on faith, while weak atheism is motivated by skepticism and confidence in the utility of the Scientific Method as a framework.
My guess is this is why you’re being downvoted, because everything else seems to be accurate.
Saying strong atheism is based on faith is the same as saying that believing dragons definitely do not exist is based on faith. In such a scenario, we all have infinite faith because we all firmly disbelieve in the existence of infinite things. We are so faithful in that scenario that the word faith becomes meaningless.
I’m honestly not sure what your point is in firmly asserting that strong atheism is a faith based belief. At best it seems like dying on a hill of split hairs.
So I mostly agree with you, except the understanding that most gods must not be real is axiomatically true, based on the beliefs of those religions. Almost every religion claims they believe in the one true god(s), so either all the other aren’t real or theirs is wrong and not real. That leaves mostly only one pantheon remaining at most, with maybe a few other that aren’t exclusive.
Its not a belief that most religions most be wrong, and odds are whatever religion any particular person believes is wrong based on how many competing religions have existed.
This is separate to a statement on a god though, only religions. There is no way to make a reasonable argument on the existence (or lack thereof) of a god. You can rule out particular beliefs, but never the concept itself.
So I mostly agree with you, except the understanding that most gods must not be real is axiomatically true, based on the beliefs of those religions. Almost every religion claims they believe in the one true god(s), so either all the other aren’t real or theirs is wrong and not real. That leaves mostly only one pantheon remaining at most, with maybe a few other that aren’t exclusive.
This feels like a very monotheism-centric argument to me. AFAIK it’s mostly (or only?) the Abrahamic religions that take such an exclusionary view, and I wouldn’t call them “almost every” religion since, although people fight over minor divisions, broadly speaking there’s only three of them. The rest of the world’s religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, shinto, African religions, native American religions, etc.) surely add up to more categories than that.
I’m no theologian, but I would expect polytheistic pantheons not being exclusive to be the rule, not the exception.
And finally, even if we’re just talking about Judaism vs. Christianity vs. Islam, each of their "one true God"s is the same entity anyway so they aren’t nearly as mutually exclusive as their followers would like to pretend.
Others may not be explicitly exclusionary, but they are implicitly. You can’t really take the Greek pantheon and mythos and also the Hindu one. Almost every religion has an origin myth about how the world was created, which you really can’t have two versions of that. Religions typically don’t mesh together well.
With that said, religions tend to evolve and engulf neighbor’s beliefs into their own. This doesn’t mean they weren’t exclusive, rather that religion is malleable because it’s made up and not based on fact.
Richard Dawkins is his own religion.
Man thinks everything he says is infallible.
And unfortunately (and ironically) for too long some of his followers have acted like he is god.
Strong atheism is, in fact, a religious belief: claims of the non-existence of gods are no more falsifiable than claims of the existence of them, so in order to “know” there is no god one must have faith.
In other words, if religion is the faith-based belief in N gods, where N = many for religions like Hinduism and N = 1 for religions like Christianity, strong atheism is simply the religion where N = 0.
Meanwhile, scientific skepticism/disbelief in god(s) due to lack of positive evidence is more like agnosticism/weak atheism.
Edit: see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
Edit 2: I genuinely don’t understand what the downvoters are so upset about. Could some of you please reply to explain?
How is it any different than claiming with near certainty that leprechauns aren’t real?
I’m nearly 100% certain leprechauns aren’t real. Is my disbelief in leprechauns a religious belief? I similarly don’t believe in the Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods. Is that a religious belief, too?
The Christian god is a positive claim, and my near 100% certainty it’s not real is not a ‘belief’ unless you’re operating from a baseline that assumes it’s true, which is not how anything works. Strong atheism is a strong unwillingness to believe anything for which there isn’t evidence. That’s the opposite of faith – faith being the belief in things without evidence.
The only enlightened path for a Real Objective Thinker is to accept that anything might exist! If not you’re just engaging in the same mystical thinking as those people who believe sky-daddy is all powerful and all good, but is just working in mysterious ways all those times good people need help and nothing happens. It’s exactly the same you hypocrite. /s
Look, I’m just going by the classification system in the Wikipedia article I cited. I didn’t even slightly imply any of the bullshit you just tried to ascribe to me.
I find the issue with hardcore atheism is the certainy of a lack of God in a scientific sense instead of an philosophical sense. Also the organization, dogma, and a sense of hierarchy in regards to authorities on atheism.
That being said the amount of atheists who subscribe to the religion isn’t the root of all evil but false vs religion is the bane of all existence, is probably the same statically to jihadist and westboro baptist church
Again, do you believe in leprechauns? How certain are you that mermaids don’t exist?
How dogmatic are you in your lack of a belief in mermaids? Or fairies? How much are you bending to the will of anti-Tinkerbell propaganda?
Do you hear how insane that sounds?
eta: you said:
What authorities on atheism? What dogma? What organisation? Do you mean the clubs such as this comment section? There’s no central group or organisation. Atheism is the opposite of that. Your answer makes me think you don’t understand atheism at all.
If that’s the case, please ask me anything. I love answering questions. :)
You also said:
I’m not going into the rest of what was obviously wrong in the bits I cut off, but I’ll just stop you right there, lol.
Does Richard fucking Dawkins claim to be “near certain?”
?
Sorry, not following you, I couldn’t actually care less what Richard fucking Dawkins thinks tbh.
My comment was in the context of replying to https://lemmy.world/comment/14237089:
Edit: also, funnily enough, it turns out that Dawkins does claim to be “near certain,” not “certain.” That was news to me, given his reputation!
That’s relevant because it puts a finer point on just how fervent the belief needs to be to count as “strong atheism.”
