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Is strong atheism "faithy," dishonest, awkward, or hard to defend?

Perspicuo said:
Tom Sawyer said:
But what do you mean by "God in general"? From what I've seen, to get to a point that a strong atheistic position would not apply, you need to get to a god concept which pretty much lacks definition altogether. Then, the only reason it wouldn't be said to be a strong atheist position is because you're unable to say exactly what it is that you're not believing in. As soon as anyone gives their god characteristics, those characteristics don't hold up.
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It's the same difference between a gray fox and a fox in general.
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A fox in general is a small-to-medium-sized, omnivorous mammal belonging to any of several genera of the Canidae family. A gray fox is a creature which meets some of those criteria while being unique in certain specific identifiable ways. We can see how each thing alleged to be a "god" is unique, but what is "God in general"?

Gods are not unproven, just ludicrous.
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Is that one of your defining criteria? If something isn't ludicrous, it isn't a "god"?
 
My atheism is strong because someone on this forum long ago said, "Show me your god." So far, no one has.
 
Strong atheism in itself isn't faithy, but there are plenty of faithy atheists.
 
Unbeatable said:
Perspicuo said:
It's the same difference between a gray fox and a fox in general.
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A fox in general is a small-to-medium-sized, omnivorous mammal belonging to any of several genera of the Canidae family. A gray fox is a creature which meets some of those criteria while being unique in certain specific identifiable ways. We can see how each thing alleged to be a "god" is unique, but what is "God in general"?

Gods are not unproven, just ludicrous.
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Is that one of your defining criteria? If something isn't ludicrous, it isn't a "god"?
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I tried to reply to this last night but it was so devoid of anything even barely reasonable I had to call quits. It's like you put all your effort to misunderstand not only what I said but the basics of what the whole subject is about. Especially that last utterance. That was just trippy.
 
Perspicuo said:
Unbeatable said:
A fox in general is a small-to-medium-sized, omnivorous mammal belonging to any of several genera of the Canidae family. A gray fox is a creature which meets some of those criteria while being unique in certain specific identifiable ways. We can see how each thing alleged to be a "god" is unique, but what is "God in general"?

Gods are not unproven, just ludicrous.
Click to expand...
Is that one of your defining criteria? If something isn't ludicrous, it isn't a "god"?
Click to expand...

I tried to reply to this last night but it was so devoid of anything even barely reasonable I had to call quits. It's like you put all your effort to misunderstand not only what I said but the basics of what the whole subject is about. Especially that last utterance. That was just trippy.
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Considering how languages evolve it isn't that goofy. Our word "god" didn't exist a few centuries ago.
 
Perspicuo said:
Tom Sawyer said:
But what do you mean by "God in general"? From what I've seen, to get to a point that a strong atheistic position would not apply, you need to get to a god concept which pretty much lacks definition altogether. Then, the only reason it wouldn't be said to be a strong atheist position is because you're unable to say exactly what it is that you're not believing in. As soon as anyone gives their god characteristics, those characteristics don't hold up.
Click to expand...

It's the same difference between a gray fox and a fox in general. Gods are not unproven, just ludicrous.
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I don't see how. A "fox" is still something that has a definition, even though there are subcategories beneath it of "red fox", "grey fox" and all the other kinds of foxes. There are specific properties which an entity must have to be correctly called a fox and you can check those properties against the definition. For instance, if something has leaves and gets its energy through photosynthesis, then that something isn't a fox.

When you get to gods, there are those which have a definition and one can easily be a strong atheist in regards to because the properties which make up those definitions don't exist and you have those gods which aren't even defined in the first place and ... they just aren't defined. They're nonsense statements.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Perspicuo said:
It's the same difference between a gray fox and a fox in general. Gods are not unproven, just ludicrous.
Click to expand...

I don't see how. A "fox" is still something that has a definition, even though there are subcategories beneath it of "red fox", "grey fox" and all the other kinds of foxes. There are specific properties which an entity must have to be correctly called a fox and you can check those properties against the definition. For instance, if something has leaves and gets its energy through photosynthesis, then that something isn't a fox.

When you get to gods, there are those which have a definition and one can easily be a strong atheist in regards to because the properties which make up those definitions don't exist and you have those gods which aren't even defined in the first place and ... they just aren't defined. They're nonsense statements.
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Seems like today's gods are being defined more and more as exactly that, something that can't be defined, only sensed. Of course, that's all gods ever were.
 
As critical examination of the concept of God has become more searching over the last few centuries, its obvious that God as a simple concept is too easy to debunk. So yes,we get the attempts to put God beyond criticism is by claiming God is beyond human comprehension. But that sort of God is divorced from the big claims of various revealed religions. Its easy enough to create a theoretically incomprehensible God like this but the price is to abandon revealed Gods of major religions. And the fact that such a God is exactly like nothing at all when one takes that concept of God to its logical conclusion. A God that is erected solely to be beyond simple debunking but doesn't have any reason to believe in it. God slowly disappears from view like the Cheshire Cat, leaving a useless grin behind.
 
