Pemalite said:
JWeinCom said:
Most atheists I know, and pretty much all that I've seen in this topic, take atheist to simply mean not believing in a god. I would actually describe it as anyone who is not a theist. I would personally not consider babies, because I think for one to count they need to be capable of evaluating the idea. Otherwise we get to silly positions like a pig is an atheist.
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Many Theists aren't actually church-going or practicing. But we still lump them in as Theists because of their convictions.
Atheism is and I quote: Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of Deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
So yes, I would also class a pig as an Atheist... Because the term Atheism isn't just a binary label that is only applicable to those who disbelieve in a deity, but also includes those with zero belief as the entire concept is alien to them.
There are simply many different types of Atheists.
JWeinCom said:
I would consider someone who says "I don't know" as an atheist. Because anyone who does not believe that god exists, whether they are certain or not, is not a theist. And would therefore have to be an atheist, as those two categories form a true dichotomy.
To sum it up, everyone capable of understanding the concept of god has to be a theist or an atheist. If they're not a theist, they're an atheist.
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I agree.
WolfpackN64 said:
Simple. The conclusion DOES follow the premises. The misunderstanding is that you need empirical proof for deductive argumentation. Deductive arguments are a form or argumentation. Just because other people doubt the validity of the conclusion it does not mean the argument is formally invalid.
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You are entirely correct.
The argument itself can be valid... But without empirical evidence to backup the argument... The result will be rendered irrelevant as we cannot ascertain it's truth.
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You gave me the definition of atheism, but what we're really discussing is the definition of atheist, and that one letter change makes a big difference.
Pretty much any definition of atheist I've seen either explicitly or implicitly limits it to people. If you'd like to suggest we expand the definition to include animals like pigs, I would challenge you to find a way to identify what pigs think about the proposition of a god. I would agree that intuitively it seems almost certain that pigs do not believe in a god, but I don't think you'd be able to demonstrate that.
I'd say for the labels of atheist or theist to be meaningful, it has to refer to something that has the capability of belief. Otherwise, it's like saying, my baby is not Antarctica. I mean, sure it's technically a true statement, but it's also kind of pointless.
As for the second part, while you're right that an argument could be valid in structure, but have false premises, in this case the argument presented (look at page 55 I think) is not only unsound (premises are not true) but is also invalid. For this argument, I wouldn't even bother assessing the truth of the premises, because even if the premises were all true, the conclusion would not be.
Last edited by JWeinCom - on 11 September 2018