Source:
I am a dumbass.
Hey, only for continuing to engage with an off the rails discussion. But your arguments are articulate and on point.
That’s okay; it happens to all of us (see my edit).
There are some semantics at play, reflected in your link. Many atheists take the label to mean simply: absence of belief. That is: atheists require evidence before making a claim. As such, those that “believe” in nonexistence wind up falling into another category: anti-theists. There’s hubris involved in making the leap to belief, so I wager many just want to illuminate the distinction.
Thanks for replying!
Well, yeah: that’s weak atheism (including “explicit weak atheism”, going by that Venn diagram’s categories). I don’t see any contradiction between that and what I wrote; weak atheism certainly still counts as atheism.
Are people getting offended because they think me calling their atheism something other than “strong” is some sort of judgement against them and not simply a categorization?
That’s not quite what antitheism is. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism :
In other words, antitheism isn’t so much about the question of god(s) existence directly as it is about considering the behavior of those who answer in the affirmative to be harmful and dangerous. It’s more of an ideological or even political position than a purely philosophical one.
I certainly goofed on my lazy definition of ‘antitheism’. Certainly more logical it’d be predicated upon ‘disbelief’ (webster, 1913). I think I picked up my lazy “belief in absence” from elsewhere on the net where people were defending atheism and, mostly, railing on antitheism. I should be more careful.
I was thinking the response more folks that just didn’t check your link and were operating on their own definition. I do think it a useful link. I’ve only heard these concepts using ‘(a)gnostic’ qualifiers. I should update my vocabulary. My concept of atheism has long been a simple binary: believer | disbeliever.
Um… Show evidence that a god exists. Poof, you have falsified the claim that no god exists. Pretty easy, actually.
Well, we can prove the universe exists, but not that it’s some unified, all-powerful thing controlling us all afaik.
It’s why I stick with agnostic atheism. I’m not claiming to know either way on all forms of deism or theism or whatever. There’s enough contradictions and falsifiable claims in all organized religions I’ve been made aware of so far, so I am gnosticly atheist for those specific gods.
Your inability to come up with a way to produce evidence doesn’t make the strong atheist’s stance unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiable isn’t “We can’t produce any evidence that would falsify the claim right now.” That would take us to an absurd definition of the word where any scientific theory that requires more advanced technology than we currently have is “unfalsifiable.” That’s not what the word means.
The difficulty in proving that God exists isn’t what makes theism unfalsifiable. You shouldn’t make any assumptions about what can or cannot be proven true at some point in the future. What makes it unfalsifiable is that there’s no rational way to prove that God doesn’t exist, not because of an inability to collect evidence, but because the logical framework constructed by religious claims forbids it. Strong atheism has forbade no such thing. There’s no equivalence here.
Believing that The Force isn’t real doesn’t make me a Star Wars fan, or even a Sci-Fi fan, even though that’s a Star Wars belief. People can have strong opinions about something without that belief indicating that they are devout zealots about that topic.
Of course they can! I not only never said otherwise, I explicitly affirmed it myself:
Weak atheism is not a weaker opinion than strong atheism! “Weak” and “strong” are just categorical labels, not value judgements. Moreover, I didn’t make up the terms; if you don’t like them, blame the philosophers, not me.
The difference between weak and strong atheism is not of magnitude, but kind: they have different philosophical underpinnings. Strong atheism is a belief based on faith, while weak atheism is motivated by skepticism and confidence in the utility of the Scientific Method as a framework.
My guess is this is why you’re being downvoted, because everything else seems to be accurate.
Saying strong atheism is based on faith is the same as saying that believing dragons definitely do not exist is based on faith. In such a scenario, we all have infinite faith because we all firmly disbelieve in the existence of infinite things. We are so faithful in that scenario that the word faith becomes meaningless.
I’m honestly not sure what your point is in firmly asserting that strong atheism is a faith based belief. At best it seems like dying on a hill of split hairs.
Also for anybody else who is interested, here’s some relevant reading material https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism#Weak_vs._strong_atheism
So I mostly agree with you, except the understanding that most gods must not be real is axiomatically true, based on the beliefs of those religions. Almost every religion claims they believe in the one true god(s), so either all the other aren’t real or theirs is wrong and not real. That leaves mostly only one pantheon remaining at most, with maybe a few other that aren’t exclusive.
Its not a belief that most religions most be wrong, and odds are whatever religion any particular person believes is wrong based on how many competing religions have existed.
This is separate to a statement on a god though, only religions. There is no way to make a reasonable argument on the existence (or lack thereof) of a god. You can rule out particular beliefs, but never the concept itself.
This feels like a very monotheism-centric argument to me. AFAIK it’s mostly (or only?) the Abrahamic religions that take such an exclusionary view, and I wouldn’t call them “almost every” religion since, although people fight over minor divisions, broadly speaking there’s only three of them. The rest of the world’s religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, shinto, African religions, native American religions, etc.) surely add up to more categories than that.
I’m no theologian, but I would expect polytheistic pantheons not being exclusive to be the rule, not the exception.
And finally, even if we’re just talking about Judaism vs. Christianity vs. Islam, each of their "one true God"s is the same entity anyway so they aren’t nearly as mutually exclusive as their followers would like to pretend.
Others may not be explicitly exclusionary, but they are implicitly. You can’t really take the Greek pantheon and mythos and also the Hindu one. Almost every religion has an origin myth about how the world was created, which you really can’t have two versions of that. Religions typically don’t mesh together well.
With that said, religions tend to evolve and engulf neighbor’s beliefs into their own. This doesn’t mean they weren’t exclusive, rather that religion is malleable because it’s made up and not based on fact.