Draconis said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
So yes,we get the attempts to put God beyond criticism is by claiming God is beyond human comprehension.
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So something incomprehensible is used to allegedly make the universe comprehensible. Umm, shifting the problem?
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That is the whole point of it. It's a way to put the burden of proof on those countering or questioning the claim, as opposed to on those making the claim, where it should be. If gods fail when you define them then the logical (if not intellectually ethical) next step for those who want gods is to not define the gods and then respond to lack of belief by asking what it is exactly that they're not believing in and then pretending that that kind of statement is actually ... saying something.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Draconis said:
So something incomprehensible is used to allegedly make the universe comprehensible. Umm, shifting the problem?
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That is the whole point of it. It's a way to put the burden of proof on those countering or questioning the claim, as opposed to on those making the claim, where it should be. If gods fail when you define them then the logical (if not intellectually ethical) next step for those who want gods is to not define the gods and then respond to lack of belief by asking what it is exactly that they're not believing in and then pretending that that kind of statement is actually ... saying something.
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Nicely put.

If I said to someone, "show me your god," and the response I get is "I can't show you my god because the very definition of my god is something that I cannot show you," the game is up. Now your god is a zero quantity, literally. How could the burden of proof possibly fall on the person saying such a god isn't real?

I see gods morphing into "unknown, unknowable unknowns," if they haven't already.
 
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All Gods fit into (at least) one of four categories:

1) Easily disproven
2) Indistinguishable from nothing
3) Identical to something else
or
4) Unworthy of the name

Type 1 Gods are provably non-existent - "Your concept of God is false"; Type 2 Gods are pure sophistry and incapable of consideration - "if nobody knows, then what the fuck are we discussing"; type 3 Gods are linguistic errors - "if 'the universe' and 'god' are synonyms, then just say 'the universe'"; and type 4 Gods are not gods - "Sure, that guy can turn water into urine. What has that got to do with gods?".

I have yet to come across any definitions of God that don't fit at least one such category, and so I am perfectly comfortable with strong atheism. The weak atheist position of "There may be something as yet un-heard of or un-thought of that is a God, and as I can't prove the non-existence of such an entity, I will not state that there definitively are no gods" is simply conceding the non-point that 'God' is a word with no clear definition. The burden of definition is on the claimant.

Words have meanings; the word 'God' must be defined in full by any person who wants to claim it for any phenomenon, and re-defining it to have a meaning so far removed from common (or contextual) usage as to become plausible is not worthy of respect.

If we are discussing Game of Thrones, and I say that I don't believe in dragons, and that they are purely fictional creatures, then pointing me to the species Varanus komodoensis or Pogona barbata is just playing silly word-games.

"God" has always been a place-holder for "That which is not understood". All people are generally ignorant - not least because the sum of human knowledge is too great for one head to contain - so there are plenty of gaps to fit Gods into for any one person, and for many groups of people. "The tide goes in, the tide goes out ... You can't explain that". But while every person and every group of people have some gaps in their knowledge, humanity as a whole does not - every gap is filled, and there is nowhere left for a God to hide. If someone claims an elephant is in your kitchen, you don't need to open the fridge to be sure that they are wrong. The minuscule remaining gaps in our knowledge couldn't hold a lowly water-sprite. Much less anything worthy of the name 'God'.

The effect of a dragon is limited to its habitat and range. 'Here be dragons' was plausible when much of the globe was unexplored territory; but today I would not hesitate to completely rule out dragons in some remote part of the Earth; We looked in all the places they would fit, and we didn't find any trace of them. Gods are bigger than dragons; So you need to do a less thorough search to find evidence for Gods. We looked. They are not there. Not even hiding in the fridge.
 
bilby said:
All Gods fit into (at least) one of four categories:

1) Easily disproven
2) Indistinguishable from nothing
3) Identical to something else
or
4) Unworthy of the name
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If I'm understanding you correctly, I think it may be Type 2 Gods that keep me from being comfortable with strong atheism. Those are the types which elude falsifiability, right? If so, I think I have to be agnostic about them.
 
Juma said:
GenesisNemesis said:
Strong atheism in itself isn't faithy, but there are plenty of faithy atheists.
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You mean people that dont believe in gods despite having lots of evidens for them?
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People who don't believe in gods, but not having very good reasons for it. They're basically the amateur atheists.
 
Unbeatable said:
bilby said:
All Gods fit into (at least) one of four categories:

1) Easily disproven
2) Indistinguishable from nothing
3) Identical to something else
or
4) Unworthy of the name
Click to expand...

If I'm understanding you correctly, I think it may be Type 2 Gods that keep me from being comfortable with strong atheism. Those are the types which elude falsifiability, right? If so, I think I have to be agnostic about them.
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You are agnostic about whether nothing is something? I would say that those are the class that is most easily dismissed. You don't need to prove that nothing is non-existent; non-existence is part of the definition.
 
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